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Twitch Build Guide by

The Ultimate Jungle Twitch Guide Season 10

Updated on

8.6

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Build Guide By

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Twitch Build Guide By Updated on

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Runes:

Precision

Press the Attack

Triumph

Legend: Alacrity

Coup de Grace

Sorcery

Nimbus Cloak

Gathering Storm

Bonus:

+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor

Spells:

Flash

Smite

Items

starting items

early backs

boots

core items

situational core

situational items

example full build #1

example full build #2

Ability Order

Twitch Passive Ability

More Twitch Counters

Champion Build Guide

-Table of Contents-

Pre Game

Runes
Summoner Spells

Twitch

Abilities
Items

Gameplay and Extra

Introduction
Jungling
Teamfighting
Conclusion

Greetings, gamer. I'm Vapora Dark, a veteran League player that's been playing since season 1. During that time I've hit Master tier as a mid lane main in season 5, as an ADC Twitch main in season 7, again as a jungle Twitch main in season 8, and once more in season 9 playing a mix of all those roles. I can play every role to a very high level and have a very good understanding of the general aspects of the game on top of that.

I've spent most of season 7 up until now as somewhat of a one-trick pony. Ever since the changes they made to in the assassins rework I've found him incredibly fun to play and he's been my favourite champion ever since.

Vapora Dark

I started off playing him ADC since I was an ADC main but over time I became disillusioned with the agency of the ADC role, and at the very end of season 7 I took on the challenge of abandoning the ADC role for season 8 and instead learning to play my favourite champion in the jungle from scratch.

In just a short few months I went from being an awful, inexperienced jungler who could only scrape enough wins to play jungle at a Diamond level through my mechanics and skills, to a bonafide jungle main who dominates early game, mid game and late game, shining in all aspects of jungle enough to dominate Diamond at all divisions and play him at a Master tier level.

As part of the learning process, I analyzed and heavily inspired my play on replays of RAT IRL, the best jungle player in the world. I looked at everything from his jungle routes to gank routes and how he would react to certain situations, to explain what separated him from lesser players and allowed him to rack up such massive win streaks and hit Challenger with ease.

To be honest, a lot of it is simply mechanical skill and experience. There are no secrets that allows RAT IRL to crush all his games, he is simply an insanely good player that makes great decisions in almost any situation he finds himself in which allows him to constantly come out on top of his opponents. And there's no way to copy his decision-making because there's a million different situations you can find yourself in in League of Legends. So while you can certainly practice your decision-making in-game as it's a skill just like any other, studying his games can only do so much for improving your jungle skills.

That being said, RAT IRL's strategies and tactics certainly are something that can be learned from. I've heavily based my own playstyle off of RAT IRL's, and to this day I still occasionally watch his replays to continue to learn anything I may have missed as well as any adaptations he's made to meta changes.

For you, the reader, fortunately it shouldn't be quite as much effort to learn jungle because I will be compiling everything I've learnt in this one guide. At the time of this guide's release it's been a work-in-progress for over a year and a half, by far the longest time I've ever spent on any guide, as I wanted to make sure I broke down absolutely everything you need to know to play jungle at your highest level.

I can't promise you that you'll be able to play him at a Challenger level after reading this guide, but what I can guarantee you is that this guide will lay the foundations through which you can achieve your own highest individual potential, once you take in everything I have to say and commit to extensively practicing it within your games. I can't turn you into RAT IRL, but I can turn you into the best possible jungle player that you can be. If that's something you want, then keep reading to begin the learning process.

I hope you enjoy reading the guide as much as I enjoyed writing it, and that by the end you feel my guide was worth the privilege of your time.

Precision & Domination

Conqueror

Since shines in short trades, is going to be your best choice on jungle since most interactions will have you auto-attacking for extended periods as you're aiming for kills rather than trading damage. is a viable alternative if you're funneling or otherwise playing with a mid since on top of having superior scaling to the attack speed has very high synergy with the DPS boost you get from .

Triumph

The only viable rune in this branch, this rune is amazing for jungle , the heal will very frequently save your life and can prevent you dying to minions during very close ganks, and can give you a lot of sustain during team fights or skirmishes. The extra gold is just a small bonus.

Legend: Alacrity

Here you have the option of either or , honestly both are pretty much equally strong at the moment but most people favour since you get faster clears and more DPS in fights. could do with some lifesteal in his early clear but takes a long time to scale making it the better scaling option rather than an early-game rune.

Coup De Grace

You have more than one option in this branch, but is the one you'll want to take 99% of the time since it's the one consistently good in the most situations, there is no game where you can't make good use of this rune. Alternatively you can use against comps with 2-3 big frontliners since in that situation you'll be gaining far more damage from it in team fights than you would from , but it's very niche and very bad as a general rune.

Domination

Sudden Impact

Relentless Hunter

: Your options here are between and . will give you more reliable results while will help you snowball harder. Both are decent but is the rune favoured by most of the playerbase. Overall it doesn't make a great deal of difference and you're only speccing into Domination for anyway.

: This provides a heavy amount of out-of-combat movement speed which will help you move throughout the map to set up ganks as well as better position yourself during ganks. Since is such a gank-focused jungler who can't afford to build into early mobility this rune is quite important to your success, and leaves you no other options than Domination secondary.

Offense:
10% Attack Speed

Flex:
9 Adaptive Force

Defense:
6 Armor

	+

Flash

It should go without saying that this is the best Summoner Spell on almost every champion, and is no exception. This allows you to escape from sticky situations, match enemies' es when they try to away from you to finish off a kill, and is all around the best offensive and defensive Summoner Spell in one.

Smite

: Because you're jungling, the only Summoner Spell more important than is , which is absolutely essential if you're jungling since it massively increases your clear speed, clear health, objective control, and gives you access to jungle items which are extremely hard for most junglers but especially to have to jungle without, since he's not a strong clearer as it is. Having access to is also extremely important sinc it massively increases your dueling potential and damage during ganks.

Skill Order

> >

Deadly Venom

PASSIVE: Deadly Venom

: Between , and 's Challenging , your ganks will have a ton of over-time damage that can cause enemies to greatly overestimate how much damage they're really taking, and will very often result in a late that allows you to execute them with , if the DoTs don't kill them.

When you're fighting or chasing it's always good to refresh this before it resets whenever possible since the more stacks you can maintain on a target since aside from the damage itself, the more damage your will deal.

Ambush

Q: Ambush

: One of 's defining abilities, makes the only ADC and one of the few champions in the game with a more long-term kind of stealth, comparable to 's but on a 10-14 second timer rather than having an indefinite duration.

This ability is the sole reason why , while not having the best kit for clearing the jungle or the best dueling ability to deal with enemy junglers, can still have amazing results in the jungle if player understands how to abuse his stealth. It gives you the ability to bypass wards and even to gank a lane by walking directly through the lane rather than approaching through the river, making it impossible for enemies to know when they're being ganked even when they've warded.

The most important skill a jungle player must have is knowing how best to utilize to enter a lane unseen and position as best as possible for a gank.

It also gives a very large attack speed boost to increase your damage in ganks and duels, and can massively increase your teamfight damage especially when combined with .

Venom Cask

W: Venom Cask

: On jungle , this ability is useful for both applying stacks on camps for AoE to clear more easily, and for helping you kite single monster camps like .

When ganking it's your only form of CC besides red buff, and while it's only a slow it can still often be the difference between getting a kill or not. It's also useful for applying stacks on enemies and especially for resetting them on a fleeing enemy to ensure that the stacks don't run out.

When ganking an enemy from the side, it's usually smart to throw a little ahead of them rather than right on top of them since that way they can't just avoid it by immediately ing when you appear. They'll still have to walk into it and get slowed by it, since it's not worth delaying their escape just to step around it.

Contaminate

E: Contaminate

: This ability's damage increases the more stacks the target has, and will hit any enemy in the range of the spell affected by . In the early game this adds a nice chunk of damage to your ganks, and late game this frequently allows you to execute or deal more damage to enemies that leave your range. Once you have full items it's not advised to use on enemies still in range of your auto-attacks since stopping your auto-attacks to cast leads to a loss in DPS.

Early game you'll want to use it either whenever you have max stacks to add to your DPS, as soon as it'll kill your enemy, or when they've escaped your auto attack range and you just want to increase your damage dealt to them before walking away.

Spray And Pray

R: Spray And Pray

: Whereas is what makes a massive threat in the early game, is what makes him a scary threat in team fights. combined with leads to do absolutely ridiculous AoE damage in teamfights, and when building correctly will allow him to kill squishy targets in 3-4 auto-attacks thanks to the extra AD. On top of all this he also receives the highest auto-attack range in the game over the duration, making him extremely safe while also outputting the highest possible DPS of any champion in the game until runs out.

During ganks you'll want to use either to increase your damage if you think the extra 20-40 AD is necessary to secure a kill or to increase your range if the enemy manages to escape your regular auto-attack range but you think you can still kill them. You also want to use it during any duel that you expect to be close, even if the range goes completely to waste. In team fights you'll want to try and combine it with 's attack speed bonus whenever possible either to blow up squishies or just to go for AoE on the overall team, while making sure you don't waste it in bad moments where you can't auto-attack much. This is one of those decision-making skills that you'll have to practice and I can't tell you exactly when you should and when you shouldn't use it.

Starting Items

Hunter's Machete
Since is a heavily auto-attack based jungler is the ideal starting item for him. As with all junglers you'll want to take rather than 3 s since while the latter's extra sustain would be helpful early on you'll save yourself a lot of gold in the long term through .

Warding Totem
isn't all that useful on jungle since you have it so easy to bypass wards anyway, and you need to help you ward around your jungle to protect yourself from enemy jungle invades. It's also useful for warding in brushes that your enemies walk into mid-fight so you don't have to face check into them to continue the fight.

First Backs

Skirmisher's Sabre
This is the only viable upgrade for , since it massively out-damages and already has a slow in his kit anyway. Since he's ranged he's also less dependant on CC to stay in auto-attack range of an enemy. Additionally the damage reduction is invaluable for helping you duel enemy junglers in the early-game, since is a very weak fighter early on so he needs all the help he can get.

You'll want to buy this as your first item (and if you can't afford it, buy before anything else) mainly because of the extra stats it gives you to help clear your jungle. 's kit is extremely weak at clearing the jungle by itself so you'll want the extra help as soon as possible before you can start healthily clearing your full jungle.

Boots Of Speed
Once you have your you'll want to get to increase the speed with which you move around the map, since this is important for a jungler as focused on ganking as is. It will also help you chase fleeing enemies while you gank them, and escape from the enemy jungler if you accidentally run into them, since if you have less movement speed than them you'll probably die or have to blow your .

Dagger
Once you've completed your previous two items, you'll just want to build s until you can afford or . Even if you build more s than are needed to build it's still useful since scales so well with attack speed and they'll build into later, which builds out of 3 s.

Boots

You never want to build your fully upgraded Boots until at least after Skirmisher's Sabre - Bloodrazor, and even then I would put off upgrading them until after Runaan's Hurricane given how important a powerspike it is. If you build Berserker's Greaves before then it's because you're confident in your ability to snowball by building the earlier powerspike at the expense of the delayed Runaan's Hurricane, and the other Boots can also potentially be built directly after Skirmisher's Sabre - Bloodrazor if the situation calls for them and you think it would be greedy to delay them.

Berserker's Greaves
Although you do usually end up overcapping on attack speed later on, it takes a while to reach that point and these are the best overall Boots despite it. They are your go-to choice of Boots unless the situation demands or .

Ninja Tabi
These Boots are highly effective against AD assassins as well as AD-centric comps in general as they will greatly reduce the amount of damage you'll take from the enemy team. Generally the increased damage output of outweighs this but if the enemy champions are bursty and hard to avoid taking damage from, or if they're just all AD, then these Boots become more valuable than .

Mercury's Treads
You almost never want to build these, but in certain games against really high CC comps you might end up benefitting from them. But I must emphasize how rarely you need these, it's only in maybe 5% of your games or less.

Core Items

Skirmisher's Sabre - bloodrazor
is the only viable jungle item for since he benefits so much more from attack speed than AD early on. It'll also give you some decent damage against tanks before you complete the rest of your build. Once you're full build you can sell it for an item that fulfills a better function late-game but there is no better early-game item.

Runaan's Hurricane
Generally you'll want to finish this before moving onto your boots upgrade since it massively increases your clear speed through AoE as well as greatly increasing your team fight damage during 's duration, making it a large powerspike in more ways than one.

Situational Core

Infinity Edge
Combined with the crit chance and AoE of this is an insanely strong powerspike for you, and when really comes online as a true hypercarry. You'll generally want to build this either after your boots upgrade, or if you feel you're going to absolutely need to win fights then you can delay your boots upgrade until after you finish this.

Wit's End
This is an absolutely fantastic item for , and extremely underrated. Any time the enemy team has 1-2 AP champions who are any sort of threat to you in the slightest, I find it worth delaying to build this instead. The on-hit damage value is insanely high and coupled with and you can get a ton of healing from it when under 50% HP, as well as spreading the full on-hit value onto any target hit without being affected by any of the damage reduction of 's bolts and 's secondary target piercing. You get a little less damage than , but you get it cheaper and with defensive properties to boot. You should even consider building this before against high AP threats because of how invaluable the MR can be while still providing massive damage that isn't reliant on crit chance from your other items like is.

Blade Of The Ruined King
Occasionally you may want to consider building this as a 3rd item in place of and if you feel you absolutely need the aid of the active to help you kite and survive in teamfights. It's commonly misunderstood to be a good option against tanks, don't fall into that trap because it's not, and are better against anything except maybe a straight HP stacking . The only reason to build is for the active to help you kite, it's very rare to need it but sometimes it might allow you to deal more damage than the alternatives would just by helping you to stay alive longer.

Situational Items

Phantom Dancer
After you have , this is a great option to boost your damage with additional crits now that you have a crit amplifier in . The shield also helps you stay alive.

Statikk Shiv
A potential alternative to , this gives more damage at the expense of less survivability than that offered by . In previous seasons this was the superior option to in the majority of situations but now that the passive can't crit it's become a lot less bursty and less valuable to build. I recommend building over this unless you think you just don't need the survivability. However it's also an option to build them both to hit 100% crit chance.

Guardian Angel
This is the best item you can build when the enemy team has an easy time shutting you down in teamfights as the revive passive acts as a 4 second stasis during which you can't be focused as well as healing you. It's also the best item if you think the game might be decided in the next team fight since its lengthy cooldown which is its biggest downside won't be a factor.

Mercurial Scimitar
This item, or just its component , can be absolutely crucial against certain comps or champions when faced with high threat CC that's very hard to avoid. For example, 's ultimate is pretty unavoidable if she's really intent on getting you with it, since it's point and click and she can easily reach you with and . Even against more avoidable CC such as 's , it's still smart to build and later against her even if just to bait her into wasting her ultimate on you rather than your team, or to ensure that you can play aggressively rather than be zoned while it's up since with you know you're safe even if you get hit by it.

While you might sometimes need to build relatively early on, such as after , the rest of your build is much more important to get to than upgrading to , so you shouldn't upgrade to until you've finished the rest of your build.

Mortal Reminder
This item can be absolutely necessary in some games if the enemy team has a lot of healing. If you're playing vs a for example I would even go as far as to build right after even though you won't be upgrading it to for a long time to come.

Lord Dominik's Regards
Good purchase when facing high armor against very tanky comps, but since the current meta doesn't regularly see many tanks on the same team you usually won't want to build this except vs or most of the time.

The Bloodthirster
This can be a good item to sell your for while it's on cooldown and if you have enough gold. It can also be a better item to build instead if you think the game won't be ending for a while still or happen to be able to afford it at the same time as .

Clearing Camps

This would usually not even be worth the mention in a jungle guide for most champions, but since is such a weak clearer I will have to talk a bit about some of the tips and notes you need to keep in mind in order to make him work, since if you're not already familiar with some of the intricacies of jungling you'll probably end up dying to camps a lot on .

Clearing The Raptor Camp

Never clear the Raptor camp before or unless you intend to recall right afterwards, and you probably will still need to do so depending on what level you are. It deals a ton of damage unless you have the AoE to clear it quickly, and doesn't.

After / you'll get enough healing and AoE damage to actually be able to clear it, but before then it will either kill you or force you to have to back right after. If you want to get some more gold before your first back and can't gank, you ideally just want to ignore raptors unless they're your only option or you know that camp alone will give you enough gold that you don't have to worry about having no HP left afterwards.

To start off the raptor camp, you'll always auto-attack one small raptor then drop on the spot where they'll stack to get the poison ticking on all of them. You need to auto-attack each small raptor once to add a stack as well as to get the passive healing you from that raptor, the way it works is that the more monsters you've attacked over the past 5 seconds the more healing you'll get from it, and when you have an AoE clear tool such as - that outweighs the benefit of focusing down each raptor individually.

Once every small raptor has been auto-attacked once, you can afford to wait a couple of seconds before casting , during which time you can either add another auto-attack onto the last few raptors you auto-attacked (healthier) or start auto-attacking the big raptor (faster). This is because your passive is still applying to many of them and there's no point refreshing it with before it's done ticking. But you also can't wait too long or will run out one or some of the raptors which is pretty bad for your clear, so you only wait about 2 seconds, as long as you think you can get away with, then cast .

Depending on your level, items and how many times the raptor camp has spawned (it gets tankier each time), some of the small raptors might get one-shot, some might just barely not but subsequently die to the ticking anyway, and some might just barely not die.

This difference is caused by the fact that depending on the order in which you auto-attacked them, some of them have had ticking on them longer than others. It also causes variations in both the strength of during the time that it was ticking on them, as well as the duration in which it was ticking on them.

When you suspect not all raptors will die to one auto-attack + , it's then ideal for you to add another auto-attack to them either during the time that you're waiting to use . Or sometimes it might also seem like none of the raptors will die to just one auto-attack, in which case you can simply cast as soon as they've all been auto-attacked once (there's no point extending the duration if it's going to last until they die anyway), and then auto-attack them all once again to finish them off.

The only time you'll start off focusing the big raptor is if you have and intend to use it anyway, the added damage will make the big raptor much faster to kill and leaves no point in delaying it since it's the highest damaging individual raptor.

There's also a trick you can do to clear more healthily in case you're worried about your HP for whatever reason. When you auto-attack the camp to make them all stack for , drag them all as far to one side as you can, throw down and then cast , then run to the other side of the camp and wait for to stop applying stacks as well as waiting out as much of the aggro reset timer as you can without actually making the camp reset.

During this small time where the camp is sitting there doing nothing you're getting a small bit of healing from on the raptors you auto-attacked (and if you're really concerned about HP and are willing to sacrifice clear speed for it, you can even cast before going into stealth to get healing from the whole camp), and when you start auto-attacking the camp again they'll be far outside of auto-attack range and have to spend time walking to you and tripping over each other before the whole camp is back to auto-attacking you.

This trick is applicable to all camps but is especially impactful for the raptor camp because usually it moves so fast, and you have such little space to walk around in, and you have to stand still for a lot of it anyway to get your ticking on all of them, that there's not much point trying to kite it, but this trick causes an effect similar to kiting.

It's not always worth doing though because it puts on cooldown much later than if you were coming out of stealth at the very start of the camp clear, and also doesn't make use of its movement speed to move between camps quicker. You should only use it if you're particularly concerned about clearing healthily for whatever reason, like if you have very low HP but want to keep clearing for your next item, or if you're literally like 100 HP but need to clear this one camp to get your item.

Clearing Blue Buff

Blue is the tankiest of all buffs and the one that does the most damage, but fortunately it's also very slow moving and has a very wide area you can kite it around without it dropping aggro, so you can do the entire camp taking only 1-2 hits if you wish.

Later on when you have more items its damage is negligible so there's no point kiting it too far and you can just kite it into the direction you want to take it, but earlier on you can kite it as far as it'll go in one direction then kite it in the opposite direction to take minimal damage.

[CLIP NECESSARY]

Jungle Routes

being such a weak clearer, he doesn't really have any specific jungle routes, it mainly comes down to one or two camps you want to do and then you just gank whatever's gankable and adapt: Do you want to recall? Do you want to gank another lane? What camps are nearby and are you healthy enough to clear them?

Junglers always have to adapt but they at least have a vague game plan as to what the ideal clear would be if uninterrupted, but because of his weak clears can't have any full clear routes since any route involving more than 2-3 camps will set him behind and leave him vulnerable to dying to invades. You either find ganks or fall behind.

You will always start at red buff for the following reasons:

1. It's the most important buff for so you want to secure it as early as possible rather than give the enemy jungler a chance to steal it as his first or second buff.
2. It's the hardest buff to clear for so you'll want your bot or top lane's help clearing it.
3. It enables you to level 2 gank since you'll have a slow at level 2 even though you don't have .

Your potential jungle routes are pretty much going to look something like this:

Red buff -> Gank

Red buff -> Blue buff -> Gank

Red buff -> Blue buff -> Gromp -> Gank

Red buff -> Blue buff -> Gromp -> Wolves -> Gank

Red buff -> Blue buff -> Gromp -> Wolves -> Scuttle Crab -> Gank

After your first camp you only don't gank if you can already tell that it'll be a waste of your time, and the same goes for every camp you clear after that.

I'll walk you through the process of moving from camp to camp in cases where you don't find that opportunity to gank:

After red buff you'll want to for movement speed towards the blue camp to secure the second most important camp of your clear, and because this is the easiest camp to clear for , especially after red buff since it moves so slowly and it's easy to kite. Before taking a blast cone into the pit you'll want to use your yellow trinket in the brush inside the pit to ensure the enemy jungler isn't clearing your blue already, or worse, is waiting for you to ambush you. If the coast is clear then you can blast cone into the pit and start clearing blue buff.

After blue you'll go to Gromp to get level 3, since you still don't have any AoE so it'll be the quickest camp for you to clear, and won't cost you too much HP as you'll have saved for it.

Next you can move on to Wolves now that you have to greatly speed up your clear on camps with multiple monsters. Afterwards the Scuttle Crabs should have spawned so you should head over to either one and check if it's safe to farm, either if the enemy jungler isn't trying to contest it or if they're too weak/low HP to contest it from you, or if your laners have lane priority and are able to collapse on them if they try to contest.

After that if you still can't gank you can either go for the second scuttle crab if you know it's still up and that you won't have any difficulty obtaining it, in which case you can through mid lane to get there faster. After that if you still can't gank then you'll go clear as much as you can of your remaining Raptors and Kruggs camps before backing.

Just remember that clearing a camp doesn't lock you into continuing to clear your jungle, always be on the lookout for gank opportunities as long as you have the HP to pull it off.

Red buff -> Level 2 gank

This is a very cheesy tactic which can often catch enemies off-guard as most junglers never gank until after their 3rd camp, while you'll be ganking at around 2 minutes. You just clear your red buff and use to gank a nearby lane. Top/bot lane, depending on which sisde you're on, are the riskiest since they're the furthest away from your blue buff, so the moment you show up on the side lane any competent any jungler will take your blue buff and either your Gromp or your Wolves minimum. If you get 1-2 kills then admittedly this will be worth it, but if you happen to not get anything then losing your camps is a huge blow to your early game.

That being said, depending on your Elo it can be pretty safe to assume that the enemy jungler is very unlikely to be up to my standard of "competent", so at low Elos level 2 ganking bot/top can be a pretty safe play to make since the enemy jungler won't abuse it anyway. But in Diamond+ I almost never level 2 gank the side lane since the risk of losing my camps for no reward is too great.

Ganking mid lane on the other hand is pretty safe and I do it almost every game that I can, even if the odds of getting a kill are very low. This is because it's on the way to your blue camp anyway, so you don't lose much time, so any time where the enemy mid laner is around the halfway mark in the lane I'll gank either to deal some damage and give my mid laner an advantage in lane on my way to blue buff, or straight up to go for a kill. This works better vs ranged champions since melee champions are much more likely to position further back where you have no chance of getting a kill and can barely auto-attack them. That being said, if the melee champion doesn't position further back then they're also the easiest to kill, since they have to walk up closer to last-hit.

Red buff -> Krugs

I'm proud to say I was probably the first innovator of this route on , at the very least by the time RAT IRL adopted it I'd already been doing it as my standard route for months. 's level 2 cheese ganks are so well known by now that everyone expects him to gank them right after red, meaning the tactic isn't as effective as it once was.

Farming Krugs after red buff before going through with your gank allows you to get a massive chunk of XP without taking too much damage which is invaluable for a jungler that struggles with clears as much as doe.

It also allows you to level 2 gank the nearest side lane after your laners hits level 2, by which point your enemies are expecting you to have already gone to the other side of the map and won't be playing as conservatively as they would at level 1 when everyone knows that jungle wants to cheese gank the nearest side lane at level 2.

It's so uncommon and unpredictable that often when I get a successful gank off the enemy will ask me in all chat in confusion what kind of an idiot waits 30 seconds after red to try a gank; but I wasn't waiting, I was farming a camp like junglers do. It's such an uncommon gank path that unless it becomes more well known to the mainstream audience in future, it will always catch enemies off-guard, and often it's easier to gank your side lane when they're level 2 and have more abilities available than when both laners are level 1 anyway, since it can give them access to more damage, mobility or CC that are integral to their gank assistance.

But you miss out on the benefit of being able to kill someone before they've even hit level 2 and then moving onto the rest of the map a lot more quickly than if you were to farm Krugs first, and if the side lane on the opposite side of the map is a lane you'd want to gank ASAP then going out of your way to farm golems rather than just doing red -> blue wastes a lot of time which might lead to your top laner getting solo killed before you can gank, or ganked by the enemy jungler before you had a chance to arrive.

Ganking After Red Buff

Lane Priority

Lane priority is a very important concept for junglers to understand in order to jungle successfully. Lane priority is when a laner has control of their lane to the extent that if a fight breaks out between the two junglers in the river or jungle, that laner will get to move there to help out their jungler before the enemy laner does.

Here's an example of one laner having priority (also known as 'prio' for short).

[EXAMPLE NEEDED]

As you can see, [laner 2] can't walk into the river without walking straight through [laner 1] and their minion wave, they basically can't leave without walking into them and dying, thus if they're going to move to help their jungler they have to wait until [laner 1] has already gone to help; which pretty much condemns the jungler who has to be temporarily left to a 1v2 since it puts them at a massive disadvantage.

This is why junglers always have to be conscious of the lane priority of their nearby laners when picking fights and contesting camps against the enemy jungler. It could be you know that you win a fight against the enemy jungler because they're a weaker champion (not likely, you're ) or simply because they're currently quite low, but if the enemy mid laner has prio and collapses on you to kill you, that's not your mid laner's fault for not roaming too or for not having prio, that's on you for not recognizing that your mid laner couldn't move first because they didn't have prio.

There are varying degrees of lane priority, and in many matchups it constantly shifts in favour of one laner to the other, but generally the stronger laner will be expected to have lane priority over the weaker laner. For example, if you're playing with a you should pretty much expect to never have mid prio before level 6 and even after 6 in many matchups will still never have prio.

However, if your mid laner is someone like against a traditional mage, likewise he won't be expected to have prio before level 6, but after 6 his kill potential becomes much greater and mages stop being able to afford to walk up to keep him shoved in and maintain control of the lane since an overextension resulting in them being hit by can lead to certain death; especially if jungle is invisible in the lane waiting for that spell to hit to commence his gank. To prevent this from happening they have to start playing back towards their tower, giving free reign to push the lane and move into the river at any time he wants.

Additionally, the position of the waves isn't just something that determines priority, but also kill potential. Again to use the example of , even if he's in a matchup against a tanky enough champion where he can't quite one-shot the enemy mid to the extent that they can't leave their tower so they can continue to keep him shoved in, there are still very few mid laners who are able to put themselves in a position where can ult them while they're far enough away from their tower that he has an extended period of time to damage them and kill them, especially if the enemy jungler can help him take them down.

One such matchup for is , who dominates the matchup in a 1v1 for most of the lane when building tanky but can't survive getting hit by as well as being focused by the enemy jungler. He can control the lane for most of the game and to an onlooker who doesn't know any better it might appear that he has prio. You could say he does have prio in a way since technically he can move before , but it wouldn't be a smart move because has a large advantage in 2v2s so if he follows his roam and immediately ults him will be burst down before he can do anything.

This goes for a lot of assassins who excell in taking someone out of the fight as soon as the fight begins, in many matchups they may not have the damage or lead to actually assassinate their opponent from full HP, but in a position where their jungler is able to help deal damage there's no way for the enemy mid laner to survive their combined focus. This makes it hard for most mid laners to really have prio against them once they have their ults, since you'd basically need to shove a wave so big into their tower that they can't afford to give it up to help their jungler.

Additionally one more thing to keep in mind in these assassin matchups is that often assassins will appear to not have prio only because they're freezing the wave to deny CS from the enemy mid laner who can't risk walking up to last-hit for fear of dying, and it's actually the assassin in full control of the lane. In actuality the assassin in this case can almost always just one-shot the enemy mid laner from full HP at all times and is just waiting for the enemy mid laner to step up far enough away from their tower to do so.

In such a case though the assassin basically appears to be giving up prio and lesser skilled opponents themselves might think they have prio because of his freeze, in actuality any attempt at leaving lane will take them away from the safety of their tower and leave them susceptible to being one-shot, helped by the enemy jungler or not. In that case not only can they not leave before the assassin, but they also can't follow without vision to make sure the assassin isn't camping for them in a brush and also can't join the fight until the assassin has already used his cooldowns to basically condemn their own jungler; which puts the fight at a huge disadvantage since few junglers will survive being focused 2v1 like that.

All this to say, the concept of lane priority can get a little complicated to understand when you account for all the scenarios where a laner can technically move first, but would basically be condemning themselves by doing so. Sometimes they can at least prevent the enemy mid moving too, other times it's just simply a case of the enemy mid laner having prio even when they appear not to.

Something that's important to note though is that your laners having prio doesn't matter if they don't use it. The lower Elo you are the more likely this is to happen, so bear this in mind as it's not uncommon for this to happen even in my Master games. Additionally, your laners having prio also doesn't matter if you lose fights so badly to the enemy jungler that you die before they can even arrive to help. is a highly vulnerable jungler and doesn't last long against champions like , , , etc; in fact many of these can one-shot him with a lead or even without. It's important to understand the benefits and workings of lane priority, but be weary of situations where lane priority is irrelevant since you'd die too quick for it to matter.

Now, what are situations where lane priority actually matters? The most common one is when both you and the enemy jungler both go for the same scuttle crab, if you see each other from far enough away that a fight doesn't just instantly break out then the one to get the scuttle will basically be whoever's mid laner moves first to zone off the enemy jungler; but things can get ugly fast if one top lane/bot lane has massive prio over the other and can move in to collapse with their mid laner in a 3v2/4v2. Mid lane prio is the most important prio because it's the center of the map and therefore tends to be nearest to most skirmishes, but side lane prio is also a factor you need to keep in mind. Additionally, because of bot lane being a lane of 2 people it's the most influential prio to have in fights where the bot lane has time to reach the fight, especially common if the scuttle happens to be towards the center or bottom of the river.

Additionally it matters when invading the enemy jungle. As you will almost never invade in situations where there's a chance of running into the enemy jungle since you basically lose every fight, but frequently you will be the one getting invaded. If your mid laner has prio then if you can keep the enemy jungler around for long enough without dying to them your mid laner can collapse, making it a very risky and often stupid invade from the enemy jungler. Whereas on the other hand, if your mid laner is the one without prio then you likely have to give up the camp since on top of being weaker 1v1 in most matchups you're likely to get collapsed on if you stay.

In all cases where you need your laners to exercise their prio, spamming the Assistance ping is key. Regardless of your Elo and whether they understand the concept of prio, it's highly likely your laners don't have the map awareness to execute on it, at least not right away. It's important you make them aware of the situation by pinging as much as it allows you.

Ganking

There's a lot to break down here because 's entire approach to executing ganks tends to be different to a traditional jungler's. means he can for the most part ignore wards entirely so a lot of gank paths that would fail for other junglers can succeed for , meaning he has a lot more gank opportunities available to him. This is what makes such a successful jungler if you can learn to distinguish all the opportunities available to you and pick out the best ones.

There are two ways of ganking, regular ganks which you already know about, and lane ganks which you may not. Lane ganks are when a jungler enters the lane through the same position as his laners rather than by flanking the enemies and ganks that way, either by simply running up in plain sight and cheesing an unexpected gank that way, or more commonly by sneaking into an unwarded brush (on side lanes) and ganking out of the brush.

Lane ganks are especially effective on because of the fact that without a pink ward in one of the brushes, there's no way for the enemies to detect it. It's harder to get into an optimal position for the gank when lane ganking compared to when ganking regularly, but if you don't know whether they have vision or not a lane gank can be optimal to make sure you're not detected if you think it can work well anyway.

aaaaaaaaaaaaTop lane exampleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaMid lane exampleaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBot lane example

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Early on laners will pretty much only place wards directly in the nearest river brush to their lane, since they can't venture too far out to ward without losing too much XP. The main exception is mid laners with good early wave clear who can go ward the pixel brush in between waves, and you might also find the enemy jungler frequently warding these too (it's more common the higher you climb).

Pixel brush

Found in both rivers, right next to mid lane.

You should be noticing if any of the enemy laners, especially mid, leaves for an extended period of time anyway to be sure they're not coming to invade you/contest scuttle crab with their jungler, but it can be hard to know exactly where the enemy's warded at all times, so for the most part you should avoid stepping near the pixel brush and giving away your location unless you need to in order to take a scuttle crab. You don't need to go through the area to gank side lanes and even if you want to gank mid without lane ganking, you can still stealth before entering the pixel brush area without losing out on much of the duration.

To gank a side lane you should usually be stealthing before reaching the river brush area, which is likely the only area they'll have warded if at all. You can stealth a little later to gain some extra duration only if you know it's not warded or very unlikely to be.

River brush

[/color]Found in both rivers, leading to the top and bot lanes.

While ganking any lane, you want to walk directly onto the lane while stealthed and ideally position behind the person you want to gank, making it so their best escape route is to run into you. The main exceptions are when the enemy has a targeted gap closer like or which they can use on you to get away from your laners, or if the target can quickly kill you if they turn on you, which varies depending on which champion it is and what your HP is.

If it's the former you should position as close to them as possible from the side, so their gap closer doesn't cover much distance away from your laner, and if it's the latter then the optimal positioning varies depending on just how much of a threat they are, so-so threat level you can just position to their side so you're safe in that they can't turn on you without also being in damage range of your laners, but not too safe that it sacrifices too much chase/gank potential, whereas against higher threat champions you'll want to position right behind them next to your laners so if they try to turn on you they'll have to run directly into your team mates to do so.

Here's an example of positioning against a medium threat. I wasn't sure how how much cooldown remained on Nautilus's and I was fairly sure that the CC and damage if it hit me would be enough that they could turn on me and burst me down if I aggressively positioned behind them, but it wasn't also such a massive threat that I needed to position all the way ahead of them next to , so I positioned to the side where they couldn't turn without ignoring Ezreal who would then clean up, and also afforded me a better position from which to chase them.

Dealing With Wards

The later the game goes the more you need to keep in mind 2 things that limit your gank options: deep wards and s.

A deep ward basically means that rather than warding to protect against ganks by warding the river brush nearest to their lane, the enemy has wards deeper into the river or even into your jungle to see which direction you're moving in and predicting what ganks you're going to make based off of that. Bearing in mind that this is a possibility, you would pretty much always rather go for a lane gank than a regular gank if you think it can succeed either way, since deep wards can give your gank away before you even enter stealth.

Deep wards admittedly are something you rarely have to worry about even as at lower Elos, but most people regardless of Elo will have the sensibility to buy s against .

If you don't know whether a side lane has a or not, you should consider whether lane ganking would be more or less equally as likely to succeed as a normal gank would. If it does it makes sense to lane gank even if you have to walk a longer distance to do so, since a would give your gank away and make the enemy laner play a lot more cautiously for the next minute or so, making getting a successful gank off less likely.

If a lane gank seems too unlikely to succeed because the enemy laner's positioning won't let you sneak past them and your laner doesn't have enough engage/CC to make the gank work despite that, you should just try ganking through the river anyway.

If there's no pink then great, if there is you can try and go through with the gank anyway and see if the enemy laner is a blind incompetent monkey who can't even see the jungler coming when he's warded against it (this happens really often at low Elo), and if he starts backing off and the gank won't work, just clear the control ward and go on with your day, possibly coming in for a return gank in a minute or two if convenient.

How To Know When To Gank

There are many factors that go into determining whether you can successfully gank a lane, and I'll do my best to break down the most important ones.

Positioning

This is the most obvious factor. If someone is over-extended they are at their most vulnerable, if they're at the tower they're safest. However, the noob trap for low Elo players is to assume it's basically the only factor that matters. Even if someone is last-hitting right in front of their tower that doesn't mean they're safe, and a lane gank would ensure they have no warning that you're coming.

Example

On the flip side, being overextended doesn't also necessarily mean that they're gankable either. If your laner's low HP or if the enemy laners have the capability to turn and burst either of you down and then walk away then you wouldn't want to gank that lane anyway.

To give you an example, ganking a level 6 especially after is a scary idea for if she isn't near death because she can turn on you with and burst you down leaving you with no way of escaping due to her burst and mobility, and this is the case no matter how over-extended she is. Likewise can pretty much always one-shot you whenever he has spells available no matter what his HP or how overextended he is, almost guaranteeing to make it a 1 for 1 trade rather than a clean gank.

Positioning doesn't just cover how close they are to their tower, but also how close they are to your laner. If your laner is someone like and they're both last-hitting in melee range, that makes the enemy top laner easily engaged on by when he comes too close for a last-hit.

Alternatively the enemy laner could be someone like and keeping the at bay with his superior range and zoning capabilities. Not only can not just readily engage at a moment's notice, but if he starts walking up to to get in range for it makes it very obvious to that he's probably about to get ganked, giving him the signal to back off and making it a very hard lane to gank overall. However, even this can still potentially be gankable if your laner has up and is on the same page as you. Ping their before you gank to be sure.

Example

Even though Neeko sees me briefly on the pink ward, the
gank still works perfectly thanks to Pantheon's Flash
followup against a Diamond 1 opponent who really should
know better.

HP

Another obvious one, the closer someone already is to dying by the time you gank them, the greater the chances of them dying during your gank. Higher HP targets limit how much you can get done in a gank while lower HP targets widen it.

But just as before, high HP or low HP isn't the be-all and end-all of whether a gank will work. That 20% HP with all spells available can still one-shot you the moment you pop out of stealth, and that full HP can still be dived even under tower.

Examples

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Ally Gank Assistance

This is one of the two factors which allows you to tell from as early as loading screen which lanes will likely be most gankable throughout the game and which ones you'll probably not want to waste your time on.

Champions like are awful at receiving ganks because they have no gap closer or CC to engage or followup an engage with, they can only run at an enemy and hit them, either before you've made your presence known at which point most competent enemies will realize they're being ganked, or after you've made your presence known at which point they have trouble closing the gap onto the enemy because they have no gap closer.

On the flip side, champions with either CC, gap closers or both are great at receiving ganks. You have champions like and with their CC doubled as gap closers to either initiate or follow up an engage during ganks, with his double/triple dashes and potential slow on to provide great followup on a gank from a very large distance without having to give you away in the process, with double dashes and a stun, etc. Having these champions or picks like them on your team will often guarantee you to have a lane you can play around to pick up kills and snowball because of their great gank assistance combined with the ever-present threat of your ganks.

Example

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaThe range of Fizz's followup thanks to his three dashes
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallows him to assist my gank onto the safely positioned
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaDiana with some damage of his own, and without giving
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathe gank away.

Enemy Gank Aversion

This goes hand in hand with ally gank assistance. Just as your allies can be particularly good or bad at receiving ganks your ganks, enemies can be particularly good or bad at escaping them. The obvious perpetrators are champions with free dashes or blinks like , , , , etc. But also things like 's or 's can make it easy for them to "outplay" your ganks with one button click.

It's obviously still possible to gank these champions, but it's much harder than immobile/unsafe champions and usually it's waste of time to try and gank them unless they're low enough HP that they're killable even through their escape, or your laners have a way to counter their escape.

The cooldown of enemy es is also a factor you must consider to determine which how gank-averse a lane is, and the absence of an enemy's Flash makes them a much more desirable target while having it up makes them much harder to gank. You don't want to spend all game running around blowing Flashes and getting no kills, so if you gank bot and blow a Flash there, then gank mid and blow a Flash there too, rather than going top because third time's the charm you'd rather just re-gank one of the lanes that already lost their flash. In fact you can even just re-gank a lane immediately after blowing their , often enemies will fail to respect the possibility of an immediate re-gank.

Example

Between this and ally gank assistance, you should be able to identify pretty accurately in loading screen which lanes will be most gankable and you should try hardest to play around, while still adapting to the unpredictable developments that will occur in-game and forming your decision-making around them.

Enemy Jungler Location

Something you should always be wary of is the possibility of a countergank from the enemy jungler, and you should also extend it beyond the enemy jungler and take into account any enemy champion currently out of vision who could be nearby in position to countergank.

Especially as who is not a great earlygame champion, getting counterganked is something you generally want to really avoid so as to not risk getting double killed. That being said, counterganks are not always a death sentence especially against champions who also don't have amazing early-games, so sometimes even if you think it's possible or likely you'll get counterganked you can still go through with it.

Here for example we had no vision in the river and no information on the enemy jungle 's location, and the enemy bot lane was in a position where it was really obvious that I had a good opportunity to gank, so obvious that it would be easy for an enemy jungler to realize it too and come counter it. Once we see Kennen move into the river this further cemented for me the belief that Sylas was likely waiting in place to countergank; however Sylas doesn't have an amazing earlygame either and we had the ability to burst so fast that even getting counterganked I believed we could still win the fight, since had only just started moving and wouldn't be able to join the fight for a while yet.

We end up trading 1 for 1 while nearly taking a second kill, our two survivors strongly out-trading their two survivors, and wasting a great deal of 's time who gained nothing from coming bot, but had to come anyway to save his team mates.

Had the enemy jungler been or instead, the possibility of a countergank would have led me to not take that play since we definitely wouldn't have won that fight against some of the stronger earlygame junglers, and the degree to how free the gank looked on the surface was too great to expect a competent enemy jungler wouldn't notice it and move into position to counter it, making the risk too big to take.

The lower you are in Elo though the less you have to worry about the enemy jungler being capable of thinking far enough ahead to actually be able to countergank though, you're more likely to get unlucky that he happened to want to gank the same lane at the same time as you, you'll almost never face situations where the enemy jungler actively sits in an unwarded area waiting for you to gank unless he actually had vision of you going for the gank.

Even in high Elo to a large extent it's often smart to go through with a gank in situations where you could get countered and where being countered would be awful just because the likelihood of the enemy jungler predicting the gank is very low. League is a game where you're never operating with 100% knowledge of everything that's going on so you can't just only take ganks that don't have any possibility of going wrong since so few of those exist, and most of the ones with risk involved will usually turn out fine anyway which makes it dumb not to go for many of them.

It's all about measuring the level of risk and comparing it to the reward if it goes right, and making a decision based on that. At low Elo the risk is smaller so you have more opportunities available to you, while at high Elo you have to be more conscious about situations like in the clip above where the enemy jungler is probably too smart to let you freely go through with that gank, and therefore measuring the level of risk in taking the 3v3 fight which in that particular case happened to be favourable, but regularly isn't.

Using Enemy Win Conditions To Predict All-Ins

Having good game knowledge of other roles makes your jungling better as you develop an understanding of the enemy laners' win conditions for their matchup and can use that to predict their actions.

For example, if you're playing against a - bot lane, you know will start at level 1 and use it along with 's to immediately all-in and try and one-shot one of your bot laners. You can use this knowledge to rush straight to bot after red, and if possible indicating to your bot lane that they should bait. If you're on red side you can even run straight from top side to bot side after getting your red buff to make sure you get there while everyone is still level 1 and still wants to engage, in this case it's even better because they don't expect an instant level 2 gank from a jungler starting on top side and are more likely to assume they're safe to engage.

Likewise against champions like you can expect them to want to all-in pretty much every time is up, and can abuse that knowledge to be lying in wait when it happens. can only trade well by using her only escape to trade, can only trade well by all-inning with , can only contribute after closing the gap with , etc. These are all things you need to be aware of.

Understand what your enemies have to do to win lane, both as a general basis but especially in relation to their individual matchup. For example if you have a or support and the enemy has , the enemies are going to get poked down by your support constantly because they get strongly out-ranged and out-traded, and their only option to stop it is to engage and catch out your support. Of course they're not going to all-in with a massive wave pushing towards them either, but in even circumstances, they want to all-in right away. Identify scenarios like these to understand that an enemy will all-in before they even do it, so you can be in place to gank them during their engage.

Examples

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Be Aware

Map awareness is the greatest skill a jungler can have. There will be thousands of randomly occurring developments in your games and your ability to identify ones which open up a gank opportunity best determine your ability to secure successful ganks.

In the clip I already linked above for example, I was doing the red buff into Krugs route but I saw the enemy bot lane had cheesed my bot lane at tri brush and there was a fight going on. Rather than continuing with my route, I used to try and gank the enemies even after the fight had broken up, since everyone was low and they could potentially try and re-engage. They didn't but I ended up getting the perfect opportunity to catch out , and unfortunately I misclicked my final auto-attack onto which caused me to miss out on the kill, but it burned her and her HP when she was already in a vulnerable state, and it opened up a followup gank opportunity which then led to a successful kill.

In the following clip from the same game, again I show an example of exercising proper awareness as a jungler as while doing blue and scuttle I still keep tabs on bot lane, as they're low enough that I'm aware something might happen that might warrant a gank. Instead I see backing off to presumably recall and leaving alone under tower at 20% HP, capable of being dived. Realizing that this is a limited opportunity that will be lost the moment the tower kills the minions, I abandon my scuttle crab even though it's less than 5 seconds away from dying and dive Draven instead, who backed off realizing my bot lane could dive him alone but wasn't able to escape because of my perceptiveness leading me to be at the right place to cut him off. Had I tried to finish my scuttle, he would've already been gone by the time I arrived.

You don't have to hover your camera over your laners all the time, especially since sucks at farming camps and you need to devote a lot of time to kiting and farming healthily, but at the very least pay close attention to the minimap while you farm. A sudden movement from any champion on the map could mean someone just engaged and there's an all-in you could join in. When that happens, consider whether the camp you're farming is really that important to finish or whether you should leave it and go help your team.

Awareness is the skill which brings all the factors mentioned together and allows you to execute on them, so make sure you never falter in paying attention to the map.

Team-fighting on jungle is no different to teamfighting on bot lane except for having available to you. Though they're different roles in the sense that one is a laner and the other is a jungler, they're the same champion building mostly the same items both fulfilling the role of ADC in teamfights. So any knowledge you have in teamfighting as an ADC, and especially as ADC , will translate to jungle as well.

Teamfighting on is more complicated than other ADCs due to the variety of options available to you. On basically every other ADC your game plan is always to kite the enemy frontline and stay safe, but is as much an AoE assassin as an ADC, meaning he has the potential to assassinate even multiple targets at a time, but as an ADC he has to ensure that it's safe for him to do so without getting instantly CC'd and blown up.

What you can get away with depends on the enemies' burst, CC, range of said factors as well as what cooldowns have already been used. There is no easy way to tell except through experience, which is why I wholly recommend limit testing as much as you can. When you can't tell if a certain move would be stupid or not, just try it and you'll have your answer! Then learn from all the answers you gather to form a better picture of the situations where you can go for AoE assassination plays on the enemy backline and when it's better to stick to your own backline.

To help you get a feel for how to approach different scenarios, I'm going to present you a bunch of different teamfight situations from some of my games, and walk you through my thought process for playing them out the way I did.

In this situation I know it's "safe", or at least good if I can pull it off, to go for AoE here even without my team around because the enemy team are all focusing on the baron and any threats are easily kitable for the most part. Should those threats turn on me I will have to switch to kiting whoever's coming for me rather than positioning for maximum AoE damage, but they are unlikely to ever be able to kill me.

The threats in this situation are , and . The biggest concern is that 's has a high range with both casts put together, and if that hits me I will get stunned and combined with and/or going for me too the chain burst/CC will be enough to wipe me out very quickly, so before I go in ideally I want to be as far away from me as possible so that there's no need to even try to dodge his chain. and on the other hand have far more limited engage range, so I know that short of them ing on me, they will not be able to get on me unless I allow them to, so all I need to do is kite them if they try to turn on me.

At 0:08 I get a good opportunity to open up onto who is separated from her team while is too far away to engage on me, which could be the best opportunity I'll get so I take it. This means that at least initially I won't be doing much AoE because is split from her team, but I have an opportunity to kill or at least seriously chunk out their main DPS, and I also know that either from her running away or her team coming to help her, sooner or later there will be overlap between focusing and also doing AoE on their team.

So I act on the opportunity, starting off with one auto-attack and during the downtime between that and my next auto throwing out on top of , as it'll both slow her escape as well as slow anyone trying to walk through that area to get on top of me, acting as both self-peel and a tool to help secure 's death.

As expected, 1 second after revealing myself to attack all 4 of her team mates turn to my direction but are too far away to immediately reach me. Because was also positioning aggressively rather than trying to run from me I was already orb-walking away from her rather than towards her, because if she's not forcing me to chase her down then there's no point getting any closer to her team than I need to. And once their team starts to turn towards me this cements the need for using orb-walking to kite rather than get closer to any particular target.

I continue to focus as well as the main bulk of her team for as long as none of her team are close to being an immediate threat, then at 0:10 I switch focus to , since threatening to jump on me and assassinate me forces me to deal with her and get that threat out of the way before continuing to deal damage to her team; though because of the baron pit keeping them stacked up and close together, in focusing I'm still dealing damage to and even even though my only focus right now is dealing with .

At 0:11 I use , again in between auto-attack downtimes to maximize DPS, and it's around this time that you see that I stop kiting away and stand still during my auto-attacks momentarily, and then proceed to even take a step forwards even though is still heading towards me. This is because around this time the enemies ( and specifically) I'd been damaging with my AoE had all dropped so low, included, that I knew that even if jumped on me at that moment, with me being full HP and their team being so low I had time to kill her before she had time to kill me, and then could finish off her team mates with my AoE before they had a chance to kill me.

Also, though I didn't notice it until analyzing the video just now, unbeknownst to me had already wasted on a second earlier in a terrible attempt at closing the gap towards me, so even once she was in range there was nothing she could actually do anyway besides throw at me. I didn't even notice this, but because she did, she couldn't gap close onto me to use ult and therefore the damage that I took from letting her get in my range was far lower than it should've been. Still, I was confident that even if she'd had , while I would have certainly been chunked out to some extent, she didn't have enough time at that point to fully take me down, and her team were not in a position to capitalize on the damage either.

With the knowledge that she couldn't kill me before I killed her, the most effective positioning for me at this point isn't getting away from , but staying within focusing range of her team mates so that the instant she drops I can keep hitting them with the remaining duration of and not waste time walking towards them to get back into range; kiting to prevent her damaging me stops being a requirement the moment that damage stops having any chance of killing me.

And because she didn't have available I never even had to stop AoE'ing her team while focusing her, the last couple of auto-attacks onto also take down and chunk out . Had I kept kiting away the entire time my auto-attacks eventually would have been too far away to AoE her team mates even with their immense range, which is why at a certain point once I knew any incoming damage I could take would be irrelevant to the outcome of the fight, it became smart to stop kiting and instead stay in range/start moving closer, in order to prioritize dealing damage over safety.

Safety is important, but when you know the enemy doesn't have the tools to kill you anyway, whether because of lack of cooldowns or not having enough HP to kill you before you kill them, you can afford to sacrifice some safety in favour of dealing damage.

A miscalculation in that regard will easily get you killed though, for example if had been fed (and not wasted the way she did) she could have killed me in 0.5 seconds after I let her get in range of me, and boy would I have looked stupid then to have stopped kiting her. But she wasn't particularly fed and though we didn't get to see her burst because she wasted , I'm confident she wouldn't have time to kill me and her team mates were also too far away to do anything with the low HP bar she would've left me with, resulting in a situation where the correct move was to sacrifice safety in the form of allowing myself to take unnecessary damage in exchange for getting to deal more damage myself, comfortable in the knowledge that the trade-off was worth it. Though truthfully, you can see this fight was so much of a stomp by that point that it wouldn't really have made a difference for the outcome whether I kited away or not anyway, the only difference is we would've won it a few seconds slower.

One important thing to note is that my decision to even go in this way in the first place was dependent on the particular champions on the enemy team, and the confidence that it would likely turn out well for me if I stayed far enough away from . Switch the junglers around, so our team has and their team has , and suddenly my decision has to account for the super long range engage of 's especially when combined with .

And unlike , this isn't an engage I can just comfortably stay out of range of while still hitting her team; in this case the only option would've been to delay going in until I can go across to hide behind my team, and my ability to output damage would be limited by whether I had my team going aggressive with me and going deeper than me to act as a meat shield between me and .

And even with the reality of it being a rather than a my decision still wasn't entirely safe, for example if or had and just jumped on me and one-shot me, or at least done enough burst to kill me with the help of their team, this would have looked pretty stupid, and I had no to counteract it.

This move wasn't a decision I made with 100% confidence that it would work out, this was a move I made knowing that it would work out if no one ed on me. It was a risk I took knowing that if they didn't have or didn't think it would be necessary to use it, I had the potential to basically ace their team 1v5 in that situation, making it a medium-risk, super-high-reward play which I felt was worth the attempt. If their jungler had been it really would've been no different except rather than being medium-risk it would've been super-high-risk, which would've been enough for me to not give it a shot. It still could've realistically worked out if I just dodged , but the chances of getting hit would be too big for me to bother trying without having as a fall-back.

I hope you've found this guide helpful. It's by far the most time-consuming guide I've ever written despite not being necessarily the longest, tackling a lot of concepts you don't usually see talked about to this level of depth and it all required a lot of thinking on my part about how best to explain it, word it, frame it, organize it, etc. All with the end goal that if this isn't the most informative guide you've ever read in your life then I've failed at what I set out to do.

Please consider lending a follow to my socials and channels if you'd like to support my work, and good luck with your jungle games!

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