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General Guide by Hahano
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Intro Blurb and Contact Information
This guide will give you anything you need to decide what jungler to play, why to play them, what to do as them and how to beat them!
Thanks to everyone who voted and put this guide at the highest rated on the site (98%)!! If you have preferences, comments, insight or criticism, I read and responding to the comments. If you want more content, videos, pictures, builds, guides or anything let me know via comment or PM. I am still changing information, making edits and also updates to reflect the patches.
My Youtube Account [Hahano9]
I am aware that a lot of people are coming here for more than just ratings, and that sometimes it's hard to pick the "right" jungler given there are so many to choose from. Because of this, I will give my recommendations for junglers at certain skill levels and why.
Under level 30 or 1200 ELO (Unranked), the Novice:
Cho'Gath : Cho can jungle well with or without runes. He also has some pretty good sustain and burst damage to unsuspecting players. Cho'Gath is also able to effectively counter jungle, disrupt their team and teaches you a lot about how to be effective in a teamfight.
Udyr : He is a very difficult jungler to play, and this is good. You can get your learning curve out of the way before it matters (when you aren't playing ranked games like I did…). He also teaches you positioning more than anyone else in the league. Being at the right angle and position on a gank is the difference between a secured kill and wasting your time. He also protects carries in teamfights, disrupts the enemy and is overall very active and strong as a character. He will teach you many things you need to know to get the basics down.
1200-1600 ELO, The Midrange:
Nocturne : At this level, he will jump over wards that people are placing wrong and offers a very strong initiate/team presence. He will dominate lesser players and has strong, consistent ganks at most levels. He can also ignore positioning due to his ultimate, and therefore help protect your property and team.
[Lee Sin]] : While Lee Sin excels in every ELO, his weaker points don't come into effect at the mid skill levels. Lee Sin is a ganking and control jungler that excels at helping his lanes dominate and shutting down weak junglers. When your teammates are competent enough that a kill can put them over the edge, Lee Sin becomes incredibly powerful.
1600+ ELO, you're good:
Shyvana : She is an extremely strong pick on the right teams. When your lanes are able to handle themselves and the game is a bit more stable, having her on a team to counter jungle is very potent. Most times coordination is needed to take her down, so playing at the higher levels will force the enemy team to respond to you and often times yields good results.
2200+ ELO, the Professional:
Yea, like you're reading this or need my help at all, hahaha.
Evaluation Points
1/10 (Lowest)
10/10 (Highest)
MMMThe grading is based on a comparison of all of the junglers and a bell-curve distribution. This means that a "baseline" character attribute is found for a category and then the better and worse go around them. I have capped the maximum number of 10's and 1's at 3 and the rest have been distributed within a semi-bell curve around the baseline. For an example, the baseline for Jungling Speed is Maokai, Jax, Alistar and Sejuani. They have average clear times - not too fast but not that slow. The other characters are then rated on a curve as to whether they're faster or slower than those particular baseline junglers.
Pros and Cons: Quick points on the ups and downs of a character.
Summary: A brief overview of this character, what they bring to a team and what to expect. It's a selling point for this character, so it is not a rainy-day analysis.
Cheat Sheet: All of the character's ratings without explanation for the browsers.
Snowball: Determines whether a character snowballs or not. Snowballing is when a character gets a few early kills and then becomes much stronger. Riven is a perfect example of a snowballer, as a few kills on her means you win. Maokai is not a snowballer because more kills on him just means he's more tanky, which can still lose you games. The "kind of snowballing" characters are those that are stronger with a few kills, however will not directly win the game ( Gangplank).
Farmer: This determines the speed at which the character can clear minions. Most of the evaluation is based on clearing a minion wave in a lane quickly and returning to the jungle.
Video: Commentated gameplay (by me) for that particular character. I am working on getting the videos up, I have a few already. Please be patient, it's an endeavor.
Jungling Speed: The speed at which they can clear the jungle camps. The new jungle heavily affected jungling speed, and as a result people with high sustain and area of effect (AoE) are much faster.
Fastest: Udyr, Dr. Mundo, Shyvana
Slowest: Fiddlesticks, Twitch
Jungling Sustainability: The ability to stay in the jungle and come out with enough life/mana to successfully complete a team objective without being a liability. This takes into consideration buff dependence as well as how long they can jungle.
Ganking: How well your jungler ganks other lanes. Junglers with good CC are better than junglers without in this respect (Trundle trumps Master Yi in ganking).
Best Gankers: Rammus, Maokai, Alistar
Worst Ganker: Fiora, Tryndamere
Control: Control is how much the jungler is in control of their and the enemy jungler. This was originally split into two categories, invasion and defense, however they were similar enough that I've combined them. A character with a lot of control is a good duelist with mobility and sustained clearing. A character that lacks control typically cannot duel early and has resource issues.
Late Game: How well this jungler does after he has left the jungle, how crucial their role is and their ability to fulfill it. Also important to note is this takes into consideration how much they contribute to winning a game. Shaco ganks are tough to deal with, but not game winning if your team can't take advantage. Compare that to Amumu who is press R to win teamfight, with little regard for how the early game went.
Playing Style: A small window into the mentality behind their game. This will give how they prefer to gank, when and what concessions they have to make in order to do so.
Tips and Tricks: Any small strategies or quirks to the character when you are playing as them.
How to Beat Them: Any small strategies or quirks to the character when you are playing against them.
The Lost-and-Found, Niche, Fringe and Other Junglers
I have been getting a lot of questions about inserting certain junglers into this guide. While I would like to make this as comprehensive as possible, I am only one person and everyone on this list has been played anywhere from 15 to 200 times by me in game. Realistically, jungling with all of the junglers enough to get a feel for them will take too much time and willpower to do (new/bad junglers hurt my soul). I am therefore adding this section and will create portions for these characters if I do end up jungling with them. If I miss some, just let me know.
1. I don't feel he's a good jungler
2. I don't want to encourage people to think he's viable (a reason I removed my Nasus section)
Now I understand that with this comes a certain degree of doubt because, as some have experienced, people can and will jungle with Sion or any other character. So let me try to get into how I see him, how to play and how to beat him for you and if you have any questions, ask away.
- Hard CC for a lane gank
- Good late game if he is AD
- Good burst early if AP
So breaking this down, he is strong when ganking a lane early on if he's going AP. This is because he can walk into a lane, provide a (nearly) unescapable 150-300 damage to your laner. In a scenario where your laners aren't doing well, they aren't warding or are just not great, this can spell disaster. He can get in and disrupt a lot of lanes and the easiest counter to this is going to be warding, even if you have to do it for your laners.
When going AD, his ganks aren't anywhere near as reliable. The stun will prove as only a gap closer and is on a high enough cooldown that he can't use it twice in a small fight. This will allow others with chain CC effects, a red buffed Sion or some other means of CC or heavy damage to pick up a kill. This can be effective, but AD Sion works a lot better in the mid game when he has a few items and his ultimate. After he has items and his ultimate, he's really hard to kill if he's auto attacking anything.
- Only good for burst unless people fight him
- Weak early sustain (if AP) or damage (if AD)
- Relies on teams fighting him, not warding and/or not invading his jungle
- Needs items to get strong (AD) or falls off hard (AP)
So this is where he starts to unravel. A 2-second stun isn't really that effective without the damage, leaving his AD counterpart sad. It is effective, however, when you're already losing your lane or in trouble. This can lead to him seemingly not having a downside here, however against a competent player he'll be lucky to get a summoner burned.
When he is either AD or AP he has distinct early weaknesses. As an AP jungler, his sustain is really poor with wanting blue early, taking damage to deal damage with his glowy axe. His shield is bigger, though, making his clear more effective. However, he only has the sheild and stun, making it so that if you pop his shield, he doesn't get a chance to explode it or he used it for that camp, he can be easily driven out. The AD version doesn't do a lot of early damage due to a low base attack speed and not having his ultimate. Both of these allow you to walk all over him with a strong counter jungler.
His AP form falls off late game, however the AD still remains relavent with items. The biggest mistake is focusing him down, but if you get deep into an AD Sion game, an ignite or exhaust is necessary with some combined burst onto him. Don't fight him 1v1 unless his ult is down. You will lose most times. His ganks also rely on people not warding properly and being extremely over extended, something common in low elo play.
So, what to do? I threw a bunch of words around and the bottom line advice I have is: Ward and Counterjungle him. He thrives on mediocre ganks and ineptitude of your team, so take him out of the game. Play someone like Shyvana or Mundo and just invade his jungle and force him out. Ward your top and mid lanes and ping back for ganks incoming. Keep track on him and squash him before he has the chance to abuse your team. This can be said about a lot of characters, but Sion isn't able to deal with it at all.
If you're trying to PLAY AS jungle Sion, you apply the inverse. Ward your jungle entrances if they are invading. Make sure you know if/when wards are placed and destroy lanes that don't. Force small fights after you have your ultimate (AD) to increase your chances of fighting nearly alone. If AP, get early burst items and start killing their lanes or jungler (if possible).
I don't feel that he's useless in the jungle, but he takes too much startup and favorable outcome to be consistent enough to play.
MMMAmumu is a very strong, tanky initiator for a team. His ability to turn a teamfight around is nearly unprecedented. His bandage toss also allows a lot of room for skill in juking and locking down a target. If he clears the early game without being invaded, he will be an absolute terror. Since he is a tank and useful any time after 6, he will really just camp and dive lanes repeatedly and seemingly never die. Truly a little man with a big impact.
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 8
Control: 3
Late Game: 10
Amumu does not snowball
Amumu is ok at farming
MMMThe new jungle is very kind to Amumu. He maintained a lot of his clearing speed because of the scaling % health damage on his Despair. Clearing the small camps is incredibly fast and his slow point, the large camps, are still pretty quick. Having two forms of AoE to clear the jungle goes a long way in aiding his time.
MMMWith the new items and routes available, he has a lot more options to sustain himself in the early game. Usually it was "start philo stone and hope to not get invaded" but he has other options such as Machete or Doran's Shield to mitigate a ton of damage from himself. He also got a mana reduction a little while back on his Tantrum, so his mana isn't so much an issue if you remember to stop crying.
MMMAmumu's ganks are somewhat variable. He can come into a lane and land a nice Bandage Toss into Tantrum / Despair for some good low level damage. However, if the bandage misses, the gank is over and he has no other forms of CC until Curse of the Sad Mummy. He is able to roam around and bully lanes really well, though, and there is a low chance of him dying in a gank. After level 6, his ganks become significantly stronger, but the long cooldown on his ultimate prevents ganking and teamfighting simultaneously until the later parts of the midgame when he hits 11.
MMMAmumu may exhibit some strong presence on lanes, but not so much against other junglers. He's cursed to have a weak early game (pre-4) in order to balance out his later game. All of his abilities are very good, but they take levels in order to become strong. Compare that to the "one point wonder" types of champs and he can't really compete in the early game.
- You can use your bandage to juke through walls and situations to make yourself harder to be caught. Think if you're on top side and are running from their team. You can bandage toss to Baron (or Dragon if on bottom) to get through impassable terrain without having to flash.
- When in a teamfight without blue buff, your mana will quickly deplete with Despair. Because of this, you have to be sure to have enough to cast your ultimate and bandage toss so sometimes Tantrum has to take a back seat and Despair needs to be turned off.
- Amumu doesn't do carry damage, he does damage over time. Keep this in mind because your job is not to kill people, it is to use your bandage toss and damage to protect your team and soak up damage.
- If you become Amumu's friend he will be 34% more effective.
- Amumu is blue buff dependent early on. Taking his blue buff at level 1 will set his ganks and development back more than other junglers.
- He is an amazing team fighter and has a ridiculous initiate. In situations where your team is dancing or facing off with the other team at a distance, he can bandage in and snare your team. Be careful not to overextend against his team because a swift wipe can ensue.
- Remember that his damage is supplemental and he shouldn't be focused or targeted unless it is convenient.
- Do not fight him in a cluster. Position your AD carry and AP carry near the rear of the team so he has to run through your tank and support CC in order to snare the important members of your team.
- The later in the fight, the stronger Amumu gets. Once the high damage on your team has died, Amumu becomes nearly unkillable and does a lot of damage in the later phases of the game, especially with magic penetration items.
- Amumu's "weak early game" phase is a lot sooner than expected. After he has the chance to recall and get some items, he becomes much more stable. Try to catch him before level 3 or 4 in the jungle before he recalls or it might be best to just go about your business.
MMMCho'Gath is an exceptional jungle tank. While he may not offer the ganking presence of other jungle tanks such as Jarvan IV, Rammus or Maokai, he brings much more to a team. He is one of two characters with an AoE splash on auto-attack (the other being Malphite), and as such he can clear camps quickly. His Rupture also has low enough a cooldown that you can use it twice during a gank, which isn't too common for hard CC effects. His excellent teamfighting plus fast clears plus Feast to counter jungle and buff control makes Cho'Gath a ferocious pick in and out of the jungle.
Sustain: 9
Ganking: 5
Control: 9
Late Game: 8
Cho'Gath sort of snowballs
Cho'Gath is great at farming
MMMThe only real reason Cho doesn't have a better clear time is his itemization. His initial clear is pretty strong and he can stay in the jungle for a very long time thanks to his passive. However, Cho doesn't build any Wriggle's items and wants to itemize tankiness, which will slow his path down over time. In the past, attack speed was an easier stat to get, which made his Vorpal Spikes much more effective in his clear.
MMMBecause of his passive ( Carnivore) regenerating him after kills, Cho'Gath can just jungle forever without using skills or can use his skills with a blue buff and jungle even faster. He isn't buff dependent, but it goes a long way on him. I only find myself low on mana when I come home from a gank or start using Rupture to clear.
MMMRupture, rupture, rupture. The problem is that you have to land it in order to gank a lane that isn't turbo extended. It's not easy to land if they have invested in wards at all, and if they dodge it you just wasted a bunch o' time. Post-6 Feast is nice, but you'll likely be getting stacks instead of saving it. This is the thing that sets Cho'Gath apart from the other jungle tanks: his ganks aren't that strong. He will certainly still pick up kills on sloppy opponents, but he has nothing like puncturing taunt or Twisted Advance.
MMMCho'Gath oozes control, which is weird imagery to have. His ganks aren't outright deadly, but his counter ganks are. Cho devours anyone trying to kill his team when he is near, which makes the landing Rupture issue non-existant. He also is very sustained and quick in the jungle, allowing him the chance to roam around and cause terror where he pleases.
MMMHis utility, damage and disruption in a teamfight is unmatched by anyone in the game. Even Blitzcrank and Alistar have prohibitive cooldowns that Cho'Gath shrugs off. With the new item changes making defensive stats harder to get, all of a sudden your passive Feast stacks become much more effective. In the jungle, you won't have the items or farm to be unkillable, but you can still keep your team alive.
MMMWhen you are playing Cho'Gath, you're looking to mostly farm and countergank. He will do a much better job at this and is dangerous any time after level 2, when he learns Rupture. Cho'Gath will be stalking around waiting in the brush of overextended lanes to pick up kills on unsuspecting foes. If those scenarios don't play out, watch for him eating up your buffs from under your nose.
- Learn to combo. You can Feral Scream, Rupture and Feast for a surprise lots and lots of damage all in one swift action. Gauge their life total and how much damage you have and just burst them for 40% of their life to secure kills.
- You have some nasty CC, so use it. In a teamfight, Rupture their damage or the guys going after your carries. Silence as many people as you can and then eat the nearest close to dead person.
- You can cast Rupture where you are standing if you predict that someone will be coming all up in your jammy (think Lee Sin or Warwick). This allows you to go from the defensive to offensive very quickly.
- In a fight, your job is to protect your team not to kill people. Do not chase down the stragglers or divert from the group. Use your Rupture to peel enemies off of your team and Feast to burst down important targets.
- When learning to land Rupture start off leading where you think the enemy will go to. Then remember what they did to juke it the first time. If you found that they juked up then ran down to draw out the rupture, be more patient with it next time.
- If your Cho'Gath gets too big, just play a few rounds of "Touch the Enemy Nexus" to lose some stacks and decrease in size. (Don't actually do this).
- WARDS WARDS WARDS WARDS WARDS. Yes, that many. His ganks rely on landing Rupture and if you ward your near bushes, he won't be at a range where it will hit you before you see him. Dodge the Rupture and you're set. If they have more CC to guarantee the Rupture, make sure you don't put yourself in a position that their stun and his rupture can be chained (on bot lane don't go close to river bushes, stay against the outside of the map, etc.)
- Respect his damage. He isn't like Amumu where a 1v1 is "How long do I feel like punching this crying guy in the face?" Cho'Gath will knock you up, double auto attack with his Vorpal Spikes and silence you just before he literally eats you up. He will burst you for hundreds of damage, do not take that lightly.
- If you don't focus Cho he will CC your whole team repeatedly. If you do, he will take forever to die. So with this in mind, try to make fights quick, spread out and target oriented. If you run as a cluster up to Cho and his team, he'll just pop you all up and surprise you're dead.
- Cho'Gath has no escape mechanisms other than Rupture. If you can dodge his rupture when chasing him, welcome to a big, easy target.
- In a teamfight, be aware that he can Feast you for 650 damage and if you see the beast approaching, leave quickly.
- He is very hard to counter jungle because of his versatility, and he can also Feast your camps right out from under you. A strong duelist isn't recommended against him for this reason, it's not like you're going to insta-kill a full life Cho'Gath that can knock you up and silence you.
- Cho'Gath with red buff is one of the scariest things in the game. The slow applied makes his Rupture easy to land and the low cooldown on it means if you have any amount of distance to flee from him, you won't make it. Respect the red stones.
MMMDarius is a decent jungler with ok stats in just about everything. He doesn't really have a strong ganking potential, but still does offer high damage and a pull in. After he hits level 6, his killing potential in teamfights and in ganks becomes much higher. He can be played in the jungle, but probably has a better home in lane. I would categorize him as a risky jungler, where getting fed and ahead wins you the game and getting behind likely loses it for you. He does have the ability to steal some kills in the later game if you're even, and Season 3 has helped him a lot in itemization. He's much less of a risk now, but you will still have that game where you get stomped because you're not equipped for the jungle.
Sustain: 5
Ganking: 3
Control: 5
Late Game: 5
Darius snowballs
Darius is okay at farming
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MMMHis jungle clear is pretty good and speeds up with time. He does have an AoE attack and his passive ticks add up over time. I wouldn't say that he's lightning fast, but doesn't have too many troubles in this department.
MMMHe does enough damage that he won't be dipping too low and you'll build Wriggle's on him most games. This can give some decent starts with vamp scep or armor. His mana sustain isn't bad at all unless you're trying to ult 4 people. He does get low in the beginning, so that is the time he is weakest.
MMMPre-ultimate ganks are lackluster, despite his hook. It is low range and hard to land on someone that has a summoner's up. He also doesn't start boots and can be low life early on, which leads to weak ganking. His damage in lane can take advantage of the bleed stacks, but coming to a gank it cannot.
MMMDarius can have a decent amount of control if he chooses to. His kit does a lot better when folks stick around for a bit, so the counter ganking and objective control is better than most. He also does a lot of damage on a little items if he can catch someone off guard, making his invasion better than you would think.
MMMTrue damage is true damage. He will do a good amount and can snowball a teamfight extremely hard. You'll see a Darius that is behind the whole game rack up a quadra and all of a sudden you have trouble on your hands. He can also flash/hook an out of position enemy in the right circumstance, which is more than a lot of other characters can offer a team. The new itemization also makes him much more of a threat when he is ahead, so watch out for this guy if he is.
MMMDarius is pretty much going to be farming. If you're a jungler, watch out for him post-recall around 4:30. He can come back with full life and level 4 to deal a lot of damage to you. In a lane, play normally and don't overextend and you won't have much of an issue with him.
- Your spin does more damage to the exterior enemies. Keep this in mind as you can use it when approaching an enemy gank or they start to flee after a few stacks have been put onto them.
- Your hook is lower range, but still try to save it for fleeing enemies, not as initiation. Keep in mind it also pulls all in front of you, not just a single target.
- Your ultimate doesn't need to reset as much when you're in the jungle. It's a nice perk, but try to secure a kill instead of saving it for a last minute burst. You will not need your ultimate up in the jungle.
- Your Crippling Strike is an auto attack reset. Use it right after an auto to get more burst damage into your attacks and re-trigger a Wriggle's.
- In a teamfight scenario, you want to save your ultimate for a low life target. This will allow you to snowball the fight with kill after kill, unlike when ganking a lane and not needing to save your ultimate.
- Respect his early damage and dueling skills. He has 4 damage abilities at level 3 thanks to his passive, and that is a lot for people to handle. If he's lower life, he isn't much of a threat but a full life duel with him is often a bad idea.
- Pay attention to your life. His ultimate will absolutely chunk you hardcore, so really pay attention to if/when he can kill you.
- Darius has a hook, and though it isn't used like Blitz' as much, he can still flash hook you. Be very aware of that before walking into or near their team.
- Darius is a monster when he is ahead, however needs to get some kills in order to be there. If you're able to keep him down in the early game, he will become especially useless.
MMMDiana is a character that seems to do it all. She's an AP assassin with bruiser stats, making either route fairly strong on her. Her kit also allows for strong AoE and sustain through the jungle, making her a viable pick in lane or jungle. She's surprisingly fast and sustained in her routes and a fierce character to deal with.
Sustain: 9
Ganking: 3
Control: 8
Late Game: 5
Diana snowballs
Diana is okay at farming
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MMMHer initial clear with two AoE spells and an AoE passive is pretty insane. She can recall and pick up some damage and doesn't get much slower from there. There will be a few spots you get to where the camps are a little strong for you, but overall she can blast through the jungle at all phases.
MMMWhile she can use a fair amount of mana to get through very fast, you can choose not to do that and clear quickly anyhow. Her life sustain with shield is pretty absurd, higher than a lot of other characters despite item path. The shield is really all that it takes here, as a double shield that does damage is ridiculous.
MMMShe is remarkable at ganking overextended enemies. Beyond that, the grab has a small radius and can be difficult to land. After her ultimate, she can dash in, burst you and then reel you back in, which is really strong. However, ganking score is not defined by how well their ultimates work and how stupid your enemies are.
MMMIt's no surprise that a high-sustain burst damage caster is good at controlling the map. She can roam around where she pleases and becomes a real terror after just a few items. Sustain and damage play heavily into control and she's got bundles of both.
MMMDiana is going to be played a lot like a Cho'Gath style jungler. Her ganks can be very deadly in the right spots and her sustain is high enough that invasion is a threat. Watch for Diana's ganks any time after her first clear, around 3:30.
MMMShe has a solid late game. When she's built tanky she can initiate similarly to Leona but with an AoE pull instead. She also has a really high burst if built AP and played properly with a lot of potential for tricky play. Her role as an assassin has been slightly re-introduced into the game with Season 3 as well, so she's more of a threat than ever.
- Your shield refreshes if all the orbs hit, so make sure you're standing close enough to the minions when you activate it.
- Your ultimate refreshes if they have moonlight, which has an important aspect to it...it refreshes. Most double skills mean you have to do it again quickly ( Lunge), however you can jump to two targets or double damage one in any amount of time if moonlight is consumed.
- Use your ultimate intuitively. There are many juking, baiting and fight entry situations with it, so play around and see what you can get away with.
- Your pull is very deceptive. It displaces the enemy and slows them, however the rate at which you move toward Diana isn't as quick as, say, an Orianna ultimate. This means your pull has some serious disable time attached to it.
- Her burst when she is running AP is real high. Be sure to check her items and build progression before assuming anything about her.
- Diana has a passive Jax ultimate at level 1. She will chunk you every third hit and attacks really fast. If you're starting to go to the 3rd or 6th auto attack in a fight, be prepared to get chunked.
- Her CC is able to be applied really far away thanks to her ultimate. Be wary of her jumping onto your team and pulling, it will be devastating.
- Her skillshot is kinda hard to land. So do your best to dodge it and predict the arcing path away from your champion.
Dr. Mundo
MMMDr. Mundo serves as a strong jungle tank that needs coordinated effort to take down. Because of this, he is a strong solo queue pick as well as being able to disrupt the enemy jungle and bruise other people in lanes. It will take a while to get used to how much damage you deal to yourself, but after that you'll find yourself cleaning up fools and never dying. A strong desire to go where you please will be present, so watch out for that.
Sustain: 6
Ganking: 5
Control: 9
Late Game: 7
Mundo sort of snowballs
Mundo is great at farming
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MMMMundo's clear speed is right up there with Shyvana and Udyr. He clears insanely fast with a damage steroid and a constant AoE damage supply. Expect to clear your jungle and anyone else's nearly instantly. His problem is that he just does so much damage to himself in the early levels. This is hurt even more by the fact that monsters hit harder now, so he won't be unstoppably fast until he has a few items under his belt. But since his damage scales well on the base, you can clear quickly no matter what you're building.
MMMMundo will do a lot of damage to himself in the early game, so his life sustain is pretty bad. A lot of damage to himself. Once you get some life items and/or regen items, you won't really dip below half of your life. I've seen more and less sustained junglers, so he's nothing special in this category.
MMMHis ganks are reliant on landing a clever most times, and minions can block that. A smart player can avoid Mundo ganks, but once he gets on top of you the damage gets ridiculous. If he's able to close the gap and land cleavers, you will get chunked down pretty hard. His low early life from the jungle isn't the best for ganking as well, improving much more after level 6.
MMMMundo is a pretty good duelist, especially in the lower levels. His poor life sustain is solved by a recall and a few items, giving him good control of his own jungle. He can also invade and blow up an enemy because of his early damage output.
MMMHe's a really tanky guy that can be built for bruiser or full tank. While he doesn't hold up to ignite and CC effects too well, he's really strong against uncoordinated enemies and brings a lot to the table. He doesn't need too many items to become very tanky and gets strong when he does have them. Overall a strong pick right now that works with a variety of team comps.
MMMMundo wants to be roaming around the map. He'll be clearing his camps and yours very quickly and is a deadly force from the start of the game. If you enjoy running around and terrorizing lanes, junglers and your own health bar, Mundo is for you.
- Your Burning Agony does a lot of damage to you early on. Be very careful with how and when you're using this as I didn't account for this damage and died many times for it.
- Your cleaver has a really short cooldown and is your only means of CC. Land a good cleaver and you're able to keep up the slow effect easily.
- Your usage of your ultimate is pretty critical to your tankiness. You want to use it right away if you're not going to be bursted down and save it until you're a bit lower if they have a lot of burst. This is because at higher life levels it will do a significant amount of damage to you, which could put you in the danger zone.
- While you are really tanky, you aren't the best initiator. You can certainly engage on enemies, however your only means to do so is charging at them. This gives the other team an advantage because they can choose when to engage.
- Due to damaging yourself, you're really not that tanky early on. This is important to remember.
- Any Ignite effect plus a CC will easily drop Mundo down. Well maybe not easily, but it will cripple his regeneration and turn him from immortal into killable.
- Don't underestimate his early damage. He does more AD with less life, so a fight can very quickly turn in his favor when he starts getting absurd amounts of damage.
- Once Mundo pops his ultimate, he will be really hard to kill. Don't overextend or dive onto him unless you have a CC effect or a lot of burst because sustained damage doesn't break his regen unless you're someone like Jax.
- When he comes to gank, his CC can be blocked by minions. This allows you an ability to zone away from him as well as avoid his CC all together. Keep behind your minions when laning in order to avoid it, much like Blitzcrank.
- Mundo has a rough time in fights if he doesn't land his cleaver. Since he has no CC outside of that, he can be kited hard if you are smart about it, despite his movespeed boost.
MMMEvelynn has been through many iterations over the ages, stretching back from when her super long cloaking was a stun when broke. She dropped in play severely when that was changed and then resurfaced not too long ago as a solid AP mid assassin. Her roaming potential outweighed her laning inadequacies and her new ultimate really keeps her alive through some crazy stuff. In the jungle she's unsustained, which makes her slow, and won't get the items required to be a real threat to the game.
Sustain: 1
Ganking: 2
Control: 2
Late Game: 1
Evelynn sort of snowballs
Evelynn is okay at farming
MMMEvelynn's speed is undermined by her squishiness. Even if you're able to turn the other way towards that, she can't jungle fast without a lot of mana and doesn't build anything to bolster her attack damage. Since she relies on Hate Spike for her damage, it's a second source of speed issues for her.
MMMShe takes a ton of damage from the larger camps, making buff control extremely difficult. She also runs out of mana when spamming her Hate Spike and/or Ravage, which are the source of monster killing. She's a fragile little death lotus that can't stand up to the rude dudes, blue boss or final boss very well.
MMMHer massive advantage has been thrown out in that she was cloaked. Now she is unable to be detected by wards but doesn't offer pre-ultimate CC any longer. This means she can gank a lane like anyone else most times, but with little to nothing to offer. This is made up for by the insane damage an AP mid Eve can bring when farmed. However, jungle Eve has to recall so often and build weird stuff that you're either ganking with no life and are exploded instantly or ganking with full life a level and item behind their laner after a recall. This is a step down from the cloaked slow ganks from the jungle.
MMMShe's only not a 1 because of the invade ability. If they happen to be an unsustained jungler and you catch them at a weak spot, you can do some work. I wouldn't rely on this and a bruiser jungler will likely turn and blow her up.
MMMEvelynn can do some hefty amounts of damage...when she's a fed mid in the right matchup. Items on her are absolutely essential to her kit because the harder she hits you, the longer she can live. Since the jungle often times doesn't offer fame and fortune, she'll end up running around the edge of a fight hoping the other team doesn't notice her or win the 4v5. Very lackluster unless you're fed, which can never be relied on.
MMMEvelynn plays similar to her laning phase, but with less life. She wants to be ganking lanes that are vulnerable to her burst and picking up low life enemies until she's strong. If you're in lane with low life, it's best to just go home with her on the other team.
- Your Ravage will rip through targets and lower their armor/mres. Open your ganks with this to apply a lot of damage from your follow up.
- You are not even remotely tanky early on. Do not initiate fights, but instead try to create advantage on out of position enemies.
- Be really careful and pay attention to pink warding. You must know where and when these are placed in order to be effective when ganking.
- Your speed and sustainability is dramatically increased with Madred's Razor. Get this item even before boots so you can take down your jungle camps without losing too much life or mana.
- Be aware of your damage output and the opponent's ability to take damage. You have to know both sides of this equation to properly play an assassin.
- You should be warding in different locations and also get pink wards. She won't be able to do too much unless you're overextended, so warding the river to see when she's coming will be an easy escape.
- Evelynn is really squishy most of the game. If you see her floating around, take her out first as she won't offer up much resistance. This isn't true if she ults your team and is fed.
- If you're in draft mode, you can counterpick her pretty easily with Lee Sin or Udyr. Both of these characters can do infinite damage to Evelynn and get around her passive cloaking at a distance.
- Don't split off from the group if you're low in life. This is like giving Evelynn free candy. Try to stick together if your team is retreating.
MMMThe new Season 3 change to the jungle has helped Fiddlesticks. If anything, it helped his itemization more than his actual jungle, though machete does works wonders for killing the little minions now. He is a squishy caster that can change the outcome of a game pretty quickly. A well placed ultimate or fear effect on a target out of position will spell doom for their team. He matches up really well against soft CC junglers and laners because his drain does a ton of damage as well. A fun and difficult character to play.
Sustain: 10
Ganking: 6
Control: 5
Late Game: 6
Fiddlesticks sort of snowballs
Fiddlesticks is awful at farming
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MMMSeason 3 and items helped Fid out a lot. He can build Machete and actually have auto-attacks that hurt the lesser creeps. Because more emphasis is placed on the large creep, his drain is that much more effective. He's still not fast, though, because he has to rely on auto-attacks on a caster to kill little things that are worth 3 gold.
MMMThe new changes also brought a whole new concept of sustain...well not a new one but the old one back! He will be at full life and near full mana most of the game thanks to the decreased need to drain multiple targets and dark wind everything. His mana isn't much of an issue any more, though he still wants that blue, and his life is 100% even with no potions or leashes/DPS.
MMMI'm giving him a 6. His ganks before level 6 are ok, he will kill someone extended far because drain does good early damage. His ganks after 6 would be spectacular if you didn't know how to ward. His fear is really good in combination with other CC, but unlike other junglers, Fiddlesticks does not bring massive damage if an enemy leaves as well as depends on a good Terrify repath.
MMMFiddlesticks is middle of the pack for control. He can counter-gank relatively effectively and he can defend and invade in the right matchups. The amount of junlgers without hard CC is about who he can control and the ones with repeatable channel breaks will burn him up.
MMMSince people don't take kindly to just chillin' around getting drained, Fiddlesticks turns into a fear bot that's super squishy. Since his spell damage comes from Drain, he'll use his high cooldown CC effects and that's about it. He can, however, change a game with a well placed Crowstorm. It's really the only reason this isn't a 2/10. A well placed Fiddlesticks ultimate still wins games, and that's that.
MMMSurprise party Fiddlesticks is the most appropriate skin ever. Fiddlesticks plays exactly like that, popping out of bushes with a laugh and CAWCAWCAWCAWCAW to kill you all. His early ganks are strong if he's in good position and you don't have hard CC to stop his channel. Aside from that, his ganks only get serious when he has a few levels in his fear and has his ultimate up.
- Learn how to use your Crowstorm and when. It sounds straightforward, but it's the key to doing well with this guy. As I said above, without it you're just a CC-bot and nobody cares.
- Terrify the right targets. If enemy Irelia is on top of you, fear her to save yourself. You are a squishy, which translates into a high priority target. Learning to position and protect yourself properly will take you far on any character.
- Remember that you are squishy, even with drain. Drain can sometimes keep you alive through people beating on you if you have enough AP, but be wary of hard CC to stop the channel.
- Even though I shouldn't tell you this, it's usually a good idea to solo dragon at level 5 with a blue buff. See a guide on what items and such, but it's possible and know that you're risking a Flash in order to secure dragon.
- Fiddlesticks' drain does an absolute absurd amount of damage. If you're able to matchup against a jungler that can't break the channel, invade them. Only a few junglers are equipped to deal with a full life guy that gains more life than they can dish out early on.
- His level 6 ganks rely on surprise bush crowstorms and, if you ward your near bushes, he won't be at a range where it will hit you. If you see Fiddlesticks coming, it's best to just get far, far away and stay there. His ultimate will ravage your manparts (or ladyparts, whatever you've got to work with).
- Focus him, but not too much. Fiddlesticks is a squishy, however he has strong CC and a powerful drain effect with enough AP. If you're not able to blow him up right away, he's often not worth the effort (if his ult is down).
- Never, ever fight a teamfight when he is MIA or you are all bunched up. A 5v4 for your team quickly turns into a 0v5 because Fiddle just Crowstorm'd in from the wraith spawn to wipe your team completely.
- Ward dragon early. This will be help secure it for your team, or at least make sure he isn't doing so for his.
- Take Exhaust or Ignite in draft mode! An Exhaust on a Fiddle that just came with Crowstorm into you will DRASTICALLY reduce his damage because of the -% reduction as well as move speed reduction. Ignite also stops his early life regain in lane ganks.
- If he's ulting into your team, try to instant kill him to prevent damage if he doesn't have a Zhonya's. If he does, wait until you see his ultimate and try to flash away because it does tons of damage.
MMMGangplank was released and dangerous in the jungle a while back, however he has been nerfed a series of times since then. Then he had a cushy office job on top lane, until being demoted to a blue-collar lumberjack role. He is a strong team player bringing a ridiculous steroid to everyone as well as a global ultimate with infinite utility.
Sustain: 4
Ganking: 3
Control: 4
Late Game: 3
Gangplank does snowball
Gangplank is ok at farming
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MMMGangplank is slow until you get Madred's Razors. He can do some decent damage but won't clear the jungle fast due to nerfs on his passive stacks and Raise Morale. That, in combination with no AoE effect and wanting to Parrrley some minions on last hit, leads him to a slower jungle in the early game.
MMMHe has a built in heal as well as the highest level 1 life (495) of any character in the game (SOURCE). He is a little blue buff dependent early on, but only if you are spamming your Parrrley and Remove Scurvy, so you can get around it by being smart with your mana. His sustain is only mediocre, however, because of the amount of time he has to spend fighting minions to clear.
MMMHe is able to apply a slow effect from Parrrley at a range, which is helpful in closing the gap. After he gets in your face, he will apply more slow debuffs, which help in combination with his Raise Morale speed buff. He also has Cannon Barrage, which allows him to shank anyone on the map that is low health. The problem lies in the amount of damage he can do early on, as it is unimpressive.
MMMA slow, low sustained jungler is awful at control. He can control the map from a global stand point because his ultimate is pretty good. Aside from using his ultimate to help a teammate secure a kill or escape, he lacks the ability to do anything controlling.
MMMAfter you leave the jungle at first, your Raise Morale will be useful when organizing team pushes on towers. It will remain very good in teamfights and group situations and your ultimate will as well. After you have burned these, however, you're reduced to more of a Parrrley bot because he is a melee champion that can't always charge in. Gangplank has a weird place where AD items are great on him but he is also melee and requires the tnakiness. The new bruiser items help him out in this conundrum, but you'll often find you're not tanky enough to go in or don't do enough damage for it to matter.
MMMGangplank pretty much wants to farm farm farm farm bankplank get that money. Then he can get some items and be a man. Aside from that plan, he will gank only in opportune spots and ALWAYS account for his ultimate to be going off. This will apply a slow and damage, so be wary at all times.
- Parrrley applies on hit effects, so Grog Soaked Blade, Frozen Mallet, critical chance, wriggle's proc, red buff, etc. are applied at a range.
- Your Remove Scurvy is an almost Quicksilver Sash on demand. Make sure you save this to remove things such as stuns, suppresses and other CC effects and don't just blow it for a quick heal.
- Learn map awareness! Using your Cannon Barrage properly is the key to Gangplank. You can clear your tower of pushing minions while somewhere else (game changing), turn the tide of a teamfight, finish off someone at low life or even just use it as an amplified ganking tool! It is so versatile and the reason he is strong.
- Don't be at low life and recall somewhere that Gangplank can see you. He can and will make it rain on you and death occurs. Treat his Cannon Barrage almost like Requiem in that when you enter a teamfight, be aware that he can chunk your whole team down and/or finish off stragglers.
- Don't let him kite you with Parrrley. It has a short cooldown and he will try to keep shooting you and backing off. Once you're in range, he isn't as hard to deal with if you outman him.
- Try to bait his Cannon Barrage by engaging in a fight that you can easily leave. This will cause him to prematurely cannonate, and they will not have it for the next fight. Once his ultimate is down, a lot of his power is diminished, so take advantage of that time.
- Gangplank's damage is a bit deceptive due to his passive. It will apply a lot more damage than you think it will, so keep in mind that a straight item-for-item stack against GP won't always mean you win that fight.
MMMHecarim is a fun and exciting character. His kit and animations are very empowering and it makes you feel like you're a giant horseman bringing about the apocalypse. He will actually play that way with a couple of kills under his belt, but other than that he is a pretty decent character. He is another one who is in a weird place because he wants to be tanky enough to use his ultimate to initiate, but has lower base damage on his skills so he wants his DPS items as well. If you can strike a balance, he will trample the opponent.
Sustain: 4
Ganking: 5
Control: 4
Late Game: 4
Hecarim does snowball
Hecarim is good at farming
MMMHecarim does have two forms of AoE, which helps a lot, however both are weak at the early levels. His Rampage takes 2 stacks to become spammable and does reduced damage to minions and his Spirit of Dread doesn't really do much damage either. He will speed up after a Wriggle's Lantern, but still not as fast as the legends.
MMMHe has a rough time before his first recall, requiring some sort of potion start. The clause on the Spirit of Dread that caps the damage you can heal for messes up his sustain with the new and improved creeps. Also, if you choose to spam Rampage, you will easily run out of mana. If you don't end up going with a Wriggle build, your sustain won't be great throughout the game, but it starts to get better with Wriggle's.
MMMHis ganks offer minor CC and a good amount of damage at over 500 movespeed. This will almost always draw a summoner's and the only time they're not really deadly is if you're alone, behind or your laner does nothing at all. In the other situations, the knockback is more significant than it seems and his burst is really good if he's had some distance to run.
MMMAgain, a low-sustain and slower clear jungler doesn't have much control on the map. He can zip around fairly effectively with his charge, but it has a high enough cooldown that you often can't gank after you use it to get to the gank on time. He doesn't offer the burst pre-ultimate to invade someone, so he is better off chilling on his side of the map and letting the game unfold.
MMMHecarim can be a strong late game character. His base values are strong for armor, mres and life, which allows him to have a strong presence with moderate items. He really isn't great when he falls behind because he has to charge into the middle of the fight and if you're behind, you can either pick tankiness or damage, not both. This leads to some shenanigans where he charges in like a boss and gets dropped instantly, it's awkward. However, with cautious play he's able to save his team or initiate with his CC and be a hero.
MMMWhen playing Hecarim, you'll be mostly farming up your creeps and ganking lanes with lower life enemies. He can't do a lot to full life foes, but he will absolutely destroy squishies. He can do this with extreme efficiency because of his movespeed boost. He becomes a real threat after he learns his ultimate and expect him to be farming more often than ganking unless a golden opportunity presents itself.
- Rampage does not affect your auto attacking. Much like Skarner, you can just spam Rampage when it's off cooldown without fear.
- Your Devastating Charge does more damage the further you go, however you need to account for their movement. If you use it when in the bush they might be able to flash away immediately, so using it after you're seen can sometimes give you the extra move speed boost you need to get behind them again.
- Your ultimate uses a fear effect based on where you FINISHED the charge and your CURRENT location to them. This means if you charge ahead of your enemy, it will fear them back towards your team.
- Your Devastating Charge will knock someone backwards, so try to hit someone towards a wall, even if it's on a skew. The wall will stop a lot of momentum and is best to be used when your option is push them into lane or the wall.
- Once you start your Devastating Charge animation, you're locked in. This means that snare effects will not matter until after you're done lunging at someone. Meaning if you lurch upwards and Lux snares you, you will finish your lunge and smash into her, then be snared.
- His early sustain is awful. Invade his jungle and destroy him when you can. If he does get ahead, remember that most of his damage is sustained after his charge has completed.
- When you see him charging, try to delay the amount of time until he gets to you by using the brush effectively. Getting hit with his Devastating Charge is the key to his ganking damage, so be sure to avoid it at all costs.
- His ultimate can still knock you into his team at shorter ranges, so don't underestimate the effect.
- His burst damage is pretty great, so don't take him entering your lane lightly. If he's ahead, there's a chance he'll hit you for 50%+ of your life.
Jarvan IV
MMMJarvan used to be a top lane monster and then over a series of nerfs, he has lost a lot of power and play. He is a strong tank and has one of the farthest initiates possible in the game ( Flash > Demacian Standard > Dragon Strike > Cataclysm). When he is fed, he becomes the fortress of annihilation, as I once dubbed him, and is an unstoppable dunking machine. He is pretty tough to play properly, but has a lot of power with some farm.
Sustain: 1
Ganking: 7
Control: 4
Late Game: 3
Jarvan does snowball
Jarvan is ok at farming
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MMMEarly on he has a bit of trouble clearing it and only gets a little faster after Wriggle's Lantern. His mana costs are really high, so you'll be relying on auto attacks more often than not, which leads to a slower jungle overall. The Season 3 patch helped any junglers that build razors, though, so he isn't super slow.
MMMHe is blue buff dependent to jungle quickly and has to take sub-optimal runes in order to do it properly. You will be left auto-attacking often or running out of mana when ganking, which leads to lower life and less reliable ganking. Because of these things, I don't rate him as a sustainable jungler.
MMMYou're going to run into a low mana pool with Jarvan. Other than that he gives your partner(s) an attack speed buff, has a sick knockup, slow/shield and his Cataclysm is ridiculous as well. He can gank as early as level 2 with a lot of power and overall a strong ganker from the jungle. Sustain is his only real pitfall in the ganking category.
MMMJarvan can duel well due to his passive, but will run into too many situations where he is low life, mana or both. Because of this, his early ability to deflect a strong invader or invade a duelist is crushed. If his sustain was a bit better and abilities didn't cost so much, he would score much higher in this category.
MMMOne of the requirements of initiation is tankiness. This is easily seen on characters such as Jarvan and Hecarim because their initiation requires being in their face with little CC to back it up. Due to this, Jarvan must walk the line early and succeed in some risky plays to be anything more than throw away initiate in the late game. If you have had an unsuccessful early game, Jarvan is very weak in the late game.
MMMJarvan is played with a push the envelope style of play. He wants to be constantly ganking, pressuring and pestering the other team while maintaining farm. It is a difficult act to balance, but absolutely deadly when done right. He is best suited on a confident, aggressive player. He can and will gank as early as level 2, so early warding is a must.
- L2E+Q, 'nuff said.
- Your true tankiness won't come out until later in the game. Don't go around pretending like you're the fortress of annihilation after you get Mercury Treads and a Wriggle's Lantern or something, because you're not.
- Please remember that you can turn Cataclysm off when they flash out of it. It's important.
- Just because your initiation is strong doesn't mean kill yourself. Make sure you know what you're javelining into.
- Your E+Q Combo can go through almost all terrain on the rift. Use this to create exciting ganking, escape and juking moments.
- Take his blue. I guarantee he won't appreciate it, so make sure you mark the timings and keep taking his blue from under his nose or ward his blue to catch him doing it.
- When he is coming out of the jungle, see if you can take note of his items. He is often just a strong CC and auto attacking damage dealer, but killable depending on his current life and mana.
- Learn to gauge his mana pool. He is stricken with high mana costs, so after an E+Q and ultimate he might not have enough to E+Q again immediately.
- In the late game, he won't be as farmed as he should be unless fed. If that's the case, he can be ignored depending on his item comp because he won't be running Atma/Warmog/Triforce at the same time. He'll be either off-tanky or full-tank with not an amazing in between.
- Jarvan is often low life and mana in his jungle. If a Jarvan on their team is just farming, take time to go over to his place for some tea and then break his head open.
MMMJax has become fairly popular in the new jungle after his remake. The low mana costs on his abilities allows him to jungle for quite a while, as well as a favorable item path for him to build. Jax has a decent clear with troubles on the first one, but really starts to pick up steam later in the game. You pretty much play Jax for the late game, so expect to farm for a little while and then burst into the mid game as a major player.
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 2
Control: 6
Late Game: 9
Jax does snowball
Jax is ok at farming
MMMHis initial clear is on the slower side, but manageable because Counter Strike does decent AoE damage and he has blue. After blue wears off, he'll have razors and the attack speed passive helps him plow through. Once he has a Wriggle's Lantern he can clear large camps very quick and his ultimate passive also helps with this. He doesn't have any reliable AoE, though, so he won't be as fast as someone like Shyvana or Udyr.
MMMJax has low mana costs on his abilities and will almost always be building a Wriggle's Lantern in the jungle. These characteristics always mean that the early sustain is mediocre and the later the game goes on the better. This is the exact case with Jax as his speed, sustain and power level greatly increase with razors or a vamp scepter.
MMMHis ganks are really situational and begging for additional CC or massive damage from your lane. The duration on his stun is really not that long and his early burst is laughable. This in combination with the stun being really hard to actually land without flash/leap striking in gives him some ok ganks. After he hits level 6 and has items, his ganks improve but then it doesn't matter nearly as much. He simply doesn't have the early game damage or CC to give him strong ganks.
MMMJax's earliest levels are bad for dueling and his dodge is on such a high cooldown that if you catch him after he's used it to clear a camp, he won't be using it again. With that out of the way, his empower starts to get powerful very fast. If you catch him any time after level 4 or 5, chances are he's planting a post into your face before you can even touch him.
MMMJax has an amazing late game when he's really fed, and the rework on his ultimate gives him his inevitability back. Giving him the tankiness back to his ultimate makes him strong in the late game, even when building like a glass cannon. It will also make his level 6 ganks stronger with the ability to dive easily and live through ganks as well. Overall the change picked his late game up a lot, and he is now stronger in the jungle and in lane.
MMMJax plays like a hybrid farm/control jungler. He starts off pretty slow and must farm up, but becomes an excellent control jungler after a few items. His kit is better suited to counter ganking and making sure people don't step out of line. Play Jax if you feel your lanes can do fine pre-ultimate and you want a really sick late game. He can start to gank at level 2, but his ganks aren't too strong until the later levels when you're warding anyway.
- Your Empower resets your auto-attack and your Leap Strike performs one after you jump in. Learn to combo leap/auto/empower for a manly burst.
- Remember that you're not tanky early and typically want Relentless Assault and Grandmaster's Might stacks when fighting. This means in a gank you're not as useful as a teamfight because you don't have the opportunity to power up.
- Remember that Counter Strike can be turned off any time after 1 second if you find yourself closer to that person than you thought.
- When using Counter Strike and Leap Strike be aware of the timings. I mistimed this many times where I activate stun too early and do it while in midair for leap strike. Leap Strike doesn't instant activate, so make sure you're well aware of the range because you won't be jumping as soon as you click.
- When in a teamfight, wait for someone else to engage and then pop your Counter Strike and leap onto a squishy or their team. This gives you an entrance with a bang while shedding some of that crucial early damage from you.
- Jax is not a strong duelist before level 6. You can push and pull him around because he will only have an 18 second cooldown dodge. He'll still crush a tank or weak duelist, of course, but it's really not significant compared to early duelists like Lee Sin.
- When being ganked by Jax, watch for his twirly stick. This means he's going to be trying to stun you. If you're able to flash away or keep running while this happens, he isn't a threat any longer.
- The weird bubble around him is now his ultimate being activated. When he is in this mode, it's probably best to stay away as he lives forever.
- Don't duel Jax in the late game. Once his stacks get up he is completely absurd and it doesn't take long before his lightpost becomes a permanent fixture in your face.
MMMKayle is a fringe addition to the jungle, and an entirely badass one. The reduced life camps allow her to kill the smaller monsters while focusing the large one due to Righteous Fury. Her ganks are high damage early on with a strong, flat slow, not to mention she is a ton of fun to play. She's a complete badass (like Samus Aran) that flies around raining fire down on people from a sword the size of her body. If that's not enough convincing to play her, I don't know what is.
Sustain: 2
Ganking: 4
Control: 3
Late Game: 2
Kayle does snowball
Kayle is great at farming
MMMKayle used to be god mode clear in Season 2, however the increased life of the camps has her limping along. She still has a high amount of damage and the splash will kill the lesser dudes, but taking down the big guy takes more time now.
MMMThe buffed jungle camps really hurt her sustainability. While she never had blue issues in the jungle, she now has life issues worse than before. This means you have to rush early life steal or buy a gallon of health potion in order to stick around the jungle longer than a few camps.
MMMShe has a strong slow at level 3 as well a decent amount of damage in a gank. Early on, she is a little too squishy to be walking in on an assassin or high DPS lane such as Pantheon or Evelynn. After her Intervention she is able to tower dive like a beast and becomes a real threat to laners.
MMMThe new lack of life sustain on top of general lack of early tankiness leaves a lot to be desired in this category. She completely dominates a lane because of her early damage output, however most laners aren't strong duelists. A strong duelist such as Lee Sin will have his way with her and Kayle doesn't have the utility to provide strong coverage and safety to her lanes.
MMMWhile Intervention is pretty insane, you often become just a character to use that ability later on. Because you typically want to build damage or mostly damage, you have to be able to kite in fights like an AD carry. When you and an AD carry and an AP carry are doing this, you have to have a really strong initiator and teamfighter in support and top in order to succeed. Even with those two, great positioning and knowing what targets to hit will completely dictate how effective she can be. When she is fed she'll do a ton of damage, but without a strong tank that damage won't matter due to her lack of mobility.
MMMKayle in the jungle is played much like a midlane Kayle. You want to be farming up and abusing your early power in the form of quick lane ganks. After other laners get their items and before you have your ultimate, you should just passively farm and then after your ultimate seek engagements that will maximize its effectiveness. You'll want to be aggressive early and then start to taper it off into good positioning and hero ultimates in the later game.
- Learn to "step" your auto-attacks with Righteous Fury. This means if you're far away from your target, attack, move towards them, attack again, move towards them. It will be difficult to master, but is essential in maintaining your DPS for a gank or moving target.
- In the early game, don't pretend you're invincible. Be very careful before you have Intervention and use your damage wisely.
- When you're going to gank, use Divine Blessing on yourself first. This will give you an extra kick in the *** to fly out of the bushes and slow them.
- Righteous Fury and Reckoning have the same range, so you whoever you can slow you can hit. When you try to activate both quickly, make sure it did it. I had issues when I quickly pressed QE and E doesn't activate or Q doesn't fire. You can E first when coming out and then Q and attack at the same time.
- Intervention is not Chronoshift. You do not have to use it like a life saving device, you can use it in many ways. Learn the effectiveness of the ultimate exploit it, don't just try to save the one person who will die.
- Respect her damage, but realize that it comes at a cost. She has to be relatively close to beat you up and is not tanky early on. Her ganks can turn on her in a hurry, so be aware that she's killable.
- Her Intervention is good, but it's not without its faults. Try to spread your damage out or CC Kayle in order to have it be ineffective.
- Kayle can fall behind pretty quickly if she gets killed or invaded. Much like other high-damage users in the jungle, not having farm or kills puts her behind and makes her relatively useless.
- If you don't have a lot of burst damage and see her coming to gank you, run away immediately. Her slow has a pretty high range and her attacks hurt a lot. Don't risk your life, leave right away.
Lee Sin
MMMLee Sin is able to do it all. He has a strong ganking presence in a lane, high burst damage and is an amazing duelist. He shuts down anyone anyone coming into his jungle, has a huge toolkit and can counter extremely well. If he gets a few kills early, he becomes extremely powerful and is one of the best junglers available, espectially in solo queue.
Sustain: 8
Ganking: 10
Control: 10
Late Game: 5
Lee Sin does snowball
Lee Sin is great at farming
MMMHe can clear the jungle pretty quickly, especially once his skills get going more. The AoE and increased attack speed from his passive really help get it done quickly. He also has some slight AoE for the camps and can kick through walls to avoid some travel time.
MMMThe new jungle loves him. He takes less damage, deals more and never has to go back. He has a shield to soak up some damage, lifesteal from deactivation of that skill and no mana to worry about at all. He can stick around the jungle forever and only gets better with his Wriggle's.
MMMYou can get in there so many different ways and heaven help anyone you cripple. He is capable of some serious damage output at level 2 on and can perform some really nasty early ganks if coordinated well. Even when he misses the Q, he still can flash/cripple if necessary and his damage is ridiculous. He remains to be a strong ganker the entirety of the game.
MMMLee Sin has an effective toolkit to shield damage, gain life back, close a gap on a target and cripple the opponent. Because of this and his high sustainability, he is almost untouchable in his jungle, on top of not needing blue buff for mana. Going at Lee Sin is a mistake.
MMMHis low level dueling skills are powerful and he has several escape mechanisms. The combination of these two mean that he can show up from behind a wall with a flying kick or just walk up and cripple you. Then when your laner comes to help, he ward jumps, kicks at Baron or teammate jumps and isn't caught. Abuse his early power by bruising around their jungle.
MMMOverall, Lee Sin hasn't been the most effective after his jungling unless he has been fed or fed a teammate. He can do decent burst damage, kick people into/away from the fight and can shield an ally. While these are all excellent abilities, he can't knock away as often as Alistar, shield as much as Orianna or Janna, and can't burst as hard as Jax or Irelia, so the effectiveness of what he does is often overshadowed by other champions.
- You can tower dive with Lee Sin relatively easily if you have minions or an ally in the correct location. Much like Katarina's Shunpo or Jax's Leap Strike, you can warp out to an ally in order to not take any more damage.
- If you land his gap closer, you have time before you have to activate it again. This allows you to play games with when you want to engage and initiate on someone.
- If you can close the gap to a minion or player behind your target it gives you the opportunity to kick them into a tower or ally.
- To quickly poke, kick an enemy and shield back to an ally. This gives you an opportunity to get free damage in since he does not have mana to worry about and there isn't much time to react if done properly.
- Your kick does damage based on life missing, so learn to combo and finish with the second hit. Lee Sin's level 6 burst with a kick > cripple > ultimate > kick follow-up is incredibly high.
- Lee Sin is a great duelist, do not fight him straight up. Instead, try to catch him out of position or prevent him from being able to simply kick you away.
- When he comes in to gank your jungler or is jungling himself, go help your team and coordinate something to take him down. He can juke through trees, so don't overextend yourself.
- If you see Lee, try to move around a lot in order to make his skillshot miss. A lot of his power comes from that, so dodging it will save you a lot of damage.
- Since Lee Sin has high sustain, many will go back into the jungle when low life and continue jungling. This is a point of weakness for him, so if he is low after a gank try to catch him with his pants down.
MMMMalphite has seen a large increase in play with the new jungle. His clearing speeds are legendary and his sustainability is also amazing. He isn't too much in the way of a ganking jungler, but his utility to a teamfight later on through Unstoppable Force is a lot to offer. A great counter to auto-attack heavy compositions, Malphite will rock his way through the jungle against the right team.
Sustain: 10
Ganking: 3
Deflection: 7
Counter: 7
Late Game: 7
Malphite does not snowball
Malphite is great at farming
MMMMalphite has an AoE on his auto attack through Brutal Strikes. The only other jungler with that ability is Cho'Gath, as Skarner and Udyr have to wait a few seconds for that kind of perk. Ground Slam also does a lot of damage to creeps, so you'll be done in no time. Malphite is one of the faster junglers on this list, but still can't clear quite as fast as the elite.
MMMI start regrowth and a potion and sometimes don't even have to use the potion. Granite Shield gives you a massive sustainability boost to your health and the abilities are very low mana cost. His ganks also don't take much mana or life away from him, so he is extremely sustained in the jungle. Malphite may not be very quick at large buffs, but he takes less and less damage throughout the game.
MMMThis is my biggest gripe with Malphite. He takes a little while to get in and when he does, it's not that beneficial. The auto-attack reduction on your Ground Slam doesn't come into effect and you don't level Seismic Shard in the jungle, so you have a minor slow at best. After you learn Unstoppable Force, the CC and burst becomes a lot better, but still requires a laner to help.
MMMMalph struggles in a gank because people run away, however in a counter jungling situation, people decide to attack him. In that situation, he has some good DPS and a cripple, which will put him ahead of the pack. He also is really sustained, so catching him at low life is unlikely. He does want to be farming a lot, so taking his jungle at opportune times can set him back a little.
MMMHe's pretty quick at clearing, so he can get in and out with ease. He isn't so great at counter jungling for two reasons, though, and those are his AoE damage and need for farm. His AoE makes it such that you can't cripple camps unless you try really hard (see: take more time) and his need for farm is just like Singed. His goal is to be a later game force, not an early disruption or present character.
MMMAgainst the right composition, Malphite does extremely well. He can take a lot of damage while dealing a good amount and debuffing the enemy team constantly. A well placed Unstoppable Force also turns the tides of a fight or initiates rather well. I put him at a 7 because I don't see him carrying a game or being extremely effective as a tank against a balanced composition. If their team locks in 2 AD carries and a bruiser top, you'll be set to destroy. If they don't, things can be harder for the rock man.
- Ground Slam resets your auto-attack. Try to use it at the startup of your auto attack and it will hit immediately, saving the auto reset time.
- Unstoppable Force can be used offensively and defensively. Use it to start a fight, mess a fight up or escape one and you will get the full spectrum of its ability.
- Remember that your Ground Slam debuffs auto-attack speed. Try to use this in proximity to their carries and/or auto attacking damage sources.
- If you are in draft mode, Malphite is an excellent last or second to last pick. If you first pick him, they can just go an AP route and do fine against you.
- While Malphite doesn't fail against AP, it just doesn't take advantage of the utility he offers. Your Ground Slam scales off of armor and you debuff attack speed, both of those things are negligible to an AP carry.
- Malphite is very good against auto attacking and physical damage. Always try to have a balanced team that will do well and can diversify damage.
- Try not to bunch up as a team. A retreating team that is clumped together will be easy prey for Unstoppable Force, which gives time for the enemy team to catch up to you.
- If you see Malphite just wandering around, try to get a poke on him if his shield is down. This mostly applies to supports who don't value auto-attacking, but when Malphite gets hit his Granite Shield timer resets, which can provide some valuable extra life.
- Just don't.
- Fighting in a cluster or next to your AD carry is a bad idea, even after Unstoppable Force happens. Malphite's Brutal Strikes and Ground Slam do large AoE damage to anyone around him, so again try to spread a little bit from your buddies.
MMMMaokai is like a slightly different Rammus. He is an amazing ganker in the early game, offers a ton of damage and utility to a gank, and does alright late game. He won't win the game by himself, but his ability to provide very high damage early ganks is actually a bit stronger than Rammus. While he doesn't have the movement speed to chase, he brings significantly more damage to the table than Rammus.
Speed: 6
Sustain: 2
Ganking: 10
Deflection: 4
Counter: 4
Late Game: 2
Maokai does not snowball
Maokai is ok at farming
MMMIf he didn't have his passive, I would rate him even lower. While it's true that you can Sapling Toss and clear lesser camps, he takes more damage than he wants to and needs SO MUCH MANA to gank someone effectively. Think about it, at level 2 he needs 140 mana to Snare/Arcane (40% of his mana pool) and level 3 he needs 210 mana to Snare/Arcane/Sapling (40% again). So when you're jungling, you can cast 2-4 Sapling Toss before you're too low mana to properly gank someone. That is awful sustain and mandatory of blue buff.
MMM Ah, the only reason to play Maokai (in my opinion). He can gank early, hard and consistently. He doesn't need that much farm, so he can camp a troublesome lane and just win it despite the matchup. Most of the times I've seen Maokai being effective has been him camping top lane and ganking every minute or two to win that lane hard and then the game. He has a more consistent gank than Rammus at the early levels and more CC to offer than any other jungler can dream of at level 2 or 3. I would say he's a counter pick, not a consisteny pick.
MMM Back to the mana. What's he going to do about it? Snare you and auto-attack? If you have any low-cost dueling skill ( Three Talon Strike, Rabid Bite, Tempest / Cripple) he is toast and must run away. This leaves him super underleveled and therefore useless. He brings a good amount of damage, but after that you have to twiddle your thumbs for a few seconds on cooldowns, not to mention hope you have mana left to do anything. He has some decent CC so an insant response from a laner will net a kill, but he has no lasting CC effect.
MMMHe can throw saplings at small camps from far away. Also, if he coordinates with mid or top, he will feed them your carcass after you're snared and slowed. He can't really do work if they don't come, however. Against a Maokai, the main concern is protecting your lanes, not him invading you.
MMMMaokai late game is physically painful for me to play. His ultimate provides little utility in most fights because, he is constantly underleveled/farmed because he needs a lot of mana to jungle and is ganking often. Even if you land a God ultimate and everyone fights only inside it, you offer a snare (which does nothing to shut down a carry who can still attack/cast on you), mild knockup (so mild people don't notice it) and slow effect (not an issue in a group fight most times). I found him to be extremely dependent on how much you were able to feed your own carries with your ganks as his cooldowns and late game utility just aren't there. He can still catch people out of position and take a beating, but that's the extent of his power.[/indent]
- Once you've started Twisted Advance, there's no turning back. If they go into a bush, you'll chase them into it and it won't snare them. If they flash at the right time, you will chase them. This is both good and bad because they can't escape, but in the early game I've teleported next to a tower snaring someone who flashed, and that just sucks.
- Remember your saplings do damage on hit and explode. Learn to predict where they're going and shoot in front of them so it both hits on impact and quickly after it lands.
- Learn to combo his abilities. He can do any sort of snare combination be it snare/sapling/smash or snare/smash/ultimate/sapling and combinations thereof. Use your damage and utility to its fullest extent to do some good damage.
- You aren't extremely tanky early on, but will come into your own through the midgame. You will still not be an Amumu or Rammus, but you can at least take more punishment than your carry.
- Your ultimate does damage whether they hit you or not. My friend forgot this, but it will STILL do ~100 damage even if nothing happened, so be sure to pop it before they leave on early ganks no matter what. Damage is damage.
- Ward for his early ganks and ignore him late game. He typically doesn't do enough damage fast enough to warrant focusing him ever.
- Try not to fight inside his ultimate. If you can bait it out or just move slightly out of it, you will have better chances of winning the fight.
- Get to that brush so he won't snare you!
- If he does land a combo on you, leave immediately. Don't try to poke out the other guy that's low or whatever, his combo will do a lot of damage and even more if you let him get auto-attacks in.
MMMNautilus is a fun new addition to the jungle and has a unique kit to bring. His Dredge Line really offers the ability to pull people off of a tower and displace them in teamfights, which is a combination Rocket Grab and gap closer. He also has an AoE slow, knockup/stun ult and passive snare, which gives him a huge CC kit. Unfortunately, he doesn't do a lot of damage in the early game which means his clear speed is slow and he relies on his laner a lot to damage in a gank. Once the late game gets rolling along he becomes more of a threat, but still never gets to that real terror status many other characters do.
Sustain: 5
Ganking: 9
Deflection: 3
Counter: 1
Late Game: 9
Nautilus doesn't really snowball
Nautilus is okay at farming
MMMHe's slow in the early levels. His auto-attack speed is low and looks slow as well. His damage skill (shield) is on a massive cooldown in the early game and his other AoE skill really doesn't pack much of a punch. This leads him to crawl through the jungle until he has a few levels in shield and can legitimately clear.
MMMHis lack of early clearing speed as well as damage puts him at a low life and mana total throughout the early game. He doesn't necessarily need blue buff badly, but it helps. His base life is also high enough that he doesn't take too much damage, so at least his life sustain is okay.
MMMHere we go, a great category. His ganks are extremely potent as he can displace someone, slow them and snare them...all before his level 6 ganks. Once he hits level 6, he is really able to do more damage and CC to their laner. He can also use his hookshot to pull people off of towers to secure early kills.
MMMA high early CC and life total will keep you somewhat out of his jungle, but he's really not able to deflect the strong counter junglers. If you're playing a powerful early duelist, just take advantage of him. He is an awful duelist, punish him. This is a key component to relieving pressure on your lanes, as keeping him down will result in less ganks.
MMMBeing really bad at dueling combined with really slow at clearing makes him a pretty bad counter jungler. Massive cooldowns combined with low damage is a recipe for bad soup, so stick with farming your jungle and ganking your lanes and you'll do far better with the giant man.
- Your Riptide ability has a pretty short cooldown, and doesn't have to hit all three to slow. This means you can open and close a gank with it.
- Your ultimate will knockup many people on its way to the target. This should be used to your advantage to fire at people in the back lines and CC their team while you're at it.
- Your early damage and dueling is bad. Really bad. Don't get into direct confrontations, but keep in mind that your CC can keep your allies in the fight longer.
- As a feel for your passive, it has around the same cooldown on a single target as your Riptide. So if you use both around the same time, they will be up around the same time (passive being slower)
- You're not a DPS carry. Your job in a teamfight is to keep them alive, so don't chase down people in fights. You should be using your abilities to keep your team alive, not to kill theirs.
- Both Riptide and Titan's Wrath reset your auto attacks, so you can attack, W, attack, E, attack very quickly.
- His early speed and dueling is really bad. If you're a duelist, kick his teeth in.
- If you're the one targeted by his ultimate, try to run away from your team perpendicularly. This will give the projectile the sharpest turn away from your team.
- While he doesn't do too much alone, with another person he is out of control. The amount of time he can keep you in one place is nearly unmatched, so don't pretend like you can pass him to get to his carries.
- His attack animation for his passive is different than his regular attack. If you don't notice the snare circle, look for him smashing his anchor vertically onto you and remember it won't be able to snare you again for 12 seconds.
- Watch out for his items and positioning. He will typically have a lot of life, which translates into damage with his shield ability, and will be in the front of the team to initiate fights. Beware of the anchor.
MMMNocturne has seen his ebb and flow of play, having a huge influx during his release and steadily losing popularity with all of the nerfs onto him. He is an extremely strong character that does scary DPS with very little items and has great utility to a fight. He can also be built as a tanky initiator and still has a lot of damage thanks to his skillset. His ganks are spectacular because he can jump over wards or have a secondary gap closer. The mind game and power he brings to a team is undeniable and he is still an amazing character.
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 9
Deflection: 8
Counter: 7
Late Game: 8
Nocturne does snowball
Nocturne is great at farming
MMMNocturne is like greased lightning in the jungle...or like shadow lightning or dark lightning. Nocturne is some sort of lightning like analogy in the jungle! His clear in the new jungle on any camp is even better due to lower life creeps, so he's increased in speed. Any jungler with an AoE effect is faster in the new jungle, so Duskbringer into Umbra Blades is free camping.
MMMHe does gain life back with his passive, and once he has Wriggle's he does fine with health. Mana is more of the issue as it is a frequent occurrence that I run into where I stop my jungling to gank with R and only have enough mana for a single Duskbringer. He is blue buff dependent to stay in the jungle and then be able to gank in the early game. In the later game, you have enough time between fights and scuffles that mana isn't an issue, but the increased number of early game camp kills will leave you with less mana to play around with.
MMMNocturne is able to gank well at level 3. I have taken down duo lanes that are getting pushy on the bottom many times with just a single fear effect and lots of damage. The ability to deflect a stun to stop you is very powerful as that is the downfall of a few of the other junglers. After level 6, Nocturne's ganking is off the chains because he can essentially teleport anywhere near him. This allows him to jungle and be in teamfights, which is an extremely valuable skill to have as a jungler.
MMMIf you manage to get in and steal camps and he sees you, chances are you're not making it out alive. However, losing a camp or a little XP hurts him on his quest for level 6. His steroids in Shroud of Darkness and Duskbringer very much allow him to catch up when behind because he doesn't need as much damage or attack speed in order to hang with the big boys.
MMMNocturne can get into your jungle and clear a camp quickly, then pop his ultimate and kill your buddies. Duskbringer into Umbra Blades will 1 shot the wraith camps after a certain period and that means he can get in and out very quickly. If he is discovered in the jungle he can just spell shield the cc and roll out faster than you on a cloud of smoke. He would be higher is his Duskbringer trail wasn't the length of summoner's rift, allowing for easy detection if done wrong.
MMMNocturne is flat out game ruining if he has been fed and is otherwise a very useful character to have. When you are jumping someone, activating the ultimate will keep the team from knowing it is happening and can also get you into the rear of a fight on someone separated. If Nocturne is behind he can either not do enough damage or die too fast when jumping into the fray, so make sure to keep ahead or at least even or he will suffer.
- Paranoia can be used to prevent vision, even if you're not there or teleporting in to anything. If your team isolates someone, use your ultimate and they won't see that someone is dying.
- Landing your Duskbringer on all of the creeps in the camp will speed your jungle up greatly.
- Duskbringer ignores unit collision! This makes you ganks far easier and make sure to use it pre-chase so you don't start to path around the minion wave.
- Sometimes when your team enters a fight, the best time to use your ultimate is in the middle or end of the fight. Remember your allies still have full vision and denying vision to enemy healers, supports or casters can save your team. This is not to mention the chaos that is involved in some bladed badass jumping into the fray.
- Nocturne can come back from being behind fairly well, but remember then he will be even squishier. Many Noc players choose to go straight damage, which makes them very easy to kill and should be taken advantage of. Check their items!
- When his ultimate goes off, communicate with your team via pings or voice as to who is getting attacked and where.
- Avoid overextending when he was not recently seen somewhere and keep in mind that he can be anywhere at a given time.
- Paranoia prevents vision, but it does not prevent sound or vision of Duskbringer (interestingly). When he uses it, look around the map quickly for that smash noise and a dusk trail to see where he is immediately.
MMMNunu was my first and favorite jungler for a long time. His ultimate is one of the coolest things in the game and his ganks are pretty strong as well. He specializes in controlling the other team's resources and jungle and can be a real annoyance. He also has the highest base life at level 18 and does well with literally no items on him. A strong jungler, but one that cannot really carry a game by himself.
Sustain: 6
Ganking: 5
Deflection: 4
Counter: 5
Late Game: 5
Nunu does not snowball (irony?)
Nunu is bad at farming
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MMMNunu has an attack speed buff and double smite. This helps him a lot on the camps with smaller numbers (golems and wolves) but not on the other ones. When his Consume is on cooldown he is really slow, however in the early levels you can ice blast, consume, smite and clear a red buff. The constant double smite helps his speed out a lot, but it is still the slowest after the first clear or two.
MMMWhile he does gain life back from Consume and have free mana with Visionary, he takes so long to clear that it's not great. He also has some massive mana issues and I feel that if he got some more mana in his base stats he would be extremely overpowered. The only thing really holding Nunu back from dominating lanes and the jungle is how much Ice Blast costs.
MMMNunu can gank after level 2 if he wants, as the slow applied as well as a buff to a teammate if you're passed level 2 helps out a lot in securing a kill. After that he is an excellent midgame character as far as damage and utility goes and his ganking gets even better when he is level 6. Unfortunately, he doesn't bring a bucket of damage, just utility, which puts a lot of the responsibility on your laner.
MMMHe doesn't need as much development as other characters, which is his only real saving grace. He will do damage to other people, but good duelists will walk all over him.
MMMNunu was considered one of the best counter junglers when there were strong camps and weak junglers. Now he's more of an initiator for his team, allowing his lanes to come in and assist him in his counter jungling. He's very good in that regard, but without a teammate he isn't too dangerous.
MMMThis is a big upgrade because I didn't fully realize the power that Nunu has. He has some extremely good base stats and the best utility spells in the game. A single Ice Blast in the later game is basically a mark for death. Blood Boil is amazing when applied to an auto attacker on your team and he has an AoE slow in his ultimate. He can really carry a team that knows what they're doing, but his real problem lies in that. Without at least 2 other people on your team that can take advantage of his absurdity, he is not a strong carry.
- Casting Absolute Zero in a bush does not reveal your position, so if you have the chance, get someone surprised with a thousand damage for an edge.
- Nunu's midgame damage and Blood Boil effect is very strong. Be sure to abuse it as much as possible in order to maximize your team's victory chances.
- If you are fighting around minions, Consume one of them to gain some health back. It can mess with people's combat math on the fly and keep you and possibly another team member alive.
- If you get enough CDR, your Ice Blast and Blood Boil can be cast before the effect even finishes, meaning you can infinitely slow/buff. Make sure to keep the timing down and keep them from escaping.
- Keep in mind that most Nunu players won't do a lot of damage as the game goes on, but will slow you long enough for someone else to wail on you. You don't have to be scared of Nunu 1v1 usually, however always be wary when he is around his teammates.
- Wards, wards, wards. Nunu is always around the map and is a weak brawler, so knowing where he is at any point is integral to beating him. He has little power without his team, so this also allows you to hunt him down and get him.
- Save your stun/silence for activation of Absolute Zero. He will try to use it at an opportune moment, but make sure that at least one person on your team has saved a stun for him. You don't all have to focus him, but try to knock him out of the ultimate as soon as possible.
MMMThe Viking man is a very interesting pick on a team. He will do a lot of damage, and true damage at that, to everyone and is a real terror if he's up close. The problem he typically has is that he can't get in close to deal it. He is a pretty tricky character to learn because positioning and proper Undertow use is difficult, but a fun character to play.
Sustain: 4
Ganking: 6
Deflection: 5
Counter: 5
Late Game: 4
Olaf snowballs
Olaf is ok at farming
MMMOlaf is an absolute beast clearer. He can rip through the jungle with a vengeance due to his passive. Because your speed keeps increasing, if you have auto attacks and blue buff he does some scary DPS to minions. If you have blue buff you constantly Undertow and welcome to AD scaling AoE damage, bro!
MMMHe will get lower in health, but if he has a good lifesteal on top of his W, you will be lower health than most junglers. He can also conserve mana if you are not using the Undertow trick to clear which means he can come out of the jungle often ready to rock, but it slows your jungle down. Without blue buff he doesn't have a fast clear, which loses him a lot of sustain points.
MMMHis damage output is enough to kill someone three times over, however he is reliant on landing an axe or a teammate having CC. Because of this, his ganks aren't quite as potent as some of the other junglers. He also is fragile early game when using reckless swing, so it is easy to get bursted down when coming to gank. After level 6, his ganks are a little better because he can ignore characters like Malzahar or Annie's CC
MMMHe really doesn't deal well with people messing with him, is often low life on his routes and doesn't come back from being behind very easily. This is also considering that you have to deal yourself damage in order to deal the most through your Reckless Swing ability. That being said, he gets stronger as his life gets lower and the rework on his AD ratio for Undertow can do some very serious DPS in the early levels.
MMMHe can get in and clear a creep wave pretty quickly, however he is normally not in the position to do so given that his life is generally around 50% through his route. Not awful at the job, but he's no Shyvana.
MMMAny character is weaker when they are behind, but Olaf doesn't even do that well when it's a normal game. To keep up in the late game, he needs a lot of farm via kills or minions. He can sometimes be effective when not ahead because true damage is amazing and Ragnarok gives escapability. When he does score kills, Olaf demonstrates that he is a carry, pops his Ragnarok and Ghost and ggnore
- Use Undertow by throwing it at your feet. This will instantly pick up the axe, refreshing the cooldown on it. When done properly with blue buff, you will have a reliable, spammable AoE attack to use on point blank targets.
- Master the Undertow. It's your key to ganking, poking and jungling so learn to use the skillshot and learn to use it well. Axe positioning is key, so try to throw the axe where you're going to be running to if the enemy is fleeing you.
- When you have your Vicious Strikes active, you gain spell vamp. That means that Smite will give you life back!
- Your Reckless Swing ability does true damage. Make sure you use this to beat up those pesky tanks with tons of resistance, as it will truly hurt them more than anything else will.
- Don't overestimate your tankiness. You may be a war machine, however you can't stand up to direct fire for too long and definitely can't stand up to people kiting you. Learn when to pop ghost and charge and when it's not worth your time.
- Dodge the axe! His axe is the key to almost anything he wants to do (unless he gets a good jump on you) so make sure you try your best to dodge the long range ones and juke the short range ones.
- Counter jungle him hard. He is prone to being messed with in the jungle, especially since he is usually low life on his routes around Red buff. Use this to your advantage in order to get him down and keep him there.
- In a fight, try to bait his ultimate. There is a right and wrong time to use it, so make sure he doesn't pick the right one.
- Kite him. Just run and attack him and he'll never catch you unless he hits an axe. If you see him pop his ult and charge at you, just leave until he's not hunching down (in ult) anymore and then drop him like a rock.
MMMPantheon is a high early burst damage jungler excelling in ganks. He brings a stun at a distance as well as a lot of damage, which will likely kill most of the cast. He has a really rough late game and can be difficult to carry games you're not ahead with. However, with his ultimate being long range as well as the high early damage, he is a force to be reckoned with in the hands of an experienced player.
Sustain: 3
Ganking: 9
Deflection: 5
Counter: 6
Late Game: 1
Pantheon snowballs
Pantheon is bad at farming
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MMMHe doesn't have a lot of mana sustain or life sustain in the early levels, taking much more damage than I am comfortable with. He won't become faster in the jungle until he gets more damage or a Wriggle's, so don't expect a fast clear with him. He also doesn't have skills or item builds designed to jungle properly, such as strong AoE or strong damage mitigation.
MMMHe takes a lot of early damage in the jungle and uses mana to spam his spear or heartseeker. This on top of the fact that you're usually going Doran's Blade/Brutalizer instead of Vamp Scepter/Wriggle's gives you a low sustained jungler. This is certainly not his forte and he uses a lot of resource to gank as well, so this isn't the reason you play him.
MMMThis, however, is the reason you play Pantheon. He has some great early damage and a targetable stun. The only reason this isn't a 10/10 is because the range on your stun is relatively short, giving them time to react to you. If he does catch you in a stun, chances are you'll be getting beat up pretty bad.
MMMIf you're near him when you have low life, there is a chance he will just burst you down instantly. However, aside from that situation you shouldn't fear him in the early levels. He has a spear burst and stun and then a block and not too much else compared to kits such as Shyvana or Lee Sin. He also isn't that life sustained, so catching him off guard is much easier than other junglers.
MMMHe can do it, but you'll likely be ganking more than trying to do this. If they have a bad duelist jungler and safe lanes, this will be your best route. He doesn't have escapability and his sustained damage is also lacking. This leaves you with more incentive to gank a lane instead of counter.
MMMYou can pretty much just wait 20 minutes and he's useless. Sure he still has a stun and such, but his burst damage is a lot more manageable and he typically won't be that tanky. This leaves him in an awkward spot because his damage is dealt at melee range by jumping onto you. This means if you're able to live through his stun and/or skyfall, he won't be killing you and if you are around your team, him jumping onto you is instant death for him. This is the reason I don't play Pantheon as it is extremely annoying to be doing okay in the early game and then just garbage in the late.
- You can spear, stun, heartseeker and then spear again. The cooldown is short enough that you want to try to get that extra spear off before jumping onto someone.
- Your early damage and level 2 gank is extremely strong with AD runes. Use this to your advantage to pressure lanes extremely hard and often.
- Your Aegis passive will block a tower shot. This is really useful when doing early level ganks and dives onto enemies because you can either get out taking no damage or shake off a tower shot.
- While your primary objective is ganking, you also want to farm your smaller camps in between ganks. You might want to skip red buff and give it to your nearest laner in order to keep up your life and mana costs.
- Grand Skyfall is good. Learn how and when to properly use this to finish off stragglers, anti-gank their jungler or just cause general mayhem. Note that like Teleport, you can also use this to escape death if they don't have CC to stop you.
- Ward well. This seems like stupid advice, as it always does, but his stun range really isn't that far. If you can see him coming, chances are you'll be living through it.
- Always try to recall near a tower, out of sight or just run home. He's able to jump on you from a good distance, but having a tower to help do damage to him or him not knowing where you are goes a long way.
- His late game damage isn't that great, but it's still damage. When I say his late game is awful I don't mean that Soraka does more DPS than him. He can still dish out some pain, he just has troubles living while doing it, which makes teamfighting hard. Be wary of his burst and don't sweat his sustained damage…unless you're alone.
- His heartseeker will do a lot more damage when you're low life. Keep that in mind if you're thinking about holding out just a bit longer for that last hit at your tower. His burst with Executioner and heartseeker passive when you're low is dirty.
MMMWhile the stats on him seem quite low, he is one of the strongest junglers you could possibly play. The presence he offers lanes with constant ganking is unrivaled and he becomes incredibly tanky in the late game. He isn't the best at killing neutral creeps and is mana hungry, but that can be overlooked on the right team comps.
Sustain: 2
Ganking: 10
Deflection: 2
Counter: 2
Late Game: 7
Rammus does not snowball
Rammus is ok at farming
MMMWhile Rammus benefits from the smaller and lower life jungle camps, his speed keeps getting nerfed or buffed by Riot. He got an AD increase which helped, then got a ball curl damage nerf. Right now he's on the lower end of the spectrum for clearing, which is hurting his viability as a whole.
MMMHe pretty much needs blue. While you can clear camps slower with spiked shell, you want to be using powerball to clear. When you're playing with someone and giving up blue buff, it gets painful for you. This is compounded by the fact that your ganks ( Powerball > Puncturing Taunt > Tremors) takes a ton of mana. Rammus without blue buff is painful, but he can still get by.
MMMHooray, a 10 for Rammus! Rammus es to gank as Mordekaiser es to Brazil, hiueehuiehuiehuiehiuehiu. I would give him a 30 out of 10, but the bar wouldn't fit on the screen. But really, he can powerball in, taunt and you're dead. Even if it's just him. Even if you are full life. You don't live through it, it's hard to stop and can come very quickly. It is one of the most potent ganks in the game due to its inevitability and the fact that it can be done every 5-10 seconds, unlike Warwick or Nocturne's super gankiness. You also can't flash out of it because it just takes an extra millisecond to get to you. He'll have trouble with tanky, slippery people (looking at you, Riven), but he smokes most people. This is the reason you play Rammus.
MMMRammus can do approximately nothing about you coming into his jungle aside from pray that you'll attack him until you die. While he can't be killed, per se, he also can't kill you usually or stop you from chasing him away. Also in this section that gives him a super low score is that he can't recover well from it. If his camps are stolen and/or his ganks fail, Rammus is a pile of useless going into the late game. He will have good armor and resistance for a brief time, but not enough life to back it up or other items for him to be the juggernaut menace he can be.
MMMHe is a pretty pesky body in the early levels. He does a surprising amount of damage with an early Powerball as well as keeps you from running away. I think a well placed Powerball on an unsuspecting jungler is ok, but he won't really take your camps and has a weak taunt early on.
MMMAs said in the other section, he is sort of a hit or miss character. He has a natural armor and MR boost, which really helps him out a lot, but if he doesn't get the health and extra stats he isn't that great. His taunt is still one of the longest CC's in the game as well as one of the more malleable and he still has good AoE damage in his ultimate. He can take a tower down relatively well with a creep wave, so all is not lost for this spiked turtle.
- Powerball can be charged in place in a bush, then you can take off so that you are even faster. This makes waiting for a gank good and gives your teammate a very clear sign that you're ready to kick some face.
- Flash does not interrupt Powerball.
- When defending a tower and taunting someone into it, you can powerball them in place in order to get an extra tower hit on them (the micro knockup keeps them there).
- Your ultimate has some great AoE damage, don't forget to use it in a teamfight.
- After you taunt, be sure to activate Defense Curl so they take damage when attacking you.
- Try to keep him down in the jungle by chasing him out often. You can't necessarily kill him, but getting him out and having to recall goes a long way.
- Don't let him kill you in a gank. This sounds logical, but remember that his gank is stupid good and get out at all costs. The more assists and kills he gets, the more of a nightmare your late game will be.
- Never, ever focus Rammus. With good items he'll have over 200 Armor and MR which means his effective health is 6 billion. That's a big number, so don't do it. You'll be taking damage when you focus him as punishment from me (Riot).
- Quicksilver Sash! This is so useful against his taunt that I would almost say it is a must. Watching your character walk into the enemy team is a painful experience.
MMMRengar is a strong addition to the jungle and top lane. The kitten is good in the jungle due to a strong ability to pounce on unsuspecting foes, provide a massive burst and also some CC tools. He has great clearing and sustainability due to his Battle Roar ability and not having mana offers him more diverse jungle and build paths. He takes a while to do well with, however weaving in and out of fights becomes more and more like hunting down your foes, providing a rich and fun experience.
Sustain: 9
Ganking: 8
Deflection: 8
Counter: 9
Late Game: 6
Rengar does snowball
Rengar is good at farming
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MMMRengar has an AoE clear in Battle Roar and an auto attack reset that gives him an attack speed boost. Throw in the fact that you can spam your spells to your benefit and reset them once at 5 Ferocity and you have a pretty potent clear time. Over time his Battle Roar will stop doing enough damage to auto-clear, however the early levels fly through with the double roar/auto reset.
MMMRengar has no mana and no cooldown issues. He can heal himself by 15% each time he uses his roar on 5 stacks, which will be every time in the jungle. He also builds life steal items such as Wriggle's Lantern or The Bloodthirster so his auto attacks sustain his life total on top of that. One of the most sustained junglers if not for his relatively low life first clear.
MMMWhile his 'jump from the bushes' tactic is countered with wards and a brain, he is similar to Shaco in that wards can't really cover the full area of his assault. Sure you are able to get the main spots, but a smart hunter will find his prey. His passive also limits the ways you can escape his gank as running through any sort of brush gives him an automatic gap closer on you. This really hurts all of the lanes as there is no clear, safe path to run if you are overextended.
MMMAny time after his first back or if he started a t-shirt soda Rengar will have most of his life. He also has one of the strongest dueling and burst kits around with no mana to worry about. The only saving grace here is the high early cooldown on his roar and the fact that he might not have any ferocity stacks. If you're to invade Rengar, you have to be prepared to kill him from full health as once you engage in the jungle you cannot easily escape him.
MMMRengar's passive makes brush overpowered. The jungle is full of brush. This really allows him to find creative ways into the shrubbery to destroy you. Stick that news in with the fact that he can jump onto you, auto attack and reset it twice for a ton of damage any time passed levvel 1 and you have very deadly hunter.
MMMOmfgoggles, a category he's not strong in! Well that's a bit deceptive because if he manages to secure an early lead, Rengar will be an absolute terror. However, Rengar suffers from the same plague many jungle bruisers do: not enough farm. If an assassin or bruiser is not far enough ahead in kills, they become either too squishy to deal their damage and live or don't do enough damage. This can happen to Rengar, especially if you put money into his amulet and don't get it fed. While a good Rengar player can often counteract this effect, you will find yourself in games where you simply can't get near people to do damage or do nothing to the enemy team. This is about the only thing that keeps Rengar in check, so remember to look at the items, farm and gold.
- Your Q is an auto-attack reset, so use it!
- When you have 5 stacks, you can cast an empowered spell. This means that you can quickly Battle Roar twice if you're at 4 stacks. The same goes for his other abilities as you can QQ or WQ or QW or whatever combination you'd like in a small time window.
- Something I stumbled on at first was that your 5 stack ability is a different cooldown entirely. Going from 4 stacks to 5 stacks is a lot more straightforward and you WW but you can also go from 5 stacks to a single stack, meaning you can roam around to the next camp and still do WW. Seems obvious, but I felt it worth mentioning as I forgot I could.
- Your passive is pretty awesome with bushes. Find ways to make the shrubbery work for you whether you're ganking from a unique spot, counter jungling or juking enemies trying to kill you. Thinking about what bushes you can leap from and how to avoid detection into them can lead to some really nasty counter jungling.
- Your amulet is a great item, but since you're not in lane you want to think carefully about when you want to get it. You'll be guaranteed a stack if you're assisting kills on lanes, however the early 800 gold really butts heads with the Wriggle's or Phage purchase to help your ganks out. If you're not going to be joining the team soon or aren't doing well, wasting the 800 on that instead of 850 for something like Heart of Gold can be a game losing mistake.
- Your ultimate is fairly easy to mess up. You want to be saving your ultimate until a fight breaks out in teamfights as going in right away is a surefire way to be instant killed. Save your ultimate for juking, closing the gap and escaping and you'll find that your effectiveness increases a lot. You can often times find a bush to close the gaps and juke around teamfights, so the ultimate should be used as a final form of deception and predation.
- Oh goodness, just hope he doesn't get kills early. Rengar is a very snowball heavy character, meaning a few early kills goes a really long way on him. Try to zone yourself away from the river bushes on top and bottom lane and stay nearer to mid in the mid lane.
- Rengar has some great dueling capacity, sustainability, damage, escape mechanisms and cool *** dreadlocks. However, his early levels (1-4) gives him a really high cooldown Battle Roar and just his auto-reset. That ability is still strong in a duel, however a strong burst can often drop Rengar before he knows what hit him.
- If you invade Rengar, do it early and with a teammate ready to back you up. Often times pushing him out of the jungle can help prevent his ganks, but not always and I would not recommend invasion after you're level 5 or 6. This plays into Rengar's hands because he will have full life, items and also his ultimate to never let you escape.
- Buy a ward or two for the entrances to your jungle. Rengar will be able to blast out of the bushes and murder you, however he cannot walk passed wards freely. This gives you a chance to see that he's entered your jungle and to leave immediately.
- His ultimate just cloaks him, it does not displace him like Shaco's jump does. When he pops it in desperation, evaluate whether you're able to catch him or not and alert your team that his ultimate is down. He's not weak during that time, but his effectiveness in a teamfight is reduced for the duration of the cooldown.
MMMRiven is a lot like a high risk Lee Sin. Much like Pantheon and Xin Zhao, she has the ability to perform extremely strong and early ganks. Also, like them, she relies on those ganks to give her a decent end game. Riven, to me, is a hit or miss jungler with a very high potential for success, but not noteworthy if early advantage is gained. She is one of the hardest snowballers and a kill or four on her goes an extremely long way. A high-action, high-skill champion, Riven is a good time to play.
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 7
Deflection: 3
Counter: 8
Late Game: 4
Riven does snowball
Riven is good at farming
MMMShe has 2 AoE ( Broken Wings, Ki Burst) spells and a triple auto-attack reset. That is completely ridiculous for clearing neutral minions! She's able to stagger her skills (like Lee Sin) in order to maximize her damage and ability to do it. Her AoE is weak and on high cooldowns, but it is better than no AoE, so her speed is good. She also builds super damage, so clearing is really quick with two Doran's Blade and The Brutalizer.
MMMShe has a few issues early on where she will have to choose between ganking or jungling because her life will dip too low otherwise. This persists until around your second Doran's Blade or Wriggle's Lantern purchase (depending what build you're doing). She doesn't need blue buff and after level 4 you'll have a shield to help soak up some damage, which helps out a lot.
MMMShe has two forms of mini-CC and a gap closer, which isn't anything to write home about if she didn't do a billion damage. I do a Doran's Blade start and at level 2, if you're not flashing away, you will die. The Broken Wings, AA loop combined with Ki Burst is a TON of early damage. Her damage output and mobility force summoner's or put you at serious risk for death, much like Lee Sin.
MMMRiven isn't in her jungle that often because she's ganking a lot. This leaves it wide open for anyone to take what they would like. Unfortunately, if you're in the jungle with Riven you're also likely lower health because her early sustain isn't amazing and she'll be saving full health time for ganks on lanes. This can mean that you will find a weakened Riven with high cooldowns in her jungle, which is easy pickin's.
MMMRiven stands somewhat like Shaco who has a tough time repelling invaders but does well invading. She can recall, get an item and just head to your jungle instead of her's. Her damage output and CC is such that she'll either take your jungle or kill you for it. I would recommend doing a route and then if there are no ganking opportunities, do the enemy's jungle and see how it goes.
MMMHer scaling is enough that if she does get early kills or assists, the damage output is insane. However, if she doesn't secure those early kills she becomes a lot weaker and is overall just a high cooldown stun/tank or an extremely fragile damage dealer. She does have the ability to snowball hard, so her late game is heavily dependent on player skill and situational advantage compiling into a high-damage tanky lady.
- Stagger your skills and auto attacks! Your Q resets on all animations, so you can time it to maximize DPS.
- You have a while to use your third charge of Broken Wings. You can quick QQ at someone and then slash them and finish the Q into a W right away in order to get an interrupt and stun.
- Ki Burst is instant casting. Keep this in mind when going at someone that you can just slash burst slash for a lot of quick damage.
- Before you go into a gank, activate your Blade of the Exile. This will give you great damage throughout the gank and you can even shoot the wave off and maintain your blade. I found myself often turning it on, going at a lane, tossing the wave to secure kill #1 while chasing after another person (you can shoot it any direction at them).
- Don't get ganked! Really it only takes a few sight ward and/or awareness of where she is on the map and you'll be really hard to gank. Play a little more passive early on and you won't regret it.
- Don't underestimate her CC and damage. Ki Burst may only stun you for half a second, but that's enough time to get another auto attack and/or Q in which means that while you're not sitting there idle you are taking a ton of damage instantly.
- Invade her jungle early and often. A strong bottom lane combo, heavy push mid or a strong counter jungler will put her down early and keep her down for the rest of the game. She has great scaling with low base, which means keeping her down means she is down for good.
MMMSejuani is another strong lane presence tank jungler, though not quite the likes of Rammus or Maokai. What she lacks in hard, reliable CC she more than makes up for in her ultimate, Glacial Prison. That is one of the most insane abilities I have ever seen in this game and is a reason to play her on its own. She is a tanky jungler with sustainability issues, but if you can overcome the early game hump, you're well on your way to shattering your opposition.
Sustain: 2
Ganking: 7
Deflection: 1
Counter: 2
Late Game: 6
Sejuani does not snowball
Sejuani is ok at farming
MMMWith blue buff, her speed is just fine in the beginning. She has an AoE on a low cooldown in Northern Winds and even more once her abilities get started. She doesn't slow down much in the jungle if you're maxing Permafrost as well because the Arctic Assault into Permafrost is a lot of damage. Her speed lends itself to small camps, which is what she should stick to.
MMMAwful. Without a leash at blue I had to use Heal to get to level 3. With a Cloth Armor start, she's still incredibly bad at keeping her life up. Once you get a few more life items and levels, you still need a lot of mana to clear a camp before the game is over. This makes her non-sustained on both life and mana, requiring a philosopher's stone.
MMMShe has essentially a permanent slow effect, a stun after hitting level 6 and a big enough body to take all the damage to boot. Her main issue is that she doesn't do enough damage in the early levels. This can lead to awkward situations where she flies in guns blazing and storm raging to have someone take all the damage and just leave.
MMMShe'll be lucky to be over half health in her route at any given time, so she can't really stop you. She also doesn't have much damage output, so a duelist will eat her alive. Combine this with dependence on a blue buff early on and inability to recover from taking damage without recalling and you have an amazingly bad deflector.
MMMThis is only a two because she can slow someone down enough for her teammate to kill them. I wouldn't really fear her coming through your jungle as her camp efficiency is pretty low and dueling skills are laughable. She is a spectacular teamfighter, not duelist.
MMM Glacial Prison is insane. She can turn a game around very quickly with a well placed 2 second stun. Her initiation is also very strong with a boar charge in and an AoE slow on their team. Her skillset doesn't allow her to be awful, even if she has to die for the initiate, the slow and stun is potent. She just has the same issue as other areas: not enough damage. She will be able to tank a good amount but her damage is lacking unless she's incredibly tanky.
- Arctic Assault applies your passive and goes through terrain. This means you can Arctic Assault through a wall and Permafrost to hit every minion.
- Your Permafrost can only be used on targets with Frost, and Northern Winds does not apply frost. This means you have to auto-attack, charge or ultimate something before being able to slow it.
- Arctic Assault stops when it hits a champion. Keep this in mind in case you have to make an exit or want to blast through minion waves. The minions it goes through are frosted, as well, which leaves you a quick lane clear with Permafrost
- As Sejuani, you want to be ganking a lot and giving away your buffs. While in low-ELO solo queue I recommend you take your buffs for sustainability, in a high level or arranged match, give your buffs away. Sejuani loses too much life to take buffs reliably and doesn't put as much use to them, so pass them off to your team.
- Glacial Prison is amazing, but the cooldown is an eternity. Use it wisely as the two and a half minute wait until level 11 is so incredibly painful.
- Sejuani can gank as early as level 3, which will put you around level 2 in lane. Be careful of a boar lady charging from the brush.
- While she doesn't do carry damage, her early game burst is still significant. Being hit with her boar and slowed will often net a kill or summoner.
- Get into her jungle and beat her up. Whether it's your top laner or jungler abusing her, she is able to be pushed around. The only thing I hate more than being counter jungled on Sejuani is coconuts. And I really hate coconuts.
- Her ultimate is ridiculous. Don't run around your best friend or you'll both be frozen in ice together forever. Scratch that, get frozen with your pal forever in time.
MMMShaco was underground for a long time, which is the best place for him, in my opinion. Then Riot made a few changes to him and people realized that he still exists and is good, so they play him! He is an extremely annoying character to play against because he is very strong at ganking, providing map control and invading your jungle.
Sustain: 3
Ganking: 9
Deflection: 1
Counter: 10
Late Game: 1
Shaco sort of snowballs
Shaco is ok at farming
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MMMYour first camp is a breeze. After that, he actually slows down in the jungle if you don't build a Wriggle's or Razor because you have to attack things and take more damage than you want to. He can still jungle, for sure, but boxes need to be set up to take damage and you don't necessarily have a super fast attack speed or Wriggle's on some builds to do it quickly.
MMMHe needs a large amount of mana for his first camp and to jungle effectively. If he doesn't take his time jungling, he will take a lot of damage and is unable to gank or stay in the jungle for a while. He also doesn't always build Wriggle's, so he won't have a lifesteal item for a while.
MMMShaco does a ton of damage, has a slow and can blink in or out of situations. You'll be chillin in your lane until you hear a laugh and he backstabs you for half of your life. Then when you get him low he'll blink up a cliff or run you into one of his fear boxes and finish the kill. Since he has an invisibility to him, he is a very strong ganker and can easily score many kills.
MMMGoing in and popping his level 1 boxes means he can't jungle. Going in any other time will make him either have to Deceive away or die. He cannot really stop people from abusing him in the jungle unless he's…
MMMCounterjungling! This guy puts boxes in your bushes and then kills you. End of story. When his boxes aren't being used for offensive purposes, they do a lot of supplemental early damage, have a fear effect and since Shaco has a blink built it, you can't even run from him. I think Shaco is the best at killing in their jungle, while Nunu or Udyr remain the best at killing neutral creeps. Shaco makes up for the fact that he can't stop you in his jungle by killing you for sport in your own.
MMMEven when Shaco is fed, he is relatively squishy. He will enter a teamfight and have to leave immediately and relies on people going after his clone. His real use is backdooring and assassination after teamfights, which isn't always as useful as having a brawler on the team. I have seen a lot of Shaco players do very well early game and lose once the damage starts going up because they don't know how to live through it. I have also seen a lot of Shaco players with high ratios losing because the 5v4 is just too strong for their team to deal with in fights. Shaco fits well on some teams and is really bad on others. Find his place and you'll dominate, get it wrong and you're left in the dust.
- Shaco is very good at helping your team snowball by establishing early lane dominance. You must do this in order to take the game because you won't be able to carry in the late game, you must rely on your team to do so with the help you've given them.
- You can particle dodge projectiles. This means that tower shots, skillshots, etc. can be dodged by using your Hallucinate AS IT HITS YOU. This leaves that spell hitting your particle cloud and neither you nor your twin incurs damage. This is really useful, so get it down.
- Always take advantage of your passive, Backstab. Get behind people and deal that extra damage, it does matter a lot.
- If a team skirmish is happening, tell them to hold at a tower while you push. You can escape almost any situation with well placed boxes and Deceive, and even if they send a team at you your allies will get a tower or dragon for it.
- Think of Shaco as a troll. Do everything you find extremely annoying to other people, like constant harassment, killing, escaping, etc. You will be most effective this way, though it's odd advice.
- For the love of God, don't be an actual troll. There's a lot of AP Shaco trolls that sit in a bush with 6 boxes waiting for someone to come. Don't. Do. This. It's not viable. It's not cool. It just makes people angry while they beat you.
- Look for the poof! When he uses Deceive, he will leave a poof of smoke in the fog of war. This alerts you to where he might be.
- Don't chase him forever. He will outrun, flash or trick you. You'll then find yourself alone in the jungle with whispers and jester noises surrounding you while he kills you.
- When he uses Hallucinate, the twin will have no buffs, so you can easily tell which is which. The twin also takes a lot more damage, so if you see him dropping fast, it's likely the wrong one.
- Remember his Hallucinate does damage when dying. Don't just shank it because it exists, it will AoE your team.
- Don't facecheck bushes at less than half life. He might be there, the bastard.
MMMShen has ridden the roller coaster of fame going from an OP pick on any team to completely unplayed. He's been gotten some love lately and has found a place in the jungle and top lane in certain matches. He's a strong ganker with a huge global presence and a lot to offer a team. I enjoy playing Shen because you have a real ability to change a game anywhere anytime.
Sustain: 8
Ganking: 7
Deflection: 9
Counter: 8
Late Game: 9
Shen does not snowball
Shen is okay at farming
MMMHe still doesn't have any AoE abilities, however his passive now ramps his jungle speed up a tad. He's able to continually cast his spells now and the more you attack, the more often you'll hit for a large amount of damage. This really allows him to early jungle faster than before, but still not fast.
MMM He has hefty piece of life and Vorpal Blade regains him life on attack, so he has good life sustainability. His energy issues were taken care of by his new passive and you're actually able to use your shield when jungling now. You have to be careful with him after level 6 in case you're needed to Stand United into something, but a minor obstacle.
MMMShen's ganks are strong. He brings usually 2 Vorpal Blade hits, a Ki Strike, a taunt with Shadow Dash and the ability to take a lot of damage. He is mobile because his gap closer is also a taunt, so having him show up in your lane typically isn't great. He can get summoner's out with ease and kills if they're not careful.
MMMShen is high life in his jungle as well as having a fair amount of utility. This allows him to repel people well enough or at least hold them until a laner comes to help. He doesn't need the farm as much as others do because he's pretty good without many items, but to properly tank he'll want them.
MMMHe can't really clear the jungle fast enough to be a threat like Shyvana or Mundo, however he has a taunt that can also be an escape mechanism as well. He has a great ability to enter your domain and deal a lot of damage to you, then taunt after you start to leave to pick up the kill.
MMMHere is where Shen shines. His ability to jungle while simultaneously being in a fight is unmatched except by maybe Gangplank. He also brings one of the only AoE taunts through Shadow Dash and can really disrupt a fight. Ki Strike also offers a high one-time damage to a single target while he goes about soaking up damage and saving allies. Stand United is one of the best ultimates in the game, so being able to use that in a fight for your favor or to anti-gank someone is spectacular.
- You're able to spam Vorpal Blade through a camp without blue buff and with blue buff you can do both Vorpal Blade and Feint.
- After you hit level 6, watch your energy and life, especially when lanes are being harassed or ganked. You want to be able to Stand United as well as Shadow Dash into a fight at any time.
- My favorite thing to do with Shen is "anti-ganking." When you see another lane being ganked, use Stand United right away to get to the fight and turn the tables on the fight.
- Hit as many people as possible with your Shadow Dash. If this means you have to delay it slightly, do so, but you want to disrupt their team, not blow it early for no reason. Save this ability to help your carry stick to the fight or to disrupt channeling ults.
- Watch your energy in a fight. Constantly spamming Vorpal Blade or Feint may not leave you enough energy to use Shadow Dash when it is off cooldown. Be smart about what you're doing and you'll go far.
- Shen isn't a mega tank, like others, but he does have a lot of escapability. Be wary that he can dash through walls either at or away from you.
- Stand United is good. Don't underestimate or forget about it. A common mistake in lower levels is to forget key information such as your opponent having Exhaust or their team has a Shen.
- Shen's DPS to a fight still isn't massive. While he can still do damage, his primary utility is taunting and his damage is secondary. Try to drop important targets first.
- You can CC Shen out of Stand United but the shield still stays on the ally, so it might be best to save your disruption.
MMMShyvana has just seen a massive surge in popularity thanks to M5's Diamondez. She has some very good base stats and becomes a force to be reckoned with on very little items. She can use her natural tankiness and damage output to bully people around, especially other junglers. Her ganks are pretty bad with no reliable gap closer or CC effect, but if someone is pinned down she can stick to them well.
Sustain: 9
Ganking: 1
Deflection: 9
Counter: 10
Late Game: 8
Shyvana does snowball
Shyvana is great at farming
MMMHoly goodness. This lady clears ridiculously fast. Combine Udyr's Phoenix with Trundle's Rabid bite and slap Skarner's passive on top of that and you have the fastest clearer (on par with Phoenix Udyr) the league has seen. She clears the jungle so fast that counter jungling her isn't an option, everything is already dead always.
MMMShe doesn't have a shield or inherent sustainability, which is why she's just "ok" in most lanes. She doesn't need blue buff, though, has no mana and clears so quickly that you won't be around to take a ton of damage. Once she has Wriggle's, she's really sustained.
MMMI went there. Take Master Yi and remove a gap closer and viola, you have Shyvana! Or how about you take Warwick and remove his move speed steroid and you have Shyvana! Her ganks are so naturally bad that she needs to run Exhaust to make up for the lack of both a reliable gap closer and CC. Just as with Master Yi, if she has red buff, phage or CC from the lane, her ganks are pretty strong. This doesn't really matter to me, though, because when you have to slap conditions on things in order for them to perform to a level that someone else does without them, there is a problem. Anyone who has played her has the same experience of people just flashing or walking away and you're done. You have to blow both summoner's AND have red buff to maybe kill someone who isn't super super extended. Damage output means nothing without ability to deal it.
MMMShe does so much damage when you actually fight her at all stages and she is extremely fast. These two in combination mean that not only will they have nothing to kill in your jungle, but will get decimated by you if you happen to be there. She is an excellent duelist with high base stats which allow for her to come back from being behind as well.
MMMCompletely ridiculous. She doesn't lose early fights and can drive anyone out of the jungle really. Everything said about her above holds here, she can get in and clear your camps before you realize it and kill you if you're not prepared for her. She doesn't get a 10 because she has absolutely no escape without her ultimate and using it as a flash just to steal some wraiths is not so great.
MMMShe is a really strong character against the right compositions and has great stats. She is similar to Lee Sin in that she builds a Wriggle's and tank/Atmog's and can solo a team somehow. Unbelievably tanky and damage dealing through all phases of the game, she has a great post-jungle.
- As Phreak said, her Q is an auto-attack reset. It also procs all on-hit effects (hello Wriggle's Lantern). Use this to your advantage in the jungle.
- Your ultimate is like energize in that the more you attack, the faster it comes back. This helps a lot when you're going to perform a gank and can then clear the jungle for a fast cooldown. Where this starts to hurt is in the later game where there is not much to attack, so use it wisely late game and liberally early game.
- When going to gank, use Burnout after you're very close to the enemy. It is your only movespeed buff and lasts longer when you are hitting someone. This also gives them an opportunity to blow Flash early, letting you dash after them, Exhaust and activate for the full damage and speed available.
- Use your ultimate to surprise people! If you're counter jungling and have seen the enemy jungler through Clairvoyance or a sight ward, fly over the wall at them. This will not only make them **** themselves in panic, but gives you damage right off the bat.
- Red buff is infinitely more important than Blue buff on her. Give blue away as often as possible, but never give away your red and never let it get taken from you. Shyvana without red buff is a joke most times, but with it is completely scary.
- Run! Shyvana is really nasty when she can hit you and runs into trouble with that part. A well timed or placed Flash or Ghost will get you out of trouble fast.
- Keep in mind her damage output and tankiness. When she is in dragon form she will most likely kill you way before you kill her.
- She is really hard to counter jungle, however her ganks aren't amazing. Take advantage of this by ganking lanes and securing victory there.
- When positioning for a teamfight, remember that she does really well when a group stands and fights. Try to put together a team comp or strategy where you will bait out her ultimate and then have the resulting fight elsewhere.
- She has no sustain and no ranged poke. When laning against her or gearing up for a teamfight, remember that she can't do anything but literally fly into your team.
MMMSkarner is one of the strongest junglers out there right now. He has it all, tankiness, utility, damage and badassery. He is my current favorite and strongest jungler and he fits on nearly any team. He loses effectiveness against really tanky DPS ( Riven, Gangplank), but is extremely strong against anything else. His ability to initiate as well as take damage while dealing a ton is unmatched in the League.
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 7
Deflection: 7
Counter: 8
Late Game: 10
Skarner does snowball
Skarner is great at farming
MMMSkarner is able to Crystal Slash pretty often, and always with blue buff, providing a solid source of AoE damage. Combine this with a shield, AoE skillshot and energize and you get a quick jungler. If he has blue buff he clears camps hilariously fast, and is still fast without it. The attack speed buff and two sources of AoE damage rips through the jungle.
MMMVery low mana usage with Crystalline Exoskeleton and the movespeed/attack speed buffs from that make ganking high life/high mana for you. His Crystal Slash mana was upped again, which lowers his sustainability a little bit. The "if a unit is killed by your Fracture you gain life" part of the patch helped a lot. He's a low-mana jungler with a shield and health returned on hit. He wants his first blue buff for speed purposes.
MMMHis ganks before ultimate are good because he is able to kill 1-2 people on his own. He has a slow, two damage spells and a shield that grants movespeed. He will get in there and at least scare people off easily, which is the goal anyway. After he gets Impale his ganks get amazing. While it may not have the range of Warwick, being able to stab, drag and then Q them for a slow proc right away is a guaranteed kill on anyone but slippery, tanky DPS ( Singed, Riven, Gangplank).
MMMEntering Skarner's domain is a flat out mistake. He will slow you instantly and is a huge body early game. He is extremely durable and will force a summoner's if you get near him. Combine this with the fact that he's really sustained in his route and you get a hard to counter jungler. He wants the farm that the camps offer, but he is very resilient to invasion from anyone.
MMMTake anything I said about deflection and apply it here. He can clear a camp relatively quickly and if caught will kill any jungler early on. While he's looking better after the patch buffs, he still isn't the most powerful in the aspects of the game where counter jungling is most effective. He wants to farm to level 6 more than he wants to pick fights most times.
MMMHis late game is absolutely monstrous. If you go Trinity Force > Tankiness, he has some of the highest DPS I've seen and is unescapable. His base stats are also ridiculous, so really if you get to the late game without much issue, he is a game winner. The buffs smoothed his early and mid game out a lot and made him overall a very strong pick. He can carry a bad game and his only weakness is tanky DPS.
- Crystalline Exoskeleton has a weird reset on your attack. Use it right after you attack and he'll twitch and then start up with it. However, if you use it during/right before an attack, your first one or two hits will be at the OLD attack speed, not your buffed one. Try to time it so you're both just finishing an attack animation and have just been hit (to maximize the shield power).
- Play Skarner like a weaker Irelia. You will have about the same damage output curve (minus gap closer, plus perma slow) as her. What this means is early game, relax, don't take risks. Once you get your sheen and other items built up, you become much stronger and can afford to be ballsy. Once you have Trinity force, you are an unstoppable killing machine.
- Using your E can give you some good early sustain, but overall it won't heal for enough to matter in the later stages. It will help pre-6 but after your shield gets levels you won't be taking any damage anyway.
- Your ultimate duration is garbage, only about enough time to do 1 auto-attack and a Q. Because of this, get in there and stab their carry and continue to crush them. You won't be able to drag them to your team in a fight, so just use the suppress time as opportunity to land an auto-attack with Crystal Slash active and make sure they can never escape.
- Remember that your shield gives you movespeed. You can pop it right as you're going to gank and be much faster at closing that gap.
- His early game is really bad. He has a slow start and isn't powerful until he hits late game. Take advantage.
- Much like Irelia, once he has his items and it's late game, he is a force to be reckoned with. Don't try to solo him and think he is still early game Skarner, you'll die for it.
- If you see him coming and are contemplating flashing, do it immediately. His Impale and Crystal Slash range are low so if you flash immediately you won't be subject to being pulled in and slowed.
- If you happen to get caught alone with late game Skarner and don't have summoners, you're probably best off trying to fight him or at least pop his shield. He does a lot of damage and has a permanent slow if he's hitting you. If you break his shield he won't have the movespeed and you might get out alive.
MMMTrundle is and always has been an undervalued champion. He brings a ton of utility, damage, tankiness and map presence to a team. You will rarely see a Trundle player in the league, but those who do play him are typically good with him. He never really saw the light of day, save a brief time around the roaming era, but remains very strong to this day. Also Pillar of Filth. 'Nuff said.
Sustain: 8
Ganking: 8
Deflection: 10
Counter: 7
Late Game: 6
Trundle does snowball
Trundle is ok at farming
MMMTrundle was slightly hurt by the new jungle. Any non-AoE style jungler lost some speed because they have to grind through more camps, but Trundle is still quick. After Wriggle's Lantern he gets two chances to proc with Rabid Bite and he jungles with silly speed. The only reason he isn't higher is because he has no AoE, but do not take that for being slow.
MMMHe is early game reliant on blue because of his Contaminate skill, but that falls off after the first blue. His passive Decompose gives him some life back after kills and Rabid Bite doesn't cost a lot of mana. Also, once he has Wriggle's the jungle minions just melt for free.
MMMHe has one of the strongest ganks in the game with his Pillar of Filth…assuming you can use it properly. If done right, he will get a kill because his early damage is high with the double attack on his Rabid Bite. If done wrong you will anti-secure a kill, making sure that you can't get to them and they get away like a giant ball of suck. Even without using the pillar, Contaminate offers a large movement speed boost and cc reduction, allowing Trundle to be very mobile and a menace to lanes.
MMMTrundle pretty much defines deflecting counter jungling. If you enter his lair, he will speed up, debuff you, buff himself and trap you there, all while mashing you with a giant, ugly club. Don't tread lightly in his domain as he will rip your face off. He also isn't fazed by being behind because his Pillar of Filth and Agony are super utility no matter what his items are.
MMMHe is able to get in and out quickly, however Contaminate gives everyone around you a big sign saying "Yo bra, I'm here." So as far as discreet goes, he is far from it. Since part his speed relies on that, he isn't too well suited if they are paying attention, even if he can out-duel most in the early levels.
MMMHe is a solid choice on a team and can save a team, save a player, complicate fights, weaken a tank and has some great skills. When looking at his skills with no items in consideration he can: Increase his attack damage while decreasing your carry's, reduce CC on himself while increasing his attack and move speed, separate entire parts of your team from the others and slow them, and finally he can make your tank less tanky in exchange for making himself more tanky. Because of these quite good skills, Trundle is a very solid character and can also carry a game if he's fed.
- Trundle's Rabid Bite can reset your auto attack timer, so double tap that sucka. It also applies Wriggle's Lantern proc, making it effectively twice as good.
- Wait to use Contaminate until the fight actually starts. This will allow you to get in on the right targets at the right time instead of spreading filth for no reason.
- When using Contaminate in the jungle, put the circle so that no parts of it reach into the lanes. When you are at wraiths, they will be able to see your ground if you placed it at the center of the camp in midlane. This reveals your position and isn't recommended.
- When using the Pillar of Filth, try to trap people against or near a corner, wall or creeps. This will mess with their pathing and provide you a few more auto attacks.
- Trundle is sort of reliant on his Contaminate. He doesn't need it, but being on it makes him very strong. Stay away from him on the ground if you value your life.
- Trundle is a tanky guy, so focusing him isn't the best option. It is better to ignore him at first or CC him away. He will do some good damage with Trinity Force, but it won't rival a strong caster or carry.
- Try not to fight in contained areas such as the jungle. It allows him to Pillar of Filth paths off entirely which sets your team up for death. Engage him and the team on open ground in order to avoid this.
- Use his Pillar of Filth against him. If he does it to you, wait for it to come up and then flash or escape to the other side. This will force him to go around his own object and likely not catch you.
MMMTryndamere was seeing a lot more play, but most of it was on top lane. He is a surprisingly sustained character and a good addition to a team. He can carry games so hard it makes my head spin and will dominate the folks that don't know he lives forever. Simply being hard to deal with and doing a lot of damage makes him an ok pick for any player.
Sustain: 6
Ganking: 3
Deflection: 5
Counter: 3
Late Game: 7
Tryndamere does snowball
Tryndamere is great at farming
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MMMAfter a bunch of items he will be a lot stronger in the jungle, however his early clear isn't great. He relies on being lower health to boost his AD and using up your fury lowers your damage. After a few levels this doesn't matter, but still not great out of the gate.
MMMStart with a Vampiric Scepter and life's good. You won't need to buy more than one or two health potions, have a heal to be used between camps and never need blue buff. All of those combined give him some ridiculous sustain in the jungle and full life ganks at all times after the first recall.
MMMHe can have a very early gank if he wants, and has some power in that regard. He also does a lot of damage, so if he does manage to hit you it's typically death. He can also chase with spinning slash and tower dive like no other after level 6. So what's the problem? Mocking shout is. It is a conditional (back turned) CC that doesn't last long enough to score kills early game without extreme overextending or additional CC coming from your lane.
MMMTryndamere can chop up anyone he sees in the jungle, but typically wants the gold from the creeps. Experience isn't as much of an issue, but farm is really important on Tryndamere. The later game being able to ultimate and live through certain death helps, but you also need to be able to kill or hurt something as well.
MMMHe wants the farm, can't typically kill you, isn't at full life most times. He does have a nerf to your damage with mocking shout and a nice escape mechanism, but the slower early clear combined with bad early dueling and he isn't great.
MMMHe I am half tempted to give him two grades here, but honestly he is now consistent enough that he really is just strong late game no matter what. He has inevitability through his ultimate and will eventually do something good and have fun keeping a fed Trynd from butchering your team.
- Use your rage meter between camps, not during fighting. You'll get higher heals and clear faster that way.
- When you use mocking shout, be sure that they have their backs turned.
- Like Xin, save your spinning slash until you have to use it. It has a shorter cooldown, but at the early levels you can just walk in, shout/attack and spinning slash when the ghost/flash away. This will help you secure kills more than just "sure wish I had spinning slash" will.
- Don't forget you can use your ultimate any time no matter what. Stuns, silence, suppress, you name it. You can't be killed!
- Practice what walls and terrain you can and can't spinning slash through to make your escapes that much better .
- Exhaust. He won't catch you or do damage to you while you run away in panic.
- Don't be afraid to focus him to get him out of the fight quickly. Don't spend all of your resource and chase him, just drop him low enough to use his ultimate and then change targets. He is a squishy, so bursting him is an easy task. Even with his ultimate he must leave when he is low health or death is guaranteed.
- He relies on getting early kills and farm to have a solid midgame. If you can ward well and not give him that, his late-game will not be as menacing.
MMMUdyr is a really strong pick for both top lane and the jungle. He lives incredibly long with his Turtle Stance and does a lot of damage with Phoenix Stance. Jungle minions tell stories around campfires about that time when a mean man ran through and killed them all instantly. He can be challenging to play when you're starting off and learning how to properly jump on people takes practice.
Sustain: 10
Ganking: 2
Deflection: 9
Counter: 9
Late Game: 8
Udyr does snowball
Udyr is great at farming
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MMMPhoenix Udyr has the absolute fastest jungle clear in the game, except for maybe Shyvana. Massive AoE with AoE on third attack and sustainability to boot. Later game it gets so fast that sometimes you forgot you attacked the camp at all, they just burst into pools of death upon seeing you.
MMMUdyr doesn't afraid of anyone and can Turtle Stance his life and mana back if he wanted to. He can also clear so fast that his only issue was mana and has been alleviated in the last patch. He is able to jungle for pretty much forever.
MMMPhoenix Udyr can still run in and deliver a stun, however that's just about all that's going to happen and as I said earlier, someone can just leave if they see you. It's important that you find the right time to get in, as there are ways to deny him opportunity to kill you without the use of summoners.
MMMWhile he may not have the ridiculous toolset that Trundle does, he will always be at high resources and is a complete monster in 1v1 combat. The Phoenix does great DPS if they choose to fight and will hit them as they are running and you are chasing them. Turtle form gives you a shield for their damage and the bear gives a stun every 6 seconds. Overall he can get you out of his jungle quickly and safely.
MMMYou clear camps so fast that the only reason I gave Udyr a 9 in this category is that his form changes let off sounds that can be heard from a little ways away. This will give up that you're in the jungle and allow them more time to close in on your escape path.
MMMPhoenix Udyr is mostly tanky DPS and runs around stunning and providing AoE damage to the enemy team. In that respect he is outclassed by many other heroes, especially given that someone can simply leave if he chooses to focus them. You can get some good damage on the team using phoenix and take a good beating with Turtle form, but you can't dash in and destroy people like the other tanky DPS characters can.
- Get used to the form changing in a custom game or you will super fail in a real game. Believe me, I've been there.
- Learning when you should be form dancing (changing) is important because it will help you get across the map faster as well as make you sound like some sort of nightmare animal train.
- Remember that your Phoenix is an Aura so you are able to switch forms right afterward in order to get benefit from another form. Remember to keep going back to Phoenix to keep the DPS up, however.
- In this form your best method of team fighting is going between phoenix, turtle and bear to stun people running through to your carries. The bear can stun multiple people in the form and the turtle will keep you alive longer in the fight. Phoenix should always be active and radiating death.
- As I've said a few times, Udyr can be kited hard. Just stay away from brush when you're over-extending and ward river to see if he's flanking you. You'll get out before he can hit you and if you're Ashe just fire and take a step back, repeat.
- If you choose to fight Udyr alone, don't. He can soak up tons of damage with a shield every few seconds as well as dish out some serious pain if you stick around to take it. Don't forget that he can dodge your attacks with his passive.
- Running from Udyr for a long distance is also tough to do. Try not to put yourself in situations where he can chase you up a lane or river as he will outrun you eventually.
MMMA few facts to sum up my thoughts on Volibear: I love bears, I love jungling, I don't play Volibear. He is not a bad jungler, per se, but a lackluster champion to me. I would love to say he's the best character and only play him, but he just isn't. In proper situations, he is an extremely strong character, however with any sort of kiting or evasion, his effectiveness is zero. Put against the right cast, he is unstoppable, but that doesn't happen often.
Sustain: 5
Ganking: 5
Deflection: 3
Counter: 1
Late Game: 3
Volibear does snowball
Volibear is ok at farming
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MMMHe has an AoE fear effect on minions in Majestic Roar, which helps clean up the camps faster. His Frenzy is on a high cooldown, but it increases your attack speed a lot, so you do clear camps at a moderate pace. In the end, you're still relying on auto attacks and mostly single target damage, so he isn't that fast.
MMMOnce his life gets low, his passive will kick in, which keeps you at a good amount of life most of the time. He also doesn't need that much mana because of the passive attack speed boost he gets, so you'll likely be using just a single Majestic Roar per camp and clearing the other ones the old fashioned way: mauling.
MMM He brings a lot of CC and damage to a gank. It's like a lesser Singed, but that is a powerful effect in a lane. His ultimate doesn't really help, but that just means he can gank early with force as well. He isn't up with the Gods of ganking, but he is still an okay ganker for most of the game (if he touches you).
MMMHe's able to repel invaders if they're low life. Most characters don't have enough burst in a 1v1 situation to get through his passive, so he is strong in a duel. He also has a low mana cost, high damage bite and an attack speed boost with a slow.
MMMHe's a big, slow bear. It's likely he can get in and out quickly and disrupt the enemy jungler fairly well, but when you want to get in and out with only auto attacks, it's not efficient. I think with proper warding this number could increase because he does offer a lot of damage to another player, however that would be an investment as well as coordination to headhunt the enemy.
- Your Frenzy does damage based on how low their life is (how much they're missing) and has a high cooldown. Because of this, you want to use it later in a teamfight and you will chunk the enemy down by a huge percentage.
- You have to be attacking in order for your ultimate to be useful, which means you want to build tanky. This allows you to stick in a fight instead of dealing damage and dying quickly.
- Your Rolling Thunder only works when running towards an enemy, so keep that in mind. Using it when you're escaping won't do much for you.
- Don't go around acting like you're a real bear who will literally maul the other team to death. Riot really missed the mark on this one, as you should do 75% of their health in a single auto attack and also have a movespeed of about 30 mph. This couldn't be farther from the truth, so don't be mislead.
- Burst him through his passive. If he begins to regain life, you will have a tougher time taking him down, however you want to focus him when he is low. This is odd advice to give vs. a tank, but if he is low drop him before you regret it.
- His ultimate is only useful when there are other people around him, otherwise it is just a damage boost. Keep this in mind when engaging in team fights around him, as you don't want him zapping your entire team.
- Early game Volibear is not tanky compared to late game. He doesn't have the same damage absorption as Skarner in the early levels, so getting into a fight with him with a friend will likely take him down rapidly.
- Volibear suffers from Udyr Syndrome (patent pending). This means his primary means of assault is "charge directly at you…just a little faster than usual!" A well placed Flash will get you out of his grasp and safely away.
MMMWarwick is one of the tankiest characters in the game when built properly. Going a CDR path with tanky items gives him invincibility and he still has a lot of damage through his Hungering Strike. He is slow in the jungle and can be a bit dry, but a strong pick in most circumstance.
Sustain: 8
Ganking: 7
Deflection: 3
Counter: 2
Late Game: 9
Warwick does not snowball
Warwick is bad at farming
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MMMWarwick's first clear is kinda quick and once he gets his Razor's he will be a bit faster at clearing the jungle. He still isn't that quick and relies on either a lot of mana or just straight up auto-attacking. After the patch change came, giving him attack damage on each attack, his speed has gone up. This also gave him more aspd and a shorter cooldown Hunter's Call, so his clear is better.
MMMIf I had to rate Warwick's life sustainability in the jungle, it would be 15/10 like Fiddlesticks, however his mana is the issue. He relies on blue buff unless he changes his skill order around, and without blue buff his jungle slows down a lot.
MMMA dual grade! Before level 6 Warwick's ganks are awful. He can provide a little extra damage but they won't be far enough up that your Blood Scent will matter, you won't have enough mana to keep swiping them and your w has a really long cooldown. This leaves you with just an auto attack gank which is less than great. After you turn level 6 the whole game changes. You now become an instant threat and hearing the howl means you're probably dead already. Jumping onto someone in the lane every 60 seconds is pretty awesome and a 1.7 second suppress is enough to take down nearly anyone, especially with a follow up Hungering Strike.
MMMWarwick is good 1v1 and can stop people from messing with him pretty good. He probably won't be able to kill you unless you're deep in his jungle and he has Blood Scent going on you. At the same time, you probably won't be able to kill him, so there's that.
MMMWarwick is too slow and mana hungry to invade the jungle early in the game and later on he'd be better off just ganking a lane or securing dragon in most cases. It's not that he's bad at it, per se, just that he's so good at other things that it's a waste of his talent.
MMMWarwick gets really beefy when you build him tanky DPS and just takes down teams. He can kill any target he wants and then swipe another to keep his life up. After he has Madred's and a fair share of tanky stuff, he's nearly unkillable and dishes out some serious DPS. He can also solo Baron as well as perform an early Baron when you get Madred's up. It doesn't matter if he's ahead or behind, it takes remarkably little items to make him good and he will always be a menace on the team.
- Hungering Strike can reset your auto attack, though the timing is a bit weird.
- Hungering strike does a % damage, so when you use it on a tank you will heal more than on a squishy. Keep that in mind when you're running low on life.
- Your ultimate applies on hit effects, which is why Madred's is awesome on him.
- If you want to sneak up on someone that is low life, you can turn your Blood Scent off and the just walk in, ultimate them and turn it back on to chase if necessary. I've done this many times as a good player will roll out as soon as they hear the howl.
- Warwick becomes a lot less tanky when he is ignited. Overall, unless he is ignited or the last person standing, do no focus him. He'll do an ok amount of damage and cause some mayhem, but he is not a carry nor does he do carry damage.
- If you hear the howl and he is level 6, you have to get out of there quickly. Also be aware that if you're low he can and will dive you because his ultimate will slice you up.
- Quicksilver sash and/or stunning him mid-flight of his ultimate will get him out of it. Keep this in mind if you have a stun or are constantly dying to him.
- A majority of Warwick's damage is magical, so building MR is effective as it shuts down his Hungering Strike and Madred's bonus damage.
- Construct a team that can do something without the main damage dealer. Warwick against a team that is focusing around a main source of damage will have that source focused, jumped on and killed immediately. You have to make sure that your team can mop up without your main carry.
Xin Zhao
MMMXin Zhao is a feared warrior in the lower ELO and is a strong jungler in the proper hands. Much like Master Yi, he brings strong AD damage to a fight and can absolutely stomp lesser players. He is really easy to jungle and does a lot of damage, so the kills come easy. He gets hard to continue to do well with because he typically isn't that tanky early on and relies on melee damage, but a lot of fun!
Sustain: 7
Ganking: 6
Deflection: 6
Counter: 7
Late Game: 3
Xin Zhao does snowball
Xin Zhao is ok at farming
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MMMHe is quick in the jungle, but only has single target damage (AoE on charge doesn't count). So as the game progresses he will clear faster and faster because he does more damage, but there is no magic AoE fast clear that the other junglers might have. The auto attack reset and cooldown reduction on it really helped his speed a bunch, though.
MMMHe is pretty life sustained in the jungle because of the new passive on his Battle Cry. He actually now has some mana issues in the jungle, though, leading to ganks where I'm 20 mana away from a kill. Overall his mana sustain went down and health sustain remained the same.
MMMXin can start ganking right away at level 2. I have had games where I go from blue golem to bot lane and get a double kill right away. He gets in there really good and does apply a slow, but he always seems 5 movement speed too slow and the third hit of the knockup is really predictable. He can bring some hefty burst damage very quickly in the right lane, but finishing the kill is a weakness he has.
MMMHe has really high life and a good amount of mana in the early game. He also is a good duelist that only gets better as time goes on. His base life and attack speed values, however, can leave him getting beat by the stronger counter junglers.
MMMIf he spots you in your jungle and you're less than half health, he can likely kill you on the spot. Problems arise if he doesn't, just like when he ganks, as he has trouble chasing down for the kill. After he jumps on you and the slow wears off, he needs another way to stick to you or he's no longer a threat.
MMMXin is like Master Yi in that if he doesn't get those early kills, he turns into a pile of useless. His rework really helped smooth out his hectic early game, but he is still a damage based melee warrior. He will still dish out some damage, but when a character relies on dashing into someone's face in order to deal it, they better do a ton of damage or have some tankiness to them. Xin will have neither if he gets behind. If he stays on par and sees mild success, he is still not the greatest teamfighter and his assassin-esque role is filled much better by other characters. When he is fed, however, Xin rocks the house until the late late game.
- Three Talon Strike resets your auto attack, so swing then push Q for a quick double attack.
- When using Three Talon Strike, you can hit anything twice and then the third hit will knock someone up. You can hit two neutral minions and charge out of the bush to get the third knockup hit on them.
- When you are ganking someone, save your charge and use better positioning to get the hits in. They will flash away if you get close enough to hit them and THAT is when you should charge in. This will allow you to get them no matter what.
- Your charge ability plus Three Talon does massive damage, so test your limits on who and when you can tower dive as Xin can generally kill someone before the tower even blinks and take only a hit or two.
- Be wary of early ganks. When you see him, wait for his charge and then flash out
- He is relatively squishy unless he builds really tanky (even as tanky DPS with Mallet/Wriggle's), so don't be afraid to lock him down
- He relies heavily on getting early kills and farm. If you can ward well and not give him that, he will taper off hard into the late game
Change Log
- 12/11/2012: Season 3 updates part 1
- 08/10/2012: Updates
- 08/09/2012: Updated Xin, Evelynn and added Darius, Fiora and Diana.
- 07-02-2012:
- Alistar through Nunu completed, more to come
- Removed Difficulty rating - it was too similar to the description.
- Removed "placing them on a team" because it often times doesn't matter if you have to first pick or pick before your team. Team composition is a delicate and intricate discussion best left to hard thought.
- Descriptions changed for characters with rating changes and ratings themselves.
- Complete ratings rebalance. A spreadsheet of the changes can be given upon request.
- 06-12-2012:
- Niche junglers updates
- Category description changed (resist counter jungling)
- Recommendations changed
- Preparing for number rebalancing
- 04-22-2012: Hecarim added!
- 03-25-2012: Many changes/updates, added Evelyn, Alistar and Twitch. Updated videos.
- 03-09-2012: Nautilus, Shyvana and Jax videos added.
- 01-30-2012: Sejuani added!
- 01-22-2012: Added in tiers of snowballing, tweaked some colors and ratings. Brought the other 8 out of the stone age.
- 01-20-2012: Brought everyone out of the stone age and re-normalized ratings.
- 01-17-2012: Malphite video and ratings updated again.
- 01-10-2012: Malphite, Shen, Singed and Trundle added/updated
- 01-06-2012: Riven and Fizz updated.
- 12-29-2011: Cho'Gath added and updated! Major change is in his speed, going to 8 from 2.
- 12-23-2011: Nocturne!
- 12-19-2011: Added sections for Volibear, Nasus and Fizz
- 12-17-2011: Number and format change over to new format for:
- Amumu
- Maokai
- Rammus
- Skarner
- Lee Sin
- 12-4-2011: A few changes setting up for an overhaul due to the new patch.
- 11-25-2011: Skarner redone again. I played him for a week straight and he's better.
- ~11-5-2011: Shyvanna added.
- 10-21-2011: Skarner buffed! Changes as follows: Difficulty to 5 from 4, Speed to 7 from 3, Sustain to 8 from 7, Counterjungling from 3 to 4, Post-Jungle to 7 from 4. Explainations in the post itself.
- 10-13-2011: Riven Added, slight modifications from comments
- 8-30-2011: 100,000 views!
- Finished re-writing Maokai and Skarner's sections.
- Made all of the rankings more uniform and linear on the rewrite. This means that I took some categories that were big jumps and clusters and spread them out. (Example: Post-Jungling ratings were like: 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 which is WAY too many 7's!) As a result, many character's rankings have been altered.
- Lee Sin ganking changed to 7 from 3. I played him more and realized his ganks are game changing.
- Touched up various sections
- Added "Recommendations" section.
- 8-29-2011: Redid the entire guide after an unfortunate deletion of information. I am still working to restore this to what it was, please be patient.
- 8-25-2011: Added in the fringe/niche/lost and found jungler section.
- 8-24-2011: New Pro/Con Formatting (Thanks again JhoiJhoi! I might be in love...). Skarner Added!
- 8-22-2011:
- Maokai added!
- Warwick's pre-6 gank lowered to 1.
- Olaf's gank lowered from 7 to 6 to reflect better my comments on it.
- Master Yi raised to 2 from 1 in ganking. It's not as bad as Warwick pre-6 (at least he has a gap closer), so WW can take the silver 1 bullet.
- 8-18-2011:
- Nunu's difficulty lowered to 7 from 9 (Thanks Zoki). He is a bit easier than I ranked him, his ganks and ultimate placement aren't rocket science and he does do some decent early/mid damage.
- Shaco's jungling speed rose to 5 from 4 (Thanks Zoki). I would rate him a 6 if everyone built Wriggle's like I do, but he still relies on box times and placement through the midgame so he's not lightning.
- Nocturne's ult no longer gives assists (patch 22.214.171.124)(Thanks Mshl629)
- Nocturne's steroid changed (mistype on my part) (Thanks PsiGuard)
- Added Maokai and Skarner to get hype
- 8-16-2011: Additional section added (after this one)
- 8-15-2011: New guide posted, Tryndamere added!
I have recieved a lot of commendation and positive feedback from my two guides, thusfar. I would like to throw out thanks to everyone who commented, asked questions, voted, +rep, recommended and most importantly read them. It means a lot to see your work recieving attention!
Special Thanks: Jhoijhoi! She's rec'd my guides and I used her formatting in order to make mine!
Also special thanks to Robot with a Hat and Johndoh for helping me test the new jungle times.