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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 Crest of the Ancient Golem Crest of the Ancient Golem for its increased mana regeneration and large boost to cooldown reduction. The jungler can weaken the Ancient Golem Ancient Golem 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 Smite Smite

Smite Smite is a common summoner spell used by junglers. Using Smite allows players to:

Jungle Overview

TipDialogImage mirroredJungle

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.

Dragon Dragon and Baron Nashor Baron Nashor 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.

Neutral Monster Overview

Camp Initial Spawn Respawn Timer Initial Rewards
1:40 0:50
1:40 1:00
1:40 1:00
1:55 5:00
1:55 5:00
2:30 6:00
  • +400 EXP
  • +190 G to all teammates
15:00 7:00

Rewards increase for every minute each camp is left unslain.

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) Greater Seal of Armor (12.69 Armor)

Marks

Glyphs

Quints

Common Masteries for Jungling

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

Items for Jungling

The most common starting item setup for Jungling is:

This provides high effective health against physical damage and 750 bonus health. Hunter's Machete Hunter's Machete can be built in Madred's Razors Madred's Razors and then into Wriggle's Lantern Wriggle's Lantern to improve jungle speed and map awareness. Or you can upgrade it to Spirit Stone Spirit Stone (which has many upgraded path aswell.

Alternative setup:

This setup is for very few junglers. It provides movement speed to clear and gank faster as well as 450 health to get through the first few levels. Can be used on sustained junglers (Warwick) or ganking machines (Shaco).

Common Jungle Routes

Level 2 Gank

Route:

  1. Wraith Wraith camp.
  2. Lizard Elder Lizard Elder camp
  3. Gank mid/bot (blue) or top/mid (purple).

Purpose: This strategy is usually used in attempt to acquire an early kill, netting 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. Golem Golem camp, medium Golem first.
  2. Wraith Wraith camp.
  3. Giant Wolf Giant Wolf camp.
  4. Ancient Golem Ancient Golem camp.
  5. Wraith Wraith camp again.
  6. Golem Golem camp, medium Golem first.
  7. Lizard Elder Lizard Elder camp.
  8. Giant Wolf Giant Wolf camp again.
  9. Wraith Wraith camp again.
  10. Golem Golem camp, medium Golem first.
  • Repeat the last three steps over and over until the other camps respawn.

Purpose: 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 requires high levels to effectively gank a lane.

Power Clear (to level 3 or 4)

Route:

  1. Giant Wolf Giant Wolf camp
  2. Ancient Golem Ancient Golem camp
  3. Wraith Wraith camp.
  4. Golem Golem camp, medium Golem first. (This step can be skipped for earlier ganking)
  5. Lizard Elder Lizard Elder camp
  6. Gank a nearby lane

Purpose: This route is the most common as it provides enough experience for the jungle to reach level 3 or 4 before ganking. It is a well-rounded route for both ganking potential and farming experience and gold in the jungle.

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 Recall Recall. 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 whfuckere 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.

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