We sat down with eXyu and picked his brain about the concepts you need to learn to master the Jungle role. From what makes a great solo queue jungler to establishing a game plan to the core concepts you need to master to step up your game, we cover it all!
Today we’re breaking down the mindset of Dignitas’ Jungler, Lawrence Lin “eXyu” Xu. He’s joining me today to talk about his experience in Solo Queue and what it was like to climb the ladder, and what information, concepts, and tips that he can offer us non-Pro Junglers in improving our game.
Before we go anywhere though, it’s important for us to define our parameters. Understand what space we’re working in, or if we’re outside it, learning towards. To that end, here is how eXyu describes a great Solo Queue Jungler?
eXyu: "The first mark of a great Jungler is someone that sticks to their pace. Consistent play is super important from the Jungle role. One of the first rules of Jungling is to always make sure your game plan isn’t ruined. So, that means you’re clearing efficiently, taking a good path, gauging whether your spam pinging teammates are actually giving you good information or they’re being emotional, things like that. It’s all about establishing your game plan, which we’ll talk about first."
So, when drafting or loading into the game, you should be having an internal monologue with yourself about what your individual game plan looks like. This means knowing what Laners you have that can offer gank assistance or what Champions on your team will have a heavy push into the opponent.
Champions like Darius, Pantheon, Nautilus, or Sivir are great to gank early since they have a lot of early pressure on their opponents and can set up your ganks easily. Additionally, should you get into a 1v1 Jungle fight, these Champions are also able to threaten and move quickly to you for the assist. But they’re not the only thing you should consider in your game planning process.
eXyu: "Whenever I’m setting up my game plan, I first consider ‘"How can I abuse the enemy Jungler?’" This means putting myself in their shoes and trying to understand their pathing, where they want to be on the map, and how I can be in position to deny that either through invading or counter-ganking. Knowing which of your laners can have the push is important in this too because it gives you more options to punish. Once these things are set, come up with a generic Jungle plan of what you want your first round to be, and from there it’s all about adaptation."
After you’ve learned to kite your camp on your given Champions, and you’ve come up with consistent game plans for your picks, it’s time to adapt small adjustments to your plan. This could be as simple as recognizing the gank potential of your lanes or making on the fly adjustments based on where you spot the enemy Jungler.
eXyu: "One of the easiest ways to learn to adapt to the map is to be able to recognize lane states. This comes through experience as a laner, or your study of lane states. So, if you recognize a lane is in a position to be ganked, you can do one of two things. You can either hang around and try to counter the gank, or you can try to ping off your laner to make a move elsewhere."
So, you and the enemy Jungler are both pathing towards the topside. Your top laner is pushed into the opposing side of the map and is at the turret, pressuring their laner’s ability to CS. This is 100% a window for him to be ganked in. And unfortunately, it’s not a window where you can make much happen yourself, unless their laner is severely chunked out and you’re on a Champion like Elise or Zac that can dive early without a ton of risk.
Most Junglers would see this and proceed to alter their course into farming, but by recognizing the style of the enemy Jungler, you can assist your Top Laner in some ways. If the opposing Jungler is on a gank heavy Champion like Elise, Jarvan, or Xin Zhao, remaining around for the counter-gank can be a successful call. Being aware of this and communicating to your Top the likely path of the Jungler, getting you both on the same page can allow you to pincer the enemy Jungler for a shove off or kill. Or, you can follow up the gank with your counter after your Top has engaged them to take advantage of a state where the enemy has resources down.
Resource management is a huge thing for laners, and this doesn’t just mean Health and Mana. Cooldowns are a valuable resource as well. So, you’re camped out waiting for the obvious gank and your Top is skillful enough to avoid some damage, when you see big movement abilities come out like Jarvan’s flag-and-drag, Zac’s Slingshot, or Viego’s shroud, you can come in after these abilities and ping a target to focus, preferably the one with the least ability options to escape with. Worst case, you blow a Flash, best case, your counter leads to a lockdown and kill.
Otherwise, as eXyu mentioned, if your lanes are in vulnerable states, pinging the likely angles that Jungler could gank from while then prodding your way in for a steal of resources is huge. If your laners are able to keep the enemy Jungler interested, you can steal camps, start a neutral objective like Rift or Dragon, or even pull off your own gank with more aggression since you know the enemy is in no position to respond to you.
eXyu: "It’s hard to boil things down when it comes to the Jungle, because there’s an infinite number of things that the enemy Jungle could do. So, your adaptation comes in based on where you see the enemy, the resources near you, or what camps are missing. In a way, it comes to embracing the chaos of what your enemies will give you."
eXyu: "So, the first skill that Junglers in Solo Queue need to learn is how to take their camps. This revolves back to our mention of pacing and staying within our game plan, but it starts here. This means properly kiting your camps towards the next one, juggling the aggro of the smaller minions so you don’t take as much damage, things like that."
Kiting, commonly associated with the ADC role, is a concept that often goes overlooked by Junglers. But, when you properly kite your camps, you actually not only guide your camp towards your next one, reducing your travel time, but you also cancel the autos of the camp you’re clearing, thus keeping you healthy since that’s damage that you otherwise would have taken. Thinking in the mindset of an Assassin Player, you can’t take a risk, or a gank, if your health pool is low. So, kiting to maintain your HP so that you can make a play on a lane with reduced risk is important. Especially if you’re ganking into lane dominant Champions like Darius, or are matched against Junglers that like to invade early like Xin Zhao.
Naturally, kiting is easier for some Junglers, like Elise and Kindred, due to their range advantage. Simply staying out of the camp’s auto range without allowing the reset is pretty much the plan. But for melee clearers like Jarvan, you have to stay out of the range while also being in range for your own damage. This is done by hitting the camp, then backing off slightly to let the camp run to you. Then when your auto is ready, do it again and again. Standing still means you take extra damage which makes your ganks and movements through the Jungle come with higher risk, so always be kiting, ABK, if you will.
When it comes to camps with smaller monsters like Wolves, Raptors, and Krugs, you can kite the small monsters out to save on damage. The smaller monsters are always the ones that are going to crank out the DPS. So, if you’re a single target Jungler, try and position the big monster between the smaller ones, forcing them to path around due to the body-block. This especially works well on Krugs. For camps like Wolves and Raptors, if you have AoE abilities, you can simply clear the big monster first then turn your focus onto the little guys since you whittle everything down simultaneously. But for you single target Champs, going one by one on the little monsters is going to be the way that you shave off damage being delivered to you.
You’ve heard it time and time again, “Play one Champion” or “Pick Three Champions and stick to them!” Well, there’s merit behind the method because it simply works. Countless current Pros start off as one-tricks or two-tricks and climb their way into Challenger and the tops of the ladder before adjusting their pools to more ‘Pro Level’ picks.
eXyu: "For Solo Queue, definitely do the three Champion play-your-own-style method. Solo Queue can get really frustrating if you rely heavily on your teammates. So, the most important thing is to be on a pick or style that you feel comfortable on and can control the game from. And that’s regardless of what your team is picking. When I first climbed to Challenger, I was playing Graves-Nidalee-Lee Sin only. Those high mechanical Junglers that allowed me to be hyper aggressive and take games over by myself.
But not all Junglers have to take that style. Like the Xmithie way is also really respectable, these heavy ganking Tank style Junglers. These combine some knowledge from laning since you have to know when the enemy laner needs to take a risk, and you’re being in the position to punish that.
There’s also the power-farming hypercarries. Champions like Diana, Karthus, and Evelynn. These Champions do nothing for their laners, but they make up for it by being as strong as possible. This style relies on the enemy Jungler making mistakes or ganking without success to get ahead, and that can be pretty inconsistent."
We’ve all been in a spot where we question the next move to make after our plan has been disrupted. We’ve also been on the flipside where we have so much gas, but it’s unclear how to plot out the rest of the game for a win. To answer both of these game states, one of the common ways to start directing the pace of the game is to play around Bot Lane.
Bot not only features the most hyper of carries in the form of an ADC, but it also features double the opportunity to come back or close out. With two targets to feast from, you can really start to swing tempo and gold your way if kills start falling into your or your ADC’s pocket. Additionally, being near the lane that can most efficiently help you take Dragon, the game’s most powerful objective is a win.
eXyu: "Additionally, when you’re ahead, you can always play towards denying your opponent their next play. It’s the idea that ‘you get something and they get literally nothing’. Since you’re always going to be in a stronger state with a lead, this works out well since you’re always stacking on your own momentum.
When you’re behind, it’s all about trading. So, you find out wherever the enemy Jungler is and you go to the opposite side of the map. Whenever they commit to an objective or play, you try and get as many resources as possible on your side of the map."
Typically I leave you with a thanks to eXyu, and a link to his socials. But, before we closed out, he had this one last bit of advice to offer folks taking on the Jungle role.
eXyu: "I know this sounds really boring, but it is really important that you try out the Champion you want to play and come to really understand their clear. It goes back to that kiting topic we had earlier, and there are a lot of YouTube videos out there that tell you how to do it efficiently. It’s always better to take time to practice this, even if you can’t do it super efficiently. It’s better than going in blind and trying it.
When I watch lower ELO games, their Jungle clear is slow that they miss all the opportunities that higher level players have to influence the map. So, get down your clear speeds because then you’ll always be at a significant advantage over the rest of your tier’s Junglers."
There you have it! On that note, I’ll give thanks to eXyu for taking the time to sit with me. And I’ll push those social links! I hope you found this piece informative, and it helps in your end of season climb!
