During the current SPL group LAN stages, we have seen the rise of team compositions which are based around fight sustain. This means not only gods based around healing, but also gods which can stay in fights for a long time and use multiple rotations of abilities during fights. Gods which have excelled in these compositions are gods like Ra, Guan Yu and Terra, but also gods such as Athena and Erlang Shen but not in their 'normal' positions. The effect of placing these tanky, survivable gods in the jungle is that the game is extended and some key aspects of it are changed. In this article, I'm going to go over these and how and when to make the choice to take these unique gods into the jungle.

Gods like Athena in the jungle, shown being picked here, have really made a difference in the SPL LANs thus far

First, let's look at what most common junglers, namely assassins, bring to the role. Assassins are usually oriented at dealing damage in large bursts, very often being easier to kill and requiring team assistance in fights. Assassins also usually transition extremely well from early game to late game, using their good base damage to carry them through the early game and their good scaling helps them still be effective later. As with all classes, there is some variance. Assassins like Thor and Fenrir are more suited to a tankier build and gods like Kali and Nemesis thrive in the late game, but overall the class follows the same general trend. Drafting an assassin jungle allows your team to have a good spread of damage amongst all its members, making your team's damage harder to mitigate.

Tankier junglers can come from the Warrior class or the Guardian class and their playstyle and impact on the game can differ drastically. These junglers are oriented towards being able to deal damage and control fights at the same time. Their transition through the game is quite different than assassins, with most making it through the early game easily due to their high base damage and then transitioning to become a more support type character. There are quite a few different variants when it comes to these junglers and even within one god they can be built in a different way or played differently to achieve something different. The main advantage of these junglers is that they are jacks of all trades and masters of none. They will never do as much damage as an assassin, but they're more well balanced and can take many more different roles.

A god like Ymir in the jungle, which we have seen run by Cherryo from Sanguine, will never do as much damage as a Kali. However, he can bring many different things to the table

Team Composition

Obviously, with non meta picks such as these kinds of junglers, you can't just slot them into any team and expect them to thrive and bring success to your team. Your team should be based around the playstyle they bring for maximum effectiveness. First of all, you have to make sure your late game damage is well balanced. These junglers don't have the hypercarry damage potential late game so make sure this is well represented across other parts of your team. Picking an ADC that excels at late game or potentially even a powerful mage can counteract your lack of late game damage and synergises with you even further because you can use your heavy CC to set up kills for them and keep them safe when required. Another thing to consider is drafting a team comp to build on your team's strengths.

Because of your tankier lineup, you can afford to fight for longer and while being much safer. So why not push that advantage and draft a healer? This further strengthens the archetype of your composition as one based around sustaining as now you can fight (for longer than the enemy can already), disengage, heal and then press the fight again. This makes sure you can slowly starve the enemy of resources and players, making pushing and taking objectives a really easy follow-up for your team. The main healers that are in meta right now are Ra and Terra, but in certain situations gods like Aphrodite and Hel could also work. It should be noted that any tanky gods on your team can become semi-competent healers by picking up the Meditation relic. Meditation also gives an extremely efficient mana heal, further allowing you to stay in fights longer.

Ra has been a star of this LAN and this emerging meta. His ability to deal damage from the backline and heal his frontliners has really made him a force to be reckoned with

Dangers

However, one has to be wary when drafting these gods. All of them are extremely vulnerable to being focused down and picked off so they need to be defended. Furthermore, a healing competition takes a huge hit if the enemy team drafts an Odin. Odin's ultimate gives the enemy team the ability to set new rules in a teamfight for a set amount of time, and the rule that will impact you the most is 100% anti-healing. If you invest too much into healing into your composition and/or don't ban Odin, your team will have a hard time doing what they want to do. While Odin is the big one, there are a few other gods that can directly impact a sustain composition. Both Serqet and Osiris can apply 100% anti-healing with their ultimates and Bacchus and Sobek can supply partial anti-healing with the Belch of the Gods and Sickening Strike respectively. All of these gods should be considered for a ban when drafting these compositions.

Odin's ult has always been an incredibly powerful ability, but the onset of a sustain meta makes it one of the best

Let's get back to our central discussion on tankier sustain junglers. What are the risks with drafting one of these? Firstly, as we discussed above, these junglers do less damage than their assassin counterparts. This means that going against junglers that excel at 1v1s and straight up fighting you can be quite dangerous. For example, without her team, an Athena jungle will have a hard time fighting the enemy's Kali jungle. In general, these junglers take more teamwork to make them work effectively. If you are solo queuing or even duo queuing, they may not be the best option for you.

Tactics

Tanky junglers are all about working with your team to get a massive lead and get to teamfighting phase so far ahead of the enemy team that your lackluster damage doesn't matter, as it's going to be made up by your carries which at this point will be in their full form. What this means is that you need to make an impact early on and get the ball rolling. As a comparison, the assassin closest to this playstyle is Thor. If Thor doesn't set the pace early on, his presence in the game is severely diminished and the same is true for Warrior/Guardian jungles. This leads to a few differences in jungling strategy. Firstly, getting Wrath is something you should definitely consider. Wrath is especially useful on guardian jungles as it boosts their slightly mediocre clear and allows them to go through camps faster and have more time to use their plentiful CC to set up fights and kills for their team. Wrath is obviously also useful when you need to secure the two big map objectives, the Gold Fury and Fire Giant. It allows you to save your team's big mage ults and just use its damage to finish off the objectives safely.

The rise of non-assassin jungles has naturally lead to the rise of Wrath. Either as a way to boost your camp clear or to secure objectives, this relic is definitely one to consider when playing a warrior/guardian jungle

Your build order is something that can be quite dynamic when playing these sustain junglers. Seeing as your role within the team can be ever changing and is dependent on what the team needs at the time, your build will very rarely be exactly the same for two games in a row. While boots, a damage item and one defense item are usually a given, you will find that your last 3 item slots are very often taken up by situational items your team requires, like anti-healing, anti-attack speed or various other debuff auras. This also synergises with your playstyle as you will very often be in the middle of a fight, so your auras, both beneficial and not, will have maximum effectiveness.

Situational items like Runic Shield are a great benefit to your team but finding a spot for them can be hard. A tankier teamfight jungler will always be a good carrier for items such as these

While this is important with all junglers, with tankier sustain junglers your core three synergy needs to be on point. The core three is your Midlaner, Jungler and Support. These three run the Midgame, which is where it's most important to gain an advantage. Because your strength comes from the multiple roles you can take on and the control you bring to fights, you need to be able to work with the rest of your core otherwise your impact could be extremely limited. Ensuring that you're communicating with your mid and your support as you move around the map and fight is essential to your success.

A final thing you should consider is understanding when your damage falls off and when your role in the team changes. This is more relevant to guardians than to warriors. As the game goes on, the amount of relevant damage you can do diminishes, as you rely on your base damage stats to do it. At the same time, your crowd control abilities become infinitely more valuable, as the amount of damage your carries can do increases. Understanding this constant change is crucial, as you need to be aware of what you can achieve at any point during the game.

I hope this article has helped you understand and play this new-ish type of jungler and has given you some insight into jungling in sustaining compositions in general!

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