Basic jungle tips? I've just now started jungling

Thy Reaver·8/13/2015, 2:11:11 PM·3 votes·3,186 views

So I'm completely new to jungling, bought Rengar as he's a champ I've always wanted and he just went on sale, and so far I've played 3 games with him and did pretty bad. I need some basic tips for jungling and playing Rengar. I mean very basic. To start off, I have some (probably stupid) questions, such as: if I don't start at blue, do I get it right away or wait until a certain level to get it? Second, should I be clearing the jungle the entire game, or focus mostly on ganking? I tend to start ganking at 6 and gank every chance i get and only clear jungle when everybody's fine, is this what I should be doing? Is there a point where I should stop clearing the jungle and teaming up for groupfights? As you can probably tell by my questions, I'm very new to this and need it explained like I'm brand new to League. Any help is much appreciated.

21 Comments

Shiroi Kitsune8/13/2015, 3:14:47 PM4 votes

I'll give you some advice as a jungle main. First, run through your first clear several times in custom games until you have it down as efficiently as possible. The first three camps are almost entirely invariable in when you get them, what skills you use, etc., so optimizing this will be a good boost to the speed with which you can do your first clear, as well as giving you a general idea of what your health pool will look like after you finish your third camp. For Rengar I would highly recommend starting krugs, and then moving to red buff, and then either wolves or blue. The passive you get from smiting krugs saves you a ton of health in your first clear, because of your auto-reset with your q.

Next up, if you start red side, you should do krugs first for the smite bonus, followed by red, and then a camp of your choosing. If you start blue side, do gromp first for the smite bonus, do blue, and then whichever camp you like. Also, when you start your first camp, smite immediately so you get the maximum effectiveness out of the smite bonus.

As far as ganking goes, it varys a lot by champ, but with Rengar you should wait until 6, and then gank whenever your ult is off cooldown. If it is on cooldown you should be farming up in the jungle. A big problem when you start out is you will find it difficult to manage your time well, and will end up wasting a lot of time not being sure what exactly to do. So just make sure you are always doing something, and going at it all the way. Half-assing a gank because "they told me to come", is far worse than ignoring the lane and just farming your jungle. Which brings me to my next point:

Laners have no idea when is a good time for you to gank (usually). You will often feel pressured to gank for lanes because laners are pinging and asking for help. Remember that despite this, it is your decision what to be doing with your time. If you think that top lane would be a better gank target than mid, despite mid pinging like crazy and top being silent, then go for it. If you think that the enemy leblanc has too many escapes and isn't worth ganking, feel free to farm, even though your mid is crying about wanting a gank. Remember, you're the jungler, and it is entirely up to you what that means.

As far as ganking goes, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Firstly, look to see if the lane has a lot of escapes (flash and abilities). If they have escape abilities (ez, leblanc, etc.), wait until they use their escape move (since they will usually use it aggressively if they are not anticipating a gank), and then immediately go in once they have used it. Same thing if the lane has a lot of disengage (alistar, janna, etc.). Secondly, if you have a gap closer, it is best to wait to use it until after the opposing laner has used their escape. On Xin for instance, this would mean holding your e until the opposing laner flashes, dashes, etc.. Rengar is a bit special because of his ult, as you should be initiating with it, but as a general rule of thumb, it is good to hold onto gap closers. Lastly, check to see how your laner can contribute to your gank. If you're ganking for a lane with a lot of cc, you will have a much easier time than if you are ganking for a lane with little or no cc.

Now I'll get to your specific questions. Your first question is about when to grab blue if you don't get it on your first clear. I would say that you should get it asap as you want it back up asap. It's free gold, and you can start donating your blue to your laner sooner if you take it out earlier. Secondly, you ask about whether ganking or farming is more important. For this you need to consider who you are playing. If you are playing someone who is very strong early, but weak late (read lee sin), than you should focus on ganking almost entirely. If you are someone who is super strong late but weak early (or have to reach a certain threshold in order to become strong), then you should focus on farming early until you hit the desired threshold, and then focus on ganking (warwick, rengar, amumu, etc.). If you are playing someone who is exceptionally weak early, but who gets very strong late game, you should focus almost entirely on farming, taking only the most opportunistic of ganks (Mundo, Shyvanna, Master Yi, etc.)

Next, you ask about how often you should gank once you hit six, to which the answer is, every time your ult is up. Rengar is pretty pathetic with ganks unless he either A) has his ult, or B) performs an in-lane gank (walking into the bushes on the side). If you can't meet one of these two conditions, focus on farming only (though some counter-jungling would also be a pretty good idea considering rengar's assassination potential.) Regarding your last question, you should start grouping up whenever your team is doing so. If your team is group, join them. If your team is chilling in their lanes, just chill in the jungle. Also, when you reach mid-late game, and everyone is moving everywhere, try to weave in a camp or two as you move around, but don't worry about farming the jungle too much. The jungle should become a free gold/exp deposit for your team at that point to be farmed by any member of the team who is in the general vicinity.

Finally, feel free to ask me any more questions you might have. I've been playing since season 1 and have mained jungle since mid-season 3, so I'm fairly knowledgable about such things.

Merxamers8/13/2015, 2:48:33 PM3 votes

When i play Rengar, i start bot side and go (for Blue side): Krugs (smite w/ leash) --> red --> Skuttle Crab (very easy to kill in early levels) --> Birds (Smite should be up, use it and kill little birds first), then recall. I recommend watching some high level streamers clear with Rengar; you don't want to just stand still and auto, you want to juke the monsters around a bit. Empowered Q makes your DPS much higher for clears, and empowered W heals a flat percentage, so those are the most useful for jungle clear.

After you recall, pick up item 3713 + health pots and a ward; you need the purple smite for the sustain. Then clear the other side, looking for opportunities to gank. The key word here is OPPORTUNITY; it's hard to force a pre-6 gank with Rengar, so you're most effective at counter-ganking (going in while the other jungler is trying to gank) or punishing an enemy for over-extending (gank while they're fully committing to a lane kill). Look for opportunities, but you're priority is to farm up items and get to level 6.

Using your ult properly is pretty tricky and requires practice, but here's the basic idea: before using your ult, get to 5 stacks of ferocity on a camp. When you turn invisible, try to wait until creeps are out of the way, and right click the enemy (preferably a fragile adc) to leap towards them. Here's the tricky part, and why you need to stack ferocity beforehand; while you are in the air, before you land on them, use your empowered E (bola) to root them. This will keep them from using their dashes while you dish out your combo, and use empowered Q when your ferocity resets. This takes practice but should annihilate people if you do it right.

The core items for jungle knife-cat are

item 3074 (sustain, AD, burst; you can activate the active while you're leaping towards someone) item 3142 (active gives an extremely useful movement speed boost during ult, gives other useful stats) item 3035 (once you get this as your 4th or 5th item you are basically the angel of death)

You will probably need one or two defensive items; item 3143 and/or item 3065 work pretty well. I haven't tried it yet, but the movespeed + decent stats mean that item 3742 is probably solid for him too.

Some acceptable options are:

item 3153 (if you fall behind and find yourself having to duel tanks more than you'd like, this isn't a terrible choice) item 3155 (if you're falling behind to an AP heavy team, this is a solid early game pickup) item 3071 (pretty justifiable purchase; gives tankiness, all-important CDR, plus armor shred that helps your AD teammates a lot)

General Tips:

Your E has pretty long range, and is very effective at covering retreats; if you have a teammate running from the enemy, just toss it at them to help your friend escape.

For runes, I run AD Quints and Reds, Flat Armor Yellow, and flat CDR Blues (that CDR is crucial for Rengar's clear)

Focus on trying to use empowered Q more than empowered W when clearing; emp. Q gives a huge burst of damage and attack speed, while if you're constantly using empowered W to heal yourself, you're going to have a hard time. Pick up a bunch of healthpots, and don't be scared to use them.

I don't recommend trying to gank bot lane pre-6, unless there's an ENORMOUS opportunity (absurd overextension; failed enemy gank and they're all low, etc.) Trying to force a gank in the dual lane as an assassin jungler is a quick way to give up first blood, so ignore the bot lane whining and farm up.

Good luck!

RogueWill8/13/2015, 2:22:25 PM3 votes

First advice don't make rengar your first jungler.... that's by far a bad idea since his kit is not very forgiving on the jungle. His clears are bad and also his sustain, also his runes are not standard ad runes. Rengar is not an easy champion on the jg.

But if you are set on Rengar and you think you are up to the challenge here it is:

  1. Focus on ganks as your first priority, you are an assassin jungler and thus you depend on kills to snowball and stay relevant through the game. Jungle camps won't give you neither as much xp neither as much gold so unless you get yourself some kills or at least assist you will fall behind.
  2. Ganking at 6 is fine but you probably should get a gank pre-six after taking red using your empowered net. You should always start bot weather is red or blue buff as they will be able to provide a better leash that will help your poor sustain.
  3. Unless you are ridiculous fed, teamfights are not your friends... again you are an assasin jungler and hence you are better off getting picks than forcing 5v5 (leave that for the utility tank junglers) only force teamfights if you have a clear advantage (you picked one of the enemy carries, you have hp advantage, etc etc). As rengar you want to finish games around the 30min mark sine as any assassin you will decay in late game.
Merxamers8/13/2015, 3:17:32 PM2 votes

One other thing: a lot of people are saying not to pick Rengar because he's hard, but you should play what you want; if you play a bunch of knife-cat, you will eventually be pretty good at it.

If you DO decide you want to try something else, I recommend giving Pantheon a try. He's great at clearing the jungle, has simple but satisfying mechanics, is super-strong early game with amazing ganks, and is the same kind of carry jungler Rengar is (just not an assassin).

But, again, you shouldn't let people tell you to play champions you don't want to play just because you're new to the game. If i had a dollar every time once of these board posts had a response telling the new player to just play Warwick or Ashe (for ADC) i'd be the richest LoL player alive.

Thy Reaver8/13/2015, 4:20:37 PM2 votes

Can't thank everyone enough for the tips and help, I'll keep all your advice in mind while I'm playing. Hopefully before too terribly long I'll be a sufficient jungler.

And as far as everyone saying "don't start with kitty cat", I've decided I'm gonna commit to taking the hard road of learning him in hopes of ending up maining him and being good with him.

Randomonium8/14/2015, 4:26:47 PM1 votes

People have given you a lot of good advice here. Another thing to focus on is the enemy jungler. By watching the minimap and getting wards you can often predict where the enemy jungler will be. This allows you to warn your teammates of impending ganks and even allows you to invade his jungle to steal his camps or kill him after jungle monsters have dropped him to low health.

For example, if you see the enemy jungler ganking top instead of going top and being late to assist go into his bot side jungle and take all his jungle camps and put a ward somewhere in his jungle. This will allow you to track his movements and punish him every time he tries to gank your team.

Predatore8/13/2015, 2:18:45 PM1 votes

Im not that great at the game but for question one, yes go right for the buff after wherever you started. Dont farm all game. I stay in the jungle but if i see someone that is gankable and i have decent health then i will gank on my way to whatever camp im going to.

agbudar8/14/2015, 4:34:21 PM1 votes

w/e you do dont just afk farm even if a gank won't net you a kill or even a burned flash its about the pressure you give to the enemy laner from them losing health/cs that will pressure them into a fatal mistake

lightdragoon888/13/2015, 2:52:45 PM1 votes

Watch and learns from videos.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rengar+jungle

There are so many you can watch and learn from. Things like what they level first, what they max, what camps they do in what order, how they gank, what they buy, etc.

Icestar11868/13/2015, 2:59:56 PM1 votes

So, part of the problem is that you picked a hard jungler to learn on. I would recommend Warwick, just to get the hang of it, and then switching to whatever jungler you actually want to play.

if I don't start at blue, do I get it right away or wait until a certain level to get it?

If you can clear a camp and there's no obvious reason not to (easy gank you could be doing, enemy nearby and higher health than you), go for it.

Second, should I be clearing the jungle the entire game, or focus mostly on ganking? I tend to start ganking at 6 and gank every chance i get and only clear jungle when everybody's fine, is this what I should be doing?

This is not what you should be doing. Gank when you can, which is not all the time. Farm when you can't gank. It is entirely possible for someone to need a gank when you can't actually gank. They could be overextended, or too low to go in. If you're finding that a lot of ganks fail, it's probably because you picked a bad time to gank.

Is there a point where I should stop clearing the jungle and teaming up for groupfights?

There is never a point where you shouldn't farm. However, you should group up with the team.

I would recommend looking up some guides on youtube, just to help you understand how jungling works. Make sure it's an up-to-date guide though. Anything from before preseason 5 is wrong by default.

RouterSmiter8/13/2015, 3:01:16 PM1 votes

First of all refer to it as jangle because draven.

  • Always start the strong side of your jungle, to get op bot lane leash with rengar, when i play rengar I like to do gromp/rugs --> blue/red --> skuttle --> wolves/raptors.
  • Backing with around 550 gold, get rangers trailblazer than rush brutalizer, tiamat than ghostblade, my advice dont finish the jungle item on rengar.
  • rengar power spikes at 6 with his ult, make sure you sweep the area before you ult, and have 5 stacks of your passive for maximum damage.
  • If rengar doesnt get an early kill, hes kinda useless. and falls behind, I wouldnt suggest him as your first jangler
NaturesMayhem8/14/2015, 3:21:14 AM1 votes

Add me in-game my name is NaturesMayhem I live and breath Rengar. I can give you some basoc tips give you some of the harder mechanics good jungle routes. I play Rengar soo much I have 66.0k Mastery Points with him. that is three times the amount requires to get to mastery rank 5 or 4 whichever is the max.