My opgg
Before I go deeper into anything, I need to make it clear that I am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to jungle (since I'm a chall mid main), there are still areas where I can improve a lot, but I think reaching Master with a pretty nice win rate is a solid achievement. Even though I've only now reached master, I've been playing in Master lobbies for the past 30 games and only encountered a challenger player once. Average elo in most games is around 800lp master. I'll give you some tips on what I've noticed made me win/lose my games.
It is not even funny how poorly people clear, even in purple elo. I don't think people understand how broken practice tool is for junglers. You have the luxury of being able to practice your first full clear until you are happy with how you clear. In other words, you are training for something practical that you can actually use in your games, whereas laners can't do that. Laners can't go into practice tool and learn how to trade, space, jungle track, track enemy supp etc. Go in practice tool and make sure you can get good times. Use websites like dpm to see the average times other people get on the champion you are playing and try to mimic it. Find one tricks or really good players on your champions and watch them clear. Learn how many basic attacks they do on each camp, at which hp threshold do they start moving to other camp, are they pulling the next camp while still finishing the first one etc. I've personally written down in notepad tips on Elise Talon and Qiyana on how to full clear by watching people like Agurin (Elise), Kaostanza (Talon) and some random challenger Qiyana players on youtube.
- Do not use chat/mute pings
Very simple, do not use chat. There is nothing useful your team can tell you that they can't say with pings. The only thing having chat on will do to you is tempt you to flame them back, since remember, if your team makes a mistake, it is your fault (sarcasm obviously). Be prepared to take the blame for the mistakes your team is making and just move on. If they start being annoying with pings, just mute them.
Many people struggle with responding to being invaded by the enemy jungler. I need to make it clear that invading on the first full clear is the biggest flip there is. Play for consistency, which means just full clear every game. Jungle matchups imo comes down to 2 things, knowing if you win the 1v1 on scuttle and how the enemy junglers wants to clear. If you are playing vs Graves/Nida/Kindred/Shaco, you can expect them to invade you. The thing you want to do vs these junglers is ward your blue and start on Red side. This will make it so that if they go for lvl 2 invade (raptors/red into invade on your Blue) you will know it and you can respond by invading their blue buff. If you are done with your 3rd camp and you don't see enemy jungler on your Blue ward, chances are they won't invade you. If they for some reason do, ping your laners to come help you and if they don't, give it and go steal enemy camps if you have prio in lanes.
Whenever possible, always path to bot. Firstly, you will be pathing into dragon, which is the best objective to stack if the game goes long. Secondly, you are pathing into 2 people as opposed to top which is just one person. This means that you have twice the amount of potential gold and xp from kills, but also, most adc players have quite a fragile ego and will not respect you ganking them and will start flaming everyone if something goes bad for them. Thirdly, winning bot most of the time is way better than having a winning top, since your adc will often times outdps your top laner if they are ahead, and if your support is ahead, they will be able to follow you more around the map applying pressure and warding enemy jungle.
Now I'll go over some mistakes that I've done on my climb that were holding me back.
- Be very cautious of starting raptors
Raptor start is amazing for some junglers, since you can sync your camps very well, however, people most of the time will ward the raptor camp, since it provides you with a lot of info on the enemy jungler. If you see enemy on raptor camp with 8cs, that means they will path into blue buff side next or invade. If you see them there with 12cs, you know that they've done the blue buff side and are now onto their next quadrant. The most important thing is the timer that you get once the enemy kills the raptor camp. If you start raptors, you will have roughly 20-25s after the scuttle until your raptors respawn. This means that after doing scuttle, you can either ward enemy raptors if you didn't have a ward before, gank mid, base or run straight to raptors. If you decide to gank top/bot depending on which team you are on, enemy jungler WILL take your raptors. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten ahead by simply stealing enemy camps when I know their camps are up and I see them overextending on the opposite side of the map. Earlier on my journey, I would often start raptors and do too much after scuttler, be late to raptors and by the time I got to them, enemy jungler already took it.
There are a lot of definitions on what tempo is, the easiest one I think is that it's the way you use your time as a jungler. This means how quickly you clear your camps and how efficiently you use the down time while your camps are respawning. Think of jungle as a turn based game. After your full clear, you have one move to make, and after that, it's gone, since you have to base and go do your camps. If you try to do multiple things, you will be punished, since the enemy jungler will steal your camps. Always try to be on your camps the second it spawns.
Learn how to play around your win condition. This means that if you were pathing to bot and you got them fed, your top is weaksided. If they start pinging you a lot for help, you might feel pressured to gank them. But you have to think about it. Say it's Yone vs Darius and your Yone is 0/3 and Darius has more items than him. There is simply no world in which you can go there and kill the Darius, unless you see that Darius has no sums/hp/team around him. Because imagine that instead of full clearing, you go help top and enemy jungle/supp is there and you both die. Not only is your tempo now ruined, but you also got the Darius even further ahead and the enemy jungler will get to steal your camps. Every once in a while press tab to see who in your team is doing well and stick to them. If you see your fed Ahri is in side and you are done with your clear, hover her and be a human ward for her in case someone comes for her. If they do, you can kill them, since the laner you are hovering is strong.
In general, focus on getting dragons. Grubs are fine to get, but I mainly value them if I have a champion in the team who can use them well. Having grubs if you have Akali top is not the same as if you had Jax top. Herald is very good, but try using it more for fights, since it's broken. It can help you escape, but also cc enemies. If you want to use it for towers, consider using it either when you can get 2 towers with it or in the side lane. T2 in top/bot is far more valuable than T2 on mid. T1 mid however is the best thing to get early since it opens up the map for you and allows you to play more agro in enemy jungle. Baron is without a doubt the easiest objective to completely throw the game. Go for baron if you get a pick in mid game and you have decent vision of enemy team. If they try to contest, turn on them. Try not to flip an objective like Baron, since the value it has is insane. In case your team doesn't come to baron when you ping them, it is what it is, just back off, invade enemy camps, hover your team, push sides w/e. But just don't start flaming them for not coming.
I'd say this is one thing that a lot of people struggle with. You need to have a good mental. Do not overly ping your team if stuff goes wrong. Don't insult them when they do something dumb. Whenever I feel like I'm playing with boosted animals, I just think back to the quote that I've heard:
Don't blame people for disappointing you, blame yourself for expecting too much. Understand that you are the only player in the game who you can control fully, this includes your in game control, but also your emotions. You can't control your 0/10 Yasuo to not int more, you just can't, even if you're faker. If you feel very tilted after a game, stop playing and do something else for a bit. Talk to someone, go to the gym, go for a walk, play another game, hang out with your partner, go eat something, watch a tv show, legit anything other than playing league. Last thing you want to do to yourself is letting your emotions from previous game effect you in your next game.
Hope some of this will be useful to you guys and sorry for the long text. There's so much more that I could type, but I don't want to make it even longer. If you have any other questions about anything, feel free to ask. My next goal is challenger. Good luck on the rift!
