Become a jungle beast – Episode 2

Advanced timing

Welcome to the second part of the “Jungle beast” series. In this article I’ll be explaining how to take advantage of not only your timers, but also the enemy timers, which can be predicted and used to read the enemy jungler pathing, making the laning phase safer for your teammates.

So, nowadays, predicting the enemy jungle path and clear speed depends a lot about the enemy skill, champion, runes, etc, however, you’ll mostly be able to read the enemy jungler and “be everywhere” just by positioning correctly.

Here’s an explanatory image about usual jungle movements when the enemy jungler is playing on the red team. Since where the jungler starts depends on the champion (For example; Amumu will likely start blue) and the elo (Bad junglers will start wherever, haha).

If the enemy jungler is on the blue side, just reverse the arrows, the timers are the same.

As you can see, the jungler has an “expected” path, and like you, the enemy jungler will take the best possible decission, as explained the last article about jungling.

To include the enemy jungle factor in your decission making you need to combine information and prediction, information can be gathered with smart ward placing and timed invading, prediction has to come from experience and knowledge. I can’t enhance your experience or knowledge about every champion matchup, but what I can do is show you how to take advantage of the usual jungle patterns to place smart wards and spot the enemy jungler.

Knowing that your trinket ward lasts 1 minute early on, and can be placed every 3 minutes, you’ve a reduced period of time where you can spot enemy jungle movements early game.

Here’s an image showing an example of where you should ward to gather the max ammount of information without risking your life, and using the best relation between time spent and reward. From the red side is exactly the same, but mirrored.

If you place the wards as shown in the image you’ll be able to spot jungle rotations, invades, and ganks, if you combine this wards with the pathing shown in this image you’ll ensure that you track the enemy jungler without losing too much farm and you’ll be able to gank and check the jungle camps of the other side.

For example, if you go ward the blue at 3:15 and it’s gone, means that he started blue, rotated top, and he’ll gank top or mid around minute 4, as shown in the first image, on the other hand, if you go blue, and is yet to be done, means that you can position yourself for a countergank mid, or gank mid yourself when you see the jungler start the his own buff.

Seeing him also tells you that he probably will have started Golems, which have a respawn time of 1:40 and if he started at 1:40 and took for him until minute 2, means that you’ll probably be able to take his camp at 3:30 more or less for free before or after ganking top without danger, because your ward you placed at his blue buff spotted him.

The ward placed at 4:45 or so can tell you a lot of information too, and it feels like a natural transition to check your strong side of the map, which is top at this moment. The jungler will probably try something at bottom or mid around minute 4, if he can’t do anything for the next minute and half, he’ll probably rotate for raptors / golems at minute 5 more or less. You’ll be able to spot him at that point if he does so, which is very usefull because you can see if he recalled (items), or if he’s about to do so, which gives you room for invading and taking something away from his side of the jungle.

The point of farming is do it efficiently, which means taking the fastest way from 1 camp to the other, and do it using the best relation between time spent and resources used (hp / mana). HOWEVER, spending extra time to spot jungle movements is worth, you lose efficiency, but you get information, which will help you take better decissions.

Resuming, you have to find the best relation between efficiently farming, choosing when to gank or invade, and drift from your fastest path to get information either by placing wards, or spotting the jungler yourself.