Empty...for now.

Hello and welcome to my Trundle guide! He is quite an unappreciated champion to those who don't know much about him but he is ranked well amongst the top junglers for his quick and sustaining jungling, his effective ganks and his ability to counter-jungle well. This guide will focus on jungling but I will also talk about late game.

A little about me: I started playing LoL about 7 months ago on advice by a friend and have loved it since then. I saw Trundle being played on an MLG stream and thought he seemed interesting so bought him, tried him out and he has replaced Udyr and my go-to-offtank-jungler.

There are a lot of possible champions you can choose to jungle with who all give different benefits to your team so the question is: why choose Trundle? Also, to a lesser extent, when is Trundle a good pick?

The first thing you need to ask yourself is "what champions are already on your team?". If you have all AD, then you have no need to pick Trundle to jungle with. If you have a couple of offtanky/tanky champions then, once again, there is no real need for Trundle. In my eyes, Trundle is a good pick if:

Your team needs an offtank who can initiate
Your team is mostly AP
Your team doesn't have a jungler (well duh')

If these are fulfilled then you can pick Trundle to jungle with. You can still use Trundle if they aren't fulfilled but other champions may be able to do the job better.

So, why choose Trundle over other good junglers? There are a lot of champions who can do very well at jungling (Udyr/Trundle/Lee Sin/Maokai/Shaco/Cho'Gath seem some of the best to me), but what can Trundle bring to the table that others can't? One of these benefits is his ability to counter jungle. Using Contaminate, he can escape very easily is caught and can clear camps very quickly when he has his Madreds or Wriggles. Another benefit is his end game. He can build very tanky and sets up kills very well for his team with Pillar of Filth.

Masteries


Masteries for this build are 21/0/9 to maximize damage and bringing most of the survivability from his items. A question people asked was why not 21/9/0 if you are building tank? The answer to that is that you are trying to build as an offtank, NOT a full tank. The 9 points in Utility allows you to move quicker through the jungle and lets you keep your buffs longer which allows you to get easier ganks (especially for the first gank).

Offensive
Brute Force and Butcher allow you go get higher base AD and higher damage against minions for a quicker jungle clear. Alacrity and Weapon Expertise gives more attack speed as you have reasonable AD, getting your damage higher. All other masteries in this tree just increase general damage The Vampirism mastery allows for a more sustained jungle before you get your Wriggle's Lantern.

Utility
Summoner's Insight to make Flash better and Expanded Mind as it is the only other good thing in the first tier. Swiftness is very good for jungle clearing time so get easier ganks whilst not losing experience and making it easier to catch up to people. The last mastery is Runic Affinity. This is very good for easier ganks and for better jungling to stop yourself going out of mana.. If you follow the jungling pattern of Blue -> Wolves -> Wraiths -> Double Golems -> Red, it allows you to get at least 1 gank off before the blue runs out which makes the gank significantly smoother as well as your jungling experience.



Runes

Runes are Attack Speed for Red, Armour of Yellow, Magic Resist on Blue and Armour Pen on Quints. I find the attack speed and the armour pen. to be all that is necessary to keep damage high and then use the Armour and Magic Pen to provide survivability.

I choose to go with Flash and Smite.

SMITE
Smite is necessary for smooth jungling on whatever Champion you play. To not use Smite, you would need a whole team to help on the initial buffs which is not reasonable in solo-queues or even team games.
FLASH
Flash is very useful on Trundle to catch up and get a double attack from Rabid Bite, to escape from possible deaths, to get quick range to get a Pillar of Filth; the possibilities are endless!

The only other possible summoner spell is Ghost and it is interchangeable with Flash (depending on your masteries and preferences). I prefer to use Flash as it allows me to invade their jungle more due to the safety it provides.

Decompose: Whenever an enemy unit near Trundle dies, he heals for 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6% of their maximum health.
Range: 1000 (estimate)
The bread and butter of Trundles jungle. It allows you to be healed whilst clearing and jungle, whilst pushing lanes, whilst in team fights, whilst killing Baron/Dragon; it is very useful and has saved my life many times.

Rabid Bite: Trundle enhances his next standard attack to instead bite his opponent, dealing physical damage equal to a base amount plus a percentage of his attack damage.
Cost: 40 mana
Cooldown: 4 seconds
The ability is quite self explanatory, it causes Trundles next attack to be empowered and do more damage. The main benefit on this ability is that is resets your attack swing timer! If you activate it straight after a melee attack, it does another one INSTANTLY! If you have blue buff, this has a very low cooldown so up's your damage by a big amount.

Contaminate: Trundle infects a target location with his curse for 8 seconds, gaining attack speed, movement speed, and crowd control reduction while standing on it.
Cost: 60 mana
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Range to Center of AoE: 900
Radius of AoE: 1000 (estimate)
Another useful ability which makes your jungle speed quicker and makes your ganks A LOT stronger. Quite self explanatory again, try use before the Crowd Control hits so that it's duration is reduced.

Pillar of Filth: Trundle creates a plagued beacon at a target location for 6.5 seconds, which becomes impassable terrain and slows all nearby enemy units while they are in the vicinity of it and for 1.25 seconds after they leave the area.
Cost: 60 mana
Range: 1000
Pillar Radius: 125
Slow Radius: 375 (estimate)
Sight Radius: 1200 (estimate)
Amazing for ganks and has a lot of utility otherwise. Drop between an enemy and a teammate to save their life, drop in certain bushes and corridors to stop anyone getting through and use with Contaminate for GODLY ganks!

ULTIMATE - Agony: Trundle immediately steals health (by dealing magic damage) and a percentage of their armor and magic resistance from his target. Over the next 6 seconds the amount of health, armor, and magic resistance stolen is doubled.
Cost: 75 mana
Range: 700
A lot stronger than most people realise, this has a lot of utility again. Used on a tank, this allows you to be tanky and lets your team tear through them. It can also heal you for defensive purposes and Agony, Contaminate and Pillar of Filth allow you to pull off some crazy escapes.

Jungling path 1:This is the standard jungling guide which many junglers use and it works well for trundle. It means you will be at level 3 when you finish RED buff so you will need to either do Wraiths again or just gank at 3.

1: Start at BLUE and get a good pull. You should only have to lose about 1/3 of your health and won't need a pot (maybe just 1). If by some miracle, there is an easy gank opportunity with someone at low health, go for that but there shouldn't be at this point.
2: Kill Wolves and use a health potion here. On to Wraiths and you might need another. You could be level 3 by now and possibly be able to do a gank. If you can get a quick gank on mid, try to but if not, I prefer to wait until RED.
3: Quickly move to double golems, kill them and then do RED buff. This will leave you close to bottom lane for a gank and open to move to top or mid.

Jungle path 2 (team support):This is the patch you can use if you have team support on the start. If leaves you at a favorable position due to getting level 4 when RED dies which makes ganks come earlier.

1: Start at Wolves and have your team both pull and help damage the wolves down. It is CRUCIAL that they need to be out of range when the wolves die or they will take experience.
2: Have the same happen at BLUE and have them do as much damage as they can but the pull is the most important.
3: Move down to kill Wraiths then up to Wolves as it should spawn as you get there.
4: Kill Wolves then move down to Double Golems then do RED. You will be level 4.

Idling path: This is the path you should do whilst waiting for ganks: Wolves -> Wraiths -> Double Golems. You should be fine sustaining yourself with Wriggle's and will get a steady stream of income.

Ganks: A quick note on ganks. Don't try and gank a lane which is pushed right to their tower. You will lose gold and experience because they won't die. Ignore what people say and keep idling until one occurs. For a gank, you want to get yourself slightly behind the enemy so they have to run towards you to get away. Open with a Contaminate once they notice you and chase them down. Use Pillar of Filth to stop them/slow them and Rabid Bite directly after an auto-attack.

That is pretty much everything there is to say in the guide. If you like/dislike any parts of the guide then please say so in the comments. This is my first guide so would appreciate the feedback.
Thanks for reading!