Description
If a champion does not appear on this list, I either consider them to be a poor jungler or haven't had enough experience with them in recent patches to accurately judge their viability. You can make most champions work in the jungle, but I'll be sticking to the stronger, more common picks.
Pick/ban
Popular. Easy. Strong. I recommend banning these champions if you aren't going to play them, unless you have a higher priority ban in mind.
Strong
These champions are strong and reliable picks, but not as highly contested or dominant as Tier 1 picks.
Good
These champions may be more situational or more challenging to play than the above tiers, but they can work if you learn them thoroughly.
Viable
These are viable junglers but are outshined by the above picks. If you don't like any of the stronger picks or you're just really in love with one of these champions, it's okay to play them. Your climb might be a little more difficult but it's doable.
There are probably better solo queue picks at the moment but he's solid enough you should be able to win with him if you practice.
He's like the perfect storm of having very situational to use skills and looking "cool" enough for all the nubs to dedicate their lives to playing him.
Kayn can be quite strong (I'm not very polished with him but am still pretty effective) but he has a number of weak matchups like Warwick where he just loses 1v1 at virtually every stage of the game. If you can get past his weak early dueling and get to his transformation then he's quite a good champion. Like you said though, he can be pretty challenging to master, so you'll only really see Kayns who carry if they're at least somewhat experienced with the champion.
Some of the champions ( Wukong, Trundle, Pantheon, etc.) do a lovely job in the top lane, but a few of them are played exclusively in the jungle.
What type of changes would need to be made to move junglers like Amumu, Kindred and Nocturne (to name a few) up your list? Would just a shift in the Meta do it? A change to some Jungle items like the bloodrazer? Would the champions themselves need individual kit changes or buffs to their stats? Or maybe the jungle itself would have to change? I imagine the answer is probably different for each of the different champions you listed there, but I'm still very interested in hearing what you think about the topic.
Meta shifts and item/rune changes are often enough to make some champions viable that were previously pretty bad. In other cases, champions really need direct buffs in order to compete evenly against standard picks. I think Nocturne suffers a bit from this, as his kit is a bit outdated compared to other assassins, so even in assassin metas he doesn't abuse strong items as much as someone like Kha'Zix or Kayn can when played to their potential. Stopwatch also makes his job harder unfortunately.
Amumu is someone who's been viable, but not actually meta for a long time. I think he'd also need some kit changes (or extreme numbers buffs) to be considered a top jungle pick. Newer tank champions tend to have more spammable or reliable CC while Amumu doesn't offer much disruption outside his ult.
Theories on how each champion should be changed would get pretty complicated, but suffice it to say there are definitely champions that are out of meta because of current game conditions and others who are out of meta because they're weak or outdated. There's enough overlap that if Riot brought back something like Devourer or Feral Flare, Nocturne could abuse that enough to be strong, but in most cases he'll get outshined by similar champions.
I hope that answers your question. Let me know if you're still wondering something.
Though your response got me thinking: as you (personally) know, I've only just started jungling this season. I don't always see Stopwatch in my games (Normals, but judging by portraits, I see a lot of silver and gold, with the occasional platinum... but still normals), but when I do, I generally don't bother trying to gank until it's a Broken Stopwatch or they're pushed way up into our tower. Now, even though I don't see them often in my own games, I see them all the time on streams and in professional play (the recent game between 100 Thieves and TSM had 9 Stopwatches!).
My question is how you (or anybody else who happens to read this and has an opinion) think the Stopwatch has changed the jungle meta, if at all?
I mean, doing that is kinda greedy but not because of that. Ganking is more to help your allys, not so you could get fed. (though getting
fat in League is much more fun :) ) So gank even if enemy has that stopwatch as a try in forcing them to use it, that will help your teammates quite a lot!
I hope I was of some help! :)
Stopwatch is annoying but the one from Perfect Timing is a Commencing Stopwatch which only works after 6 minutes. This means that stopwatches won't ruin any of your early ganks, since they can't be used that early. Once 6:00 arrives, you'll have to account for which champions have a Stopwatch and keep track of who's used them.
If you have your own Stopwatch, you can use it to tower dive pretty effectively. The stasis will nullify one tower shot and it'll drop tower aggro so you won't die. Just be sure there are minions or a healthy allied champion there to pick up the aggro once you come out of stasis.
If your target has a Stopwatch, it can be tough to dive them, but it's still doable. Ideally you want to be able to blow their Stopwatch and then kill them anyway, but sometimes you just have to get them to use it and then back off and return later. It's a lot like Flash to be honest. Almost everyone has it (or can take it) which means there's just as much playmaking potential as there is counterplay. Also like Flash, sometimes you have to gank to get them to blow the ability, then return later when that ability is no longer there to protect them.
Mostly Stopwatch sucks for assassins, especially ult-reliant ones like Rengar and Nocturne, since they can often have their first ult ganks nullified by a Stopwatch, then they have to wait several minutes for their ults to come back up. Feelsbadman. :(
Hope that makes sense!
As for someone like Aatrox I'm afraid I haven't seen a jungle Aatrox in a really long time, which makes it difficult for me to rate. If I were to add a "bad" tier of junglers, he probably wouldn't be included simply because I haven't played him or seen him as a jungler in quite some time.
However, if you make it to Mid game even or ahead you will stomp on kids. Late game will depend on their comp. If they have a lot of anti-dive ( Lulu, Janna, Lissandra) you'll cry, but if they don't have enough CC to stop you and their ADC doesn't buy a Hexdrinker you can instantly take them out of the fight pretty much at will and have some chance of walking out.
But IMO really there is no reason to play her over Evelynn right now. Eve has a weak early game as far as dueling goes, but has healthier clears and has a similar if not better Mid-Late game.
I don't feel there's a great reason to play her unless you just love the champion, but she's capable enough as a jungler.
PS I still can see the names but gotta look at image url address, which is not that comfortable
PSS thanks for your list, who would you recommend to buy first? A strong jungle, so that i could fill the role when suddenly i'd have play jg in blind pick?
Thanks for your feedback on the champion names, I'll pass that on to the devs and we'll see if we can do anything to make the tier lists a little more easily digestible for new players.
Let me know if you have any more questions!
Also feels weird to see Dr. Mundo tier 2 because he is sub optimal. I'd also keep Zac tier 1 but I can understand the reasoning for lower tiers for soloQ.
I'll bow out of arguing whether Elise requires more jungle knowledge than Lee though, since I don't main jungle.
Mundo was a bit hard for me to place. I've seen very few and haven't played him much since his buff, but his win rate went up a lot and he's sitting among the top tank junglers right now. I'd have to play more games with/against him to get a better feel for his power level but this is my best guess based on stats.
As for Lee and Elise, Elise is quite clearly prioritized competitively while Lee Sin is much less popular. There's also a staggering difference in win rates. Perhaps it's not fair of me to place Lee so low based on how difficult he is to pull off, when Elise is also quite challenging, but right now I feel there are good reasons to play Elise and not really any reason to pick Lee unless you're a Lee main.
Can you also defend your reasoning behind putting Ivern in tier 2? I thought that his early game got nerfed too heavily for him to see play still
Ivern's a lot like Janna in that he's pretty easy to be consistently effective with, even if you can't hard-carry. Most teams simply aren't coordinated enough to prevent champions like Nunu & Willump and Ivern from stealing camps for free, and Ivern makes his teammates really hard to kill. I don't think he's top tier anymore with the scaling monsters that are Maokai and Cho'Gath, but I don't think he's bad. I haven't seen very many since his last nerf though.
To put these champions in perspective, Ivern has a roughly 3% higher win rate than Zac in platinum and diamond. Using op.gg for stats since champion.gg seems to be bugged.