Today, we're taking a break from our normal content to talk about something historic.
Something truly momentous.
Something that we'll all be telling our children and grandchildren about in the years to come.
This event, of course, is Tyler1 reaching Challenger as a Jungle main.
What, did you think we were going to talk about a manned space launch or something?
The 1v9, herculean Ivern god himself is far bigger news.
In this vidoe, we'll be looking at how T1 achieved this genuinely very impressive feat
that some player, who have been maining Jungle for years, may not be able to accomplish.
Beyond that, we'll be exploring some of the areas in which we think his Jungle play has
some room for improvement, which is totally understandable as someone relatively new to
the role.
But, let's start by quickly talking about exactly how he got there--and it was definitely
a journey, taking 947 wins and 864 losses, a total of 1811 games.
So, in the 138 days that it took him to reach Challenger, he averaged just over 13 games/day.
By far his most played champions on this journey were Olaf, Ivern, and Karthus, but he didn't
play Karthus much recently since the nerfs, primarily playing Ivern on his final climb
with some Olaf as well.
Now, we've seen some people flaming him for just how many games he played, but we don't
see it that way at all.
Learning a completely different role, from ADC to Jungle, is a totally different skillset.
It's not as if he swapped from Mid to top, right?
This was a huge change to make.
Rather than flame him for how much he played, we applaud him for his grind and dedication--reaching
Challenger in his first season playing Jungle during the middle of the season when it's
much more difficult than at the start.
So, let's start out by taking a look at a few of the strengths we think T1 really displayed
during his climb that player who have been maining jungler for 5+ years can still learn
from And, first up, as his major strength, we have
that dies quite rarely--especially on Ivern, but his deaths are below average compared
to Masters Olaf players as well.
In his last 6 Ivern games on his way to Challenger, he had a total of two deaths, which is crazy!
When talking to our Challenger consultants, they really thought this was one of his keys
to success and something that is super underrated among lower ELO players.
It's hard to really quantify just how bad it is to die both in what you don't gain while
you're dead in gold, experience, pressure, objectives, etc. combined with how much your
opponents gain while you're dead in those same categories.
Just not dying can have a lot of unseen power in your games, and we think T1 is cashing
on this very effectively.
And, while you can just say that his low death count is a product of passive play--that's
not really what we saw while reviewing his gameplay.
We did definitely see him diving towers, fighting for objectives, and making huge, popoff Ivern
plays that really show why Ivern is one of the more mechanically demanding champions
in the game.
BUT, what we noticed, is that he almost always made these aggressive plays when he knew he
had the advantage and avoided uncertainty very well.
For example, in this play we saw earlier where he runs aggressively under tower, we saw Lee
and Maokai topside moments before, and Janna and Twitch bottom--so this is completely risk
free.
Inversely, here, his bot lane is spam pinging him to go in on this fight, but he sees Rumble
recalling and doesn't know where Lee is, so he just backs off, later seeing that Lee was,
in fact, there.
and they're able to safely disengage.
We really think that this skill of identifying no risk, but still aggressive plays, was a
huge part of his success in the Jungle and something we can all learn from.
Another strength that we saw from Tyler, though he didn't always perfectly demonstrate it,
which we'll talk about later, was the ability to identify and play around the correct lane,
which is obviously crucial for any Jungler, but especially on a champion like Ivern whose
whole job is to support his lanes.
In this game, he spent most of his time playing around his Rumble in the mid lane, mainly
leaving Teemo alone to win that lane by himself.
In this game, he very intentionally pathed to his bot lane that has a ton of kill pressure,
and once TF hit 6, hovered and ganked for the lane well to deny his ability to port
bottom.
The whole early game, he played around bottom, keeping them safe, but later, as we started
to approach mid game, we saw him take Herald, announcing to the whole map that he was top,
then go toward top lane after seeing Gragas on the bot side.
He was very lucky that his bot lane was able to survive this, but Draven lost lots of farm
and Ezreal got 4 plates.
Also, using Herald top helps funnel gold onto Olaf and Ivern, two champions who you really
don't want to be funneling your team's gold into.
And, this is what we saw a lot from Tyler--he would have the right idea usually, playing
around bot here, but would get distracted or just make very random mistakes that didn't
fit his plan at times.
Like in this game, where he does a nice job early playing around the super volatile top
lane, although he does waste a bit too much time, it's still a good job of recognizing
a dangerous early matchup.
But later, we see him taking his red as it respawns, and since the enemy Lee Sin started
blue this game, that's spawning as well, meaning he's likely there.
With his double melee bot lane slow pushing a large wave into the enemy tower, this would
be a PRIME time to tap Krugs then move bottom and cover them as a Lee gank is just super
likely.
Instead, he moves toward Mid where action is highly unlikely, spends time on vision,
and ends up being really late to the bottom play, which they could have hard won had he
been there on time.
So, to reiterate, we do think that Tyler's ability to recognize and play around lanes
is a strength of his, but it's just not quite as fully realized as it could be or as we
would expect from other Challenger Jungle mains at times.
Ok, now that we've talked about some of Tyler's strengths in the Jungle, let's also quickly
hit on a couple of the areas in which he could and likely will continue to improve.
First, he tends to not quite know when to abandon a doomed play.
For example, in this play, he's just a bit late bottom with TF ulting in first and Gragas
also nearby.
By the time he gets there, the play is already super doomed, and dying for absolutely no
reason.
Or, in this one, where by the time he shows up Kled is already dead, but he still walks
in for some reason.
This clip is another really good example, where Tyler spends a huge amount of time trying
to play around or contest this dragon despite his bot lane being in base, eventually just
barely escaping with his life and losing flash.
Instead, he could have been top diving Maokai, invading Lee's top side jungle, etc.
This play obviously wasn't going to work and he had clear things to gain elsewhere.
Understanding when a play is blown and INSTANTLY leaving to gain an advantage somewhere else
is a really crucial skill in the Jungle, but recognizing a doomed play can definitely be
difficult at times, and it's something that will improve with more time on the role.
This next one is a bit nitpicky, but it was really weird and kind of inexplicable, so
we wanted to point it out.
As anyone who has played Ivern should know, your auto attacks gain bonus magic damage
while in a brush and for 3 seconds after leaving one.
After 323 Ivern games this season...we're..not sure that Tyler knows this, which seems impossible.
In this game, we see him ganking Katarina and his brush buff drops off before the gank
ends, and he's almost at max brushes anyway, so there's no reason not to.
If she flashes and get's W'd by Lee or something, that damage could matter.
If you think he just didn't do it because he didn't need to, think again.
Here, we see T1 ganking TF mid, with two brushes saved up, not using them, and missing the
kill because of it.
This is REALLY weird and we're not really sure what to think about.
Surely he knows, right?
Right??
It's a question that will surely haunt us.
Either way, reading your abilities is a pretty overpowered strat, so we definitely recommend
that to all players, despite the fact that it's obviously not necessary to hit Challenger.
Anyway, the last main weakness we saw from T1 was struggling to juggle keeping up in
experience while also supporting his lanes, which is just a classic Jungle struggle that
we've all faced--not even the best Jungler in the world always does this perfectly.
But, T1 did sometimes take it to the extreme, in games like this, where he is level 6 at
12 minutes We get that Ivern is a champion more focused
on supporting lanes than farming, but this is pretty wild and there were a lot of chances
for him to tap camps THEN move to help lanes, preparing XP for later.
Or, times like here, where his Krugs are up, but he just ignores them to walk to red, then
walks back into a brush for seemingly no reason before recalling.
Things like this really add up and can result in him falling really far behind, which he's
only able to get away with because he's Ivern, but that doesn't really make it ok.
Alright, to finish off this video, we also want to hit T1, and anyone else looking to
pick up Ivern right now, a few ideas--a few pointers, if you will.
First, let's talk runes.
It looks like Tyler runs with Aery every single game, with a page that looks like this.
And, this is the most popular, most common setup for Ivern...but we don't think it's
the best one.
After talking to some other Challenger junglers as well as a Challenger one trick Ivern on
EUW, we feel confident recommending a Guardian page, with very, very strong options in the
resolve tree, and two options for your secondary, either running Inspiration for a bit more
utility and flexibility, or domination for more damage and MS.
Of course both setups are viable, but the Guardian setup, while not as popular, is not
only a favorite of our consultants but also has a 1.3% higher winrate in Platinum and
above as well.
Ok, our next Ivern tip has to do with his build.
Most of you probably know that Ivern just purchases a Hunter's Talisman at level 1 and
sits on it--not upgrading the item at all.
Now, Tyler would often end 30 minute games still sitting on this one item, which we just
can't recommend.
One option is to sell it and have room for control wards, but what you can actually do
that is pretty overpowered, is, around level 9, or whenever the early game ends and you
won't be farming your jungle much anymore, just running around supporting you team, sell
your talisman and pick up a spellthief's edge.
It will actually upgrade pretty quickly and can end up providing your team with a huge
amount of vision and FULLY embracing your role as a support champion.
Aaand that does it for our quick look at Tyler1's historic climb to Challenger in the Jungle.
Once again, we think it's incredible the progress that he has made as a player, and reaching
Challenger is a huge accomplishment.
He demonstrated a lot of clear strengths that it made it clear why he was able to climb,
but also, very understandably, still has room for improvement as well.
We hope you all enjoyed this different video, we had a blast making it.
Thanks for watching, and we'll see ya next time.