Hey everyone and welcome.
On patch 10.4 riot introduced a couple of different buffs and changes that have impacted
the jungle.
Today, we'll be going over them, breaking down what they mean, how it's changed the
meta, and what you can do to gain that sweet sweet lp. Trust me, you don't want to miss
this one.
So let's jump straight into the changes.
First, being the buffs to Bami's Cinder items.
Bami's Cinder, Cinderhulk, and Sunfirecape all received a buff.
They now have a new passive called immolate.
It causes your next immobilizing ability to deal flat damage, along with dealing bonus
damage based on your bonus health.
These are big buffs to tank junglers and this was absolutely overpowered on release, and
Riot had to quickly implement a hotfix nerf, increasing the cooldown from 10 to 12 seconds,
along with reducing the damage it deals.
Still, these nerfs didn't change the fact that tank junglers are now significantly stronger.
For example, let's take a look at Zac, before this patch, his win rate sat at 51%.
After the buffs his win rate shot up to 54%, an increase of 3%.
Nunu's win rate increased even more significantly.
51% last patch, jumping to 55% after the changes.
These two were the top solo queue tank junglers before this patch, and you can see how they've
now risen to being some of the best junglers period.
However, even the weaker tank junglers benefited from this change.
For example, we saw Sejuani's win rate go from 48% to 50%.
In general, if you were a tank jungler that would purchase Cinderhulk as your jungle item,
your win rate has increased at a minimum by 1%.
So what does all this mean?
Well, if you watch challenger streams or pro play, we'll likely still see the current aggressive
picks of Elise, Lee Sin, and Rek'Sai that look to take over the early game.
These are still the high elo meta.
Prior to this patch, these were also some of the strongest picks in the lower elo brackets
as well and if you were to pick a tank in the jungle, your teammates would probably
think you were trolling.
Not anymore though.
These changes have now made tanks an actual viable pick in the jungle.
At the same time, some very specific tanks have actually become borderline overpowered.
Specifically Zac, Nunu, and Sett.
Each one of these champions are at the top of the charts with an over 54% win rate in
the jungle right now.
The one we'd recommend if you want to truly 1v9 hard carry a game is Zac.
Currently, he has an amazing build where you grab Cinderhulk into Liandry's Torment.
You then complete the build with tank items, Gargoyle Stoneplate, Spirit Visage, Warmog's,
Randuin's Omen, literally whatever tank items are best suited given the enemy's team composition.
You end up being extremely tanky while Liandry's Torment just racks up the damage.
When I was testing this out it wasn't uncommon for me to end the game with over 80 thousand
damage.
Zac has a really simple opening path as well.
You just start Hunter's Talisman, begin at your Red, and full clear your jungle.
Out of all the tanks he definitely has the most solo carry potential right now and is
borderline overpowered.
Another thing to be on the lookout for is Trundle jungle.
Trundle has always been a counter pick to tank junglers due to how his ultimate works.
It steals a percentage of the target's maximum health and resistances.
Since tanks stack both of these stats, when Trundle ults them, it basically makes him
a super tank, while leaving the enemy tank weak and easy to kill.
Trundle's win rate in the jungle is sitting at around 54% right now.
If the meta continues to shift towards these tank picks, you might want to either ban Trundle
if you're going to be playing them, or look to develop him as your own pocket pick.
Now the Bami Cinder buffs weren't the only jungle changes on the patch.
Riot also tried to introduce new champions to the jungle.
Darius, Diana, Garen, Gnar, Mordekaiser, Talon, and Zed all received changes to help them
do more damage to the jungle camps.
Their goal was to give popular champions at the lower skill levels better tools to jungle
with.
This way, new players learning the role of jungle won't have to also learn a new champion
in the process.
And the question on everyone's mind is are any of these champions actually good junglers?
Well, we here at skill-capped took a hit to our lp and tried out each one of them to let
you guys know, along with doing a deep dive into their stats.
So let's jump into a list breaking down which ones were a success, and which ones are better
left to laning.
Let's start at the bottom, where we have the worst: Gnar and Zed.
Now, fair warning, do not pick Zed jungle on this patch.
You'll find yourself clearing slow, barely being able to get through your jungle, and
your early game damage will be laughable.
And this shows in his stats, where he has an abysmal 37% win rate in the jungle.
Gnar, we thought would have a bit more potential, but boy were we wrong.
You're stuck focusing single target camps, which you'll clear much slower than expected,
and trying to gank lanes will make master yi look like Elise.
And if you thought Zed's win rate was bad, Gnar's is even worse at 35% in the jungle
position.
So these two champions are practically unplayable.
Above this tier, we have champions that can actually jungle, but are mediocre at best.
Mordekaiser, Garen and Talon.
Now, I must admit, Garen was surprisingly effective.
His clear is okay, and his passive keeps him healthy.
He reminds me a lot of Warwick in how his healing can make him beginner friendly since
you can't die to jungle camps.
Additionally, his Q silence actually counts as hard crowd control on Scuttle Crabs, reducing
their resistances by 50, allowing him to kill them relatively fast.
Still, his ganks are really weak and he doesn't have good enough scaling to make up for it.
His win rate in the jungle is currently sitting at 44%, not exactly impressive, but he is
playable and there is some potential with him.
Now, you might be surprised to find Talon in this tier, and not the tier below, as currently
he's sitting at a 37% win rate as a jungler.
But I think this is more due to the fact that players don't understand how to play him yet.
You need to start Hunter's Talisman, and then never upgrade it and instead rush a Tiamat.
This will give you tremendous farming speed.
You'll essentially aim to self-funnel, picking up camps, stealing the enemy's raptors, and
any minion waves you see.
Again, it's doable, and you can carry, but there are so many other better choices if
you want to play a farming hard carry style of jungling.
Now, above this tier, you have Darius.
I don't want you guys to get the wrong idea though, Darius is a mediocre jungler at best.
However, his Q now heals off large monsters, which means your clear will be very healthy.
At the same time, at level 3 you unlock your E ability, which at least gives you some crowd
control to use when ganking.
It also lets you crowd control the Scuttle Crabs to reduce their resistances and kill
them faster.
To top it off, he has a fairly strong 1v1, and decent team fighting.
You definitely want to build the new buffed Cinderhulk on him, as his E ability will actually
proc the new immolate effect.
And at the top of the tier list for the new junglers is Diana.
Now, this isn't for the reasons you might think.
If you hop into a game, you'll find her initial clear is pretty slow.
On top of this, she needs time to scale and get items, so a ton of the meta junglers will
just straight up beat you in a 1v1.
That being said, out of all the champions Riot has tried to turn into junglers on this
patch, Diana definitely has the best scaling and most solo carry potential.
This is especially true in lower elos, where players struggle to close out games.
For example, the average game time in Silver is 31 minutes.
When we then take a look at a higher elo like Master tier, we find that the average game
time is 27 minutes, 4 minutes faster.
This is why the higher in elo you go, typically the more successful you'll be on aggressive
early game junglers.
And the inverse is also true, the lower in elo you go, the more powerful farming, scaling
solo carry junglers become.
This is what you'll be learning today, is exactly how to hard carry in these lower elo
brackets.
We'll be teaching you this by comparing two replays, one where I'm playing Garen jungle
and one where I'm playing Diana jungle.
So let's start with Garen jungle smurfing in around Silver 1 to Gold 4.
Here are the runes, skill order, and build, if you're interested in trying it out yourself.
I start the game out with a simple full clear.
One cool trick you can do with champions that do AOE damage like garen, is pull the Gromp
with your smite as you kill your Blue.
This way, you can AOE both camps at once, increasing your clear speed.
I eventually spot a dive opportunity top with Fiora being low.
One trick you can use if you take Nimbus Cloak in your runes, is actually smiting a minion,
this will trigger Nimbus Cloak, and give you the movement speed needed to chase down opponents.
I follow this up with another gank later, which nets me a kill on the enemy Malzahar.
Making sure to keep up in farm by clearing camps.
And by following what we teach you here at Skill-Capped, I'm able to gain a huge lead
through ganks, taking objectives, and farming efficiently.
It then gets to the point, where it's almost 25 minutes in the game.
I'm 8/0/9, 170 CS, I have 11 thousand gold, which is 2k more than the second highest player,
needless to say, I'm extremely fed.
Despite this, both teams are essentially even in gold, with 42k each.
What this means is, despite me being fed, my teammates are far behind, and so it's on
me to turn my lead into a true 1v9 solo carry.
The enemy team starts Baron and I look to contest and what do we see?
Well, suddenly that gold lead isn't looking so impressive.
The enemy team turns and focuses me, and in the meantime our Ashe has suddenly become
a pacifist and decided violence isn't the answer, not landing a single auto-attack.
Despite this, I hang in there, and fight tooth and nail to keep the game alive
Eventually, we get a winning team fight where we outnumber the enemy.
and am able to kill an overextended Fiora in a side lane shortly after.
From this, we're able to take the Elder Dragon.
Into then taking the Baron.
On top of this, we have the Cloud Soul.
I mean, we can't really get any stronger than this.
And yet, since I'm playing Garen, I have no way of sieging towers, and when I go to brute
force the team fight, we see the same thing again, I can trade 1 for 1, but am focused
down in the process, not exactly the solo carry we're looking for.
In the end, we have to take a chaotic second Elder Dragon, where my team dies and I have
to flash away.
I'm able to make a pick on the enemy ADC shortly after, which we then convert into a Baron.
And with our numbers advantage, we then take a game winning fight after.
Now, despite amassing a huge lead, this game was way too hard to finish, and I had to rely
on my teammates way more than I'd like to in order to win the game.
And the fundamental problem is that I'm playing Garen jungle, which doesn't scale well enough
to solo carry in this lower elo bracket.
Now, let's compare this to a game where I'm playing Diana jungle, in the same elo of Silver
1 to Gold 4.
Here are the runes, skill order, and build, if you're interested in trying it Diana jungle
yourself.
I start the game out keeping things simple.
Hunter's Talisman and look to full clear.
However, I'm then invaded at my blue by the enemy Ekko, and despite my best efforts to
escape, he eventually runs me down and kills me.
So already, we're off to a significantly worse start than the Garen game.
I immediately look to secure myself a scuttle as I respawn.
I notice the nearby bot lane is in a fight, low on health and overextended, so I pick
up a free kill off them.
I then head back into my jungle to full clear.
Eventually recalling after my Gromp, and then heading to my Red, where I hit level 6.
Great, I've now stabilized and hit my first real power spike as Diana.
I look to take advantage of this by repeat ganking the enemy bot lane now that I have
my ultimate.
After securing two kills, I then push out the wave to get myself further ahead with
minion gold and experience.
With my ultimate on cooldown, and Diana still needing time and gold to scale, I head back
into my jungle to full clear.
Again, I spot a nearby fight breakout where an enemy gets low on health, so I react to
clean up the kill.
And push out the wave after to soak more minion gold and experience.
I hope that you're starting to notice a pattern.
I'm really just afk farming my jungle, and only reacting to lanes when they're low on
health and are free kills.
And this process continues throughout the game, prioritizing farm first, and either
ganking once there are no more camps to clear or reacting to free kills on the map.
Eventually, we find ourselves in the same position as the previous Garen game.
I'm 11/2/0, 177 CS, and have 11k gold.
Needless to say, I'm very fed.
Here's the thing though, the state of the game is actually worse than in the Garen replay.
The enemy team is ahead by 6k gold.
Despite this, look at what I'm able to do in an upcoming teamfight.
I basically kill 4 of the enemies all by myself.
And we can start to see the real difference the champion you play can make.
With a scaling, solo carry champion like Diana, I'm now actually able to convert my lead into
winning fights, regardless of how far behind my team is.
And this only gets worse for the enemy team as the game continues.
If anyone is out of position, I quickly one shot them.
And if a teamfight breaks out, I quickly turn the tides into our team's favor, and destroy
the enemy.
Despite having a worse start, and being further behind, just by playing a champion that scales
and has solo carry potential, I'm able to easily hard carry the game to a victory in
these lower elo brackets.
Keep in mind, I didn't even have to do anything fancy to get my lead.
Just stuck to the fundamentals, prioritizing farm, and being efficient with my ganks.
This is why out of all the champions Riot tried to turn into junglers on patch 10.4,
we rated Diana the highest, as she has the most solo carry potential.