Jungling

Jungling is the act of killing neutral minions or jungle monsters. It is mainly used for getting Buffs, Gold, and Experience. As of patch V1.0.0.107, a jungler is capable of leveling up faster than a solo lane, making the jungle an extremely important area of the map.

Strategies
Diverse strategies are used when jungling. The most common one requires the champion to "jungle" in the early laning phase of the game, then to return in the midgame to dominate the enemy team, usually via ganking unsuspecting enemy heroes. The most common jungling mastery setup is 1-16-13, to get the mastery, damage mitigation, and longer buff duration and increased experience.

A second strategy is to quickly leave a lane, either alone or in a team, to slay monsters for their Buff to gain a temporary advantage. The bottom lane in Summoner's Rift will often quickly leave their lane to go get the Dragon, resulting in worldwide gold for their team.

If done efficiently, early jungling can be a boon to your party as it lets another teammate monopolize a lane that they would otherwise have to share, resulting in more gold and experience for that individual. This means that 3 individuals on a team will have more gold and experience (the jungler, the mid lane, and the person in a 2v1 lane), while the opposing team will only have 1 person with more experience and gold. If done poorly, jungling can result in falling behind, dying repeatedly to the enemy team, or losing control of an abandoned lane.

One common tool for jungling is, which enables the early kill of neutral Monsters, and is also used to steal buffs for the jungler's team, or to prevent the enemy team from stealing them. While it helps a lot in jungling, it also is a huge giveaway that you are going to try ganking them, so they may put up wards to predict your appearance.

A Jungling champion has the advantage of performing ganks to give his team an advantage and stunt the progress of enemy champions. With this in mind there are champions that excel at this far beyond the average jungler. Stealth junglers, junglers who can taunt, or junglers who can stun are all cabable of preventing enemy champions from running away or from seeing them coming.

Another factor that determines a champions ability to gank and jungle efficiently is the level at which the jungler can effectivly gank a lane. Effective junglers like can gank as early as level four with a powerball, flash, taunt combo. If rushes lizard, he can gank at level two, unlike junglers like  or  who rely solely on being level six or having Lizard buff to be an effective ganking threat.

This idea is not set in stone of course. Any jungler can expose a lane's weakness and gank at any level. Junglers need to have extremely good map awareness, and they need to a strong team to support them. It is the laning champions responsibility to inform their jungler whether x bush is warded or x champion has used x summoner spell before a gank. It is also important to attempt ganks so long as you are not over extending your attempt. It is really important to keep enemy champion's summoner spells on a cool down. A failed gank is not a complete fail if you force the enemy champion to use summoner spells, especially flash, ghost and cleanse. Leaving these spells on cool down will inhibit them from being aggressive.

It is also wise to ensure that the summoners who are controlling champions in the top, middle or bottom lane are not pushing their lanes out too far towards the enemy turret. Having your lane pushed out too far will inhibit your jungler from making an effective gank as well as giving the opposing jungler a better opportunity to gank.

Prioritizing ganks is extremly important as well. Watch the CS count in the game panel to see which champion is starting to get too farmed. You must force enemy champions to be uncomfortable in their lanes. You do not want an AP carry or an AD carry to sit top lane or middle lane and free farm for the first ten minutes and accumulate a lot of gold.

Champions
Some Champions are better suited to jungle than others; examples for these are:
 * - He has to reduce damage taken per hit. Paired with Defensive masteries this gives him great durability. He also has  to deal damage to nearby enemies based on a percentage of their max health. This makes it easier for him to kill mobs like the Ancient Golem and Lizard Elder.
 * - returns health and  helps reduces damage.
 * - His passive heals him while his  mitigates damage. Also his  lowers attack speed to further lower damage taken.
 * - Her heals her passively and does bonus true damage actively. She is also an excellent ganker if weakened from the jungle giving her a free stun with.
 * - His passive gives him a lot of durability and he can do sufficient AoE damage with  and.
 * - He is able to deal a massive amount of damage thanks to the combination of and, has a chance to instantly kill a monster camp and stick to an opponent when ganking with , and is able to heal himself with.
 * - does massive damage to minions and keeps him healed.
 * - He does plenty of damage, does more damage at low health thanks to, and keeps himself healed with.
 * - His keeps him alive and helps kill minions.  gives him great mobility in the jungle.
 * - His help him kill monsters while taking little damage, and  is great for ganking or escaping.
 * - His heals him while he attacks monsters.
 * - His shields him and does AoE damage. He can stun monsters with  and later has massive life steal with his ultimate.
 * - kills monsters quickly while  reduces damage and restores health.
 * - Passive life steal with and more life steal with  makes him a great jungler.
 * - Extra damage and knockup from lets him kill monsters while he gets some small healing from his passive .  lets him attack faster for more healing from passive and also helps lower his cooldowns.

Other Champions, mainly casters, are unable to hold a steady jungling without going back frequently. is a example of this type of champion.

Monster Spawn times
Summoner's Rift (5v5)
 * 2 Golem or 3 Wolf camp - First Spawn 1:40, Respawn 1:40
 * Wraiths - First Spawn 1:40, Respawn 1:40
 * Lizard - First Spawn 1:55, Respawn 5:00
 * Ancient Golem - First Spawn 1:55, Respawn 5:00
 * Dragon - First Spawn 2:30, Respawn 6:00
 * Baron - First Spawn 15:00, Respawn 7:00

Twisted Treeline (3v3)
 * Middle camp (Golem/Lizard or Wraiths packs) - First Spawn 1:40, Respawn 1:15
 * Top camp (3 Wolves or 2 Golems) - First Spawn 1:40, Respawn 1:15
 * Top buff camp (Wraith / Wolf buff) - First Spawn 1:55, Respawn 3:00
 * Lizard Buff - First Spawn 2:10, Respawn 4:00
 * Dragon Buff - First Spawn 4:40, Respawn 5:00