Hey everyone, so we sent Hector to smurf in Grandmasters, Gold and Platinum as a jungler
while commentating his decision making in real-time.
Hector is one of the few players who ranks up as 'fill' all the way to challenger, which
makes his jungle techniques a little unorthodox compared to high elo jungle mains, because
he plays as a laner so often.
In short, he places very little value on gold and experience from camps and instead aims
to always get his laners super far ahead with a very high pressure gank style.
Throughout this guide, we'll be asking you a ton of questions about your decision making,
then you can compare it to Hector's real-time thoughts, so you can test if you think like
a Challenger.
Let's jump into it starting in Gold elo with Hector as Graves vs Kha'Zix.
Okay so first thing's first.
You're graves and these are your matchups.
Which lanes would you focus your ganks on and why?
Let's hear what Hector has to say
Okay, let's break this down further since there'll be a bunch of similar questions to
this throughout the guide and most of us are guilty of default starting bot side for that
fat leash.
Most of your time, the decision for which buff to start should be based on what side
of the map you want to play around.
In gold elo and below, nearly every game we review, junglers ALWAYS start bot side, which
leads you to miss out on big opportunities in certain matchups.
In this game, Hector knows bot is a poor choice to gank because Heimer has to push the lane
to get any work done.
Bot and Top he describes as 'volatile', because both matchups are melee.
Which means they both have to get close to each-other to last-hit, prompting them to
trade more often than ranged champions who play further back.
By starting bot, he can clear this side of the jungle and path towards the area he wants
to influence.
Let's see what he does next.
Why do you think Hector know's Khaz'ix is 3 camping and what information does that give
you as a jungler?
Information gathering and knowing how to use it certainly makes jungling a whole lot more
fun, which.. is why junglers love Skill-Capped.
:) Hector is a bit fortunate to have a top laner
who gave him this extra information.
This allows him to identify that Kha'zix has only done red buff, and is doing a red to
blue to gromp start, which is an aggressive rush towards level 3.
By rushing level 3, Kha'Zix will want to impact the map.
Either by ganking a lane, invading, or securing scuttle crab.
With this information in mind, he'll just clear wolves and get a camp advantage over
Kha'Zix, while being aware that he may need to react to aggression from the Kha on top
side.
As Hector is killing red, Kha'Zix opts into an invade.
Let's see what happens.
So that was kind of close, but with 4 stacks of his Grit Passive, Graves wins this exchange.
With that free kill, Hector looks top lane.
What do you think he should do next?
Alright, so that was a great start to the game, where things clearly went great for
Hector.
In the next game, he won't
be
so lucky.
On to our next game.
This game will feature Hector playing Maokai into a newly reworked Fiddlesticks jungle.
Like before, take a look at the lane match ups.
Where do you think you'd path towards?
It's safe to say most of you assumed to path bottom here, and that is going to be correct.
"we have blitzcrank....there's not a lot of follow up in top lane"
To that end, Hector does the standard Blue, Gromp, Red start, so that he can look to gank
at level 3.
But, as he's doing red and glances over to bot lane, something unexpected has occurred.
"it allows me to adapt....that's not how ranged vs melee match ups go"
This is always the issue with making assumptions and game plans.
Your low elo teammates and even the enemy team won't always play their match ups accordingly.
Like he said, Hector will have to adapt.
While your initial pathing is almost always based off top or bottom, there's always the
option to pivot towards mid lane, since of course you can gank it from either side.
So after raptors Hector chooses to set up a gank on Lucian over doing his own krugs
Since this gank isn't looking like it'll work out, he dips and moves for scuttle, but he
happens to find Fiddlesticks.
He steals the Scuttle Crab and a fight occurs.
Let's once again hear his thought during it.
"i need to back away....i guess we don't have prio"
Clearly, he's made some wrong assumptions, and at the end of the day is lucky that this
went as a 1 for 1 in the first place.
It's important to admit your mistakes when you make incorrect decisions based on the
map state.
Hector made an assumption based on his earlier intel that his bot lane was winning lane super
hard.
This caused him to believe that he could take any fight in the river, since his bot lane
could use their priority and rotate over.
But obviously your information should always be up to date.
This time he was being quite lazy about his camera positioning while he was waiting on
the Lucian gank.
If he'd taken a moment to look at bottom here, he would've received new information that
told him that his Jhin had just taken a horrible trade.
Sure, that's not his fault, but if he'd gathered the information prior to fighting fiddlesticks,
he would have known to simply back off after stealing the scuttle crab instead of going
for a really coinflippy river fight.
Let's see how he makes up for it a bit later into the game.
Let's hear his current thoughts on the game state first.
So, Hector desperately wants his Velkoz to setup a recall, so that he can either gank
mid, or at least make plays in the river.
Ganking Lucian with his Vel'koz sitting on zero mana is a no-go.
He just wanted to pressure Lucian to back off to give him a free recall timing, but
unfortunately gets collapsed on.
Hector's getting really frustrated and for good reason.
As he touched upon, it's very difficult for him to do anything around the mid lane area,
without his Vel'koz being able to play the game at the moment.
Even this Scuttle Crab is a bit risky, considering we don't know exactly where Lucian is at the
moment, so he's having to hesitate on every decision that he makes.
But, Vel'koz did finally base, thankfully.
After securing his Scuttle and clearing vision, he can make very proactive moves and just
immediately flashes onto the Lucian in mid lane, eventually resulting in an easy double
kill.
And that's going to wrap up the last low elo smurf game of this guide.
Let's head into our Grandmaster's replay, where he'll be playing Taliyah into a Jarvan.
Like before, let's look at the lane match ups.
What do you think you'd do based on these lane states?
Hector actually has pretty solid gank follow up in all 3 lanes.
In those cases, you'd want to prioritize the lanes that can snowball the hardest, and have
the most reliable follow up.
While Neeko has decent root follow up, it's inconsistent to land, therefore..
"so i'm gonna do red, transition gank, into blue, gromp, into top lane or something."
Transition ganks level 2 is something usually reserved for the likes of Jarvan or Xin Zhao,
champions with reliable engage and CC, but as we can see..
Taliyah can definitely do something similar with her ridiculously long range Q. Sure,
Ryze should have flashed, but Hector would have still chunked him out of lane and blown
his Flash with such an easy and convenient gank.
Now, the normal route pivot off a transition ganks is to head to your blue side jungle
to hit level 3, but as Hector pans the camera over the top lane, it's looking especially
volatile.
As we know by now, Hector is quite predisposed towards helping his laners, so he adapts once
again and immediately rushes over there.
Unfortunately, Pantheon griefs and initiates a trade way too early.
Instead of being able to go around to cut Riven off, he's forced into running straight
at Riven giving her an easy out.
Despite Pantheon's failure, Hector can still output a lot of pressure on Riven, especially
by clearing the ward she just placed.
"im gonna clear this ward....so this riven feels really scared right now"
After clearing his blue, which gives him level 3 from all the lane exp he's soaked, he moves
top again "wait why is my pantheon pushing, why is he
pushing? he has a freeze, he should just freeze and let me come back top"
Once again we see that even in high elo, your laners won't play according to plan.
The most important thing as any jungler is to never let that affect your mental state
and don't....yea "i just got kind of tilted that pantheon pushed
the wave instead of freezing, but he's still doing fine so I shouldn't have tilted"
Definitely important to always critique yourself on any mistake you make, be it an in game
decision you make, or an emotional reaction you have to your teammates.
Now Hector is in a rough spot?
What do you think he should do to come back into this game?
Well, if you know Hector at all, he has a very simple game plan to get himself out of
this pickle "this riven has no tp so i just go top.....in
my opinion" As he heads into top, Riven wards the tri-brush,
so he has to go all the way around in her jungle.
There is a risk that Jarvan is here, but as we've heard, he sees no other way back into
this game and this is a very import play to make for 2 reasons.
One, if Jarvan is in the area, he can protect Pantheon and they likely win the 2v2, since
pantheon is slightly stronger than Riven at the moment.
Two, if Jarvan isn't here, he can just wait patiently to dive Riven.
If this is successful, which it was, the Riven is completely shut out of the game.
Now he may be ridiculously far behind, but as we've covered this is his specific style
of jungle, that he sticks to even when climbing.
His reasoning behind being so selfless is simple.
"i am level 3.....gonna help me catch up anyways" We see immediate results to his actions.
Pantheon uses the free recall he got from the top gank to come bottom, ensuring an easy
double kill Later, he receives help from Pyke, while Ryze
overextends to kill him And finally, he's fully back into the game
with another Pyke roam ensuring a won skirmish in the bot lane.
We're definitely not telling you to play this selfless style of jungle.
This is just the style that works for Hector, and if you think you'd prefer this style he's
proof that it works, if executed somewhat correctly.
Alright, how did you do with the questions?
Do you think like a bronze player or a challenger?
Let us know in the comments below!
Also, be sure to check out our website.
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Thanks for watching!