LoL Jungling Guide

LoL Jungling Guide by Artiquinno

Hi! My name is Artiquinno – a Gold I player on the EUW server, and recently I have been making guides on Reddit concerning various different aspects of play. Most recently, you may have seen my guide to warding, and so I am continuing with writing my guides, hopefully you will get something useful out of this.

Jungling is a role that some people love or hate – either way you should know the basics of how to do it because their are times in ranked where you encounter someone who just doesn’t understand the basics. If that’s you; hopefully I can help! Jungling is a very complex role, lots of decision making has to be done – but there are a multitude of basics that can be mastered while will help.

Clearing the Jungle.

Being able to clear the jungle with speed and proficiency is a must when learning to jungle – and you must accept that some junglers have a better clear speed than others. I will list below a route for the first clear of a jungle, from the persepctive of a Lee Sin jungle:

Blue Side:

Red Buff – Wraiths/Wolves – Blue Buff

Although this may seem simple, you have to bear a few things in mind:
1. How do you clear this in the fastest possible way?
2. What do you do once you’ve cleared this first bit of jungle?

Looking at number one – different junglers have different clear speeds and have different abilities that will help them clear the jungle in the fastest possible way. In this example we can see that Lee Sin has a very fast jungle clear. If you take advantage of the attack speed that his passve grants him – as well as an execute on his Q – he can go through the jungler very quickly – but you have to take advantage of these abilities.

Another person to look at would be shaco, he can solo a buff very quickly becasue of his boxes, but if you don’t take advantage of this, you slow down his clear speen tremendously!

Moving on to number two. Decision making is a large part of playing the role of a jungler. After you have completed your initial clear of the jungle, then you have two real options:

1. Continue farming.
2. Gank.

You would continue farming if you were a weak early game jungler that required a lot of farming, you had taken too much damage taking your buffs, or there wasn’t a lane that you could push. As Lee Sin, you have a lot of early game damage – so you want to take advantage of this – so ganking would be a better option if you could!

Ganking is the most important part of playing most junglers. It secures kills in lanes and helps to force objectives. If you can ganka lane and you think it will apply pressure, you probably should. Soon I will go through good times to gank, and when not to gank a lane.

Ganking. When and how to.

Counter Ganking – is something that you can do as a jungler if you are sure that you, and the lane you are ganking are strong enough to 2v2 the enemy laner and their jungler. This can be very strong and can easily result in First Blood. This is easiest to do when your laner is pushing hard (maybe to the enemies turret) – you sneak into a lane bush and wait for the enemy jungler to arrive. When they do, your laner and you focus them down and try to kill them. This should be relatively easy to do early in the game – especially after first jungle clear because they will be on around 75% HP.

Diagram showing Top lane counter gank – Blue side.
Diagram showing Top lane counter gank – Purple side.

In the Blue side diagram we see that the jungler comes in the back of the lane and sits in a bush to wait for the enemy jungler. If he had walked down the river then he may have been spotted because of a ward.

Similarly, in the Purple side diagram – we see that the jungler walked through the Tri-Brush. This should avoid any wards, and put you in a position to counter gank very well.

There are some important things to consider when you are going to counter gank:

1. Will you get to the lane before the enemy jungler?
2. Will you be able to 2v2 them?
3. Is there a huge risk?

With regards to number one – if you are a jungler that has a very slow jungle clear, then you will not reach the top lane before you have the chance to counter gank. Your top laner will be in trouble and you won’t be able to help.

Number two – If you don’t think that you can 2v2 them, then don’t try. If you’re trying to fight a Riven + Lee Sin combo as Maokai + Fiddlesticks then you are probably going to lose. In this situation, it’s a good idea to ward the top laners bush, and ping them back.

Number three – If there is a huge risk over counter ganking – then it may not be a good idea to do it. For example: if you’re going to try to counter gank a lane which has huge 2v1 potential, there is very little doubt that you will lose. Expect the enemy jungler to be there unless you have vision on them in some other part of the map.

Some good junglers that I can recommend for counter ganking are:

• Rengar.
• Lee Sin.
• Evelynn.
• Udyr.
• Jarvan.
• Elise.

All of these offer a good amount of damage/cc that will help you out in a 2v2 situation and are very capable of scoring first blood.

Counter Jungling. How to do it, and how to deal with it.

Counter jungling can be a very effective way of dealing with the enemy jungler, but it’s horrible when it happens to you. Counter jungling involves going into the enemy teams jungle and taking camps to help gain experience. If they are stronger than you – then they may sit in your jungle trying to kill you. This means that you will lose out on a lot of XP and be in constant danger of dying.

There is only one way to deal with counter jungling – and that is to buy wards. There are a few spots that you can ward that will give you the advantage and give your team time to collapse on the enemy and make them wish that they hadn’t counter jungled.

Have a look at the map!

Here I have labeled warding spots that will be good for both sides of the map. Here you will see if the jungler is showing up and either avoid him, or get your team to collapse on them for a free kill.

What do I do when I’m counter jungling?

What you want to do is steal the enemy team’s jungle camps and leave one last minion so that they have to clear the camp and get next to no XP at all. This ensures that you will stay ahead of the enemy jungler and will be stronger in teamfights.

A good thing to do is to ward in the enmy jungle. By doing this you will be able to see where they are in the jungle at all times, and either avoid them, or go to kill them if you are strong enough. Refer to my map to see where some good warding spots would be in the enemy jungle.

Despite this only being a basic guide – I believe that I have covered a lot – and would like to spread some information across other guides so stop it from being so crowded! Remember to keep an eye out for my other guides, and as always – good luck in ranked!