Introduction
Jungling in League of Legends is a unique role when compared to the others. Junglers don’t have to stay in the same lane for long periods of time and instead have a lot of choices at all times, this is what makes this role so versatile and engaging to play, but it can also make it very challenging for beginners to play, with so many options you might be paralyzed and not know what to do.
In this article, we’re going to be covering a bunch of things to help you understand how to play Jungle in League of Legends, including champion selection, jungle pets, pathing, ganking and some tips.
What Champion to Play
Maybe the first question most junglers asks themselves. Picking an appropriate champion can make your first games much easier to play. Champions like Nidalee and Lee Sin are very fun and flashy, but they make for terrible introduction to jungling for most people.
Instead, I’d recommend most people to pick a slightly tanky champion, with a good clear and with a straightforward kit. Here are some examples of great champions to pick for your first few games as a jungler:
- Amumu
- Xin Zhao
- Warwick
- Rammus
- Trundle
- Volibear
Now, you don’t have to play these champions for a long time, especially if you don’t enjoy them. There are many more viable champions in the game but they generally are more difficult to have an impact if you’ve never tried them. Out of all these, Amumu and Warwick would be my favorites because they work well with almost any team, providing front line and crowd control which almost every team needs.
A lot of the time, if the jungler picks a Mage/Assasin type of champion and the support doesn’t pick a front line champ your team will be stuck with no front line, these guys ensure that you have what your team needs at all times, plus they do plenty of damage on their own.
Jungle Pets
Before even playing a single game, you should know this. If your champion takes smite you will be presented with a choice of a unique jungle pet at the start of the match. These cute little guys will follow you around the jungle and help you clear the camps by doing Area of Effect damage to the enemies.
Eventually these pets will provide buffs to your champion and to your Smite spell. Let’s start out with the Smite spell:
Types of Smite
Smite
Deals 600 damage to the target minion or monster.
Unleashed Smite
Deals 900 damage to the target minion or monster. Can be casted on enemy champions to deal damage and slow for 2 seconds.
Primal Smite
Deals 1200 damage to the target minion or monster. Can be casted on enemy champions to deal damage and slow for 2 seconds. There is a special effect depending on which jungle pet you chose at the start.
Pet Bonuses
Blue Pet
Gain movement speed after exiting a brush or killing a jungle monster.
Red Pet
Gain ember stacks after killing jungle monsters, at 100 ember stacks your next ability or attack against an enemy champion deals bonus true damage equal to 4% of the target’s health.
Green Pet
Gain a shield that recharges after killing jungle monsters or after 10 seconds out of combat. While the shield holds gain extra tenacity and slow resist.
Jungle Pathing
Ok, so you’re ready to play but what route should you take? Red buff? Blue Buff? Invade? For an easy introduction, enable recommended jungle pathing inside the game’s options. It will recommend an appropriate jungle path for your champion.
In general, you want to arrive at one of the river crabs by minute 3:15. This ensures you can take at least one of these guys, never let the other jungler take both of them. So clear one side of your jungle and then head to the scuttle crab. After this ganking could be a good choice but it depends on your champion and how the lanes are going.
If you want to focus on ganking then make sure to constantly check the lanes, check who is pushing and making themselves a target, obvious examples are “pushing” champions like Yasuo or Yone, these guys are almost always pushing and will fight anyone, if you focus your efforts on these your chances of a successful gank are higher.
On the other hand, never gank lanes which your allies are pushing hard, it makes it way difficult to gank the enemy when they’re right next to their tower, do more camps or even invade.
Power farming is an option for many champions like Master Yi and Bel’Veth but you should still gank when you see an opportunity, and always save smite for when the teams wants to do dragon.
Here is a simple summary of popular routes:
Level 3 Rush
Kill three camps to get to lvl 3 then gank a lane. You can do blue buff, red buff and gromp for a guaranteed level 3. This is useful for champions which have great ganking potential.
Full Clear
Kill all 6 camps in your jungle and also the scuttle crab. This is great for champions with limited ganking potential before level 6.
Which Lanes Should I Gank
Alright so you just reached level 3 and ready to gank someone, which one should you choose? Top, mid or bottom? While every game is different these are some useful guidelines for choosing a lane to gank.
Here’s a great tip, before the game even starts you should already be making plans for your first gank. If there is a melee matchup then chances are high that the first minutes are going to be very aggressive with lots of trading and they both will be low hp. For example, Renekton vs Jax in top lane, or Yasuo vs Talon in mid lane, but it can also happen in bot lane with something like Pantheon support vs Nautilus.
Melee matchups are great choices for your first gank, so always keep those in mind. But if there are none of these then don’t worry a Melee vs Ranged matchups is the next best thing, melee champions here will usually be pushed into their tower the first 10 minutes of the game, so if your team mate is the melee champion you can usually score kills early here.
If there is no other good obvious choice then consider ganking bottom lane for the simple reason that 3 people clicking one champion can burst basically any champion in the first 10 minutes of the game. Plus you can then do an early dragon sometimes which is a massive play.
After you’re more experienced with jungling you should then start to see some patterns like the Yasuo/Yone thing we mentioned. There are always exceptions to these rules, for example if your mid lane is a Twisted Fate and you are playing Elise then you can gank anyone in mid lane at almost any point as long as you coordinate your stuns together. Communicating well in these scenarios is vital!
Tips and Tricks to be a Great Jungler
Gank lanes in which your allies are being pushed
It’s so much easier to gank these lanes because the opponent has to walk all the way back to the safety of their tower, never gank lanes in which your ally is doing the pushing, it’s useless!
Flank when ganking
Don’t just run into the lane from the river, loop around the back and ambush them from behind. If you’re below plat, don’t ping the lane and tell your teammate that you’re ganking until you’re almost there. A lot of the time these laners will botch the gank by being extremely obvious that an ally is coming.
Buy Red Trinket
Unless you’re playing Lee Sin, red trinket is almost always better. It makes it so you can create ganking opportunities by clearing vision.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed this article; we didn’t cover jungle objectives like Dragon and Herald in much detail because contrary to popular belief these are not the exclusive responsibility of the jungler. Instead, the entire team should focus on these from the first minute of the game, especially mid and support!
If you follow these tips then you’re well on your way to becoming a great jungler, find your favorite champion and spam games with him. Don’t tilt and do your best, jungle is not as hard as some people say!