Nov 19, 2022 — min read

How to play jungle in League of Legends

Being an effective jungler means knowing the clear speed and pathing of your champion to save every second and gank other lanes faster!

A jungler is the one who responds to all kinds of fights on the entire map but you also have to consider the enemy jungler and beat him in a lot of aspects. You need to clear jungle camps faster, you can do this by knowing your jungle route, and protecting your jungle camps by vision.

How to play as a jungler?

Being a jungler means you will spend most of your time in jungle camps clearing jungle monsters like the blue sentinel, and red buff. The blue and red buffs can be obtained from 2 epic monsters on opposing sides of the jungle camp. Here are some tips when playing jungle in League of Legends:

Know the jungle clear path of your champion.
Kite when you are clearing a camp to save a few seconds that you can use to your ganking advantage.
Use your smite as often as you can to upgrade it immediately.
Upgrade your smite before taking on the dragon, having 900 true damage on smite will guarantee a faster clear.
Always build or buy a dewarding item when you recall to base.

When you play the jungle role, you need to predetermine what type of champion your team needs. Some are ganking champions like Zac that take the enemy laners out of the game. Some are power farming jungler and come out during the late game and easily win the game like Master Yi.

But whatever type of jungler you are playing, jungle clearing should be the first thing you master. Most of the time you will start by clearing your own jungle camps, but sometimes invading the enemy jungle is better but high risk.

Gank lanes as much as you can

Ganking lanes is the main job of a jungler, you can do this even during the early game to keep enemy champions from gaining a lead against your allies. Frequent ganking will make sure that enemy champions won't get far ahead of your allies.

When should you gank?

You must gank or counter gank even during the early game as this can give your teammates a huge lead against their enemy laner. The best time to gank during the early game is when you finish clearing your monster camps. A successful gank is when you secure kills and gain a lead against the enemy jungler.

If the enemy minions are pushed all the way to your allied turret this is the best time to gank if enemies are overextended.
Before securing a major objective gank the lane.
After making your first camp clear, gank the nearest lane or reset.
If the lanes don't need help, look for an invade on the enemy jungler's camps.

However, you need to take into consideration where the enemy wave is currently at. If the enemy minion wave is pushed through your allied turret, then you should gank the nearby lane.

Which jungle monster should you kill first?

Neutral monsters or jungle monsters have fixed locations on the map, meaning they will stay in that position no matter what game phase you're in. Because of this, you need to determine which neutral monsters should you kill first.

Most of the time, champions kill the major buffs first as it will greatly help them with their clear speed. Caster champions start with a blue buff as it gives them bonus mana regeneration while auto-attack reliant champions choose to start with the red buff as it empowers their basic attacks.

What are the different jungle monsters?

Neutral monster camps are scattered all over the map of league of legends. There are 2 huge monsters in the map that are kind of like boss monsters because they are far stronger than the other ones.

Killing neutral monsters give you buffs, gold, and experience. Killing monsters like Baron Nashor also give your team a strong temporary buff that can turn a losing lane around.

What to do after killing Major jungle monsters?

Baron Nashor

The Baron is the strongest monster in League of Legends. You need to have your whole team with you in order to slay this beast. After dealing the killing blow and securing the Baron buff, the best thing to do is use the buff to push all lanes and take an enemy turret down with it.

Elder Dragon

In League of Legends, the elder Dragon spawns after one team manages to secure the dragon's soul. After killing the Elder drake, you can burn an enemy champion and execute them when they fall below 20% HP. This is a major buff and can easily turn the tides of battle even if you are behind in terms of experience and Gold.

The Elder Dragon buff is really helpful during team fights and can also be great if your team has champions with poking abilities.

Rift Herald

The rift Herald is what spawns before Baron. Killing this monster will give you the eye of the herald that will empower your recall and give you the ability to spawn the rift herald that deals tremendous damage to an enemy turret.

It's worth taking note that the Rift Herald will lose 66% of her current health when she successfully damages a structure. So try to protect it after destroying the first turret if you want to heavily damage the next one.