Overwarding: A Jungler's Bane

Wards. We have all seen the “Buy a Ward, Stop a Gank, Save a Life” memes, yet we have not considered the repercussions of this. It has made life much, much harder for junglers.

Since supports usually start Faerie Charm + Wards and Health Pots (or even full consumables), the addition of the Explorer Ward mastery and the two Sightstone items, has lead to them  having a large pool of wards at their disposal with which they can potentially block any river ganks while still have enough to ward one of the two bottom lane bushes. From a junglers point of view this scenario is a nightmare.

 

Previously, supports would have to make a choice: spend more gold to ward the river and the bush and risk falling behind in items, or make a choice to ward either the river or the bush, but now this is not the case. The jungler must now rely on the support to be pink warding and clearing either the river or the lane wards for him to be able to gank. One might say that the power of ganking has been taken away from the jungler and now rests in the hands of the support.

But it is not only supports. With the current meta for both top and mid being consumable start (9 Health Pots + 2 Wards or 1 Elixir of Fortitude + Wards and Health Pots) all lanes will have wards from level 1. Also a gank on such a lane will not cause much harm to the laner since he will simply use his Health Pots to refill his health, if he is not killed. This again makes ganking so much more difficult for the junglers.

Thus the rise of Wall Jumping and Ghost. To overcome the problem of overwarded lanes, these two, new jungle strategies have been devised. The first is to pick champions with the ability to pass through walls, such as Jarvan IV and Vi. With proper monitoring and awareness of where the enemy wards are placed they can for example Demacian Standard + Dragon Strike or Vault Breaker through certain pathways to avoid detection. Through the Dragon Pit into the Tribush is a common maneuver and a relatively safe one if there is a friendly pink ward in the Tribush. Similarly, to avoid wards placed in the river a Wall Jumping jungler will attempt to jump over the purple side wall into the side bush.

 The tactic of bringing Ghost into the jungle is a relatively new one. Here we find champions like Nasus and Volibear who have either a slow or movement speed boost of their own. The idea is that Ghost will supplement their slows and boosts making ganking easier.

With good communication between jungler and bot lane the Ghost jungler can either lane gank after the bushes have been cleared or charge down through the river with his increased movements speed once bottom lane has been initiated upon, giving little time for the enemy to react. This works best with a support that has a form of hard CC. Imagine a scenario where you have a Taric or Leona as support.

These hard CC supports can initiate on the enemy target, keeping them locked down long enough for a Ghost-Nasus to come in and Wither the target or a Ghost-Volibear to charge with his Rolling Thunder, flip the target backwards and then slow them with his Majestic Roar. By doing this the effectiveness of bot lane wards are minimised as well as guarantee a kill or at least burned Flashes. This works out in favour of the jungler since Flash has a cooldown of 300 sec (285 with Summoner’s Insight Mastery, might be lower for supports due to Mastermind Mastery) where as Ghost has a cooldown of 210 sec (might be lower due to Mastermind Mastery) which gives the jungler roughly a 75-90 second window to gank again when his Ghost is up, but the enemies' Flashes are still down.

A very interesting play has been developed related to overwarding, which includes support Thresh, that renders both river and bush wards obsolete. Bottom lane will be pushed just so that the allied turret is out of vision for the enemy. Thresh will then throw his Dark Passage back to the turret where his jungler is waiting. Landing his Death Sentence, the jungler will grab the lantern and be pulled into the fray where a Death Sentenced and then Flayed target awaits. The combination of Death Sentence, Flay and any CC the jungler has to offer (such as a Volibear Rolling Thunder) will almost certainly guarantee a kill.

An example of this can be seen in this video.

So what is your opinion about this overwarded early game that we have been witnessing lately? Do you junglers see this as challenge to work out new, innovative ways of successfully ganking or is it simply a nuisance?

Daniel “Lynxathrope” Kyriacou