Jungling

Jungling is the act of killing neutral monsters in the jungle. It is a player who likes to remain out of sight, grab all the good stuff, and choose their attacks carefully. 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. Due to the wealth of gold and experience that can be accessed by slaying neutral (unaligned; loyal to neither team) monsters that remain (camp) in predetermined locations on the map, many players specialize in remaining in the jungle and doing so - leaving two solo lanes to each gain high experience and gold. 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 will net an increase gold and experience per player in contrast to having all five champions lane instead.

There is also an increased gank capability as enemy champions cannot see the jungler through the fog of war. The jungler can ambush them and attempt to slay them by outnumbering them. 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 a crucial aspect to their team role.

Seasoned junglers will find themselves beckoning teammates into the jungle to share the spoils of war. Quite often, a jungler will alert the most mana-hungry teammate to claim the for its potent mana regeneration and large boost to cooldown reduction. The jungler can weaken the to a near-death amount of health and allow this beneficiary to simply deal the killing blow and pick up the buff.

Certain junglers in particular are capable of tackling large, powerful neutral boss monsters alone, with the risk of being interrupted by the enemy. These boss soloers can net an enormous advantage for their teams. Candidates for a boss solo jungler are prepared with either high single-target damage, the ability to sustain themselves against a single target, or both. Even good champions for this specialzed jungle role should be acommpanied by teammates so as to greatly reduce the risk of being assassinated in the boss nest, or having the boss kill stolen from them by the enemy team.

The Utility and Prevalence of
is a common summoner's spell used by junglers. The reason are listed below:


 * Bonus Gold
 * Increase in Jungle Speed
 * Objective Security
 * Stealing Objective
 * Extra sustain through 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 two bosses, which are unique.

and are unique boss monsters along the river. The designated areas for and  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 setups that attempt to increase jungler potential:

Seals
 * 9x (+13 Armor)

Marks
 * 9x (+15 Armor penetration)
 * 9x (+8.5 Attack damage)
 * 9x (+15% Attack speed)

Glyphs Quints
 * 9x (+5.85% Cooldown reduction)
 * 9x (+24 Magic Resistance at Level 18)
 * 9x (+12 Magic Resistance)
 * 9x (+6.3 Armor)
 * 9x (+5.76% Attack speed).

Common Masteries for Jungling

 * - Increases the damage you deal to minions and monsters by 2. (4 at rank 2)
 * - grants 10 bonus gold upon use.
 * - Reduces damage from minions and monsters by 1. (2 at rank 2)
 * - Return 6 true damage against minion and monster attacks.
 * - Increases all neutral buff duration by 20%.

Items for Jungling
Most Common starting item setups for Jungling are:


 * 5x
 * 5x

This provides high effective health against physical damage and 750 bonus health. can be built in and then into  to improve jungle speed and map awareness.


 * 3x
 * 3x

This setup is for more sustained junglers. It provides movement speed to clear and gank faster as well as 450 health to get through the first few levels.



Picking up a from the start cheapen the cost of a  as no gold is spent on (s).

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

Purpose: This strategy is usually used to acquire an early kill and usually First Blood - gaining 680 Gold (400G for the kill + 70% for the Assist) for your team and setting the slain opponent back on both experience and gold.

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

Purpose: The point of this route is to run around and collect gold and experience from the jungle with little dependent on how the enemy team reacts. This is usually done with champions with low ganking potential or champions that need their ultimate or more levels to effectively gank a lane.

Power Clear (to level 3 or 4)
Route:
 * 1) camp
 * 2) camp
 * 3) camp.
 * 4) camp, medium Golem first. (This step can be skipped for earlier ganking)
 * 5) camp
 * 6) Gank a nearby lane

Leashing
Leashing is the process of a champion (the non-jungler) holding/provoking the aggression of a neutral monster for a period of time. Leashing gives the jungler some time to deal damage without facing retaliation.

There are a few types of leashing methods:
 * 'Standard Leash'
 * A champion attacks the strongest neutral monster in the camp once and returns to his/her lane.


 * 'Hard Leash'
 * Generally multiple players are involved in a hard leash. This has the champion(s) attacking more then once and leaving shortly before the neutral monster is killed to not steal gold or experience.


 * 'Superman Leash'
 * A champion attacks the minion from behind and continues to runs around in circles in order to not make the monsters reset. This gives a big advantage because the jungler and the champion who leashes will not take any damage. However, this act can prevent the one who leashed to miss some experience and creep score in the beginning.

Here is a clip showing how this method is done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDDlKNhMZxM

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, or 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.