Clairvoyance Blog

Article by Cactopus & Riot Tamgros, Design by Nancymon

Next time you're walking through the jungle, tread lightly. Keep a careful eye on Gromp, Red Buff, and all their woodland friends. Because underneath all the fuzzy fur, fat tummies, and cozy branches lurks something terrible. Deep down, these critters are cold-blooded killers.

Every day, countless victims fall prey to these foul beasts. With each death the sky goddess shouts "EXECUTED," making their shameful demise known to all. But exactly how many lives are destroyed by the jungle monsters?

With the power of data, we've discovered the horrifying answer.

To determine the relative murderousness of the jungle monsters, let's look at the percentage of executions caused by each jungle camp during the most recent preseason. We excluded Scuttlecrab from this list because she's a nice gal who'd never hurt anybody.

Breakdown of Jungle Camp Executions

(Preseason 7)

In preseason 7, the Raptors came out on top, dealing out just over half of all jungle monster executions. From a game design standpoint, it makes sense that Raptors would be toughest, since they're the closest of the camps to the center of the map. They're a tempting target for any would-be counter-junglers, so taking them should feel a little dangerous.

Red Buff and Krugs do their fair share of unrepentant violence to foolish junglers as well, smashing past the Wolves, who are only responsible for about 1.94 percent of all jungle-monster executions. Only the most boosted of animals succumb to the wrath of Gromp.

That's just the data for preseason 7, though, and we've got data going all the way back to preseason 4—patch 3.14. Look at all those support items! Holy hell, what did support players even buy before the pi patch?

Breakdown of Jungle Camp Executions by Season

Anyway. There's always been a detectable spike in jungle executions during preseason, mostly because that's when we most often do dramatic tinkering with the jungle's design. Over the years, Red Buff and Raptors have traded the title belt for "deadliest jungle monster in League," with the Krugs rotating between second and third place.

Now, you may be wondering, "what was the deal with Red Buff in preseason 6?" The kindly brambleback was the king of accidental suicide-by-critter for junglers from midseason 5 to preseason 7. His victims were numerous—as you can see from the data below, many non-tank junglers began dying in far greater numbers in preseason 6 when compared to previous years.

Most Executed Junglers by Season

(Killed only by Jungle Monsters)

Nidalee

Dr. Mundo

Tryndamere

Kha'Zix

Evelynn

Wukong

Twitch

Kayle

Ekko

Kindred

Part of the boost to jungle deaths during preseason 6 can be blamed on the relative weakness of AP junglers at that time. AP jungling wound up getting more than a few buffs between patches 5.23 and 6.1 even things out (culminating in the full-blown replacement of Runeglaive with Runic Echoes).

Also, if you thought you hated playing against Dr. Mundo in preseason 6, think about how the poor jungle monsters felt! That was the only time in measured League history that Mundo wasn't the single most executed champ while fighting neutral jungle monsters.

There's one other possible explanation for Red Buff's dominance from midseason 5 until preseason 7, and it has to do with Sion. To see what we're talking about, we've separated out jungle execution rates for "non-jungling" champions. We'll define this as champions who AREN'T taking smite, but who are still getting executed in the jungle.

The figures below represent the average number of times each champ is executed by jungle monsters in any given game. We determine this by dividing each champ's total number of executions at the hands of jungle monsters by the total number of games played on the champ.

Most Executed Non-Junglers by Season

(Killed only by Jungle Monsters)

Sion

Singed

Hecarim

Tryndamere

Kassasadin

Wukong

Riven

Ekko

Gangplank

Jax

Oh, Sion mains. Beginning shortly after the big grey guy's rework in patch 4.18, Sion players developed a strategy that involved intentionally dying to the enemy red buff, finishing off the camp using Sion's passive form, then teleporting to lane with an early level two advantage. It looks like this. It's still technically a feasible strategy, although it's been losing popularity since around midseason 5.

This preseason we've seen a big jump in Singed suicides, which may or may not have something to do with a recent controversy involving support Singed. These mad scientists are getting bopped in the jungle more and more. We're just gonna assume that their teammates are cool with it.

Speaking of shameless feeders, we can now answer the question everyone has: which junglers get executed by jungle monsters the most? As above with the Sion graph, this is the average number of executes per game, although we've limited this to data gathered during preseason 7.

And the crown goes to Nidalee players, who get executed once every ten games on average. Of course, the real average is probably a little lower, since that number is brought up by games in which a single Nidalee player goes full tilt and gets executed multiple times. Although normally Dr. Mundo would top the charts here, he isn't on the graph at all because his jungle playrate in preseason 7 has been extremely low.

Ivern is dead last on the chart—the only way he can get executed by a jungle camp is if someone else in the game somehow activates them. The Green Father only gets executed by jungle monsters in one out of every 2,000 games. So, there you have it! Nidalee players are suicidal chimpanzees, and if you die to a jungle monster as Ivern you're basically a rounding error.

To close out our investigation of these bloodthirsty jungle fiends, we've got one last big data point to consider: the breakdown of executions from all sources, including towers, fountain, dragon, and baron.

Breakdown of Total Executions (All Sources)

(Preseason 7)

Basically, over 10 percent of all executes are just people BMing by diving into the enemy fountain as the game ends. Towers take the top prize, surprising no one. The fact that Raptors execute twice as many people as Baron is pretty nuts, although history has shown that players will probably adapt as we move toward the preseason. Also, Dragon and Baron are probably both a lot lower than they otherwise would be because they're often contested objectives, turning their last-hits on champions into kills rather than executes.

This concludes our grisly report. If you've been using Replays on the updated client, reply in the comments below with links to videos of your most embarrassing executes.