Working on collecting information on being a better jungler.

Information is interesting. As with many things timing and circumstance matter.

You might get stellar advice, but not be ready to implement it due to needing other pieces of the puzzle to resolve themselves first.

If you watch a masterful martial artist perform a technique on an opponent, what you get at first might be something along the lines of, well he blocked their punch and then clotheslined their opponent and they fell down.

But when you break it down your realize that very little force was actually used, so it wasn't a classic brute force clothesline like you might see in a bar room brawl.

And even after you've had it broken down for you so you know all the individual steps you still can't make it work.

So I had an earlier coach point out that some lanes naturally push faster than others and that is something you can take advantage of, potentially repeatedly if they will always push faster. This can let you set up for a rinse & repeat style of gank on that lane (laners with Teleport can also be susceptible to this style of gank..you kill them once and then go take scuttle and then kill them again for instance).

But what I didn't get from that coach (and to be fair to them, I got frustrated at not quite grasping what they were getting at and didn't finish the last session with them), is how to incorporate this knowledge into my pathing.

Enter another coach which helped me connect the dots in a systematic way that let me approach every game with how I want to tackle pathing, ganking, counterganking, and challenging the enemy jungler.

Twenty games in while isn't 100% automatic, it is getting there, in way that sort of obscures that it is happening. By which I mean, I'm thinking about it, it just isn't taking as many brain resources.

I imagine more accomplished junglers do this sort of thing like they breath, which is one reason a lot of them don't explain what they are doing. Or if they do, they only rarely mention it. And even when you hear them say it, it might not be clear to you if you don't have the right framework to understand the techniques they are using to determine where they need to be.

PantsAreDragon has mentioned that he only needs a few minutes of watching another jungler to understand what they are doing and why. For those of us who haven't hit Challenger yet, it is going to take a little longer and we may need someone to point out that certain pieces of the puzzle even exist.

So one of the pieces of advice that always comes up is keep your champion pool small.

I'm a poster boy for trying to play everything, because it "fits our team comp", which has worked out for me in some games, but not others.

So let's look at the following to see why it is a good idea to keep your champion pool small:

1. Which lanes will push?
2. What is my jungle route going to be?
3. What is the enemy jungle route going to be?
4. Do I win the 1v1 vs the enemy jungler?
5. Do we win the 2v2?

1. is generic information. Useful for any champion you play
2. is champion specific information (if you want to clear healthy and efficiently)
3. is broad information that you might guess based on
-Common jungle routes
-the capablities of the enemy jungler
--good AoE clears
--good single target clears
--can they gank at level 2
4. is champion specific
5. experience based (but possible to guess based on CC and early game damage)

So 2, 4, and 5 rely heavily on champion specific knowledge

Ergo the more champions you play the bigger your knowledge base has to be in order to be able to correctly predict the outcomes for various gameplans.

I'm having pretty good success on Dr. Mundo and Hecarim, having a 60% winrate on both champions. Dr. Mundo is great into AP comps though he struggles somewhat with getting to backlines, whereas Hecarim is pretty much guaranteed to get there. So, those are my concessions to team comp.

Two champions that are strong in the META, are reasonably easy to play, and have carry potential.

Off-role I go ADC as Sivir and just try to make sure I can do damage when my team needs me to do damage.

On Top of that one of the most prevelant pieces of advice I'm seeing is GET RIFT HERALD. Preferrably before the 14 minute mark so you can knock out some tower plates (preferrably the last two plates on a tower as those are the hardest to get). And if possible step back and feed that gold to one of your carries so they can get to an item spike that much faster.

If you get it later than 14 minutes then try to hold it until after you win a teamfight so you can use it to knock down several towers and possibly an inhibitor in a lane.

Getting the gold and opening up that section of the map are both big for accelerating the pace of a game.

And if your early game was good you want to use your lead and win as early as possible so it is less likely that the enemy team will recover and your team has fewer opportunities to throw.

If on the other hand your early game went poorly you want to slow the pace of the game by only fighting around objectives, rather than fighting willy nilly over whatever with no objectives to gain. And rift herald can help get you some of the objectives that you need to get the game back on a manageable course.