Identifying what side of the map you should play on as a Jungler is one of the most important skills in League of Legends. But it is tough to develop, as it is a skill that requires you to have a lot of discipline, as well as an understanding of individual lane matchups, who the carries are on your team, and what potential you have for counterplays, among other factors.

Due to the nature of these concepts that require a lot of personal application in your own games, this guide will be a little different in that it won’t always provide the end all, be all answer to these concepts. However, it will get you to identify key factors that will help you come to your own conclusions!

A Professional Perspective

So how do you identify the side of the map you should play on? First and foremost, you should know what your team composition wants to do, and who the key members are for your composition to succeed. To give an example from the recent series between Cloud 9 and 100 Thieves, specifically the first game of their series from the first round of NA LCS playoffs:

Closer decides to path top lane early in this game, and what ends up happening is 100 Thieves plays a very heavy top side focused game in the early game. This is due to the fact that 100 Thieves wants to protect their scaling champions, and it’s hard for Cloud 9 to force ganks on bot and mid lane in the early game. Renekton, however, provides good setup for plays in the early game, so it’s pivotal to 100 Thieves that they shut down Renekton. That way, Cloud 9 have fewer avenues to win the game, since their early game carry cannot have high impact, and it greatly increases the risk that 100 Thieves outscales them.

Now normally, pathing to a lane like Ornn versus Renekton isn’t that great of an idea, since Ornn is a champion who doesn’t require a lot of resources. However, due to the way Cloud 9’s draft functions, it actually works in this case to path towards the tank lane. 100 Thieves then goes one step further, deciding to involve Nautilus in the plays top as well, and making Xayah play weak side for a bit. Why does this decision work? It’s because of Closer’s decision to play towards the top side that allows his team to then leave Ornn alone when they start moving the mid and bot lane around the map.

The effect of playing towards the right side of the map

To add on top of that, since Closer got so many successful fights in the top side, he’s so far ahead of Diana, that once he starts going bot side to secure Dragons, he can do so without fear of being contested. This is because Xayah only had to make small sacrifices while her support made plays top side, which still allows her to be at least somewhat relevant in fights, whereas Diana fell massively behind Lee Sin from Cloud 9’s lost fights top side. Due to Lee Sin’s lead, he is able to massively impact fights in a way that Diana cannot, so Cloud 9 will have to end up dropping pressure bot side, and now they’ve lost all pressure on top side because 100 Thieves decided to shut down Renekton in the early game. This secures 100 Thieves’ win condition, which is scaling, since Cloud 9’s only avenue of trying to accelerate the game is shut down, and their bot side isn’t capable of matching 100 Thieves’ bot side.

I highlight this as an example because it’s important to understand what Junglers are thinking about when making their decisions for pathing, and how the various different roles can contribute to that win condition. However, it is tough to have this same level of communication in solo queue, so the question now becomes: what can I do to facilitate something similar?

Put on Your Thinking Cap

Consider your own win conditions versus the enemy win conditions, and how to help or counteract them.

First and foremost, you should spend time during the loading screen thinking about what resources your team needs, so that they can succeed at various stages of the game. For example, if the enemy bot lane is something like Draven and Leona against your team’s Lucian and Nami, there’s a good chance that those two lanes will be trying to fight each other a lot. Whoever gets ahead will likely control the lane, so being there early to impact the lane in your favor would be a great boon to your team, as it allows for easier secures of early dragons. On the other hand, if the bot lanes are something along the lines of an enemy Lulu/Kog’maw versus your Ezreal/Yuumi, you may want to spend more of your early game towards your other lanes, since Yuumi doesn’t provide good gank assistance until level 6, and it’s unlikely that any action will take place in the early levels.

Find the enemy jungler’s pathing through their laner’s positioning

Another thing you can do is watch the enemy lanes during the first wave, and see which lanes come late. There’s a good chance you can figure out which buff the enemy started based off of if a lane comes to lane late. Another, more subtle tell is if the enemy is playing a champion like Renekton or Gnar, since they have a rage bar that only builds if they hit enemies, meaning they likely helped leash. Of course, this can become trickier if the enemy tries to fake leash, and at that point you should also consider from the enemy’s perspective what side of the map they want to play towards. If they have a Jayce top laner, with an Ezreal/Yuumi bottom lane, there’s a good chance they will path towards top early, as Jayce is a champion who can become scary if he gets resources early.

Make sure to work together with your mid lane

One thing you may have noticed is that I haven’t really discussed mid lane yet, and that’s where understanding concepts like invading come into play. You want to generally use your mid laner to help invade, as most non-buff camp steals tend to be raptors, which is very easy for mid laners to follow you to. You can also view mid lane as a “support” for your job, much like how the Support role helps out their AD Carry. Mid lane is an extension of yourself, and you want to make sure you’re enabling your mid laner to help make plays with you. This means helping secure good recalls, making sure they can push out their wave without being ganked, and so on. Since mid lane wants to play towards the same side of the map as you, be sure to also communicate how you want to play the map. That way, your mid laner can make informed decisions on concepts such as managing their waves, trying to time their roams with your gank timers, and so on.

Understand the importance of planning ahead for plays, and sticking to that plan

If you were to take away one last important idea from all of these concepts, it’s that each game is different, and there will never be a distinct “correct play” that will always work 100% of the time. Some games you will have to make sure your scaling bot lane doesn’t die early, so that they can scale up and carry in the late game. Other games you will have to gank top frequently in order to make sure that they can get ahead and snowball. Whatever your job is, make sure that you stick to it, and don’t massively deviate from the plan. Speaking from experience in a competitive setting, one thing that often doomed my team was that we would often deviate from our plans, or we would try to bite off more than we could chew on a play. If your plan is to sit in bot lane for a countergank, and you successfully counter the gank, you don’t need to also then go and gank mid, and then do dragon in the time in the span of thirty seconds. You should be willing to take your wins as a jungler, and respect that the enemy has timings to make their own counter plays.

Counter the Opposition

Speaking of counter plays, this brings me to my final point - sometimes you will have to trade on the other side of the map, in order to keep up with the enemy. As I mentioned in that Closer example from before, he made plays top lane, and as a result his AD Carry fell behind a little bit in comparison to Cloud 9’s AD Carry. However, Closer got his top side so far ahead that it didn’t matter that his bot lane had fallen behind. This is what you need to think about as a jungler; it’s easy to panic and start trying to damage control on a lane that just got ganked, but sometimes it’s best to exploit the enemy’s weak side in order to get that side of the map so far ahead, that it doesn’t matter that the enemy made successful plays onto your teammates.

I remember that I once played top lane against a former professional player in scrims, and it was obvious from the get-go that his team was going to play towards him. It wasn’t my job to win the lane in those scrims, but rather that I lose less than what my other side of the map gets. Our jungler didn’t spend much time pathing to my lane in those games, because he knew that his job wasn’t to try and match the plays they were making. We were able to take off games of this team, despite the fact that their top laner was incredibly skilled, because we were able to successfully execute that idea of trading plays on the members that had champions that could carry harder than he could.

Ward the enemy jungle

But how do you identify potentials for counter plays? A key tell can be accomplished by getting wards into the enemy jungle, so that you can figure out where the enemy is trying to make a play towards. If, for example, you’re playing on red side and you ward the enemy’s blue buff and gromp and see that they’re gone, and you know their red buff is about to spawn, there’s a good chance the enemy is going to try and make a play either in bot lane or mid lane. Knowing this information then, as a result, gives you a chance to make a play on the enemy top laner with less resistance, since the only person who could potentially respond is the enemy mid laner. This, by far and away, is the best way to figure out not only where the enemy is trying to play, but also where your opportunities for making plays become either more or less risky.

Another thing to look for is neutral objective spawns. For example, say dragon had just spawned, and Rift Herald isn’t spawning for another two minutes. There’s a good chance that during that two minute timer before Rift Herald spawns, the enemy will probably look to try and take the dragon down. That gives you a timer to then look to make a play top lane, since the enemy team will dedicate their bot lane at the very least, and most likely their mid laner, to securing the dragon. Sometimes, it’s even worth trading a good gank for the first dragon, since the dragon buffs on their own don’t offer much in the early game. If you get a lane ahead enough that they start stomping their opponent, it could be of a higher benefit than sacrificing for a coinflip fight over an early dragon, since the laners will have high impact on the game deciding dragon fights.

Conclusion

In all, I hope this guide has helped you consider some of the various factors that come into deciding what sides of the map towards, the cost and benefit of choosing a side of the map to play towards, as well as engaging in thought-provoking concepts such as making counter plays. They are difficult concepts to grasp at first, but if you get the hang of it, and make sure that you’re constantly asking yourself questions as the game states change, you’ll be sure to reap the benefits in no time.

As always, best of luck on the Rift, and stay safe out there!