Hey everyone, we all know the feeling, you want to do something to win the game before
your teammates can int their lanes, but youve looked for ganks and it just looks like theres
nothing you can do but sit back, farm, and wait, hoping everything somehow works out
and youll get a chance soon.
Well today were going to be turning that mindset on its head, one of our challengers and jungle
experts, japanese import, is going to be taking on the most ludicrous challenge weve done
yet.
instead of giving him the option of farming his camps when things go wrong, or when theres
just not much to do, were not going to allow him to farm at all.
you heard that right, not a single jungle camp on our side of the map is going to be
taken by him.
As an additional challenge, he only gets one chance, so if he fails, he cant get a redo
and he definitely cant troll teammates by trying this again.
And while this guide is going to be focused on jungle gameplay, a lot of the concepts
and mindsets will be applicable to every role, so make sure to stick around, especially if
you want to see if he can pull this off as a jungler, this sounds absolutely impossible
right? and why are we even doing it? well, lets let him answer that.
Too often players get in the mindset that theres nothing they could be doing besides
their camps.
They end up over farming and miss out on their limited chances to really snowball the game.
What this challenge is going to prove is that there really are a lot more chances to win
a game than you might think, and that by going into game with a solid plan, and knowing what
to look for, you can win even without the ability to farm.
You'll also see what its like for someone that literally doesn't have a choice but to
force plays, and how they make that work without inting the whole game.
Anyways, something like this is not going to be easy, and we know what youre thinking,
couldnt you just farm lane minions and then it wouldnt really matter?
well, not really, Riot put in anti funneling mechanics so you get reduced XP and gold if
more that half of your farm comes from lane minions, so yes, we really need to find an
alternative to just laning instead.
So before being thrown into gold elo, Japanese import came up a with a very specific plan
for this game.
it began in champion selection.
With this challenge, the only way that you can really get resources is by invading, skirmishing,
ganking, and diving.
We needed someone who was exceptionally strong and could be able to do these things no matter
what.
A few options stuck out initially like udyr, elise, and reksai, but those all had at least
one key weakness out of the list we mentioned before, and without the ability to farm camps,
weaknesses just really werent going to be okay if he wanted to win.
So, he settled on graves, for the reasons we stated before, but also because hes probably
one of the best junglers at level 1.
Level 1 was going to be the most important time in this game, without either starting
at an enemy buff, or contesting a camp, it would be nearly impossible to impact the game
since hed be stuck without a way of getting xp.
Because of this, it was absolutely imperative that he invaded.
There are 2 scenarios that could happen here.
One is that khazix starts blue and we take his red, either forcing the map to be split,
or giving us the combat advantage when we innevitably have to deal with him.
The 2nd and most ideal circumstance is that khazix tries to start red, and we force him
off, secure the buff, and counter jungle.
So in the game, you can see that JP was pinging and typing to try to get this invade to happen
right from the start.
Going in and getting a kill, as well as pushing khazix off the camp was a result of both good
planning and a small amount of luck that his team was willing to go along with it.
The 2nd part of his plan involves contesting khazix at every possible point.
In our how to beat challengers series, we showed how a lot of junglers throw massive
leads by not contesting the enemy once theyre ahead, and instead they allow them to trade
objectives around the map and lose their advantage.
JP knows this, and the stakes are even higher here.
For example, if he chooses to gank bot, and khazix ganks top, he risks losing out on his
jungle and the enemy jungle as well.
On bot side however, he would only be able to take the enemy jungle, and would be locked
out of his own, letting khazix get twice as much as him in this scenario.
In general though, its important that once you get a lead, like we did through the invade,
you constantly push it to snowball the game, even when you CAN take your own camps, its
still not ideal to if you can take the enemies instead.
Right after taking away the raptors hes about to use a really important concept to help
push his lead.
Ganking for Pressure and freeing up a lane to move can help you out in the long run.
By using time and resources to cross through mid and chunk trist, hes able to more confidently
invade as pantheon now has the ability to move, and trist is too low HP to really affect
a play.
He walks in super confidently and begins taking away the enemy gromp.
Seeing both blue and gromp up means that khazix had to have done his wolves during this time,
and now is probably too scared to contest due to a combination of red buff, trist being
really low, and pantheon beginning to move into the jungle.
From this point khazix cant really fight him here, so he pretty much has no option but
to reset and go to krugs if he wants camps since weve taken away pretty much everything
else.
From this situation, imagining you COULD farm your own camps, what would you look to do?
This is where player tend to tunnel on their camps, we mentioned it specifically because
it changes nothing about what you should be looking to do here.
If we do something like taking top crab and then going to clear our top side, then khazix
has a chance to clear bottom crab and take our bot side.
Essentially just trading camps and going even.
From ahead, this is a terrible thing to do.
Because of this JP wants to do one of 3 things here.
Either continue to make aggressive plays on top side, either by looking for a dive, or
if thats not possible, going to contest the khazix on bottom crab to make sure we can
stay ahead.
If mid gank is possible on the way, then that also works as well.
The concept that this challenge so beautifully illustrates is that sometimes you can do more
things to put yourself ahead, and defaulting back to camps is a trap in most situations.
Obviously there are going to be times where you should farm, when other plays look impossible.
But we need to check for those plays BEFORE we go back to our jungle.
JP even called this out 20 seconds ago because he knew that there would be very few options
to pick from, and the result is a successful dive that denies urgot the wave and forces
his teleport.
After this, the only real option is to take crab and then what?
lets just let him answer that
so theres two things to unpack here.
What is tempo, and why bot side?
Tempo is essentially just control of the game, if JP doesnt recall, the next time he wants
to invade on camps, for example onto the raptors right now, it would be much harder due to
a lack of items.
A very common mistake for junglers is to make a successful gank, and then go full clear
their jungle.
sometimes youre better off recalling and looking to punish somewhere else on the map. getting
to that place faster, instead of using your time to farm and delay your impact on the
map can be extremely important and its often overlooked.
as for why botside, hes thinking that because urgot teleported back, and lucian is walking,
that urgot would be able to crash the incoming wave and then he wouldnt have a gank or invade
available on top side.
In hindsight, urgot didnt end up pushing this wave but it was most likely correct for him
to do so.
going top couldave been a viable play knowing what we know 20 seconds into the future, but
in league you have to take a calculated gamble, you have no idea how the enemy will play situations
so you just have to try to pick the highest probability play with what you know.
He invades to check on the respawning raptors, hoping to find khazix, but just ends up warding
for intel and pressuring mid in order to soak some xp and give pantheon some pressure by
blowing tristanas jump.
he notices that top is fighting and runs straight to it.
while he doesnt even get an assist, he does get valuable experience from being nearby
and from helping to push the wave.
Why else was it so important that he goes top here?
Because we invaded on the raptors earlier, and havent seen khazix cross through the ward
yet, we can assume that hes most likely doing his topside camps, or hes in our jungle somewhere.
In all situations, lucian is extremely vulnerable here so its important we just stick around
to make sure he doesnt die.
After pushing the wave, taking the enemy gromp, and finding that the wolves had been taken
already.
he now wants to go back to one of our missions from earlier.
he wants to play into the khazix to contest him for everything, seeing him on the map,
he paths straight into him on vision and takes away the crab, knowing that in the worst case
scenario pantheon still has ult available to force the fight, and if khazix gives it
up, hes still winning.
from here, what do you think he should do if he could farm camps?
In this kind of situation he doesnt have bot prio, or mid prio, so invading it kind of
out of the question.
This is one of those times where we check to see if we can invade or gank, but it looks
really unlikely here.
Unfortunately for our brave hero, he doesnt have much of of a choice, so hes going to
have to try to find a way to make this work.
He knew full well that this play was extremely risky, he probably couldave gotten out had
pantheon not w'd in over the wall, but this is a perfect example of why pressuring on
the right timers is important.
Fortunately the enemy team overcommits and it ends up being positive for him overall.
However, the mental battle that hes currently fighting may have us wondering if hes truly
ok. from here he is more than happy to catch top
wave, and afterwards rotate to mid to catch some more xp while pantheon roams.
We want to point out this is absolutely still the correct play even if he could farm camps
right now.
Making sure that the enemy cant just deny huge amounts of farm to towers and take plates
is part of your job as a jungler. when teammates die, or they look to roam, sometimes you just
become a laner for a bit, and thats totally ok.
Unfortunately, the monster hunter debuff is in full effect and even though he gets these
waves it cant be the only source of xp and gold he gets
So, just like before, its back to scavenging for plays.
looking mid and knowing that trist is about half HP, hes looking for a dive. this kind
of play might be really hard to see and relatively risky, but when its all youre ALLOWED to do,
youre going to try it anyways.
Fortunately we get a relatively clean kill.
And it these kinds of punishes that really set the enemy super far behind.
While in your own games you obviously arent FORCED to play this way, we cant overstate
how valuable it can be to put yourself in the mindset of someone who literally cant
farm their camps.
You'll definitely find that youll be able to see plays that you've been ignoring before.
Because of good decision making and the leads hes accrued early on, hes still at least even
level with the enemy adc and is able to invade (pause) skirmish (pause) and take objectives
with the best of them.
But his job is still really hard, so were going to let him do the talking for this part
to give a bit more insight into what hes looking to do from here.
Having the foresight to call for plays from your teammates ahead of time gives you a chance
to switch up your actions if they dont follow through with what you want.
If he had pinged the teleport and lucian didnt channel it, then he would just have to play
a different way.
but by preempting it, you have a much better chance that your team will go along with you.
And while he really wants to do blue and gromp here, hes more than willing to ditch for a
top dive since the timer for that is much more pressing.
identifying when windows of opportunity will open and close is key for making sure that
you arent wasting time on camps when you could be doing things like this.
Obviously once the laning phase is over, hes more than happy to join in on all the random
fights that his teammates are going to call for.
But because hes gotten such a huge lead for his lanes early, everything just goes really
smoothly in a game that shouldave been incredibly difficult.
even though he has way less items and is a much lower level than he should be, impacting
the early game well will pretty much make most games a casual walk in the park once
it gets later on in, even if you do int teamfights just trying to frontline for your super fed
carries like he did here.
Missing out on proactive plays is by far the number one mistake that most players make,
and its unfortunate that it happens to be one of the hardest to notice yourself doing,
because its not really what youre doing, but what youre not doing instead.
Hopefully this has shed some light on some ideas you can use in your own games, and made
it more clear that sometimes you need to play high risk high reward to really learn your
limits.
And that brings us to the end of this video.
If
you have more torture, uh, we mean challenge ideas, for our experts, definitely leave them
in the comments below.
Until next time, definitely dont do this in solo queue, and we'll see you shortly.