How to Play Jungle in League of Legends
Learn how to play Jungle in League of Legends! Jungle is one of the most unique roles in the game. It allows you to influence plays at almost any given time, therefore helping your teammates to gain an advantage over the enemy laners.
What’s even more important for this role is that you’ll be responsible for a huge amount of the vision that may or not may revolve around their lane. However, most of the junglers do not understand this, as their main goal is to just camp in bushes and farm golems and other jungle camps.
This isn’t acceptable for a good jungler, and that is why you need to read our guide in order to learn how to be a better jungler in League of Legends! Stick with us until the end to find out which aspects of your gameplay you should improve if you have a hard time competing in this role.
Understand your role
You cannot just pick jungle because you’re bored or you want to wander around the map without any particular goal. You need to understand what the role does, and how it influences all the other lanes. Not just that, you need to understand how to properly farm and be present in lanes, and that your presence in a particular lane could be the difference between a lost and won game.
Plus, junglers can be “petty” creatures sometimes, and if they visit your lane without any help, they’ll tax it for no particular reason while you’re already behind. If you are a jungler with this “profile”, we advise you to quit this toxic trait, as taxing the lane is only proper when you are behind the enemy jungler, or you have completed a successful gank that resulted in an objective or a kill.
The minimap is your biggest ally
We cannot emphasize this enough- you need to constantly watch the minimap. This is where you’ll receive all the information regarding your allies’ position and how are they doing without you. Plus, one of your main goals is to help your teammates if they are losing a lane. Ping them that you’re on your way when the enemy laners are pushing, and that way you can be a very important factor in the turnaround of the game.
Also, it’s very important that you help your allies with vision. The minimap can help you in this in a huge manner because you’ll be able to see where the enemy jungler moves thanks to the wards you’ve placed in his jungle. Plus, if you keep the river warded at all times, regardless if it’s by killing the crab or with Vision Wards, chances of ambush are very slim.
Understand which period of the game belongs to your jungler
To elaborate more on this situation, not every jungler is good in the early/mid/late game. For example, you have champions that are very proactive in the early game, such as Jarvan, Lee Sin, and Elise. This means that ganking on enemy lanes in the early period of the game is a priority if you play some of these. If you play champions like Amumu, Evelynn, or even Master Yi, the scaling up of these champions could take up until level 6.
This is why they are most focused on farming and gathering solo experience, and ganking is done only if necessary. You don’t want to die 2-3 times without any reason, mostly because you don’t provide much value when ganking under level 6.
Your ultimate is a very important ability
Most the junglers are heavily dependent on their ultimate ability. This is why you need to wait until you have it before you gank, mostly in situations that you think have the potential to turn into a total disaster. Of course, if the enemy is already behind your ally in gameplay, you won’t need it to complete the gank 100%, especially if your ally has CC skills.
However, most of the time the jungler needs its ultimate to deliver a top-notch gank to a lane. For example, if Lee Sin ganks without his kick, it’s almost worthless. Amumu does provide a stun with his Q, but if he misses it, he is a true liability if he doesn’t have his ultimate. The same goes with Malphite, as Jarvan can escape thanks to the E+Q combo if he doesn’t have his ultimate.
Leave the kills to your allies whenever you can
As a jungler, you don’t depend heavily on kills. Just a few junglers need kills to scale properly, such as Kha Zix or Rengar. Other than that, you are good with the assists, as your teammates would use the kills much better in the early/mid-game. It’s very important for them to take the kills because that way, they’ll receive the much-needed gold and will take advantage of the enemy laners.
Also, a very important note is to never pay too much attention to a lost lane. Not every lane can be a winning one, and it’s good to try to help your teammates when they are losing behind. But this could result in winning lanes losing their advantage due to an enemy jungler ganking more often than you, and instead of one, you’ll end up with three losing lanes.
If you see that a lane is doing miserably bad, and your allies are behind not just with gold, but farm and itemization, it’s better to focus on a winning lane and try to snowball the game from there.
Conclusion
Jungler is one of the roles that require a lot of attention and intelligence to play it successfully. This is why we hope that this guide will help you in “finessing” the art of jungling properly, and more importantly, we hope that you’ll apply our tips and tricks to be a better player in the jungle role. Make sure that you pay attention to all of our advice, as they are coming from players that are much more experienced in this role than you are!
Looking for more LoL content? Check out these guides:
League of Legends can be played on PC for free.