Hey everyone and welcome, most people consider jungle to be a more decision based role and
less mechanically taxing than laning.
Although this is true, after analyzing hundreds of games, we realized most people don't use
several key mechanics while jungling - causing them to lose more games.
In this video, we'll covering the top 5 mechanics EVERY JUNGLER should know.
So let's jump into it.
Our first one, is about kiting your camps.
I'm sure many of you have seen high elo junglers kiting while killing camps.
You probably have questions like: Why are they doing this?
How beneficial is it really?
And are they using a specific technique?
First, let's address why people kite camps in the first place.
The main benefit is that we get closer to our next camp or location that we're heading
to.
This shaves off valuable seconds off of each camp, which adds up a lot over the course
of a game.
Now as far as the technique, there's a specific one when doing your buffs.
You want to land 3 auto-attacks and then walk back, land 3 auto-attacks, and then walk back.
Repeating this pattern.
The idea is, we're landing 3 auto-attacks for every 2 of the buff's - this is the most
optimal.
What we don't want to do is land 1 auto-attack and then walk back.
This will end up trading 1 for 1 in auto-attacks with the buff, resulting in tanking far more
damage while clearing significantly slower.
It's important to note that you want to weave in spells in between your auto-attacks cooldown.
This is extremely important.
Often, players will cancel their auto-attacks with an ability, resulting in them doing less
DPS.
Make sure you avoid this.
Our second mechanic you need to know are the specific ways you're supposed to kill each
camp.
Let's start with the Krugs since that's a camp a lot of players struggle to do without
taking too much damage.
You start by pulling the Ancient and Medium Krug further out.
Then you position yourself so you're on one side of the Ancient Krug while the Medium
Krug is on the other.
Then in between each auto-attack we move away from the Medium Krug.
The pattern ends up making you walk back and forth.
In this example, I auto-attack then move right, auto-attack, then move left, repeating this
pattern of left to right and right to left.
This causes the Medium Krug to get stuck running back and forth and results in you taking no
damage from it.
For the Raptors, make sure to focus the small ones before switching to the large one.
Believe it or not, mathematically, the small ones will actually do more damage to you over
time if you leave them up.
Additionally, make sure to kite and not just stand in the middle of them.
This is important as the small Raptors have much higher attack speed than you.
Now if you're playing a Jungler that runs Hunter's Talisman, then you don't want to
focus each small raptor down one at a time.
Instead, try to spread out your auto-attacks while the healing effect from Hunter's Talisman
steals their health.
Then, get them down to low enough hp to kill them all at once.
As you can see, by doing this I was able to kill the Raptor camp as Kha'Zix without losing
any health and I didn't even use a potion.
For the Wolves, you want to follow the same rule of focusing the small ones first, while
kiting them to your next location.
The Gromp also has an advanced trick.
For those of you who don't know, The Gromp gets bonus attack speed for its first 5 attacks.
This means, if we stand still and auto-attack with the Gromp, he's going to land more autos
than we will, and do more DPS.
However, if we kite back after each auto-attack, we can force the Gromp to trade 1 for 1.
Once you get good at this, you can then start weaving in your spells after each auto-attack
while kiting.
This helps reduce the amount of damage you take from Gromp.
Another trick with Gromp, is to smite it right before you're finishing Blue.
You do this by kiting the Blue to this location and then Smiting Gromp.
This saves you time as you don't have to run to the Gromp and then back towards the river.
Additionally, if you have an AOE ability you can time it to hit them both at the same time.
This trick works really well on champions with constant AOE damage such as Amumu and
Hecarim since they can actually do both Gromp and Blue simultaneously.
Our third mechanic covers some of the most common questions players have in regards to
jungling such as: when should they be checking the minimap, and how do they improve their
map awareness?
Most people give unhelpful answers like "Check it as often as you can".
Instead, we're going to give you a straight forward system that you can easily memorize
and follow to have challenger level map awareness.
To begin, let's divide our time as a jungler into two sections.
The first, is when we're fighting a camp.
The second, is when we're moving to our next camp.
When you're fighting a camp, you should be balancing your attention between what's in
front of you and the minimap.
When you have to cast spells and kite, focus on what's in front of you.
When your spells are on cooldown and you're simply auto-attacking, focus on the minimap.
That being said, there's another thing a jungler should be checking consistently: their teammates
health bars.
When teammates are low on health this can signal that they traded with the enemy.
This is a strong indicator that we should move our camera to see if the enemy is also
low on health and if the lane is gankable.
Essentially, while fighting camps think of yourself as doing reconnaissance.
Now, the second part is when you're moving between camps.
This is the ideal time to physically move the camera and check the lanes.
There are two main ways to check the lanes: The first, is to do it manually with by moving
your cursor and left clicking.
The second, is to use the F1-F4 hotkeys.
For those of you who don't know, these keys will jump the camera to your teammates position.
If you want to use these, then we highly recommend going into the settings, under hotkeys, then
camera control, and rebinding them so the F keys align with the corresponding Ally.
This is due to the fact, that by default Select Self is F1, which is completely useless.
So what we can do with these binds, is first send a movement command to our next camp,
then hit F1, then F2, then F3, and finally spacebar and jump back to ourselves.
We do this every time we move to our next camp.
This let's us check which way the minions are pushing in each lane and the health of
the enemy.
To summarize, while fighting a camp, your focus should be on your minimap and teammate
health bars at least 50% of the time.
Then, once you've killed the camp and are moving to the next one, send a movement command,
check each of your lanes with your camera, then hit spacebar and jump back to yourself.
I can promise you, ingraining these habits will make you a significantly better jungler.
Alright, now that you're spending more time checking the minimap and looking away from
yourself, you increase the likelihood of walking over a ward without realizing it.
I can't begin to tell you how often this happens to junglers.
However, our fourth mechanic will cover how to prevent this from ever happening again.
Along with a tip you probably haven't before, so stay tuned.
When moving through the map you should always be doing two things:
The first is moving through nearby brushes to check for wards.
The second, is using the attack move command instead of a regular movement command.
By attack moving, we'll stop and immediately attack a ward if it's in front of us.
This free's us to move our camera to scout around the map while still clearing any wards
in our path.
For example, let's say you move to invade.
You send an attack move command along the path you want to take.
Afterwards, you hit F1, F2, and F3 to check the state of your lanes.
Once you hit spacebar and jump back to yourself, you'll find you're automatically killing a
ward.
This is how you should be moving through the jungle.
For those of you who don't know, the attack move command can be used by hitting A+Left
Click or Shift+Right Click.
Additionally, there's a mechanic you should be aware of in regards to wards: Residual
Vision.
After you kill a ward that's been disabled it will retain vision of you for around 4
seconds after it dies.
For this reason, you should never immediately path in the direction you intend to go after
you a kill ward.
Instead, walk in the opposite direction for 4 seconds, and then take the original path
you intended.
This will trick the enemy.
Our final mechanic has to do with taking Rift Herald optimally.
Rift Herald is currently one of the strongest objectives for snowballing your leads.
That being said, most players take way too long to kill it than they should.
Often spending time circling it trying to hit its eye.
So let's break it down.
You should always start Herald by auto-attacking it once and then moving behind it.
Right before it dashes, auto-attack to hit the eye.
This will get the next eye up faster, reducing the overall time it takes to kill it.
We then stand still damaging it until the next eye opens.
This is the part most people mess up, so listen carefully.
You want to input your movement command at the same time that the Herald starts swinging
its auto-attack.
Let's look at that again, when the Herald begins to attack, we move to its back.
It rhymes so it has to be true.
The common mistake people make, is they try to move to the back of the herald after its
finished auto-attacking.
For example, in this clip, we can see the Herald is at the end of the auto-attack animation,
Kha'Zix then moves to hit the eye, but it turns around and he fails to do so.
In short, move at the start of its attack animation not at the end.
The next tip has to do with Rift Herald's big swipe attack.
This occurs twice, once at 66% of its HP and second when its at 33% of its HP.
It most commonly occurs after you hit the eye.
Most people try to dodge this by moving backwards - this is a mistake as the hitbox is pretty
obnoxious and you usually end up still taking damage.
Instead of walking back, simply walk through the Herald.
This will dodge its swipe much more consistently while taking less time.
The final step, is to wait for an eye to open before putting Herald below 2400 health.
This is important, because if its put below 2400 health without its eye open, it won't
re-open again.
This way, you can wait until its at 1400 health to instantly kill it by attacking the eye.
Additionally, the Eye of the Herald that drops, will take 40 seconds despawn if it isn't picked
up - a lot longer than people realize.
Alright, we went over a lot in this video so let's recap.
First, is to kite camps in the direction that you're heading next.
Additionally, each camp has its own optimal way of killing them, make sure to learn each
one.
Next, use the time while you're fighting a camp to glance at your minimap and teammates
health.
Then use the time while you're moving to your following camp to check each individual lane
with your camera.
A common problem junglers face is running past wards that spot them.
Combat this, by always checking nearby brushes as you move and making sure to path using
the attack move command instead of normal movement.
Lastly, we broke down exactly how to take Herald as fast as possible.
One key point, was making sure to move to its eye at the start of Herald's attack animation
instead of at the end.