Hey everyone and welcome.
Recently, there's been a lot of changes to the jungle, and many players are finding themselves
struggling and not carrying games as much as they'd like to.
In this guide, you're going to learn the 10 rules all junglers should follow in the new
meta to start carrying and winning your games, so let's get into it.
Rule 1: Use the Ward Trick
For those of you who don't know, there's a ward trick that's become extremely popular
where you place your trinket ward around the 50 second mark and then recall, purchase a
sweeping lens, and head to your first buff.
The benefit of doing this is that your sweeping lens you just swapped to will come off cooldown
at the 2:20 second mark.
This will allow you to sweep for wards when you're level 3, have double buffs, and are
looking to gank.
At the same time, you'll still get early vision down to help track the enemy jungler.
When you're on the blue team, you want to place your early trinket ward on the enemy's
Raptors - this is extremely beneficial.
If the enemy starts at their Red Buff, you'll be able to see whether they're doing Raptors
after their Red or if they skip them to immediately go to their Blue.
And if they don't show in the ward at all, it indicates that they moved to their Krugs
after their Red.
The raptor ward let's you know the exact route the enemy is taking.
However, if you're on the Red team, it can be risky to place a Raptor ward as the Blue
team often stacks near the entrance at the ramp to watch for invades.
This is why it's recommended to place your ward in the top pixel brush when on the Red
team - it's not as valuable, but it's much safer.
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Rule 2: Almost always start at your Red and take your Krugs second
After the nerfs to jungle experience, many junglers are finding it difficult to keep
up in levels.
We made a table listing the experience and gold that each camp gives.
When analyzing it, you'll find that the Krugs give by far the most experience and gold,
with Raptors coming in second.
This means, that camps on the side of your Red Buff are far more valuable than the Wolves
and Gromp that are found on the side of your Blue Buff.
However, this is only one part of the picture.
There are two other hidden mechanics that make Krugs even more valuable.
First, is that the Ancient Krug has a debuff that will give 30% less experience the first
time you kill it.
By killing the Krugs early, you remove that debuff from it the next time it spawns, making
it worth even more in experience.
Secondly, camps will give more experience based on their level.
Their level is determined when they spawn and is based on the average level of everyone
in the game.
So by killing Krugs early, the most valuable camp in terms of Experience and Gold, we'll
not only remove that 30% debuff the next time it spawns, but it will also respawn at a higher
level giving even more experience to you.
Now, many of you are probably wondering, is there ever a situation where I would want
to start at my blue?
And there actually is.
To understand why, you first need to understand that in the new jungle meta, the majority
of the time the jungler will be ganking the opposite side that they started on.
For example, if we start Red as Kindred, then it means we'll be farming towards our Blue
side jungle, and be ganking bot early on.
However, sometimes there's a key matchup that you want to influence early on that doesn't
align with starting at your Red.
For example, let's say you had a super passive bot lane like Ezreal and Soraka - not exactly
champions that can help set up a gank for you.
In top lane though, you had Jax against Riven, a volatile matchup that can snowball out of
control for either player.
You could choose to start at your Blue instead, so that you would path towards the top side
of the map to apply early ganks to this lane.
Rule 3: Track where the Enemy Jungler Started
Doing this is extremely simple to do, but is more important than ever in the current
meta.
To do this, check the side lanes while you're killing your first buff.
In this case, Kled shows top early, while the enemy bot lane is missing, this indicates
that the enemy Rengar is getting a leash at his Red.
Remember, junglers will most likely be ganking the opposite side that they started on.
By knowing that Rengar started at his Red, we can immediately know he'll apply his first
gank top.
This gank typically hits around the 3:00 to 4:00 minute mark.
This can let us back ping our teammates around this time and let them know that the enemy
jungler is on that side of the map and looking to gank them.
Additionally, by scouting where the enemy jungler started, you can find out that they
are starting on the same side as you.
It's extremely important to be aware of when the enemy jungler starts on the same side
as you since it means you're in a race towards the opposite side of the map.
The basic ideas though, are that you want to rush to the opposite side as fast as you
can to be in position to gank or counter gank that lane.
The reason for this, is that often the jungler who has lane priority in the side lane will
be able to take the nearby Scuttle as it spawns.
This can open up a really strong tactic where you transition gank mid after taking the Scuttle,
to then secure lane priority there, and take a second Scuttle away from the enemy jungler.
By knowing where the enemy jungler started, you'll be able to both track them while also
using the most optimal pathing for yourself.
Rule 4: Check the state of the lanes with your camera
It's not enough to only be looking at the minimap, you need to physically move your
camera and check the lanes.
You want to be looking for the health and mana of everyone in the lane while also checking
the state of the minions.
For example, we've already applied the first 3 rules.
We first used the ward trick.
We started Red and did our Krugs next.
And we tracked the enemy jungler and saw that the enemy Rengar started at his Red.
After doing our Krugs, it's natural to take our Raptors next as we transition to our Blue.
However, by checking the state of the lanes we can see bot lane took a big trade that
put the enemy Morgana low on health.
Additionally, we can see that the enemy minions are pushing towards our side of the map, meaning
the enemy will be pushed up the lane and vulnerable to a gank.
It's for these reasons, we now know to skip our Raptors and go straight for our Blue.
Since we did Krugs in our opening route, which give so much experience, we can hit level
3 off of 3 camps instead of the usual 4.
So we're now level 3, with double buffs, in position to gank bot as the wave crashes into
the tower.
This allows us to pick up 2 kills on the enemy bot lane that we never would have if we didn't
know about the 4 rules you just learned.
Rule 5: Soak minion experience
After the successful gank we don't immediately leave to take the nearby Scuttle, instead
we stay to help push and soak lane experience.
First, by helping push with your teammates it actually benefits them.
Even though the enemy bot lane died, which is good for us, it also gives them the opportunity
to purchase items and come back to lane with an item advantage.
We can also see our bot lane is low on health and mana.
By helping them push, we let them recall faster, denying minions from the enemy to their tower,
while letting our teammates get back to lane faster.
Secondly, it gives us lane experience which is so important after the exp nerfs to jungle.
Minions actually give a flat amount of experience, meaning, they don't scale and give more exp
later on in the game.
This means they're unbelievably valuable early on.
To put this in perspective, a single minion wave without a siege minion is worth 264 experience,
that's about the same as a Krug camp and 50% more valuable than our other camps.
That's not all, if the minion wave has a siege minion in it then it's worth 356 experience
- that's insane as it's actually worth more than 2 of our jungle camps.
Even though we'll often have to share this experience with our laners, it still averages
out to be worth around 1 of our jungle camps.
Soaking minion experience off successful early ganks is the secret trick high level players
use to snowball any early leads they get into dominating victories.
Rule 6: Play around the 4:40 second timing
4:40 seconds should be a new timing that's ingrained into your brain.
This is when the first small camp you killed will respawn.
For example, in this game, we did Red and then Krugs, so Krugs was the first small camp
we killed.
This means, our Krugs will respawn at around 4:40 seconds.
If we jump back to our current position, we can see it's 3:20 seconds.
We don't need to recall and head to the top side of the map as our Krugs won't have respawned
yet.
Instead, we take the nearby Scuttle.
After killing it, it's 3:40 seconds, our Krug respawn is a minute away, so again, we still
don't need to recall.
This is how we know it's the correct choice to farm our Gromp and Wolves.
After which, we can see the 4:40 mark, when our Krugs will respawn, is around 20 seconds
away.
We finish our Recall, buy items, and head to our Krugs, getting there as they've spawned,
now a higher level, giving more experience, and without that Ancient Krug 30% debuff we
mentioned earlier.
Killing this second Krug rotation at 4:40 seconds is what's going to let you keep up
in experience with the laners after the jungle nerfs.
Rule 7: Repeat Gank on the lane without Summoner Spells
It's at around this point of the game that many players will struggle to know what to
do and how to form a gameplan.
Remember, our earlier gank got our bot lane ahead and got all of the enemy's summoner
spells except Morgana's Flash.
We still have to farm our Krugs at that 4:40 timing, following rule 6, but we'll now path
towards the bot side of the map and look to land a repeat gank on the enemy bot lane.
This concept of Repeat Ganking lanes without Summoner Spells makes for a simple yet extremely
successful and powerful gameplan for you to execute.
However, as many of you may be thinking, this makes it so that we can't apply pressure or
gank any of the other lanes.
That would be the case, if we didn't have Rule 8: Quickly Gank off your Side Camp before
you transition to the other side of the map.
In this game, we already know we're going to want to path towards bot side to repeat
gank the lane without summoner spells.
However, our Krugs are very close to the top side of the map.
After we leave our Krugs, we'll be too far away to pressure top for a very long period
of time.
What we can do, is apply a gank to top lane right after we do our Krugs, it's close by
so it's efficient in terms of our pathing.
Additionally, we can use our Sweeping Lens or a Pink Ward, to clear vision as we gank.
As we can see, this is a very small time investment to gank top, but we apply pressure and clear
their vision.
Now we leave to farm and path towards the bot side of the map, but Kled is now left
without vision and has to play safe as he's scared we would gank him again since he lacks
vision, even though we have no intention to do so.
This is an extremely powerful tactic to use in conjunction with the repeat gank strategy
as you can give the illusion that you're ganking the entire map even though you're actually
farming all your camps and really only focusing the lane with the highest chance of a successful
gank.
Rule 9: Full Clear while your Ultimate is on Cooldown.
So you're following all of the rules, you repeat gank that bot lane, and have to use
your ultimate in the process.
What do you do next?
Many junglers can be significantly weaker without their ultimate, both in terms of fighting
power, but also the efficacy of their ganks.
Champions like Vi, Amumu, Sejuani, Kindred, Nocturne, and many more are significantly
weaker without their ults.
Some champions don't have this problem like Elise or Nidalee, but they are the exception
to the rule.
In this case, even though we got summoner spells in the gank, if we head straight back
bot it's very risky as we don't have our ultimate to protect ourselves.
We could easily be focused and bursted down, especially if Rengar counter ganked us.
Instead, by full clearing and then ganking when your ultimate is up, it can make all
the difference.
Allowing you to win a fight that you'd otherwise lose, and it's these key moments that often
decide the outcome of a game.
And finally, Rule 10: Mute Everyone
Climbing the ladder as a jungler is far more mentally taxing than any other role.
You will be blamed by your teammates in nearly every single game.
This isn't just about preventing yourself and your teammates from being tilted by avoiding
arguments.
It's also to avoid being pressured by laners to make sub-optimal jungle decisions.
Tell me if this doesn't sound familiar, you're doing perfectly fine in the game, but your
top laner has died twice, he's spam pinging you and telling you to gank his lane and how
free of a kill it is.
You make the mistake of listening to him, go to gank, but ganking a losing lane is usually
a bad idea, and the enemy turns the gank around killing you both.
Your teammate replies "GG jungle difference" and you're tilted out of your mind.
There are two chat commands all junglers should have memorized.
The first is "/mute all" which will mute what everyone is saying.
And the second is "/fullmute all" which will mute both what players are saying along with
their pings.
If a teammate pings you, mute them.
If a teammate says something remotely negative, mute them.
If a teammate's character so much as looks at you wrong while you're standing in fountain
together, mute them.
Jungling is more about decision making than it is mechanics, you have to protect your
sanity at all costs, as it's your critical thinking and decision making that will let
you climb the ladder.
Alright, we went over a lot, so let's briefly recap.
Rule 1 was to use the Ward trick.
Place your trinket ward at the 50 second mark, recall, swap to a sweeping lens, and head
to your first buff.
Rule 2 was to start at your Red and do your Krugs next.
Krugs gives the most experience and gold of any camp.
By killing Krugs early, we remove the 30% exp debuff from the Ancient Krug on it's next
spawn, and will get them to respawn ealier at a higher level, giving us the experience
boost we need after the jungle nerfs.
Rule 3 was to track where the enemy jungler started.
Junglers will often gank the opposite side that they start on.
By knowing where the enemy jungler started, we can inform our teammates of where he's
going to be ganking.
Additionally, we can scout out if they're starting on the same side as us.
Which means we're in a race to the other side of the map.
Rule 4 was to check the state of the lanes with your camera.
By doing this, you check everyone's health, mana, and which direction the lane is pushing.
This informed us to skip our Raptors and go straight to our Blue, to hit a super fast
level 3 gank on bot lane.
Rule 5, soak minion experience.
Minions give a flat amount of experience, which is extremely high in the early game.
The trick to snowballing is to soak minion experience after kills.
By pushing do we not only achieve this, but we also give our teammates a faster recall
and deny the enemy laners minions to their tower.
Rule 6, Play around the 4:40 second timing.
This is when your first small camp will respawn, which will likely be your Krugs.
By killing this as it respawns, you'll be farming extremely efficiently, and help you
keep up in levels with the laners after the jungle nerfs.
Rule 7, Repeat Gank the lane without summoner spells.
When a lane has their summoner spells on cooldown, specifically their flash, you want to focus
on landing a gank on them before they come back up.
This gives you a simple and effective gameplan to follow after your opening route.
Rule 8, Quickly Gank off your Side Camp before you transition to the other side of the map.
Since you often want to focus your attention on the lane without summoner spells, it prevents
you from being able to apply pressure to the rest of the map.
To remedy this, you can use the tactic of applying a quick gank off your side camp.
Since you're already in the area, it's efficient with your time, and by clearing their wards
it can cause them to have to play safe.
You're essentially applying pressure to the lane without even being there.
Rule 9, full clear while your ultimate is on cooldown.
As a jungler, you often rely on your ultimate to not only make ganks work, but also to win
the ensuing fight.
A simple rule to follow, is to clear your jungle while it's on cooldown, and then look
to gank when it's up.
And lastly, rule 10, Mute everyone.
You have to prevent yourself from tilting as decision making is the most important skill
we have as junglers.
So how many of these rules did you know about?
Let us know in the comment section below, as well as any questions you might have.
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As always, good luck, and have fun, on summoner's rift.