Hey All,

This is the first in a hopefully long line of jungling guides that I will be creating. These guides are part of a project that I have wanted to take on for a long time and I hope that my almost two years jungle experience (fell in love with the jungle during beta) will help new and experienced players alike.

This guide is meant to be a quick reference with very simple explanations why I do what I do. Also, stay tuned for videos that I will hopefully get around to publishing of each of my champs I write a guide about.

If you would like to know a little bit more about me and the team I play on please visit:

StronkGaming.com

Thanks for looking!!

This is a basic jungle Rune set I like to use. It works for many different champions and gives good early game stats. It also lends for a bit faster jungling with the attack speed boost.

Greater Mark of Attack Speed: Gives you extra attack speed, great for proc'ing that passive and makes for a quicker jungle, plus allows you to take more points in your Q and E early game.

Greater Seal of Armor: Almost a must for jungle. It gives you that base armor you need to resist neutral creep damage and also helps with that early game ganking.

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: This, again, is to help with that early game ganking and overal resistance in game.

Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed: See Greater Mark of Alacrity description.

Greater Quintessence of Health: This is to boost your starting HP. I was find this useful for longer jungling and greater early gank sustain (because you never know when it might turn into a team fight).

This is your basic attack damage mastery path with a splash of defense. This will give you increase magic resist, your Smite bonus, as well as, all of your attack speed/damage gained from the offensive tree.

I am not going to break down my decisions on this. This is a pretty standard setup and once you have jungled for a while you will find yourself picking the same things.

I chose a pretty standard summoner spell setup here. Flash and Smite are great on a lot of jungling champs and Xin Zhao is no different.

Smite: Pretty standard. Almost all junglers use this. It reduces your jungle times, plus, if you put points in Summoner's Resolve you get a bonus 10 gold every time you use it. Also works on Tibbers and Heimerdinger's turrets... just a side note.

Flash: This is a great defensive and offensive skill and most people are used to using it. I also find it nice for those level 2 ganks or against champs that have faster move speed then me. Especially, with Three Talon Strike. I often found myself ganking and only getting the first 2 strikes off and not being able to get the third, most important, strike off which knocks the enemy champ airborne. So, a quick flash to get the third strike solved that problem. Then there is the obvious escape advantages; flashing over walss, flashing out of ults, and even flashing as a sort of dodging maneuver, all valid uses of this heavily used skill.

I believe the first 6 choices are the most important because after that it really falls on play style.

-> -> -> -> ->

Alternatively, I also like to max out Battle Cry before Audacious Charge, but I don't feel that it offers better ganking. I only use this if I am going for faster jungle speeds.

Now, the reason that I go this route is because it offers good balance, but, it also, adds good ganking damage. That second level in Three Talon Strike allows for more damage, the one point in Battle Cry allows you to reset your Three Talon Strike and Audacious Charge and the two points in Audacious Charge gives it a faster cooldown and a little more extra damage which allows you to keep dashing to the back lines to blow up some squishies.

Xin Zhao is so versatile that it is hard to tell you how to build him. I can only tell you my thought process and how I build him given the enemy team and your role in the team.

Starting Items:

If you are going fast/get rich quick jungle:

Vampire Scepter

If you are going strong early game:

Doran's Blade

If you are going traditional model or tanky (traditional model doesn't really matter too much any more because you can just start with a Vampire Scepter):

Cloth Armor + Health Potion x 5

Second Item (go back as soon as you can afford this):

Boots

Late Early Game/Early Mid Game (you should be farming/ganking enough to buy these outright, or go back and get pieces and parts if you aren't doing so well):

Wriggle's Lantern + Berserker's Greaves

Final Items:

Now, this is where things are going to vary a bit. It really depends on the role you are playing in the team. If you are playing a tanky DPS vs a straight up DPS, your build is going to change. I will list the complete build below.

Tanky DPS (probably your more common build):

Mercury's Treads + Wit's End + Atma's Impaler + Warmog's Armor

and, if you still have money up the wazoo sell your Wriggles and get one of the following:

Black Cleaver or Madred's Bloodrazer or Bloodthirster or Frozen Mallet

Straight up DPS:

Berserker's Greaves + Wit's End + Madred's Bloodrazer + Black Cleaver + Wriggle's Lantern

and, if extra cash sell you Wriggles for:

Bloodthirster or Youmuu's Ghostblade or Frozen Mallet