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Understanding the Difference Between Carry and Non-Carry Junglers

evilswitchkix·4/28/2016, 5:09:39 PM·2 votes·1,512 views

I just lost a game with a Shen jungle. I hard leashed him the entire bottom camp to speed up his jungling. I was Mao support with a Kindred ADC and we faced a Morg/Lucy combo bot. Shen ganked top several times resulting in our Rek Sai dying and Shen scoring a couple of kills on the enemy Poppy. The enemy Nocturne jungler along with Morg caught Kindred several times leaving our ADC well behind. Inevitably team fights ensued, the Shen went ham, got destroyed by the enemy carries and with our carries being behind we lost all team fights.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND WHEN YOU JUNGLE: There is a difference between jungling someone like, let's say Master Yi, and jungling someone like Shen. Master Yi is a hard carry. Shen is not. YOUR FOCUS AND PLAYS SHOULD BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

IT SHOULD BE NO GREAT MYSTERY THAT IF YOU CHOOSE A NON-CARRY JUNGLER AND TAKE KILLS FROM LANES THAT YOUR TEAM WILL FALL BEHIND IN TEAM FIGHTS.

Mobile junglers like Shen are great for protecting lanes, harassing enemies at objectives and are plenty good in team fights with only assists. THEY DO NOT REQUIRE A GREAT NUMBER OF KILLS.

So please, when you choose a jungler, be aware of whether or not you intend to carry or support lanes and gank accordingly.

What do you guys think? I believe this is a fundamental flaw in many junglers gameplay and ultimately leads to raging/arguing about KDA ratios/feeding/team fighting etc... and more lost games.

8 Comments

Šeraρh4/28/2016, 5:57:08 PM2 votes

I can see how kill distribution can be of some impact at a higher level, where you do want your scaling partners to be the one wth the most gold to scale from, but really in your average game, anyone getting the kills and the others getting the assist is all it should take for a whole team to snowball. The reason it fails to happen most of the time is that people won't abuse the free time they've been given, effectively giving the ennemy an opportunity to recover, and having the "not-carry-champion" being the only one fed in your team when you didn't get any objective off of his work then becomes detrimental.

Plus, what people fail to realise is also that you falling behind as a botlane even when your jungler has been getting kills ( and thus giving you assists ) across the board either means that you've been the weaker lane from the get go, or that their jungler had more of an impact as a player anyway.

More than him taking the kills, I think that your Shen's problem was him going ham when he should have been using his advantage to peel.

And in my defense, if everyone were to mindlessly whack at things like I do, the heavier hitters would be the one most likely to get the kills, resulting in the damage carry roles racking up more gold anyway [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

dangopee4/28/2016, 5:20:32 PM1 votes

It's not like renekton would have been much better off with those kills anyway. He's just a fall off meat shield too.

Šeraρh4/28/2016, 5:24:09 PM1 votes

My mindset is "go in, and slap the ennemies 'til they dead". I don't really care who gets the kill as long as they dead. I mean, the janna support could get all the kills, and as long as lanes are being pushed and objectives secured thanks to those kills, things should be alright. As long as you do wisely use the ennemie's downtimes to your advantage, they should be set back no matter who took the kill.

The problem is if Shen takes all them kills, but you do not / can't use the advantage he's giving you.

But well... no matter how much people complain about it, I'm still gonna be whacking at things until they die.

Prozzak4/28/2016, 5:36:03 PM1 votes

Not entirely sure on the downvotes on you, but maybe it was cause of the tone with the capslock. Anyway, you are not wrong. For example, I won't play panth and try to take every kill, he falls off too hard for that to matter, you mostly want to secure assists for yourself and kills for your lanes so that when you fall off, the team won't. Same goes for if I am playing a tank jungler. Kills are nice, but I prefer my lanes get kills. Then if I am playing Nocturne/Kindred I prefer the kills. Let's me just straight up carry.

You can only really do this though if the kill is a given. Don't try for an assist and let the lane get away, that does nothing.

TheThundersRoar4/28/2016, 5:46:19 PM1 votes

It's easy to say that when theorizing. But when actually jungling, it's way different.

There are a ton of factors affecting which lanes I'll gank, and my champion's late game scaling is honestly very low priority. Take a look at some of the factors I have to consider when deciding which lane to gank next:

  • Which lanes are pushing? Which lanes are pushed? Which summoners/ultimates are down? Which lanes are warded? Which wards did I just clear? Did I step on any wards on the way over?
  • How easy is it to gank that specific champion, compared to my own ganking power? How fed is an enemy champion? Does anyone need to be shut down? Does anybody need to snowball?
  • Where is the enemy jungler right now? Does he have ultimate? Summoners? Is the enemy jungler duo'd with anyone? Is his path obvious? Did he step on any wards? Is he contesting Scuttle Crab? Does he have timers on my buffs? Am I at a risk of getting counter-ganked? Do I know enough about his location/thought process to counter-gank him myself? Do I risk losing a buff by ganking a specific lane?
  • Is my jungle path efficient? Is ganking bot worth it after I just cleared my way to Krugs? Am I ganking too often? Not often enough? Do I need to farm? Should I gank or should I counter-jungle? Do I have timers on the enemy's buffs? Do I have his jungle path?
  • How is my mana? Health? Gold? Devourer stacks? What about the laners? Is anyone low? Requesting a cover?
  • How is tower/neutral objective status? Do I need to be present to contest Dragon/Herald? Are they trying to sneak Dragon/Herald? Should I take Scuttle Crab? Do I have the ability to quickly take it? Do I risk running into the enemy jungler? Can I fight him? Should I go deep ward?

So many factors. And we can't even process half of them at once.

Honestly, most of us suck. It takes a challenger to even consider all the factors above at once and make the best decisions. We're lucky to even make a half-educated decision about which lane to gank, and considering the late game scaling of the champions involved is just one minor factor.

So forgive us for not ganking your lane. Even in a good game, ganking your lane at a specific time might be a bad idea. Let alone in a bad game.

#And don't even get me started on kill-securing.