Looking to finish the final Split of with a high rank, maybe even Diamond? The right guidance can significantly bolster your climb! That's where Andu comes in—a seasoned LoL veteran since Season 1, consistently achieving Diamond rank from Season 5 onwards, and peaking at Challenger in Season 10. With extensive experience across all roles, particularly mid/jungle, and a notable background in both team and solo play, Andu has garnered a wealth of knowledge. His history of mentoring friends and live coaching has further sharpened his insights into climbing the LoL ladder.
In this article, Andu shares 25 PRO-Tier tips, honed from his extensive Challenger level jungling experience, to assist aspiring players in their quest to reach Diamond in Season 13. Whether you're a solo player or part of a flex team, these strategies can be a game-changer in your pursuit of higher rankings. Gear up for a wealth of practical advice aimed at boosting your jungle gameplay and propelling you towards that glorious Diamond tier.
- When you clear your jungle you should never sit still and look at other lanes, instead, you want to kite (move around and attack) the monster camp while keeping an eye on the minimap, this allows you to avoid some of the attacks since you force the monsters to cancel them when they move.
- You can take camp kiting even further: for example you’re taking blue team red buff and you know you’re taking krugs next, what you should do is slowly drag the red towards the krug camp in order to minimize the time it takes you to get there; you might not think this affects your clear, but it does make a difference in your clearing speed.
- Something that can make you make mistakes in your jungling is listening to your laners: sometimes they’ll spam ping asking for a gank from you. You have to remember that you are the one making the decision, while they want (what they think to be) the best for their own lane. If you concede to your top lane and camp him for 3 minutes, there’s a chance you’ll lose your bot side jungle, dragon, and bot lane early game while not gaining anything on top.
- Compared to previous seasons, smite can now have two stacks and there are two important things you should know. First, you should always keep one smite stack for when an objective (fighting for scuttle, a buff, the dragon or baron) is about to begin. Second, you should never sit on two smite stacks, as this just slows down your clear speed since you’re not being efficient with your execute summoner spell.
- If you suspect you and the enemy jungler started on mirrored sides, (for example you started blue team red buff and he started red team blue buff) if he follow a default clearing route, you can figure out where he is by once again mirroring your position in relation to his: you’re at your wolves heading to blue? This means he’s most likely clearing the wraiths camp and heading to red.
- Something that I like to call the ganking minute(s) happens between 3:00 and 5:00, this is where both junglers have finished both their jungle sides and will be looking to either force a gank or fight for scuttle. You can use this to your advantage and figure out by looking at your laners and decide who is most likely to get obviously ganked, so you can be there for a counter-gank and turn it around.
- When deciding who and when to gank, you should be looking firstly at the type of champions the lanes have: are they melee or ranged? Range champions tend to push the lane faster and overextend a bit since they can just harass the melee champions who need to get closer in order to cs. They will also be generally squishier so you can use this to your advantage.
- When ganking you want to be flanking. This means you should be coming from behind the enemy laner and sandwich them between yourself and your team mate. You can skip this part if you have to get there faster, to either catch a running enemy or if your laner would quickly die without you and there’s no time to flank.
- An amazing way to use your tempo is keeping track of both your items and your levels power spike: you just got a dirk and level 4 on Kha’Zix? Most likely you’re stronger than everyone in the game at that exact moment so it’s time to make a move, don’t waste time doing krugs. Getting a fresh level, going back and getting an important item instead of wasting time sitting on 1500 is the difference between a difference-making moment and you having gold.
- Most junglers forget about the importance of trinkets: you should be swapping your default yellow trinket to the red one, the sweeper. This allows you to clear wards whever you go, and since the jungler is the one player who moves around the entire map from the start of the game, this is really helpful as it not only allows you to clear enemy vision, but it can save you from getting jumped on when you’re walking on a path that’s warded by the enemy.
- An exception to the aforementioned rule is Evelynn, you don’t necessarily need sweeper on Eve post level 6 since she becomes invisible, and using your sweeper would just tell the enemy team you’re there since their wards would suddenly be attacked. With Eve you can rely on the yellow trinket or even swap to the blue one once you hit level 9.
- A very important game setting you should have is the “Show timestamps” check from the Interface settings tab. This allows you to see the exact time when something happens, and its useful regardless of the role you play. If you see an enemy flashing, you or your team mate can just bring up the scoreboard with Tab, ping that enemy’s flash and add 5 minutes, that’s when they’ll have it back up again. For example, if you see 02:54 Lulu- Flash in chat, you know you have until the eight minute to do something about the vulnerable support.
- An important thing to remember is that a successful gank is not necessarily a gank where the enemy laner dies: a good gank is one where they’ve either died, went base, burnt a summoner or even lost some HP, as this gives your laner a huge advantage regardless; if you can make the enemy Darius burn his ghost when you gank, this will ease off the pressure for your own top laner as the Darius cannot force fights that easily for a few minutes.
- When you gank you should always keep track of the enemy wave, you should wait for it to crash first: what this means is that you should stall until the new enemy wave starts attacking yours or your tower, if they’re still moving and you jump straight in their face, they’ll start attacking you and you’ll lose a lot of your HP, especially in the early game.
- A very important thing related to ganking that a lot of people underestimate is keeping your gap-closer or your ganking tool until you’re really needed to use it: think Amumu Q, Kha’Zix E, Jarvan Q-E combo. If you use those tools too early, the enemy will either flash or use their own disengages or you’ll just miss and you get nothing out of it.
- Going one step further from the previous tip, when people realize they get ganked they panic for a bit almost every single time if they’re not ready for you or they can’t 1v2, so you can use this for your advantage: you can just walk closely to them and they might pop their Flash just because they aren’t prepared to try to sidestep your Elise stun or Lee Sin Q.
- Not all ganks are going to work out even if you plan ahead and make a definite idea of “I’ll go blue buff and then go top lane”, so plan your ganks together with your camps: if your top side jungle is fully cleared, empty, nothing there, and you rely on a top lane gank that fails, you’ll have nothing else to clear there and you’ll waste quite a bit of your time walking away from there or even recalling. Instead you could try a mid lane gank when your raptors are up, since you have a backup plan.
- One annoying pick at the writing of this (Patch 13.20) is Briar. If she makes it past the ban phase into your game, you have quite a few ways of dealing with her: her enrage makes her unable to target anyone but the closes target, so if you’re the target you can use this to your advantage and move her towards your team or your tower, she can only break her enrage with her only defensive skill, so it’s a win-win scenario for you. Apart from that, make sure to stack up on healing reduction and try to keep her CC locked.
- A very important thing you remember regarding objectives is that the first Herald is more important than the second, the main thing to remember is that people are weaker in the early game (when the first Herald is around) so it’s harder to push towers, so that’s why Herald is a big advantage. More so, you want to use the Herald on the enemy tower (preferably mid, in order not to split the gold three-ways, and to open the middle of the map) before the 14 minute mark- because beyond that point there is no plate money anymore.
- In order to avoid bitter scenarios where you might be thinking “my team is fault because they didn’t help me” you could just be choosing the safest way to take an objective instead: once you’ve killed the enemy jungler so there’s no one to smite-contest you, once you know the enemy jungler is top lane for example, you can go for drake, and when you know that your laners are healthier and closer to you in case you need to fight for the objective.
- Another great communication tool is knowing how to actually ping that you get noticed: people, especially in solo queue, don’t look at other pings on the map, so if you’re going to ping Dragon expecting help, you might not get any. To avoid this, ping on top of your laners’ heads- they’ll see the pings since that’s where their camera is and there’ll be a higher chance of them coming to your aid.
- A great objective-securing tool is doing some simple math: see how much your smite does, either 600, 900, or 1200, doesn’t matter. Now add this value to the damage of your burst ability. This can be your Kha’Zix Q, your Lee Sin second Q, or your Ekko Passive burst. While you are doing the objective, notice how much that particular ability does and add it to your smite. The enemy jungler will always expect a 1200 dragon to be smited, but they won’t know that you can deal 1200+587 from your ability.
- Control wards (aka Pink wards) are a life-saving tool that you should use. You already know you can use them for vision or for ward-jumping when playing certain champions such as Lee Sin or Jax. Something that can save your life or allow you to get a kill is using them offensively: you fight someone and they break line of sight by entering a bush- you can instantly use a control ward in that bush which in turn allows you to target them and hit your targeted ability.
- If you ever find yourself invading the enemy jungle, a great spot for placing a Control Ward is the bush close to their red buff (top right from red buff for red team, bottom left from red buff for blue team). Most people ignore that bush and won’t notice that ward, while you’ll get their position when they’re walking towards their bot or mid lane.
- If you’re on the other side of the map while the enemy jungler makes a move, you shouldn’t waste time, there’s an open window where you can invade their jungle or do some moves on your own without getting punished, since they’re far away from you. In these cases, it’s better to take their jungle while leaving yours for later. Your jungle will wait for you, for the enemy’s won’t always be unguarded like it is in that moment.
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