Hello, my name is JefferXpr3ss, current League of Legends summoner name being JefferEspresso, and I am here to give you my in-depth guide to playing nocturne jungle the right way. For some background, I have roughly 50 games of nocturne in ranked holding a solid win-rate, greater than 70 percent; I am mastery level 7 on nocturne with 70,000+ points on him, and he is probably my favorite jungler I have ever played, just because of how fun and strong his kit is. But without further delay, let's get into the guide.

These runes are pretty straight forward and standard for nocturne. Precision is taken for arguably the most effective rune on him, Lethal Tempo. Then along the precision tree we take Presence of Mind. There has been a question of whether you take presence of mind or triumph on nocturne in the third precision slot. They are both good, I just prefer presence of mind because nocturne is a VERY mana heavy champion, and you most certainly in my opinion need extra mana from kills to keep going. Then we take the pretty standard Alacrity because of the necessary attack speed bonus for nocturne to be effective. Tenacity is just straight up useless on nocturne, and bloodline would leave him with not enough attack speed to make use of the lifesteal. Alacrity is just the best option for nocturne in general. And finally, we take Coup De Grace to ensure as much damage as we possibly can to compliment the increased attack speed. The secondary tree is very straightforward as it is identical to almost every other jungler and basically every other assassin's secondary runes to make good use of time in the jungle, Celerity, and Waterwalking. These are very effective for moving around the jungle quickly and efficiently which is why nocturne should make use of them.

The thing I like about nocturne is that he can be very flexible with how he builds. He can get very defensive while steal having a very high damage output due to his W passive, giving him bonus attack speed. The starting items are straightforward, Hunter’s Talisman, refillable potion, and a warding totem. The core items due to a need for very high damage output, we take Skirmisher’s Sabre: Warrior, Duskblade, and the Ionian Boots of Lucidity for extra CDR which is very effective on nocturne, especially with his very strong ultimate. The items which can serve as other options for this build are also pretty simple. Just a bunch of lethality and damage with some magic resist and armor. That’s why Youmuu’s and Edge of Night are there in addition to Mercurial Scimitar and Maw of Malmortius with Guardian Angel as well there being almost an essential. The Standard Build is just a bunch of lethality plus the CDR boots and Guardian Angel. This is what you would build against a team without a lot of mobility making you able to kill mostly everyone on the enemy team. The Well Ahead Build is the same as the Standard Build but with the order mixed around. You take the Guardian Angel earlier so that you can basically dive into the enemy team and not die giving your team time to follow up. The builds against AD and AP comps are basically you admitting you cannot one shot everyone on the enemy team or even anyone so you build a little more defensively to have more survivability.

The skill sequence for nocturne can go several ways. I personally like maxing out your Q before your E just for a better gap closer in ganks without your ultimate. You can max E first for longer fear duration, also being very effective. I suppose you could even max your W first if you wanted a very large attack speed bonus. Otherwise, I think his Q is the best ability to max first, only because of how useful it can be in a lot of scenarios.

To summarize, Nocturne is a very strong, aggressive, and unique champion that has a lot of flexibility in the way he builds which I why he is my favorite jungler but also a very effective jungler because he can build defensively while still outputting massive amounts of damage.