Getting ganked can feel extremely terrible especially if you lose a ton of resources because of it. This guide will go over information that will help laners to play better against the enemy jungler in League of Legends.
Everyone has had moments where it feels like the enemy jungler is just everywhere at the same time. You think the coast is clear and walk up to farm some minions, suddenly, the fed enemy Evelynn with 25 stacks on their Mejai’s Soulstealer appears out of nowhere and instantly sends you back to the death screen. Sometimes it just feels as if there is no counterplay to certain champions.
This guide will go over some tips and general information that will help laners to deal with the enemy jungler. It will also aim to help players to understand and play better against certain junglers such as Evelynn.
One of the first indicators of how the game will go is what matchup you are playing. For example, if you are playing Sion against Cho’Gath, then the lane will most likely be quite uneventful. The kill potential for both champions will be quite low if both of you are building tank items. Since kill threat is low on both sides, heavy trading will probably happen very rarely as both of you will likely farm for the majority of the laning phase. This will be extremely unappealing to the enemy jungler as the lane matchup is not very snowball oriented.
Junglers are more likely to gank lanes with matchups such as Irelia against Jax, where both are likely to trade heavily often; scenarios like these are also extremely snowball oriented, one successful gank for either champion could easily cause the lane to be over. It also gives an extra incentive for the enemy jungler to gank your lane because Irelia and Jax are both champions that can carry games by themselves if given enough resources. Knowing how much trading you will be doing in lane and how snowball oriented the matchup is will help you to understand how likely it is for the opposing jungler to gank you. Coming up with a successful game plan is much easier once you are aware of how the enemy jungler might want to influence your lane.
Another key factor that should be taken into consideration is the state of the minion wave. The enemy jungler is unlikely to gank if they only have a small wave under your turret. On the other hand, ganks are more likely to happen if you are pushed up too far in your lane. If the enemy laner is freezing the wave near their turret, you might want to be more careful and establish vision before walking up to farm. They might be setting up the wave to give their jungler an opportunity to gank you. If the enemy laner is slowly pushing towards your turret and stacking up a big minion wave, they might be looking to set up a turret dive on you with their jungler. To avoid getting dove under your own turret, you could thin out the wave before it crashes into your turret in order to discourage the opponents from committing to a dive.
If you do not have vision and the state of the wave is not clear to you, you can look at the opposing laner and their movement to tell if their jungler is nearby. When junglers are in the vicinity or looking to gank, players tend to play more aggressively and try to trade heavily. They do this because they know that their jungler can arrive quickly in case anything goes wrong. If you notice that your lane opponent is suddenly posturing really aggressively and looking to trade, it could be a sign that their jungler is nearby.
Knowing the location of the enemy jungler is an extremely valuable piece of information that will help you to know if you are getting ganked or not. The first and most common way people spot the enemy jungler is through warding and vision. Warding common gank paths and warding the enemy jungle will help to spot out the enemy jungler before they are able to gank you. Another method you can use is to see which buff the opposing jungler starts. Whichever side the jungler starts at is usually the side of the map that is the safest in the first few minutes of the game. This is because most junglers would look to either do a full clear or reach level three before they start ganking.
When doing a full clear, junglers would kill every camp, starting from one side of the map and moving towards the other. This means that if the enemy jungler starts on your side of the map, you would be safe because they will end up on the opposite side of the map from you after they finish their clear. When looking to do a level three gank, junglers are most likely going to do both buffs and the Gromp camp because it is the fastest way to hit level three as a jungler. Again, if they were to start on your side of the map, they would have to path towards the opposite side of the map for the other buff in order to hit level three and start ganking. Keep in mind that these are the most common methods that junglers use, but it does not mean that every jungler will play this way. Some may opt for a level two gank or another unorthodox method that may catch you off guard.
Another factor that should be kept in mind is the current state of the match. Every champion has different power spikes that come from their items and levels. Knowing how to play around these spikes is important, it will help you to better understand when you are going to get ganked. Junglers such as Lee Sin and Jarvan IV are more likely to gank in the early game because they are strong during that phase of the game. On the other hand, champions such as Evelynn who are weak in the early game are unlikely to gank in the first few levels.
With that being said, it is also important to know that every jungler plays differently. Being able to read and predict your opponent’s next move will be extremely helpful. Some junglers might be very passive, while others are extremely aggressive and look to constantly gank. For example, if you notice that the enemy jungler is always looking for ganks, you could look to bait them towards your lane and ask your jungler to make a play on the other side of the map or invade the enemy’s jungle. Learning to adapt and play around different players and different playstyles will help to increase your level of play and make you a better player.
This part of the guide will cover two champions that many players find annoying. Although it will not cover every single jungler, the purpose of this part of the guide is to show that there is a way to deal with every champion apart from just banning them during the draft phase.
Many players find Evelynn to be an extremely annoying champion to play against, and with good reason. She can generate pressure in a lane without being anywhere nearby due to her invisibility. She can only be spotted by Control Wards and other sources of true sight, which makes tracking her a nightmare for players on the other team.
Shutting down Evelynn in the early game is extremely important because that is when she is the weakest. Most of the time you will find that Evelynn does not gank until she reaches level six, this is because she is very weak and has a low gank threat before she obtains her invisibility and ultimate. Even though she is weak before level six, this does not mean that you should sit back and farm without any worries. In order to prevent Evelynn from scaling and taking over the game, you need to be proactive and punish her weak early game.
Evelynn is extremely vulnerable on her first clear, you could take this opportunity to invade the enemy jungle and potentially kill her while she is farming her camps. If you know which side she is starting on and you are playing (or playing alongside) a strong early game jungler such as Lee Sin, you could choose to start on your red buff and look to kill Evelynn while she is on her second buff. This will set her back very far behind and make any further attempts at counter-jungling much more likely to succeed.
Master Yi is another champion that many players find very irritating. His Alpha Strike and Meditate allow him to tower dive easily and take reduced damage. Master Yi scales extremely well and has the ability to mow down a team’s entire backline if late enough into the game. But just like Evelynn, Master Yi’s biggest weakness is his early game.
Master Yi is weakest during the early game when he does not have his ultimate. It is highly unlikely to see him gank lanes before level six because he has no form of crowd control and has very low mobility and attack speed early on. Master Yi generally wants to farm as much as possible in the early game to hit his level and item spikes as quickly as possible. At this stage of the game, he will most likely focus on cleaning up, which is why it is important to not overstay and overextend.
Hard crowd control abilities like stuns and knock ups are the biggest counter to Master Yi. If you see the enemy pick Master Yi early on in the draft phase, you can counter him by picking champions like Rammus or Malzahar who have easy unit-targeted abilities that instantly lock him down. It is harder to hit Master Yi with skillshot oriented crowd control abilities because he is quite fast with his ultimate and can dodge skills with his Alpha Strike. Abilities like Malzahar’s ultimate immediately immobilizes Master Yi and allows the rest of the team to quickly burst him down.
To conclude, playing well against the enemy jungler requires the understanding of certain factors and how they influence the probability of a gank. Knowing what a jungler wants to do and accomplish in a game is also extremely important, being able to figure out their game plan will help you to come up with a counter.
