Jungling

Jungling is the act of killing neutral monsters in the jungle. This page refers specifically to the jungler role for teams competing on Summoner's Rift. The jungle itself refers to any area of the map that is not a lane or part of either team's base. The jungle offers lots of gold and experience that can be accessed by slaying neutral monsters (monsters that side with neither team) that spawn and respawn in predetermined locations on the map. Because of this, many players specialize in remaining in the jungle and killing these neutral monsters - this leaves two solo lanes to each gain high experience and gold rather than only one solo lane. In effect, all of the accessible resources are being utilized by a team with a Jungler. There are many other benefits and strategies which will be explained in this article.

Reasons for Jungling
Lane resources are distributed to fewer players while the jungle resources are being utilized. This results in more gold and experience per player instead of having all five champions lane instead.

Jungling also makes ganks much easier as enemy champions cannot see the jungler through the fog of war. The jungler can ambush them and attempt to kill them by having more players and unexpected positioning. Well-contested lanes may even have counter-ganks on top of normal ganks, where the enemy being ganked is then joined by his/her jungler to catch the original ganking champions off-guard and slay them instead. Ganking is not unique to the jungler, but is a crucial aspect to their team role.

Seasoned junglers will find themselves calling teammates into the jungle to share the buffs and experience it offers. Quite often, a jungler will alert the most mana-hungry teammate to claim the for its increased mana regeneration and large boost to cooldown reduction. The jungler can weaken the to a low health and allow the receiving champion to simply deal the killing blow and pick up the buff.

Certain junglers are capable of slaying larger neutral monsters alone, but this comes with the risk of being interrupted by the enemy. These champions can create an enormous advantage for their team. Champions with this potential usually have either high single-target damage, the ability to sustain themselves, or both. Even champions good at this role should be accompanied by teammates. This reduces the chances of the champion dying to the monster or the rewards being stolen by the enemy team.

The Utility and Prevalence of
is a common summoner spell used by junglers. Using Smite allows players to:


 * Secure or steal objectives and buffs.
 * Gain 10 bonus gold when used, using the mastery.
 * Provide an additional powerful damaging skill.
 * Heal using spell vamp.

Jungle Overview


Each team has its own jungle - an equal area with the same amount of non-boss monsters. The entire path is mirrored across the center of the map, except the two bosses, dragon and baron nashor, which are unique.

and are unique boss monsters along the river. These designated areas are accessible from different directions, making them slightly easier to access for the team on the side they are open to; blue team has superior access to Baron Nashor and purple team has superior Dragon access.

Champions of the Jungle
Players seeking a good champion for the jungler role should search for a few key capabilities of the champion:
 * Defensibility
 * This statistic mainly concerns the base armor and health champion stats.
 * Abilities of the champion that concern the above stats, shielding, incoming damage reduction, or enemy-unit outgoing damage reduction contribute to defensibility.
 * Having higher defensibility means the champion will be able to contest the natural tank-type quality of the jungle monsters.
 * Damage Output
 * This statistic concerns base attack damage, attack speed, critical strike chance, and/or ability power champion stats.
 * Abilities of the champion that concern the above stats or that are able to deal damage directly to non-champion units contribute to damage output.
 * Having higher damage output means the champion will be able to contest the naturally low damage-per-second of neutral monsters.
 * Healing/Sustainability
 * This statistic includes the health regeneration, life steal, and spell vamp champion stats.
 * Abilities of the champion that concern the above stats or come with their own healing or regenerative capabilities contribute to healing.
 * Having higher healing compounds the effect of defensibility. Combining these two categories together, many players summarize this cumulative effect with the word "Sustain". Since a jungler will always be dealing and receiving damage in order to gain gold and experience, it is important to have as much sustain as possible. This is the bottom line for jungling, and the very reason why pretty much every champion can do it to some extent with the help of runes, masteries, and items.
 * Gank Potential
 * This statistic includes the movement speed champion stat.
 * Because movement speed is alone here, the largest contributions to gank potential are the abilities of the champion. Abilities that concern movement speed, have a crowd control effect, or that displace the jungler or the target contribute to gank potential.
 * Having higher gank potential increases your overall usefulness to your team. Kills and assists will give your team an edge against equally-farmed opponents.
 * Jungler Potential
 * With the right circumstances in place, this is merely a summarizing statistic that all champions have which identifies how well they perform at slaying monsters in the jungle and contributing to victory in the jungler role. You will usually only see the champions with the highest jungler potential in everyday matches.

General Runes for Jungling
Runes are an important and intricate part of the jungler. There are a few common rune used to increase jungler's potential:

Seals
 * GSeals_(1).png Greater Seal of Armor (+1.41 Armor)

Marks
 * GMarks_(1).png Greater Mark of Armor Penetration (+1.28 Armor penetration)
 * GMarks_(1).png Greater Mark of Attack Damage (+0.95 Attack damage)
 * GMarks_(2).png Greater Mark of Attack Speed (+1.67% Attack speed)

Glyphs Quintessences
 * GGlyphs_(4).png Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist (+2.7  Magic Resistance at Level 18)
 * GGlyphs_(1).png Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction (+0.65% Cooldown reduction)
 * GGlyphs_(3).png Greater Glyph of Attack Speed (+0.64% Attack speed).
 * Quintessences_(3).png Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed (+1.5% Movement Speed)
 * Quintessences_(1).png Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage (+2.25 Attack damage)
 * Quintessences_(3).png Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed (+3.33% Attack speed)

Common Season Three Masteries for Jungling

 * - Increases the damage you deal to minions and monsters by 2 / 4.
 * - grants 10 bonus gold upon use.
 * - Reduces damage from monsters by 1 / 2.
 * - Returns 6 true damage against monster attacks.
 * - Grants 2 / 3.5 / 5  armor.
 * - Increases all neutral buff duration by 20%.

Items for Jungling
The most common setup when starting a jungle game is a and 5. This setup greatly improves jungle clearing speed and provides 750 bonus health to cover early health losses. Junglers who are unconcerned with issues about clearing, however, can start with a and 5  instead. This setup provides high effective health against physical damage and 750 bonus health, allowing for extended periods of jungle farming for champions who lack the sustain to do this with (eg. ). A few junglers may also opt to start with and 3, which provides movement speed to improve ganks as well as 450 health to get through the first few levels. It can be used both on highly sustained junglers who do not need clearing assistance (eg. ) or champions who focus more on heavily ganking enemy laners (eg. ).

For extremely slow junglers who urgently require a way of improving their clear times, can be upgraded to  for its large magic damage proc. On certain junglers, this can also be built into to further improve clear speeds and provide additional map awareness. Champions who do not need much additional aid for clearing can upgrade into a instead, which provides excellent sustain and also has some varied and useful upgrade paths which can be tailored to fit the jungling champion.

As the jungler is often expected to spend a large amount of time roaming the map between camps and lanes, are a common purchase, made to lessen the considerable travel time, particularly for junglers who can invest in a  to provide their tenacity statistic. If this is not possible, are a good alternative which also provides early magic resistance. are the next most common option, providing high movement speed and a resistance to slowing effects which greatly aids ganking potential.

Level 2 Gank
Route:
 * 1)  camp.
 * 2)  camp
 * 3) Gank mid/bot (blue) or top/mid (purple).

''This extremely aggressive jungle route is the riskiest out of all jungle routes and is most often used in an attempt to obtain the First Blood bonus before opponents have had a chance to acquire all of their spells yet. On some junglers, this also sacrifices some potential at farming for early increased offensive prowess.''

Failure to achieve a successful gank can often leave the jungler dangerously behind on experience and farm and will leave them vulnerable to harassment for several minutes, but acquiring the kill can be greatly rewarding, granting the killer's team 680 gold (400G for the kill + 70% for the assist) and setting the slain opponent back on both experience and gold at a very early stage, which can easily become an insurmountable disadvantage.

Buff-to-Buff Run (to level 3)
Route: This route is a strategic route taken at higher levels of play to both prevent theft of the buff camps by the opposing team and gain a fast level advantage over opposing champions, potentially resulting in an early kill for the team either in a gank or a rapid counterjungling attempt.
 * 1) camp
 * 2) camp (-less)
 * 3) camp
 * 4) Gank mid/bot (blue) or top/mid (purple).

Note well, however, that this route does require allies to heavily assist at the first buff camp so that the jungler will have available for use at the second, as many junglers are unable to efficiently kill the second camp on their own without a large loss of health.

Power Clear (to level 4)
Route: Alternatively:
 * 1)  camp
 * 2)  camp
 * 3)  camp
 * 4)  camp or  camp
 * 5)  camp
 * 6) Gank a nearby lane.
 * 1)  camp
 * 2)  camp
 * 3)  camp
 * 4)  camp
 * 5)  camp
 * 6)  camp
 * 7) Gank a nearby lane.

''This route is a well-rounded route that equally balances ganking potential, farming experience and gold, and is one of the most commonly used overall as it provides enough experience for the jungler to reach level 4 before ganking. At step 4 of the clear, champions who use multi-target skills can opt to return to the  camp instead of going to the  camp to preserve more health.''

A start is often the faster of the two routes, but it is only available to champions who do not have steep mana requirements in order to clear successfully and doing it first will often leave little time to benefit from the buff's slow during ganks after the clear has been completed.

Jungle Farmer (to level 6)
Route:
 * 1)  camp.
 * 2)  camp.
 * 3)  camp.
 * 4)  camp.
 * 5)  camp again.
 * 6)  camp again.
 * 7)  camp.
 * 8)  camp again.
 * 9)  camp again.
 * 10)  camp again.
 * 11) Repeat the last three steps over and over until the other camps respawn.

''This passive route is chosen to maximise gold and experience income from the jungle at the expense of supporting the lanes. Champions with low ganking potential or high level requirements to gank effectively will usually use this route to obtain their farm as quickly as possible.''

Counter-jungling/Invading
Counter-jungling is the act of slaying monsters in the enemy jungle thereby stealing gold, experience, or neutral monster buffs from the enemy jungler.

In some instances, counter-jungling will become a fight between the enemy jungler. If the enemy jungler dies or is brought to low health, he/she may no longer be able to jungle and must. Counter-jungling poses some level of risk as an invading champion may be spotted and caught alone by the enemy team. Therefore, counter-jungling should be done when you are somehow aware of where the enemy jungler is located, whether the enemy jungler is babysitting/camping a lane, covering a lane for an enemy teammate that has recalled, died, or the enemy jungle is warded.

If all of the monsters in a camp die, the timer for the camp to respawn begins, but if any of the neutral monsters are left alive the respawn timer will not begin. Use this to rob the enemy jungler of precious gold and experience.