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Jungle is the hardest and most stressful role: how to make it enjoyable

Yoella·1/5/2015, 7:48:24 PM·8 votes·3,487 views

We've all been there a hundred times. You're in Teambuilder or draft and the last role to be filled is Jungle, and in Teambuilder it can take up to 15 minutes to find one. It's just a role that not a lot of people want to play, but why is that? Aside from being mechanically different from laning, it's because it's unnecessarily stressful and sorely under appreciated, especially after the jungle update. People say that supporting is hard, people say that supporting is very often unrewarding, people say that people blame your for everything as a support. Well a jungler is supporting three lanes, not just one, it's three times that. As a jungler you have to micromanage the entire map from the beginning of the game. You're not just responsible for one narrow lane and tower, you're a part of all three and everything in between. Now I use the word "responsible" here but do not be confused, a jungler is NOT responsible for your own lane. If you lose mid it's very likely not the junglers fault, but they know they'll usually be blamed anyway. That goes for any lane. The junglers job is to farm in the jungle, get the buffs, and occasionally gank an overextended opponent, all while keeping a constant eye out for the enemy jungler. Anything more than that is just the jungler being nice.

So why is being a jungler so difficult, stressful, and often undesirable? Also, how do we fix it? This is where it gets difficult, as balancing the jungler role via game mechanics would be difficult, cluttered, and take forever. Luckily there's a quicker, but less constant, fix. Teach the other players what not to do in lane. That's what I'm going to do here.

While in lane:

  1. Do NOT overextend. Overextending is when you farm too quickly and push your minion waves too close to the enemy tower. This is the leading cause of jungler frustration imo. If you're overextended then not only can your jungler not gank your opponent, you yourself are at risk of being ganked and giving a kill to the enemy team (making it harder for the jungler to gank that person from then on). Last hit minions, don't attack them the entire time, UNLESS you have a clear advantage over your lane opponent (good matchup, they suck, etc) AND you have some sort of escape from their jungler (flash is up, movement ability, stun you can land, etc).

  2. Do NOT take your junglers camps without their consent! Seriously I cannot stress this enough. "But I'm ADC and I need the XP/Gold", shut up, you have an infinite amount of minions constantly delivered right to you in lane. By taking your junglers camps you're denying your own teammate already limited gold, XP, and possible buffs as well. If your jungler gives you permission, go ahead. Otherwise either leave it or take it from the enemy jungle.

  3. Ask your jungler to ping before they gank. I know this one is on the jungler and not the laner, but I see it far too often to not mention it here. Most junglers do it anyway. It will help you coordinate ganks and make them overall much more successful.

  4. Lastly, and this is huge (most people already do this) ping when your lane opponent has disappeared. More than likely they're paying a visit to your unsuspecting teammate. I see most people do this, but there are still some who don't get why this is important.

Just do (or don't do) these four things and you'll have better, more successful games, and maybe we get it to the point where being a jungler isn't like being the only employee at McDonald's when the fat camp across the street just got out for the week.

15 Comments

Grimspeake1/5/2015, 8:04:54 PM7 votes

all the support mains r qq ryte noaw

Saint Millay1/5/2015, 9:09:24 PM3 votes

Jungling will always be stressful because laner's will very rarely blame themselves for losing lane. (If they do -- it's because they got "countered.")

So the jungler is the easiest person to blame. Either the other jungler is "camping" them or your "not ganking enough" otherwise they'd be 12-0 and stomping the game. No laner in the history of League has ever straight up lost a lane.

People whining is just the price you pay for jungling. It'll never change.

Yulen Xoshxius1/5/2015, 7:53:22 PM2 votes

I feel support is fairly easy to get down compared to jungling, I guess there may be more to be an EXPERT at it, but just supporting someone feels easier than jungling which I find intimidating to do against bots even.

disregardable1/5/2015, 7:52:40 PM2 votes

Wow, another deceptive thread that does not tell me how to be a more effective jungler. Thanks for that, I was missing one from my 20 per day quota.

CaptanKrushnKill1/6/2015, 9:42:28 AM1 votes

Wrong. Junglers role (actually, everyone's role) is to win lanes. Junglers do have a much harder time figuring out which items to buy to win lanes, since they have to deal with all lanes + enemy jungler.

But after a while you figure it out.

Yormaughm1/7/2015, 1:23:12 AM1 votes

Most of my favorite champions in this game are junglers, but I never play them in real matches because of what you said about it being the most stressful role. I actually prefer to main support. Junglers quite simply have to keep track of more than anyone else (of course a good player keeps track of everything no matter what their role is, but the jungler is required to do it,) and what's worse if you somehow fail a gank and feed a lane/buffs to the enemy you can single-handedly be responsible for losing the match very early. Or at least making it an uphill battle from the get go. IMO the jungler has the most important role on the team, and it's just too frustrating and takes too much responsibility when you know that there's 4 people counting on you to not only never make a mistake, but also correct theirs.

I agree with your list, but I do take a bit of an exception to #1. Overextending can work in an instance when you can really deal good burst damage to the turret. As long as you don't pretend that the enemy jungler is never going to react to it. If you earn an advantage in lane you should take it, and that means doing as much damage to objectives when you can, just understand that the second you do overextend you're a priority target for the enemy jungler and possibly even their mid-laner which is why pinging MIA is important and why you and your team need to react appropriately to when you do overextend.

For example, if you're prepared to do it and/or have good ward coverage, this is precisely how you set up a counter-gank, which can really steamroll the game in your favor. Sometimes the other players on your own team just don't know how to do this and I think that's why you initially cautioned against doing it. Otherwise the argument is "the advantage you earn from getting a kill or pushing a lane isn't extra damage to the objective, it's the CS you get that the enemy doesn't." That's entirely true, and works great for some matchups and team comps, but it's situational and both situations can work. Sometimes not pushing objectives when you had the chance is the reason you ultimately lose the match, so #1 shouldn't be a set in stone rule for every game IMO. Now if you meant to say "don't push the lane unless you've killed the enemy champions or forced them to back" then it's a good rule, unless your ADC/Supp combo have really long range harass and the enemy laners don't.

2 Though --- super true. Especially if you now take the new jungle item that makes smite reward health and mana when you use it on the jungle creeps. People have no idea how important that can be to just dip out of a battle for a few seconds in order to get an instant heal/mana boost and then you're right back in it. In bot games, I've been able to use that tactic to stay in the enemy half of the map pressuring them forever without having to b. The value this adds especially if you as the jungler have a sightstone and can place wards, or if you're tanky can be amazing. I've also kited enemies into the jungle with low health, smited something then turned around and killed them. Once you've learned how awesome this can be you also also feel how frustrating it is to not be able to do that because your laners took the jungle creeps for themselves just because they can.

Also the point SupaSwagKittyCat made about pinging MIA on top of your allies so they're guaranteed to see it is a good idea that I hadn't even thought of honestly.

Rustling Bush1/5/2015, 7:58:46 PM1 votes

i find jungler to be the funniest role, support in my opinion has to be the most stress of the roles. just gettings slightly annoying when people ask for ganks after they die.

[{quoted}](name=The AFK Farmer,realm=NA,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=zJYi3oTg,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-01-05T19:52:40.015+0000)

Wow, another deceptive thread that does not tell me how to be a more effective jungler. Thanks for that, I was missing one from my 20 per day quota.

i'm looking at the title and how is it deceptive, it doesn't say anything about being a better jungler, just about how to make the role less stressful.

Sammystorm1/5/2015, 9:03:47 PM1 votes

its hard to find because riot made the jungle harder.

SupaSwagKittyCat1/6/2015, 5:21:55 AM1 votes

Jungle is not the hardest or stressful role. imo any lane can be considerably worse. If you fall behind in the jungle all you have to do is put wards at entrances and farm, while laners have to deal with their mistakes, and often when behind forced to farm under turret they will get dived by jungler. This is my opinion as jungle being my second most proficient role.

For me jungle is all about looking at a map. If someone is pushed gank. If your laner is pushed, ward for them and countergank. If they enemy is ganking one side of the map, go counterjungle. If hes getting drag, dive top and take tower. Just time peoples summs and camp people with low mobility. Honestly people want to win games and they will listen to the jungler if you promise kills or objectives, they will follow. Also it may not be a junglers job but, ping everyones mia's on the lane theyre missing from and the danger ping on all other lanes. Guys just pinging mia is not enough you have to ping on top of the player for them to realize most of the time, this is super helpful and it will prevent your lane from killing other people TRUST ME.