Whether you're watching LCS or playing solo queue you might be seeing an awful lot of a champion known as the Mechanized Menace, Rumble. Currently sitting at the highest win rate for all Mid laners at 54%, it's fairly easy to see why he's showing up so much. What he offers in competitive is a strong control over sustained teamfights and objective control with his ultimate, and in solo queue his lane bully nature tied with some of the factors of nerfs in currently strong champions has put him in quite an advantageous position in the meta. However, we're here to talk about my favourite little rodent in a different position, Jungle.

Now I didn't just decide to start taking Rumble in the Jungle because of his skin of the same name. He was actually a meta jungle pick back in 2016 and then again in 2018 and, though I must admit Rumble jungle isn't exactly a top meta pick right now, what he offers doesn't disappear from being in the jungle position. In fact, it may just be in enhanced.

A quick overview of Rumble's kit for those who may have never played him before. We'll get his four abilities out of the way quickly and then move on the passive.

Q - Flamespitter. In short, a 3 second cone of fire. It deals magic damage on a tick, which means every 0.25 seconds is when it actually deals its damage. This is his main clearing tool, and the bread and butter of his kit.

W - Scrap Shield. Simple enough, a small 1.5 second shield as well as bonus movement speed that ends when the shield drops or is broken.

E - Electro Harpoon. Another simple spell, a slowing skillshot that slows for 2 seconds. This is on an ammo system, so Rumble can store 2 of these at any given time, and their slow stacks.

R - The Equalizer. A difficult to use skillshot that drops a long burning field that lasts 5 seconds, applies a 35% slow, and does a bunch of damage.

Rumble's passive is the most intricate part of his kit. With each ability to you cast you generate 20 Heat (Electro Harpoon technically generates 10 heat per shot, 2 shots = 20 heat). When you cast an ability that generates over 50 Heat, said ability will be amplified in forms below.

After 4 seconds of no skills, Rumble will lose 10 Heat a second. If you generate 100 Heat, Rumble will be silenced for 6 seconds, but his auto attacks will be empowered by 30% of his AP and deal magic damage. Also, it's important to note that the ability to cast to reach 100 isn't stopped either even when silenced. This includes being able to use the second cast of your E despite being silenced.

The challenge becomes managing your heat in lane effectively, staying over 50 but never overheating; Jungle Rumble doesn't care for this issue!

Jungle Rumble can overheat all he likes. Jungle Rumble really strips away a lot of the pitfalls a lane Rumble would have and allows him to excel where he shines best, teamfighting and objective control. There are some setbacks, a weak first clear, being "forced" into pushing back a power spike item such as Liandry's because of your jungle item, but for a champion as fun as Rumble, these setbacks seem minor.

-Runes-

Let's begin with the runes.

If you feel a need for explanation, lane Rumble usually prefers to take things like omet for a little bit of cheeky poke, but it's a tad unnecessary when in the jungle. Dark Harvest allows Rumble to play more akin to the jungle Karthus, where he's relying on his ult in ganks. For the other runes, take Ultimate Hunter, because reducing Ultimate CD is where you want to be, and two chocies from Sorcery are just preferable with Rumble's early game bullying. Although your clear is weak, your ability to tussle is not, these runes just help back you up a little bit.

-Pathing-

Pathing on Rumble is key to not just inting it up early game. Usually starting Red and dropping your smite on Krugs is the way I go, getting the most experience and hardest camp off the field first. Chickens is easy with your Q as well, so my pathing looks a little something like this;

Red > Krugs (Smite) > Chickens, Wolves > Blue > Crab > Gromp; Recall

First clear is tough, but more than doable. From there, it's basically just play to your strongest side of the map, farm up for 6, and try to convince the solo queue goons to group up with your early on objectives. You'll have control of any river/jungle engagements post-6 with your ultimate.

If you're on the red side of the map, the clear is still the same, however jungling is a thinking man's game, so keep in mind things like the type of Dragon spawning early, strongest side of the map, and such. Rumble's gank potential is low but his gank potency is rather high, bringing easy to land, unavoidable damage basically, not to mention a two slows of his own.

-Skills-

Here's the quick order of maxing your skills. It never changes whether in lane or the jungle, so it's pretty simple.

Max R > Q > E > W

-Build-

The biggest pitfall of Rumble in the Jungle is his itemization becomes a little wonky. Usually he wants to rush a Haunting Guise and finds effectiveness in an early boots as well. In the jungle you can for sure still get an early boots, but the trade off becomes jungle item over Haunting Guise. Fortunately, League of Legends is a multifaceted game so we can luckily experiment and go with whatever we want. I'm going to list two types of Jungle Rumble build I like to play.

Standard

This would be a final standard build, in order. You can swap out any of the last three items based on what you may need, such as some armor, Grievous Wounds, or just more damage. Usually, you don't make it past Void anyways.

For a bit of an item breakdown, I first back on regular old Boots of Speed and grab the Fiendish Codex for the jungle item, and then I don't back again until I can pick up the full jungle item or if possible grab a pair Sorc boots. Basically you want to avoid ever buying the mana part of your jungle item and blue smite isn't that necessary either, but usually I will finish the Runic Echos before I move onto to Haunting Guise.

Tank

This is the first iteration of a tank Rumble build, not something I would necessarily suggest for the sake of it being "OP" or anything, but if your team is lacking front line this can work. His clear speed is almost unaffected thanks to buffs to Cinderhulk. You'll still want to be packing some damage and, thankfully, Rylai's and Liandry's come in big help for Rumble in that department and round off with whatever armor/MR items you prefer. However, I choose ones with health to help with Cinderhulk passive. Omen can keep people in your ultimate as well, so there's a fair amount of synergy in the build.

The second iteration of this build is just instead of taking Cinderhulk you keep on your normal Runic Echos, but grab defensive boots. This does mean you'll be lacking penetration which what Rumble is always looking for. A possible swap out of the Liandry's in this type of build would be an Oblivion Orb, but don't upgrade it till much later as it's gold efficient as heck. You could knock off one of the armor/MR items for the Morello's, but again it's all fairly team dependant.

-Tricks and Tips-

Like any champion, Rumble has a few little tips and tricks to play him to maximum efficiency. The first and foremost is his "mobility". All the good jungle champions have ways to get to their camps or lanes quicker, like Rek'Sai's tunnels or J4's flag and drag. Rumble has his W. Remember to stack heat on spawn using Q and two E's. From there, every W press will give you that little speed boost, which can be perfectly timed to be off CD so you'll always have it.

The best tip to hitting a good Rumble ult is to either unbind smart cast for your R or use quickcast indicators. Either way can make for a more ease of access version of lining up those big Equalizers.

Both Q and W have no cast times on them, so you can just slam those keys without having to wait for other actions to complete

Rumble Q isn't cancelled by the likes of Zhonya's, Stopwatch or Bard ultimate. So you can still pump out damage even in Zhonya's.

-Wrap Up-

That's about it. There'll be obvious flaws playing Rumble in the Jungle if you're not great at Jungling. Think of him as an AP variant to Sejuani, bringing a little more damage but trading out the obvious tankiness, I cannot list how to play jungle perfectly but the best advice is as I said before: play to your strongest side of the map, be aware of the next objective spawning, and don't be afraid to contest. A well-placed Equalizer can burn straight through even the tankiest of front lines and is a great zoning tool as well.

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