Hello, I'm Pyro, and no I'm not trolling with this pick! This is my first build guide on mobafire, and I feel it's warranted because I want to try to get people as excited as I am about playing Naafiri Jungle. I'm not a crazy high tier player or anything - I just hit Emerald 2 but I'm steadily climbing despite abysmal LP gains and losses, and I'm optimistic that I can reach Diamond soon with the help of Naafiri. I started playing league in Season 5, maining Amumu, Thresh, Kha'Zix, and Ekko for most of my time (as well as one tricking the old Mordekaiser - gone, but never forgotten </3).

I've been a jungle main for most of the years I've played league for, sometimes playing some top or support here and there but always returning to jungle. When I saw Naafy's ability showcase, I immediately knew that I wanted to jungle with her, and honestly, I feel it's incredibly strong despite the poor winrate and what most people are saying about it.

Since I started playing her, I've reached a 61% win rate in 54 games on her and I've very rapidly climbed from where I placed in Plat to Emerald II, and I don't seem to be slowing down. Her clear speed is pretty bad, but her gank potential is amazing and she's very good at contesting early scuttles and counter ganking due to immense mobility and long-range engage potential. I'd say the champs she plays most similarly to would be Nocturne and Xin Zhao, though you need to be a lot smarter with using her targeted dash (I go into this more in the ability section).

"Why don't you take Flash?" Short answer? I honestly just don't think it's necessary on Naafiri. Your ult pairs better with Ghost if you want a movement-related summoner, but even then you have enough movement speed that it's just not necessary (I used ghost for most of my games, though I've since moved away from it). Taking Exhaust or Ignite makes you WAY more likely to win early duels with junglers or have successful ganks early on, which are really, really important on Naafiri. Her clear speed makes it difficult to keep the tempo against the enemy jungler, so you just need to try to get your lanes ahead as early as possible, which Ignite and Exhaust both help you do.

Ignite vs Exhaust

Honestly, I think both are great. Exhaust is amazing pre-6 when you can't easily outrun people or, conversely, chase them down without ult, and late game it's great for keeping you alive in teamfights and helping to take out any mobile carries they have.

I'd almost go so far as to call Ignite essential, though, if you're jungling against something like a Warwick, or honestly even if they have a Renekton top. Needing to buy grievous before your 2nd item is really not a situation that you want to be in since cleaver's such a massive power spike for you, and ignite will help keep early healing in check. It also makes you way burstier early on, and can help secure kills before you're able to chase them down effectively.

I'm still kind of experimenting between the two right now, but I think exhaust will be the better choice if you're unsure which to take.

These are the runes I take pretty much every game now. I started off playing Naafy with conqueror and conqueror only, but it's hard to look back after switching to First Strike. The gold, utility, and even mobility that this tree provides are all very strong on her.

Inspiration Primary

First Strike

★ Naafiri takes massive advantage of First Strike since your all-ins very quickly deal large amounts of damage, allowing you to get a nice and steady source of income without needing to necessarily kill. This is, imo, the best keystone on her right now.

Magical Footwear

★ These are honestly really the only option in this row. Commencing stopwatch can be alright, but honestly, I feel like it's kind of a wasted rune. Not needing to buy boots also saves you on some gold, allowing you to reach your cleaver spike faster and giving you some nice bonus movement speed.

Future's Market

★ As Naafiri is VERY item reliant early on, Future's Market provides a great means to buy those items just a little bit earlier if you're beyond on gold. Whether this be a dirk on your first back, a warhammer on your second, or anything in between, it can make a pretty substantial difference. Don't forget, whenever you use Future's Market you only get added debt once, so this can be a great time to stock up on vision wards!

Approach Velocity

★I see that a lot of people playing Naafiri with this rune page take Cosmic Insight, but I feel it's not a good choice on her, especially since I don't run flash. Approach Velocity makes it even easier to dive on targets that your team has locked down, and once you get Serylda's it'll be nearly impossible for anyone to outrun you if you land a Q and they try to escape.

Domination Secondary

Sudden Impact

★This is pretty much impossible to pass up on Naafiri, honestly. Your E and W both proc this and give you pretty consistent uptime on the burst of lethality it provides - especially great considering most games, you're not going to have too much lethality in your build past eclipse.

Treasure Hunter

★Another incredible rune for Naafiri. Getting Eclipse and Black Cleaver as fast as possible is very important, and this helps immensely with getting the ball rolling.

Again, I mostly don't use these runes and generally go first strike, but it's still good if pretty much everyone on their team is tanky with heavy CC. Legend Tenacity can be HUGE in those situations and the rune page adds a lot to your survivability - I just find that it's not generally needed and you lose too much damage and utility for it.

Precision Primary

Conqueror

★ A great choice into very tanky team comps where fights are going to be prolonged no matter what you do. Pretty much everything in your kit will allow you to very rapidly stock conqueror, and the healing paired with the healing proc from your Darkin Daggers is very substantial.

Triumph

★ Triumph gives you a lot - the bonus gold on takedowns can add up pretty quickly if you're snowballing, and the health restoration can save you if you go for a dive or find yourself in the middle of a big fight.

Legend: Tenacity

★ Legend: Tenacity very strong rune into games where taking green smite and mercs isn't going to grant enough tenacity to avoid being permanently locked down.

Coup de Grace

★ Coup de Grace and Last Stand are both viable options here, though I find that most of the time you can pretty easily kill one or two of their carries before your health drops enough to make Last Stand the better option. Overall, both are good runes for giving a nice bump in damage.

Domination Secondary

Sudden Impact

★This is pretty much impossible to pass up on Naafiri, honestly. Your E and W both proc this and give you pretty consistent uptime on the burst of lethality it provides - especially great considering most games, you're not going to have too much lethality in your build past eclipse.

Treasure Hunter

★Another incredible rune for Naafiri. Getting Eclipse and Black Cleaver as fast as possible is very important, and this helps immensely with getting the ball rolling.

Naafiri has a lot of great options when it comes to items, including mythics. Personally, I love taking Eclipse and very rarely build Duskblade of Draktharr, though I understand that many people playing her feel differently so will put some reasoning here. Duskblade adds to your damage against low health targets and also has the very valuable passive of making you untargetable and invulnerable following takedowns. Honestly, though, I feel it's not even necessary if you get Eclipse. The shield it grants is surprisingly massive, and the mythic passive of giving 4% armor pen is a lot nicer than the haste granted by duskblade IMO. Your cooldowns already get to be really low late game, and getting some extra pen on top of Serylda's and Cleaver makes you that much more deadly. In short, it grants a lot more survivability than duskblade that doesn't hinge on getting a takedown and provides more useful mythic bonuses.

Following your mythic, Black Cleaver is... pretty much non negotiable, to be honest. I'd recommend finishing boots first, but that's it. Even if they have 0 champs on their team that will stack armor, you'll still pretty much instantly cleave through 30% of what they *do* have. The 400 hp makes you way tankier, and the ability haste feels great early game when your abilities still have lengthy cooldowns.

Completing cleaver opens up a couple of options. Most of the time I'll go Serylda's Grudge because of how valuable the slow it provides is, and if they are a tanky team, the additional pen on top of Black Cleaver will still allow you to melt them like butter. If you decide not to get Serylda's at this point and want some more assassination potential, I think Prowler's Claw would be the best option most of the time. If they have a really shield-heavy team (Sion, Karma, Ivern, Lulu, etc. etc.), then this could also be a great time to get Serpent's Fang.

After you get your third item, there are a lot of options that you can go with, so I'll just list off when each of the items is best, in my experience.

Maw of Malmortius - Amazing into AP heavy teams that can and will otherwise burst you down. If I know I'm going to build it, I'll generally get hexdrinker after Black Cleaver and before my third item since even just getting that helps a lot, then complete it later on as I see fit. Can also be great into CC-heavy comps with some AP, or into champs like Neeko and Lissandra so you stand a better chance at living through their CC.

Death's Dance is a very good item, though honestly I generally only build it if I find myself needing more armor. The passive is great at helping keep you from getting bursted and synergizes great with The Call of the Pack resetting on takedown. If you find yourself still getting shredded after building Black Cleaver (and it's not just by bursty AP champs, in which case build Hexdrinker then Maw of Malmortius, this is probably your best option.

Guardian Angel can be a great last item, though I don't think I'd ever recommend building it before. Helps you to stay in the fight longer and makes it harder for their team to shut you down if you're ahead, as you get a second chance to mess them up.


Edge of Night isn't something I build every game, but it synergizes very well with your W and can keep it from being interrupted. It also provides a lot of HP, further bolstering your survivability, and a nice boost to lethality.

Serpent's Fang is an item that I only build when my team's getting destroyed by the enemy's shield abilities. It's a really good item on Naafiri, though should ONLY be built into heavy shield comps, otherwise it's not worth it.

I kind of talked about Prowler's Claw a bit for the third item options, but I do occasionally find myself building it later if I want some raw damage and I'm not having any issues with survivability.

We Are More - Passive
Dogs! This ability gives you pets that follow you around and attack with you - you start off with 2 maximum, then get 3 once you hit level 9. Additionally, your ult allows you to break the cap as long as it's going, allowing you to have up to 7 pups following you around at level 16 (or 8 with a Neeko ;)). On top of supplementing your damage, dogs will stack the damage of your W, block skill shots, tank jungle monsters, and can tank tower (though they always die in one shot), which can sometimes come in handy. Additionally, landing an ability on a large jungle monster or enemy champion will reduce the cooldown of summoning your next dog by 4 seconds, and it's reduced by an additional second on killing any enemy.

Darkin Daggers - Q
This is the bread and butter of your kit, and where most of your damage comes from. It's a 2 charge skill shot that pierces all units. If the target isn't bleeding when it hits them, it will apply a bleed that deals damage over time, as well as continuously proccing things like cleaver, conqueror, serylda's, and so on. However, if they ARE bleeding already, then the remaining bleed damage will instantly proc AND it deals execute damage, scaling with the target's missing HP. As if that wasn't enough, Q'ing an already bleeding champion will also heal you for a chunk of your hp. Your packmates will also jump onto the target that you Q.

Hounds' Pursuit - W
This is an interesting ability. It's a point-and-click engage that reveals the target on hit, slows them, and deals more damage based on how many packmates you hit with (your packmates are also untargetable during this time). However, you stop on the first champion hit so it's very easy for a tank to just body block it, and you're not unstoppable during it, so something like Syndra, Thresh, or Ziggs can just smack you out of it if they play their cooldowns right.

While it's good for engaging - particularly on squishies if they're alone - I generally hold onto it in ganks and skirmishes. For ganks in particular, it may seem obvious to just W in immediately, but then if they flash or dash away you can't do anything. If you run in and damage FIRST, though, then you can chase after them with W and prevent them from escaping. It's also great if you need to temporarily peel off of a fight/need to back up for a second, allowing the enemy team to shift their aggro onto someone else while you back up and get in a good position to W back in on their carries.

Eviscerate - E
Your E is a short range dash that deals damage to units that it travels through AND deals a larger burst of damage in an area around you after landing. It can be used to jump over small walls (ie Dragon Pit, Raptors, most River Walls, structures), and honestly it nukes pretty hard, especially late game.

Also important to consider, though, is that your packmates get pulled back to you and are healed to full after you use E. If you're just Q'ing someone for poke and don't want your packmates to hop in and die, you can just use your Q's then E to pull them back to you and keep them alive. It's also *really* important while clearing early on to hold your E until one of your packmates is going to die, rather than just using it off cooldown.

The Call of the Pack - R
This is where the fun comes in. Popping your ult instantly summons additional packmates (2/3/4 at 6/11/16), grants you a massive burst of decaying movement speed, reveals the area around you within roughly a screen, halves your passive cooldown, and grants you additional attack damage. Your first attack or ability that hits an enemy champion will grant you a large shield, AND will reset up to one time on getting a take down (which resummons packmates, gives you MORE movement speed, AND you get another shield on the first enemy hit), AND it increases your W range based on the ultimate's rank. That's a lot.

The shield it grants pairs great with Eclipse, and the burst of movement speed is amazing for chasing down squishies or catching up to a fight that already started. I will generally pop my ult before going in, but if you don't know if you're going to commit to a fight yet there's nothing wrong with engaging and popping it after you're already on top of their team, which also ensures the shield doesn't get wasted if you don't immediately go in after, saying, landing a Q.

Oh boy. Here comes the hard part. I want to start by saying that I would not recommend Naafiri jungle if you're new to jungle. While an easy champ, I feel like she's pretty damn difficult to jungle with as your clearspeed is so abysmally slow relative to most other champs. As such, it's incredibly easy to fall behind if you're unsure of yourself in pathing or when to gank.

Now that that's out of the way: I always 3 camp to a gank, if I can (blue buff -> gromp -> red buff or red buff -> gromp -> blue buff based on who I'm trying to gank). Unfortunately, your lanes aren't always gonna be in great states, and sometimes you just need to keep clearing until scuttle spawns, then go for that into a gank. Getting an early kill or assist (really just enough gold for a dirk first back) is really, really important. It makes your clears way smoother and makes dueling + ganking far more likely to succeed.

Your clear's also a little weird compared to other junglers, since you want to keep your pets alive and juggle aggro with them to keep your HP in check while making sure your dogs aren't constantly dead. For the first buff, I generally Darkin Daggers -> auto -> Q on top of the buff and then just tank it and auto until it reaches ~1000 hp, then back up and let my packmates tank. Your dogs can survive 2 hits from buffs early on and then will die on the 3rd. Once my first dog dies, immediately use both of your Qs on the buff to start lowering the cooldown (DO NOT use your Q a second time until your first dog dies, this is very important for keeping your dogs up for your first clear [moreso if you're on blue side, since your 2nd camp is right there and your passive won't have time to come off cooldown]). Hopefully you still have 2 dogs alive at this point, though if it was a poor leash you might only have one, which isn't a huge deal.

After you have Eviscerate, clearing becomes a bit easier since you can refresh their health. Moving onto gromp, start it and let the dogs take aggro, then E the gromp once it dies (again, your dogs can survive 2 hits from gromp, then die on the third early on).

Once gromp and your second buff are dead, you now have W, and should look for a gank between middle or whichever lane is on your side of the map.
If you know where their jungler was clearing to and they're likely to do an early gank, setting up for a counter gank is a really good idea. If no lanes are gankable, just clear wolves or raptors and set up for scuttle or look for another gank. Using your W on camps is good very early on (pre 6), since if you're struggling to keep dogs alive you can W to either take aggro or hope that the monsters aggro on another dog with full hp, but I wouldn't recommend it mid game when it's got a longer cooldown and the game starts moving a lot faster.

Moving past that, objective control is really important, but unfortunately a pain on Naafiri. I'm not sure if it's a bug or intended, but due to how your packmates take aggro dragon can and will reset multiple times if you're soloing it, especially if you pull it, (I've seen up to 3 or 4), which makes it completely miserable and makes it more likely to be contested. Always try to get help with dragons if you can at any point in the game. It's better for everyone if you're not left soloing it, but if you see a really good drake opportunity and need to solo it, it's not the end of the world.

Early Heralds are a lot easier to get since it won't constantly reset and push you away and you can pop the eye for a lot of damage since you don't have that much early on. Just make sure that at least one of top and mid have priority in case you end up needing help, though it's almost always free if the enemy jungler shows bot lane. I'd also almost always recommend trading dragon to get the first herald if it comes down to it - the early plate gold is huge, and helps your laner of choice with getting first tower.

I sort of mentioned this when talking about what Hounds' Pursuit does, but I want to reiterate that most of the time you shouldn't engage with it early on. If the enemy laner that you're ganking is in the middle of the lane, go through tri-bush if you can - remember, you can use Eviscerate to jump over over dragon and baron walls which makes this a lot easier if you're worried about vision or can't safely get around.

*This isn't related to ganking, but E'ing over one of those walls is also a great time to drop a pink deep in their jungle which can be huge early on - the bushes behind the red buff wall are very rarely checked for some reason, and can provide a LOT of information on the enemy junglers whereabouts.

Once moving through tri, simply walk up and E to the enemy laner, pop your Qs, and try to kill. If they commit to the fight, you may not have to use your W at all unless they hard dive your laner, but if they try backing off or flashing away, your W can very quickly close the gap and give you time to hopefully finish them off.

If they're hard shoving and under your tower, then chances are they're confident they can win lane and your laner's probably missing a good amount of HP at this point. W'ing on them to start might be better here, because if it's something like a Renekton, Illaoi, or Sett, they're likely going to hard commit on and possibly even dive your laner, and you need to make sure that doesn't happen because you will NOT be able to solo them. If they're not committing, though, then I'd recommend holding W and playing it the same way.

Once you hit 6, ganking gets a lot easier. Instead of just walking up to them, you can sprint at them with youre 50% decaying movement speed and very quickly collapse on them with your packmates. Hounds' Pursuit also becomes more viable to engage with at this point - particularly if they don't have much mobility - because with 4 dogs going in with it, it's going to do a pretty solid amount of damage early on in the game.

I feel like Naafiri's ganks go best when you're counterganking the enemy jungler. If you're anywhere on that side of the jungle, you can start walking up, ult when you're a screen or two away, and then rush into the fight and collapse on them, hopefully before your laners die and turning the fightaround in your favor. As such, keeping up vision is REALLY important, and helping your lanes with it by sweeping whenever you can is a great way to both build pressure on that side of the map and set up for potential future ganks.

Naafiri's also a great dive champion - your W allows you to easily get on them from under tower, and honestly, if the minion wave's arriving after the dive you can even use it as an escape by W'ing to the wave once they're dead. Just make sure it's with laners that can follow up and it's not a champion that is always a very risky dive, such as Nasus, Thresh, or Vladimir.

Teamfighting on Naafiri is honestly a breeze. With this build you are... surprisingly tanky, and enemies are going to have a tough time trying to blow you up. Depending on whether you're the one engaging or not, you can pop ult and W into their team from the front and try diving their carries, regardless of whether or not your W is blocked, or - my preferred choice - look for a flank. If both teams are kinda just in a stalemate mid, I like going into their jungle before engaging. Assuming you're level 11 at this point, your Hounds' Pursuit has pretty decent range at this point and you should be able to lock onto a squishy over the wall, hopefully before their teammates have time to react and body block you. This'll bring all the focus to you and, again, since you're incredibly tanky, you'll be able to hold off while your team moves in to follow up, and you'll hopefully get a kill or two pretty quickly.

Fighting near objectives is probably my favorite area to skirmish as Naafiri. A lot of the time, their ranged carries (ie ADCs, artillery mages, etc) will sit on the opposite side of a wall and kind of just kite your team backwards or deal damage from there. Well guess what? You can just W onto them for free! Chances are their front line will be trying to peel off your team, giving you the perfect opportunity to oneshot their squishy.

Naafiri doesn't really have any important combos to know, imo, but for something like that against a squishy, I generally do The Call of the Pack -> Hounds' Pursuit -> Darkin Daggers (first charge) -> Eviscerate -> Darkin Daggers (second charge), and honestly they're probably already dead by that point.

Thanks for taking the time to use this guide, and I hope it helped you out on the rift! If you have any issues or suggestions, feel free to leave feedback and I'll address it as soon as I can. I know that it's not very aesthetically pleasing right now, I really only used code for the runes section though if it gets enough attention then I'll go back and try to pretty up some of the other sections as well. Again, this is my first guide and I just wanted to get it out there with the hope of spreading awareness of the potential of Naafiri Jungle. Good luck climbing :)