Hey everyone and welcome.
Today you'll be learning about a new ganking strategy that has emerged in the meta to completely
shut down laners.
We'll be doing this using a replay from none other than G2 Jankos.
Jankos and his team, G2, recently came first place in MSI - an international tournament
that pitted the best teams from every region against each other.
A truly impressive achievement.
So let's get into it, and learn from the best.
With Jankos playing Lee Sin against Skarner.
Jankos starts at his Red Buff when he notices his top laner spot the enemy Skarner at his
own Red buff, meaning they're starting on the opposite sides of the map.
Now, in a recent guide titled "The Korean Krug Strategy" we talked about how players
are clearing their Raptors and Krugs in their initial routes, while overall ignoring their
blue side jungle.
This is because the Krugs and Raptors give far more gold and experience than the Gromp
and Wolves.
By killing the Krugs and Raptors early, we get them to respawn sooner at a higher level,
where they'll be worth even more experience.
In that guide, we covered the route of Red, Raptors, into Krugs, after which you can attack
the nearby side lane to secure lane priority for you, into invading the enemy's Blue Buff.
If we hop back into the game, we see Jankos is starting at his Red, and with the enemy
Skarner starting on the opposite side of the map, he's free to do that previous route of
Red, Raptors, Krugs, into side lane gank, into invading the enemy's Blue.
However, he instead does Krugs first, into Raptors - the reverse of the previous route.
Why is this?
By doing Krugs after his Red, he can begin transitioning to the other side of the map
after his Raptors.
He's essentially deciding to play towards his top lane instead of his bot lane and if
we analyze the lane matchups we can see why.
In bot lane he has Taric Swain against Kogmaw Thresh.
Thresh can protect Kog'Maw with his Lantern and Flay abilities, while neither his Swain
or Taric have gap close abilities to help chase.
If we look top, we can see it's Renekton against Sylas.
Two scrappy melee champions that will be trading a lot into each other and a matchup that could
snowball hard for either player.
Essentially, his bot lane has the option of playing safe, while Renekton will have to
trade aggressively into Sylas.
This is why Jankos does Red, into Krugs, into Raptors, he gets the important early reset
on the valuable Raptor and Krug camps, while transition towards that important top lane
matchup
Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, okay this is nothing too special so far, he's just
cleared his Red Side jungle, but a lot of players would follow this up by killing their
wolves or their Blue.
However, Jankos instead chooses to transition gank mid.
In this case, Lux is already pushing, so no gank occurs, but if Zed was pushed up, this
is a free gank for Lee Sin while he moves to the other side of the map.
Keep this transition gank in the back of your mind, because it may not look like much now,
but it's a cornerstone to the ganking strategy you're going to learn.
After the transition gank, he immediately moves top lane.
Why is he doing this?
Well, if we move our camera to check the state of the lane, which you should be doing as
a jungler, we can see that Renekton is building a wave that is slow pushing into Sylas' tower.
This is a pattern all junglers should memorize, when a big wave is building and slow pushing
to the enemy this is indicative that a dive is available once the wave hits the tower.
So Jankos moves into position and executes the dive as the big wave crashes.
It takes a little longer than usual because Sylas is a totally balanced champion, but
they end up killing him.
Now the reason why dives like this are so strong is that you not only kill the enemy,
but deny him the big wave to the tower while he's dead.
There are two reasons for this.
First, Renekton would take a long time to clear this wave on his own.
We can see he's low on health and needs to recall as Sylas will be coming back to lane
with full hp.
By helping him clear the wave, Renekton will get that recall off much faster.
Secondly, it allows us to soak minion experience.
This is absolutely key in the current jungle meta so listen up.
You should all know how Jungle camps increase in experience the higher in level they are.
However, minions don't work like that.
They give a flat amount of experience over the entire
game - they never increase or decrease.
What this means, is that minions are worth a ridiculous amount of experience in the early
game.
To put this in perspective, when Lee Sin soaks this one wave of experience, he actually soaked
172 experience.
That's slightly more than a single jungle camp.
You heard me right, by simply soaking this wave with Renekton it's given him more experience
than a camp and it only took him 7 seconds.
This is one of the secrets to keeping up with solo laners in the new jungle meta.
As Jankos leaves, he see's Sylas teleport in, your jungle senses should be tingling.
Both Sylas' Teleport and Flash are now on cooldown.
We should be watching top lane like a hawk for opportunities for a repeat gank.
Sure enough, Sylas goes aggressive, and Jankos immediately reacts to re-gank him.
He picks up an easy kill for himself, into soaking a wave and a half of experience, the
near equivalent of 2 jungle camps.
To understand just how insane this is, you have to realize Jankos has only farmed his
Red, Krugs, and Raptors.
He then applied pressure through a transition gank mid, into getting two kills top, and
the equivalent of 3 camps of experience.
That's farming 3 camps, landing 3 ganks, all before the 5 minute mark, while actually being
ahead in experience.
Now a lot of you probably saw Jankos recall after the gank and are wondering what in the
hell he's doing.
We can see his entire Blue Side jungle is still alive.
However, his Krugs have respawned and his Raptors will be spawning next.
If we take a look at this chart we made of jungle experience we can compare this decision.
His krugs have Respawned and are level 3.
This means they're worth 318 experience.
That's basically the same as the Gromp and Wolf camps combined.
Remember though, his Raptors will be spawning right after, however, they will be level 5
by then, and worth 190 experience.
When combining the Raptors and Krugs together, they'll be worth 508 experience.
If we add our entire blue side jungle of Gromp, Wolves, and Blue, it's only worth 495 experience.
That's right, farming his Krugs and Raptors, 2 camps, will actually give more experience
than farming the 3 camps in his Blue Side jungle.
Now a lot of you are probably thinking, what about the gold?
Maybe it's more efficient in terms of experience, but don't you lose out on gold?
Here's what's really messed up, you really don't.
Krugs and Raptors will give 272 gold while the entire blue side jungle only gives 286
gold - the difference is negligible.
By recalling, he's making more efficient use of his time, only having to clear 2 camps
to get the same experience and gold as farming 3.
Now, after he's cleared his Krugs into Raptors, a lot of players would then farm their Blue
Side jungle since it hasn't be cleared once this whole game.
Again, though, we seem this same ganking pattern.
Transition gank mid.
Into Ganking Top
Into taking the Nearby Scuttle
This isn't just a one off thing either, Jankos and other pros are doing this a lot in their
games.
For example, if we briefly take a look at Jankos playing Aatrox jungle we can see him
land two early ganks on bot lane.
Once he goes back to base and heads back onto the map he executes a transition gank mid
to secure lane priority, into a gank on bot lane, the same pattern we saw in the previous
replay.
Alright, we went over a lot so let's briefly recap.
You first learned how Raptors and Krugs are more valuable than Gromp and Wolves, which
is why players are choosing to clear them in the opening routes to get them to respawn
faster.
A new ganking strategy, is to do Red, Krugs, Raptors, then instead of farming your blue
side jungle, you transition gank mid, and hit an immediately gank on the side lane.
When successful, this can let you land a follow up gank after taking the nearby Scuttle.
By soaking lane experience during these ganks we actually get ahead in experience even though
we haven't farmed our blue side jungle.
We then recall in time for the Krug spawn, since killing the respawned Krug and Raptors
are more efficient than clearing our Blue Side jungle.
We can then follow this up with the exact same pattern, transition ganking mid, into
a gank on top lane.
This strategy follows a solid ganking principle where once you've set a lane behind all subsequent
ganks will be even easier to land.
This let's you completely shut down a side lane, while still weaving in transition ganks
on mid.
So what do you think of G2 Jankos and his ganking strategy?
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.