Tips for an Aspiring Jungler

Budget Bruiser·Mar 18, 2017·1 votes·1,232 views

I'm trying to jungle more, usually with either or because I often play them top lane. I don't quite understand what I'm doing wrong, but I find myself falling behind with gold and XP. I usually get a few successful ganks and I farm the jungle too. Can someone give me some tips to do better, or maybe explain why I am falling behind?

EDIT: Thankyou for the help! There's a lot of information here and I think that I understand things better. These are all great tips and I've made sure to write some of them down. So yeah... glhf

6 Comments

CrimzynMar 18, 20172 votes

Welcome to the Jungle!

It is by far my favorite role! And please don't feel bad about not being super successful right away. All junglers start off terrible at first because its not just simply farming CS in lane and making the odd trade with your lane opponent. Here are 2 ways to not fall behind.

PATHING If you find yourself getting behind in the Jungle it is most likely due to time management. Im not saying what you are doing is wrong but in the Jungle time is money and you need to make the most of your time to make sure you don't fall behind. Here are some key points to keep in mind; A) Always have a jungle path in mind so you know where you are heading. You don't want to run in a circle trying to decide where to go. (Example: Starting bot side you can go RED buff, wolves, BLUE buff, Gromp and then start ganking at level 3) B) Another example of pathing is, if you have cleared say your TOP jungle and are now backing, you obviously don't want to go back TOP lane, you want to head BOT and clear at least some of your Jungle there while paying attention to MID and BOT lanes to see which lanes are maybe pushed up and gankable... so in this case maybe in BOT jungle you may clear chickens and then go right to BOT lane to try to gank.
GANKING You mentioned you do some ganks which is nice of course and expected! But again, going back to your comment about falling behind, try not to waste time. For example; You don't want to just sit in a bush for 3 minutes waiting for the enemy team to push up in lane. Only go to the lane if it is already pushed up, or if you have other information such as you know that their Flash is down or they are really low HP and you know you can gank them even close to tower.

GOOD LUCK!

HammermancerMar 18, 20172 votes

I got some great tips, number 1 priority is pathing, second is confidence, third is not dying to a laner (Dying to your enemy jungler is bad too but never ever feed a lane, even if you're getting first blood, trying to carry, you sabotage yourself)

Third is smoke a bowl and hop in practice mode, the just play around with the champ you like seeing what paths are fastest, try to get your first gank at about 3ish minutes if you can or before 4 and a half minutes at the latest, even if nothing comes of it, it puts the enemy team in a mindstate of "Oh fuck really he's ganking me?" figure out who has the most to bring to the table on your team, that's a mixture of the champ and the player, if your best player is your support and the worst is your varus, try to get that support strong enough to carry lane for the adc, you dont have to camp specifically, just gotta stay communicative.

Don't let yourself fall for a trap lane: a trap lane is a lane tht's too far lost to salvage for an effective amount of gold Let's say there's a malphite top on your team, and the enemy team has a yasuo, and he's 6/0/3 because of roams and just recking the malphite (With good farm to boot) You should try use that to your advantage the best you can, enemy jungle might appear to try to steal that tower, which means maybe you can get mid to four man bot lane.

Everything is about the gold trade, and everything you do is for your team, yes you should have kills, but don't forget to leash as many as you can without hurting yourself. If you think ahri needs the double when you countergank, give her both, even if you're yi. Really pay attention to what's open and who's missing, where are the wards?

Also from what i hear the higher elos just get smitestone instead of red or blue smite, vision op yo

EndlessSorcererMar 18, 20172 votes

General Tips:

I would suggest watching videos by high-ELO and/or professional junglers (i.e. Valkrin, Meteos, Stonewall008, Nightblue3, and FoxdropLOL). They will typically provide a lot of useful tips while playing and you can often see or hear their decision process and some optimizations throughout the game.

Off the top of my head, some basic optimizations may be:

Use hard-CC when the monster camps are about to attack you to cancel that attack and delay their next.
Attack Speed is extremely efficient at clearing on most junglers. I'd recommend using about 15% on champions when you need to speed up their clear even if they don't use the stat much later (with a few exceptions, such as Nidalee and Evelynn).
Keep a control ward out (or in your inventory) whenever possible. This is important for every champion, but I thought I should emphasis it. There isn't really a good reason not to.

As far as ganking is concerned:

When possible, conserve your gap-closer while ganking. If you can get to the enemy champion without using your mobility spell(s), then you can save it to catch them after they try to escape (Flash, dash, blink, etc).
You should should try to stay between the enemy and their escape route. You should be trying to move backwards (towards their escape) in-between attacks so that you can body-block them and slow their escape. This also leaves you closer to them if they try to dash or blink past you.
It can be risky to gank top-lane while Dragon is up since the enemy team can just group and take it 4v3. I'd recommend ganking top-lane early if possible (after your initial clear) and when Dragon is down; that lane can be quite snowbally due to isolation, so you want to get your ally ahead.
Learn to recognize the general times when buff camps spawn during games. If you see the enemy gank bottom lane while their top-side buff is up, you can go steal it from them.
Watch when top and bottom lane initially go into lane. If that lane has leashed for their jungler (missing health, mana, or showed up to lane a bit late), then you know where the enemy jungler has likely started and where they will end their clear (where is closest for them to gank).
If you have killed the enemy laner, you can either allow your laner to freeze or shove the lane into the enemy tower. If you shove the wave under tower and the next minion wave is coming up, it can be helpful to proxy it to ensure that the wave fully resets and the enemy laner misses as much as possible. This is very situational though and you will have to learn when through experience.

Other tips:

Whenever possible, walk up to the enemy champion during a gank and save your gap-closer for after they use their escape abilities.
Watch the enemy laners when they go into lane. Whichever lane shows up later and/or missing mana will likely indicate which side of the jungle the enemy jungler started on (which is useful for predicting gank paths and for counter-jungling).
Watch the minimap to see when and where the enemy goes to ward, which laners are pushing, which laners are vulnerable
Know, roughly, how most laning matchups go so that you can prioritize which lanes are the easiest to gank or require an early gank to decide the matchup.
If you have blown an enemy's Flash during a gank but haven't killed them, swing back around immediately after an gank them again. Many people don't expect it
If you've killed an enemy during a previous gank in top lane, kill them again immediately after they return to lane. They likely won't have wards up yet and a second back-to-back death can be enough to completely crush any chance that opponent has to recover the lane.
Top laners rarely bother warding the lane bushes. As such, lane ganks can be quite surprising and effective.
When you kill an enemy laner, shove the minion wave into the tower so they miss gold and experience and so that the minion wave will reset to the middle of the lane. If you can get away with it, clear the upcoming minion wave as well to ensure the reset and maximum missed minions.

You will learn a lot through experience, but these tips should help you at the start.

GrimspeakeMar 18, 20171 votes

Jungling is basically all about who is more time efficient.

Sett up 4my gankMar 18, 20171 votes

You should hover around the lower half of in between solo and duo lanes for the most part as a jungler. just work on your pathing and ganking efficiency and the xp will come. Bot buff, to wolves, to Top buff, to top gank, is a very easy classic path that a lot of top laners fall for. It also leaves you options after the gank. You can either go back and clear the scuttle / 1 last camp in your top jungle. Or you can base then go either top or bot because you will have camps on either side.