Hey there, you may have read my earlier article on supporting your support as an ADC and I had a couple of requests to expand the idea to the other roles. I figured I would dive into my main role as jungler. I’ve been jungling since mid-Season 1. It was my first role I ever dedicated myself to and it remains one of my favorite roles. There are a lot of points made in the ADC guide than can also apply to junglers and I hope to point out specific tips for junglers. I will be stressing factors that are 100% vital to any role and should be reiterated.

Share That Experience and Gold

Junglers have a nifty item known as Bumba’s Mask which is the must-have item for all junglers (yes, even you Thanatos mains unless you are very, very, very good at snowballing off of kills). The most important part of the passive is “if you have an ally nearby, you get the normal gold reward as if you were solo.” While this does not affect your personal gold income, it does affect your team’s gold income. What the jungler really wants to do is share every camp they can as it will benefit the team.

Junglers should try to share as many camps as they can with their supports. Map awareness, I will not stress enough, is vital to the success of any character in the game. If a support is aiming for a camp, the jungler should hold on for a moment from killing the large minion so that their support can benefit from the gold and experience.

Junglers, much like supports, can easily fall behind in gold and experience. By sharing, they help ensure that they and their support can keep up with the rest of the team. The most important camps to share will be the duo-side back camp, the red buff, and the allied boars.

Communicate Ganks

There is never a sadder moment in a jungler’s life than when they aim for a lane to gank thinking “it’s obvious I’m coming for a gank” and the laner backs away from the gank. This often leads to failed ganks and frustration. This can be especially important in the duo lane where the jungler wants to shut down or prevent the enemy ADC from getting ahead and possibly keep the enemy support behind.

Even tossing out a VG1/3 will help the support, especially, know that they need to “go in” and provide the CC they can which will increase the chances of a gank being successful.

Now, everyone should know that supports end up wandering the jungle at some point to permit their ADCs to get solo farm and help out with ganks, turning any lane into a 1v3. However, a 1v3 only exists if the jungler and support are on the same page, so communicating a gank is important.

Don’t Forget the Duo Lane

Junglers frequently have this issue where they are needed in all areas of the map so they often choose to focus on one half of the map over the other unless they have crazy mobility like Thor. A lot of newer junglers, I have noticed, tend to spend more time on the solo side of the map as it is easier to confirm speed buff, blue buff, and there is this idea of balancing the numbers on the map so that the duo side has two people “guarding” it and the solo side has two.

This isn’t always correct. As a jungler, they need to be constantly looking out for opportunities and it is possible to get ahead by securing a double kill in the duo lane over a single kill in the solo lane especially since popular solos tend to be very tanky.

What can be done as a jungler? Pay attention to the duo composition of the allied team versus the enemy team. If the allied team has poor lane push in the duo lane compared to the enemy team, it is likely that they will be pushed under tower and the enemy duo can become an easy gank and an easy double kill if the jungler and support are on the same page.

Wards Win Wars

A few key locations where junglers may want to ward.

Junglers generally have better opportunities to ward as they end up everywhere on the map and placing a ward in a few key areas may permit the support to be more selective with their wards. This can save them gold which lets them get to their builds faster and be an effective support.

Now, this isn’t to say that supports should ward less, but they may be able to focus more on counter-warding which can free up the jungle (especially the enemy jungle) for the jungler and make the whole jungle safer in general. It will also help out with lanes that are (possibly) neglecting their warding duties.

Sync-Up Picks

Junglers have a massive variety of abilities and each jungler has pros and cons to them. Obvious, right? Well, the same exists for supports. They have different levels of CC, damage, and setup.

Supports will generally try to coordinate with their ADC to give themselves the best chance of winning their lane and junglers can do the same. Having a support with poor CC such as stuns, taunts, and so on might lend the junglers to picking a god with high control.

Fafnir and Nemesis, for instance, have poor synergy as Fafnir’s stun is single target. Before any naysayers appear, it is possible for Fafnir and Nemesis to work well together as Fafnir can buff Nemesis’ attack speed and power (the former of which she benefits from greatly), but the lack of hard CC such as stuns needs to be supplemented elsewhere. So the jungler may want to consider someone like Hun Batz instead whose ultimate gives plenty of control.

Another jungle-support that can be questionable is Ne Zha and Sobek. Sobek offers a lot of displacement as his CC. With his knock up and pluck, his skill truly shines as a disruptor. Ne Zha, however, has relatively difficult time hitting abilities and it is much easier to miss them if Sobek manages to displace Ne Zha’s target. This can lead to frustration and a lot of missed kills.

The easiest way to mend this is to pick a jungler who works well with their support. Of course, supports should also consider how their pick affects the whole team, and the jungler can offer suggestions like “try X god as it works well with my Y pick,” but that does mean that someone has to budge and it might be easier for the jungler to switch if the support syncs well with the rest of the team (and vice versa, supports!).

Pay Attention to Roles of Primary and Secondary Initiation

I made a thread once when Khepri was soon to be released to ranked about primary and secondary initiators. Usually initiation is dependent on the support, the jungler, and the solo depending on picks. If a jungler has very good primary initiation like Hun Batz with his ult, they need to communicate when they are “going in” so that supports can follow up.

If the jungler is a secondary initiator (like Awilix, Ne Zha, and Susano-o), they should pay close attention to when the support initiates and try to follow up.

Much like with the ADC guide, sometimes supports initiate at the worst of times and it will take time to learn when an initiation is good, poor, or possible to turn around if the whole team follows up.

Provide Peel

I like to refer to some characters, especially junglers, as scavengers. These would be junglers like Serqet and Arachne who don’t necessarily excel in the middle of teamfights. They tend to look for picks, meaning enemies that are out of position or low on health are prime targets for them to finish off.

Scavengers tend to hang out in the background and off to the side of a teamfight only to pop up out of nowhere to confirm a kill. However, if looking for picks is difficult because the enemy team tends to stick together or the jungler is too far behind to provide the 100-0 kill potential, they can hang out with their hunters and mages to help peel. Solo laners, especially warriors, tend to try to disrupt the enemy backline and there are many a lost game where the support is in the frontline and unable to get to the backline in time to save their squishies from the enemy warrior.

That is where a jungler can come in handy. If they’re far enough behind or unable to find picks, they can stay close to the squishies to fulfill the role of peel so the support can focus on frontline duties.

Overall

Supports have it rough, so do junglers. There are things that junglers can do to help out their support which can benefit themselves and, above all, the team.

Good luck, and happy jungling!

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