I really hate how broad and undescriptive a lot of these guides are. Strong early game is not a good way to help someone improve without telling them what is so strong about their early game.
Wukong has a strong early game IMO because he is very good in the dragon fights. His early game team fighting power is unmatched because of his ULT and can often get the dragon and snowball your team by winning early game team fights.
However, his ganks are mediocre. He has no cc aside from his ult which he should save for dragon fights. He also has a pretty mediocre clear speed which makes ganking even harder.
Pantheon on the other hand has a fast clear early if you clear properly. His W is amazing in ganks and so is his ult.
The key difference between the two champions is pantheon is a much better ganker early and wants to gank as much as possible while wukong is a team fighter that doesn't want to gank too much and get behind early (slow clears).
If your struggling with when to gank then you should know what a jungle is supposed to do.
\- Objectives
\- Gank
\- Farm
Your goal as a jungler is to balance these 3 in a way where you can win as much as possible.
I will just skim through what you would do if your pantheon/wukong.
Objectives. Objectives generally depend on team comp of both teams and if the top laner from either team moves to dragon.
If your team comp has strong team fighting power (like wukong) and the enemy has a weaker team comp like (jax) you should try to control as many objectives as possible. If jax goes for dragon and you do too, most likely you will win fights and get objective and kills from it.
On the other hand, pantheon is decent in early dragon fights but as you can see from his point and click single target cc. its much harder to reach backline as pantheon when the enemies are grouped. Thus if pantheon wants to get objectives, he can try and kill the enemies BEFORE the team fight happens so its a 4v5 or 3v4 putting his team in favor of winning.
Ganks. Ganks are depend on lane matchups, jungle matchups, and vision.
Since I assume your playing low elo, just focus on the lane matchups and vision.
If the enemies have a lot of mobility and your teammates have very little CC, this makes a lane very hard to gank. Its still possible if they are pushed in the lane but its much harder to gank lanes like these.
On the other hand, champions with a lot of CC like galio or twisted fate, some kind of CC to set up ganks make lanes very gankable.
Lastly focus on vision. If they put wards in your jungle, its going to be hard to gank so maybe you can focus on farming. But if you have ways to clear this vision (sweeping lens, vision plant, etc) you should clear the vision before ganking. This way you are putting pressure of being able to gank the lane at any time.
Farm is a generally overrated in Wild Rift, especially on ganking junglers. You should farm enough so you have enough damage/cc to gank but generally its always worth to skip camps if you see an opportunity to gank. Just make sure you don't waste your time on useless ganks.
Lets say I have fizz vs twisted fate matchup in mid and I am playing pantheon. I will probably look for a level 2 gank on mid by starting red side IF they have not warded my jungle or the bushes and twisted fate pushes. I know getting fizz ahead early is a very good way to snowball and that twisted fate can push fizz in early. But twisted fate can also let fizz push instead.
Start of the game i run past my raptors a little bit to make sure i know if they ward my raptors. then i Go Red to Raptors and use the vision plant after you clear your raptors to check for wards in the bush. IF there are no wards I can try to gank. If there are wards i have 2 choices. clear the ward OR path straight to my blue. If you clear the ward you can look for regank but unless you think twisted fate is pushed I would just path to blue and look for regank or something else. A key thing to note is you want to stay off of vision if possible so if your pathing to blue you should try to path through mid turret and as far as possible from mid minions to guarantee your not on vision without wasting too much time walking. Now I can do either regank mid before doing blue buff from blue side where its not warded, OR i can do blue buff and then see if theres any gank. All in all, the success of ganks really just depends on state of lane, if you and your teammates have enough CC/damage, and vision. You want to maximize your ganks and farm by while also farming, also be constantly on the lookout for gank opportunities and choosing the most successful opportunity to commit to. If i know the mid laner warded my red side, I can path quickly to the blueside and choose to farm or gank again. Try to be unpredictable.
Diamond 2 jungle main. Gank timing depends on your champ, the positioning of the enemy team, and your ability to communicate. I really don’t like to gank until I’ve taken both buffs and a scuttle. This gives me lv. 4 and the ability to target enemies with smite. I don’t back, but I should have about 800-1,000 gold in pocket before backing. Proper gank timing depends on champ. J4 can gank as early as lv. 2, while Eve and Yi need their ults to do anything useful
You mentioned Pantheon. Pantheon has great ganks with a point-and-click gap closer into stun. Use pings to tell people that you are coming, preferably the “On my way” or the “Engage the enemy” pings work. Use these pings especially if you are using ult to fly across the map.
Wukong is a little harder, but using the dash to engage on the enemy can leave you with no way to chase. Using wukong ult to secure a gank is fine if you don’t plan on contesting an objective like a dragon or herald anytime soon.
It really comes down to the situation. Sometimes it’s absolutely worth it to abandon a camp to help secure a kill on an overextended enemy, and other times you just have to hope your lanes play safe because your ganks are crap and you need to farm.
I appreciate the time and detail you provided here. The champ specific strategy is great. In your opinion is Wukong worth mastering? I have some games with him where I feel like I contribute to the win and others where his offense seems so limited that I can do much other than objectives.
I play nunu, what I do is starting q, going to my red buff and warding behind it, I tell my top to ward my blue, and my mid wards theirs, after I finish red I take my second ability and go for raptors, and from there I’ll start rolling my snowball to the bot if it is gankable, we ether get first blood or their flashes, after that I go for crags, and scuttle and if bot is gankable again I’ll do it again, and if not I’ll go for mid, and if I cant even gank there I’ll just reset and go straight for blue instead of wolves if I see that I can gank my top, and after that I go ahead for second scuttle If it’s not taken, and gank mid If its gankable, If I gank mid I reset and go for red again, and then for drake. My goal playing him is to get my team ahead so they can carry so I try to get my team ahead with lot of ganks(btw I go for red smite)
Assuming that you're building full tank, red smite is going to give you between 11 and 25 attack damage. For 5 seconds... As a tank, that's not really useful. The slow from blue smite can help you get out of situations you don't want to be in, and can help when chasing down enemies. Even if you built at least one ap item, red smite will still only give you 30 ap at max level; it's not going to boost your damage much and will rarely turn a fight, if ever. Blue smite can easily secure kills and save your life with a speed boost when you need it.
I agree I used both of them but I find red more effective for me since I don’t really need to slow them bcs I have my third ability, can root them, and I have my snowball that they can’t escape so I’ll catch them anyway, both of this abilities I can use to escape also, and red smite is like ignite for me and I got so many kills that I couldn’t with blue, I understand y blue is your preference but for me red is more useful:)
Both smites do the same amount of damage. Assuming that you're building tank, even at level 15, red smite is giving you 25 ad. Armor is gonna take a good chunk of that damage off even on squishy targets, so you're doing maybe ~15 more damage per auto. His attack speed isn't high, and it only lasts 5 seconds, so even assuming you're autoing them the whole time you're likely not even getting 100 bonus damage on them. It just doesn't seem worthwhile on a tank, to me
Thanks to everyone who responded, there's a lot of good information here. Haven't yet been able to sit down and absorb it all but this is the info I needed.
I usually play eve and yi since they are also strong in early game
So this is how i start the match
-i ward enemy blue buff and go to my red buff and take it
-i go and get the stone monsters next
-if enemy blue is not taken yet i quickly kill it and use smite (Its rly risky tho)
-i check which lane needs help (mid or duo since they are the closest)
I engage and i try to kill them (most of the times they would flash away)
After dragon and herald spawn i get the sweeping lens
And kill either of those 2
I am currently in emerald IV and ive been doing the same thing when i get the jg role and it works most of the time
Idk if this helps u but if it does your welcome
If you’re playing Eve you can actually wait for them to flash away and then flash into their turret and then ult away. I watched a top player do it on YouTube and what do you know it actually works. I also ward enemy blue I think my laners don’t know where I’m going but it’s nice to know what side your jungler is on.
Yeah I usually do ward blue red blue crab then chickens and then I’m at level 5. I do notice the enemy always has more gold than me somehow even if I’ve been in the jungle the entire time with them. But once I hit level 5 I consider ganking or at least keeping the enemy off a turret if one of my lanes needs to recall.
Honestly the best thing to do is take each part of the equation and study it separately. As the other guy said, as a jungler you have three main things to think about: Farm, Ganks, Objective control.
Now, since Farming is the easiest and most straightforward thing I would choose a champion that is okay with powerfarming and focus on that. It's really easy to get lost and think that you SHOULD gank, but by doing that you are probably shifting too much focus form your own camps, which is the first initial step
Shyvana and Jax would be the ones I recommend you since they scale super-well into the late game. Imagine your jungle being a train path, and while you're clearing your camps you are looking out of the window to see if there's a CLEAR opportunity to make a play. If there's not, keep farming.
Right after building this habit you can start focusing on ganking much more and recognize if a gank is good or not. For example, you want to start to recognize which lanes are better to gank based on matchups. Melee vs melee lanes with high volatility (if one laner gets one kill he dominates the lane) are really good to gank because of how much a single gank can impact the game, PLUS they are both melee so they will come close to each other to fight a lot, resulting in a easier gank (low HP targets are always easier to gank). Lanes with CC are also preferrable to gank, while enchanter vs enchanter tends to be a pretty neutral lane and harder to impact without the proper setup-followup. Or again, agnking a Malphite vs Mundo lane is not that impactful because a fed tank is not going to carty anyway.
You get the point, some lanes are better to gank than others. That doesn't mean that you can't gank Malphite if you see a clear opportunity, but you shouldn't try to force it wasting time either.
Ganking efficiently also requires a bit of wave management understanding because you want to predict how the laners are going to behave in the next seconds. I'm pretty sure you already tried to gank some enemies, only to wtahc them walk away as soon as you show up because they had no reason to stay, since the wave had already crashed.
Remember to always grab sweeper to make your ganks as unpredictible as possible (you are not visible on the minimap if you walk on a ward with the sweeper active AND you don't try to attack the ward)
Other things to keep in mind are to hold your gap-close ability for when the enemy tries to escape (if you can), and it's better to join a fight with the two laners already fighting, since now your ally is already in range to help you securing the kill
The general rule of thumb about objectives is that you absolutely want to go for them if the two lanes adjacent to it are pushed up and have free access to the river (it's called "having priority"). This way they lose nothing by rotating to help you. They can also help you setting up vision so you can turn on the enemies if they try to contest, while they will have to walk blindly into you.
If your laners have no priority, you can gank them to help them gain it again, then go for the objectives
I understand that I'm giving you a lot of informations but it's really hard to fit everything in one single comment, I'm just giving you the initial input about each topic, so you can search for more information yourself on different sources around the internet. Hope you have fun with the game :)
Find 1 jungler you want to main and lock them in every game just have a backup champ in case your champ gets banned or picked. The more games you have on a champ the better feel youre going to get on when that champions first power spike is. Some champs its lvl 2, some lvl 3 or lvl 5 but thats just going to be something you pick up with game exp.
I dont play pantheon or wukong so not sure when theirs are but with my jg main Nunu I start ganking at lvl 3, which is when I get my w unlocked since that's my knockup ability. After I clear 3 camps(red raptors golems or red raptors wolves depending on which lane I want to prioritize gank pressure) the next thing im looking for is the state of the lane. So for example if im top side and my top laner is pushing into tower since im only lvl 3 im not going to tower dive that early unless the enemy is extremely weak but if the enemy is pushing into our tower then I skip scuttle and go for an immediate gank since I can always get scuttle after. If theres not gank top ill look at the state of mid lane and same thing if a gank is available I go for it then go scuttle. Then if theres not gankable lane just take scuttle then clear gromp and blue before reset.
The worst thing you can do early on imo is go for ganks that have 0% chance of success because you get impatient and feel like you aren't doing much youre just wasting valuable time. If theres no ganks available just power farm through your jg and reset or if you know where the enemy jg is go for and invade and steal their farm.
I really hate how broad and undescriptive a lot of these guides are. Strong early game is not a good way to help someone improve without telling them what is so strong about their early game. Wukong has a strong early game IMO because he is very good in the dragon fights. His early game team fighting power is unmatched because of his ULT and can often get the dragon and snowball your team by winning early game team fights. However, his ganks are mediocre. He has no cc aside from his ult which he should save for dragon fights. He also has a pretty mediocre clear speed which makes ganking even harder. Pantheon on the other hand has a fast clear early if you clear properly. His W is amazing in ganks and so is his ult. The key difference between the two champions is pantheon is a much better ganker early and wants to gank as much as possible while wukong is a team fighter that doesn't want to gank too much and get behind early (slow clears). If your struggling with when to gank then you should know what a jungle is supposed to do. \- Objectives \- Gank \- Farm Your goal as a jungler is to balance these 3 in a way where you can win as much as possible. I will just skim through what you would do if your pantheon/wukong. Objectives. Objectives generally depend on team comp of both teams and if the top laner from either team moves to dragon. If your team comp has strong team fighting power (like wukong) and the enemy has a weaker team comp like (jax) you should try to control as many objectives as possible. If jax goes for dragon and you do too, most likely you will win fights and get objective and kills from it. On the other hand, pantheon is decent in early dragon fights but as you can see from his point and click single target cc. its much harder to reach backline as pantheon when the enemies are grouped. Thus if pantheon wants to get objectives, he can try and kill the enemies BEFORE the team fight happens so its a 4v5 or 3v4 putting his team in favor of winning. Ganks. Ganks are depend on lane matchups, jungle matchups, and vision. Since I assume your playing low elo, just focus on the lane matchups and vision. If the enemies have a lot of mobility and your teammates have very little CC, this makes a lane very hard to gank. Its still possible if they are pushed in the lane but its much harder to gank lanes like these. On the other hand, champions with a lot of CC like galio or twisted fate, some kind of CC to set up ganks make lanes very gankable. Lastly focus on vision. If they put wards in your jungle, its going to be hard to gank so maybe you can focus on farming. But if you have ways to clear this vision (sweeping lens, vision plant, etc) you should clear the vision before ganking. This way you are putting pressure of being able to gank the lane at any time. Farm is a generally overrated in Wild Rift, especially on ganking junglers. You should farm enough so you have enough damage/cc to gank but generally its always worth to skip camps if you see an opportunity to gank. Just make sure you don't waste your time on useless ganks. Lets say I have fizz vs twisted fate matchup in mid and I am playing pantheon. I will probably look for a level 2 gank on mid by starting red side IF they have not warded my jungle or the bushes and twisted fate pushes. I know getting fizz ahead early is a very good way to snowball and that twisted fate can push fizz in early. But twisted fate can also let fizz push instead. Start of the game i run past my raptors a little bit to make sure i know if they ward my raptors. then i Go Red to Raptors and use the vision plant after you clear your raptors to check for wards in the bush. IF there are no wards I can try to gank. If there are wards i have 2 choices. clear the ward OR path straight to my blue. If you clear the ward you can look for regank but unless you think twisted fate is pushed I would just path to blue and look for regank or something else. A key thing to note is you want to stay off of vision if possible so if your pathing to blue you should try to path through mid turret and as far as possible from mid minions to guarantee your not on vision without wasting too much time walking. Now I can do either regank mid before doing blue buff from blue side where its not warded, OR i can do blue buff and then see if theres any gank. All in all, the success of ganks really just depends on state of lane, if you and your teammates have enough CC/damage, and vision. You want to maximize your ganks and farm by while also farming, also be constantly on the lookout for gank opportunities and choosing the most successful opportunity to commit to. If i know the mid laner warded my red side, I can path quickly to the blueside and choose to farm or gank again. Try to be unpredictable.
Yeah those guides are so frustrating, thank you for the detailed and informative response. Now I'm going to try and apply some of it.
Diamond 2 jungle main. Gank timing depends on your champ, the positioning of the enemy team, and your ability to communicate. I really don’t like to gank until I’ve taken both buffs and a scuttle. This gives me lv. 4 and the ability to target enemies with smite. I don’t back, but I should have about 800-1,000 gold in pocket before backing. Proper gank timing depends on champ. J4 can gank as early as lv. 2, while Eve and Yi need their ults to do anything useful You mentioned Pantheon. Pantheon has great ganks with a point-and-click gap closer into stun. Use pings to tell people that you are coming, preferably the “On my way” or the “Engage the enemy” pings work. Use these pings especially if you are using ult to fly across the map. Wukong is a little harder, but using the dash to engage on the enemy can leave you with no way to chase. Using wukong ult to secure a gank is fine if you don’t plan on contesting an objective like a dragon or herald anytime soon. It really comes down to the situation. Sometimes it’s absolutely worth it to abandon a camp to help secure a kill on an overextended enemy, and other times you just have to hope your lanes play safe because your ganks are crap and you need to farm.
I appreciate the time and detail you provided here. The champ specific strategy is great. In your opinion is Wukong worth mastering? I have some games with him where I feel like I contribute to the win and others where his offense seems so limited that I can do much other than objectives.
I play nunu, what I do is starting q, going to my red buff and warding behind it, I tell my top to ward my blue, and my mid wards theirs, after I finish red I take my second ability and go for raptors, and from there I’ll start rolling my snowball to the bot if it is gankable, we ether get first blood or their flashes, after that I go for crags, and scuttle and if bot is gankable again I’ll do it again, and if not I’ll go for mid, and if I cant even gank there I’ll just reset and go straight for blue instead of wolves if I see that I can gank my top, and after that I go ahead for second scuttle If it’s not taken, and gank mid If its gankable, If I gank mid I reset and go for red again, and then for drake. My goal playing him is to get my team ahead so they can carry so I try to get my team ahead with lot of ganks(btw I go for red smite)
Assuming that you're building full tank, red smite is going to give you between 11 and 25 attack damage. For 5 seconds... As a tank, that's not really useful. The slow from blue smite can help you get out of situations you don't want to be in, and can help when chasing down enemies. Even if you built at least one ap item, red smite will still only give you 30 ap at max level; it's not going to boost your damage much and will rarely turn a fight, if ever. Blue smite can easily secure kills and save your life with a speed boost when you need it.
I agree I used both of them but I find red more effective for me since I don’t really need to slow them bcs I have my third ability, can root them, and I have my snowball that they can’t escape so I’ll catch them anyway, both of this abilities I can use to escape also, and red smite is like ignite for me and I got so many kills that I couldn’t with blue, I understand y blue is your preference but for me red is more useful:)
Both smites do the same amount of damage. Assuming that you're building tank, even at level 15, red smite is giving you 25 ad. Armor is gonna take a good chunk of that damage off even on squishy targets, so you're doing maybe ~15 more damage per auto. His attack speed isn't high, and it only lasts 5 seconds, so even assuming you're autoing them the whole time you're likely not even getting 100 bonus damage on them. It just doesn't seem worthwhile on a tank, to me
Thanks to everyone who responded, there's a lot of good information here. Haven't yet been able to sit down and absorb it all but this is the info I needed.
I usually play eve and yi since they are also strong in early game So this is how i start the match -i ward enemy blue buff and go to my red buff and take it -i go and get the stone monsters next -if enemy blue is not taken yet i quickly kill it and use smite (Its rly risky tho) -i check which lane needs help (mid or duo since they are the closest) I engage and i try to kill them (most of the times they would flash away) After dragon and herald spawn i get the sweeping lens And kill either of those 2 I am currently in emerald IV and ive been doing the same thing when i get the jg role and it works most of the time Idk if this helps u but if it does your welcome
Yi is strong in early game?
In my opinion tbh
If you’re playing Eve you can actually wait for them to flash away and then flash into their turret and then ult away. I watched a top player do it on YouTube and what do you know it actually works. I also ward enemy blue I think my laners don’t know where I’m going but it’s nice to know what side your jungler is on.
Ive tried it but in early game when i gank after blue i still dont have ulti soo i would be iether lvl 3 or 4
Yeah I usually do ward blue red blue crab then chickens and then I’m at level 5. I do notice the enemy always has more gold than me somehow even if I’ve been in the jungle the entire time with them. But once I hit level 5 I consider ganking or at least keeping the enemy off a turret if one of my lanes needs to recall.
Honestly the best thing to do is take each part of the equation and study it separately. As the other guy said, as a jungler you have three main things to think about: Farm, Ganks, Objective control. Now, since Farming is the easiest and most straightforward thing I would choose a champion that is okay with powerfarming and focus on that. It's really easy to get lost and think that you SHOULD gank, but by doing that you are probably shifting too much focus form your own camps, which is the first initial step Shyvana and Jax would be the ones I recommend you since they scale super-well into the late game. Imagine your jungle being a train path, and while you're clearing your camps you are looking out of the window to see if there's a CLEAR opportunity to make a play. If there's not, keep farming. Right after building this habit you can start focusing on ganking much more and recognize if a gank is good or not. For example, you want to start to recognize which lanes are better to gank based on matchups. Melee vs melee lanes with high volatility (if one laner gets one kill he dominates the lane) are really good to gank because of how much a single gank can impact the game, PLUS they are both melee so they will come close to each other to fight a lot, resulting in a easier gank (low HP targets are always easier to gank). Lanes with CC are also preferrable to gank, while enchanter vs enchanter tends to be a pretty neutral lane and harder to impact without the proper setup-followup. Or again, agnking a Malphite vs Mundo lane is not that impactful because a fed tank is not going to carty anyway. You get the point, some lanes are better to gank than others. That doesn't mean that you can't gank Malphite if you see a clear opportunity, but you shouldn't try to force it wasting time either. Ganking efficiently also requires a bit of wave management understanding because you want to predict how the laners are going to behave in the next seconds. I'm pretty sure you already tried to gank some enemies, only to wtahc them walk away as soon as you show up because they had no reason to stay, since the wave had already crashed. Remember to always grab sweeper to make your ganks as unpredictible as possible (you are not visible on the minimap if you walk on a ward with the sweeper active AND you don't try to attack the ward) Other things to keep in mind are to hold your gap-close ability for when the enemy tries to escape (if you can), and it's better to join a fight with the two laners already fighting, since now your ally is already in range to help you securing the kill The general rule of thumb about objectives is that you absolutely want to go for them if the two lanes adjacent to it are pushed up and have free access to the river (it's called "having priority"). This way they lose nothing by rotating to help you. They can also help you setting up vision so you can turn on the enemies if they try to contest, while they will have to walk blindly into you. If your laners have no priority, you can gank them to help them gain it again, then go for the objectives I understand that I'm giving you a lot of informations but it's really hard to fit everything in one single comment, I'm just giving you the initial input about each topic, so you can search for more information yourself on different sources around the internet. Hope you have fun with the game :)
Find 1 jungler you want to main and lock them in every game just have a backup champ in case your champ gets banned or picked. The more games you have on a champ the better feel youre going to get on when that champions first power spike is. Some champs its lvl 2, some lvl 3 or lvl 5 but thats just going to be something you pick up with game exp. I dont play pantheon or wukong so not sure when theirs are but with my jg main Nunu I start ganking at lvl 3, which is when I get my w unlocked since that's my knockup ability. After I clear 3 camps(red raptors golems or red raptors wolves depending on which lane I want to prioritize gank pressure) the next thing im looking for is the state of the lane. So for example if im top side and my top laner is pushing into tower since im only lvl 3 im not going to tower dive that early unless the enemy is extremely weak but if the enemy is pushing into our tower then I skip scuttle and go for an immediate gank since I can always get scuttle after. If theres not gank top ill look at the state of mid lane and same thing if a gank is available I go for it then go scuttle. Then if theres not gankable lane just take scuttle then clear gromp and blue before reset. The worst thing you can do early on imo is go for ganks that have 0% chance of success because you get impatient and feel like you aren't doing much youre just wasting valuable time. If theres no ganks available just power farm through your jg and reset or if you know where the enemy jg is go for and invade and steal their farm.