Dealing with Counter-Junglers in Solo-Queue

Forever Alone in the Jungle

As someone who mains jungler in solo-queue ranked, nothing is more frustrating than enemy junglers controlling your own territory. It affects you by putting you behind in farm and levels, but it also affects your team as a whole. You’re farming to catch up, clearing that lone red wraith at your camp the enemy left behind as a sad memento, and those key buffs are now fueling your enemy’s advantage. It’s not only frustrating as a jungler, but in solo-queue it gets downright demoralizing when your team starts to pester you and analyze your performance when they don’t take any measures to help you.

The role of jungler has taken on this stigma that it’s there to help the laners. The problem is that although this is a part of jungling, it is but a fraction of the purpose of the jungler. And similarly, if the jungler is meant to help lanes when they’re in trouble, why do people in solo queue so rarely make any effort to help the jungler when he’s in trouble? What I’m going to explain are several methods and strategies that all but force your team to react and adapt when the enemy jungler is on your side of the map. When done correctly you could even say your own jungle is a weapon to less-savvy players.

 

Before the 1:40 Minute Mark

Communication throughout the game is extremely important for keeping you and your jungle safe. Tell people in champ select to be ready for pings in your jungle if you’re getting countered. Have them help you at the start by guarding you, damaging wolves/wraiths for you, and hard leashing your red/blue buff. Ask for the damage specifically, put it in clear terms for them and if you feel they need it encourage them to do it by explaining to them that fast jungling equals better ganking. Make sure the far lane from you has vision of the jungle entrances closest to them so the enemy jungler doesn’t get to start for free at your own buff. Showing you’re open to communication at the beginning of the game will make them want to help you, and you’ll find quicker reaction times.

Right from champ-select a knowledgeable player can begin to guess how their game will go by seeing the matchup of champs in-lane, and the same thought can apply to the jungle. Ever since the recent tournament where team Moscow 5 really spotlighted Shyvana and her counter-jungling potential, you can assume that when you see a Shy pick she’ll be in your jungle half the time. Shyvana has good mobility and fast clear times; what would be a good pick into this from a solo-queue mindset?

Well, Dr. Mundo has extremely fast clear times, and is a fantastic duelist. You can race Shyvana to your red buff if she decides to go the “her blue to your-red route,” and if she instead decides to lv 2 gank from her red she doesn’t have your blue open to take. In cases where you’re worried about your red buff and the other jungler usually starts blue you can pick a champion that can start red to deny them that option.

 

Never Surrender!

But let’s say we’re 10-12 minutes in and the other jungler has already started to dominate your own jungle and has nearly killed or has killed you several times now. Wards, wards, and wards! Yes, these guys cost money, but with only a few of them you can stop the enemy jungler dead in their tracks, or even better turn what was their advantage into your own. Your red buff jungle is by far the easiest to invade as an enemy jungler without team support. You’ll often see junglers not only trying to go for your red when it spawns, but also cleaning out your wraith camp often. You need to keep a couple of things in mind when contesting your own jungle:

- How strong are they in comparison to you and your team?

- Are your lanes at base, low, or is the enemy pushed to their tower and cutting them off from you?

- What type of summoners does this guy have, and are they up? Is their ultimate up? (If you don’t know for sure, assume they are up.)

When not contesting a major buff you need to put in perspective that your wraith camp is in no way worth giving them a potential kill over. If you’re versus a fed Dr. Mundo with a level on you and exhaust with a Cassiopeia pushing your mid right up to your tower, this is a terrible position to contest your jungle. Do keep in mind that the closer the enemy is to your own tower, the closer they are to your jungle, and thus the enemy jungler will acquire support quickly. A big factor in this scenario is also who is winning that lane at the time, as your lanemate might want to come help you, but get cut off or out-damaged by the enemy.

You still have an advantage if you can’t contest your jungle – you know where their jungler is, and so do your teammates. This relieves a massive amount of map pressure. Top/bot can play riskier, and if you feel your team is prepared you could even force a quick dragon if their jungler happens to be on the opposite side of the map too busy stealing your small camps. Keep in mind by mid-game the mobility of the opposing team and if they’re in position to baron when attempting something like this. As a jungler, keep baron and dragon warded at all times possible; the worst feeling is to nab dragon only to see the enemy team walk out from the fog of war with baron buff on them.

A map with Blue/Red buffs marked. The dots are good defensive warding areas for blue and purple side respectively.

Controlling the Map

People in low-mid elos underestimate the disadvantage of appearing on the map as a jungler. This is why early-oracle junglers have become really strong, as they clear vision of the map, and they make your presence on the map an unknown unless you gank or cover a lane.

As a side note, jungling with an oracle makes things more complicated. It’s a high risk, high reward type of deal. An oracle is 400g that expires upon death, and you’re playing a role that is going to be dealing with all 5 members of the other team in all likely-hood, and thus somewhat prone to death. Certain champions will hold an oracle better: Alistar (His ult, cc, and movement), Shyvana (Movement, and her ult), Shaco (Extremely slippery), Dr. Mundo (Ult, tankiness, safe clearing), and Udyr (cc, jungle control, tankiness, and speed) are some good examples of champions that early-oracles work well on.

If a jungler isn’t landing successful ganks gold is going to be tight, especially as some core items can be expensive, and thus the 400g for an oracle is a heavy investment. Each ward you clear gives you 25g, and costs the enemy 75g, as well as giving you advantage in map control. The risk is that most junglers can’t afford more than one oracles, and losing it wastes their investment; this means when engaging in ganks, fights, and contesting objectives you need to factor in you dying is a minimum of 700g loss for your team (400g for oracle, 300g+ for the kill). Play smart – think.

Speaking of map presence, knowing where the enemy jungler is gives your ganks an edge as well. Say you see the enemy jungler near top and mid looks under control. If your bot lane is performing well enough you can safely go all-in for kills bottom without worrying about the enemy jungler cleaning up what’s left of you guys and making all your efforts worthless. On the other hand if you’re feeling strong (Perhaps you’ve bought, and the enemy hasn’t) you can go the route of counter-ganking the lane you think the enemy will try for. This can turn things around quick - just at all times remember about the objectives like dragon in play.

This is another point I cannot emphasize enough: Time all big mobs! The timers for blue/red are 5 minutes, dragon is 6, and baron is 7. Expect a counter jungling enemy to time your buffs so that if you’re unprepared he’ll just pick them up the second they spawn. This means not only should you be timing your buffs, but you should be in that general area of the map around their spawn time if you don’t want to give them away free.

You’ll notice that jungle routes now tend to make the first 2-3 spawns of buffs easy to guess. 7:15~ is when the buff that was started at will spawn a second time generally. Expect these early-game spawns to be contested, and act appropriately. If you know the enemy to be aggressive and you’re reasonably sure they’re going to contest a spawn but you’re not confident in your team – keep in mind their buff will spawn at the same time on the opposite side of the map. With vision on your buff this gives you an opportunity to trade their buff for yours.

 

In Combination

Using all the above information and strategies in tandem you’ll find solo-queue jungling to be a much safer gambit. Does this guarantee success? Does it truly force people to support the jungler so you can in-turn support them? No, but I’m hoping armed with this information my fellow solo-queue junglers will be better prepared, and that those who aren’t jungling will better understand the inner-workings of the jungle. There’s a lot more to jungling that can be learned, my own knowledge of the game included! Watch those professional streams, read up, and learn not to get angry in-game.