Every role has its purpose on Summoner’s Rift. Supports maintain vision control and guide the ADC through the laning phase. The ADC makes sure your team has sustained damage and is your late game insurance policy to make sure you translate your lead into objectives. Mid lane is capable of roaming and helps maintain global map pressure. Top lane makes educated macro decisions through their exceptional ability to duel, split push, and teleport into otherwise lost fights. But where does jungle fall into this mix? Are you merely a secondary support that’s a slave to your laners? Are you required to find the enemy jungler to create similar duels to those that happen in the lanes? Is every lost objective your fault? None of these are correct, and most educated junglers are glad this isn’t the case.

The tempo is key to the jungle role. Through your decision making, you are the primary X-factor for your team. Rather than being stuck in one location on the map and only allowed a particular class of champion, you’re capable of numerous different champion types, enabling you to influence the map wherever, however, and whenever you want. This freedom makes quality decisions a necessity rather than a luxury. Tempo is a rather abstract term, so it's important to understand what it means to League of Legends.

What Is Tempo?

Originally a musical term, “tempo” has been adopted into regular usage regarding sports and video games. As a jungler in League of Legends, you make a multitude of important decisions regarding what objectives are priorities and when you should fight. All of these decisions take in numerous factors such as team composition, map state, power spikes, and even current stat lines. By controlling the speed at which events occur on the map, you inherently control how early games end, when fights happen, and when an objective is taken. This process is controlling the tempo.

Why Should I Control Tempo?

As mentioned earlier, there are a few reasons to control the tempo. The primary reason is team composition. Often, jungle players assume that their matchup is the only one that should alter their tempo. They believe that if their pick is not a late-game favored pick, they need to push the game's tempo regardless of who their lanes are. However, the reality remains that team composition needs to be viewed through multiple lenses rather than the individual 1v1. As a jungler, you have no obligation to fight the enemy jungler, as you don’t share a lane like your teammates. Trading is not a fundamental part of your role, but choosing when you wish to look for fights is. By viewing a team composition through the various 2v2 matchups, 3v3 matchups, and even the holistic 5v5 matchup, it becomes easier to see what lanes you should influence early, or if you have no obligation to push the tempo at all.

In this example, while Graves is a solid scaling jungler, with lanes that include Renekton, Talon, and Draven, Graves has lanes that rely on ending the game early. Graves cannot afford to farm to the late game and now must force the tempo, so he doesn’t get pressured into playing 1v5 in the latter portions of the game. The other team is merely relying on being allowed to reach the late game forms of their champions. The obligation is then on Graves to force action around the map, otherwise champions like Karthus, Xayah, and Ryze are allowed to come online.

Another reason to control tempo is map state. Pressure on particular objectives often leads junglers to decide between trading objectives or contesting them, and the desired tempo often decides which option should be taken. If there is an objective that your team cannot afford to give up such as dragon soul or baron, but your team is unable to contest it yourselves, you should be looking to slow the game down. Defensive wards and overall defensive play help prevent them from getting the pick needed to snowball into an objective.

How Do I Control Tempo?

Controlling tempo comes in a multitude of ways. In the laning phase, if you wish to push the tempo, invade the enemy jungler to look for a duel, gank your lanes, or look to force objectives such as drakes or rift heralds. If you wish to slow the tempo during laning, use wards and jungle tracking to counter-gank when the enemy jungler ganks, stall objectives and farm safely away from the enemy jungler. Note that when you counter-gank to slow the tempo, preventing any of your teammates from dying counts as a success. Your goal must be to prevent kills on the map so your team can continue to farm. Transition your role from providing playmaking ability to ensuring safety when slowing the game down. This safety enables your team to wait out the enemy power spikes and hit power spikes of their own.

What Does My Choice of Tempo Change?

Depending on the tempo you set as a jungler, a few things can change. Primarily, your win condition can become different. If your team requires a quick finish to a game because they can’t scale into the late game, you must recognize how to reach that end. Suddenly, the Dragon Soul becomes a much more promising means to an end, as it's obtainable as early as 20 minutes into the game. If your team is okay with slowing the tempo, you must recognize that waveclear has become a higher priority, along with team fighting as a 5v5.

The choice of tempo can also influence build paths. Gragas is an excellent example of a champion whose build can change depending on what his team aims to do. If Gragas recognizes a late-game win condition, he can instantly alter his build to be a more supportive role and serve as a tank. With more reliable engagement items and tank items, his off-tank build serves a higher purpose in the late game's 5v5 nature. However, if Gragas recognizes an early-game win condition, he can invest fully into AP to delete carries from the map. This AP build is a much more viable option when the game is played in lanes, rather than as a 5v5 team fight. It allows Gragas to take advantage of his pick potential, rather than tanking for his team. This decision between builds is centered on the tempo he wishes to set.

Finally, your choice of tempo can easily alter which lanes you look to gank during the laning phase. If a jungler recognizes a late-game win condition, they should look to gank and influence the lanes that have the late game scaling potential. Once you’ve identified that a game will likely last 40 minutes, there is no need to pour resources into the Renekton, who will become a glorified melee minion by that point in the game. Instead, you can look to accelerate your Vayne ADC into her power spike, so by the time 40 minutes hits, you can guarantee she’ll have reached her peak impact.

Summary

Tempo is an essential concept to understand as a jungler. By recognizing when your team is strongest, you enable yourself to help them reach those points and exploit them. It allows you to recognize a win condition and pursue it, rather than aimlessly wandering the map. Doing so allows your jungle pathing and decision to be planful and educated, which gives you a leg up on the competition.