Know Your Jungle Style

The Jungle in League of Legends has great depth and versatility, and one of the first things a jungler must find out about themselves is what type of jungler they are. I will limit this to just 4 categories: Carry, Sub-Carry, Tank/Support, and Anti-Jungler.

 

Carry Jungler

First is the Carry Jungler; this is usually the jungler you find in Solo queue. If you find yourself playing a lot of Master Yi, Nocturne, or an Aggressive Kha'zix, you may be a carry jungler. The carry jungler's role in a match is normally to farm up and choose their ganks very wisely, as you won't do much ganking at all. In the mid game you would probably focus on continue to farm up, whilst getting picks on single targets here and there, slowly building an advantage for the last part of the game. In the late end of the game, the carry jungler will spend most of their time split pushing, forcing favourable fights for your time and taking objectives with well thought out, planned split pushing.

Pros:
- You don't need to rely on your teammates for success
- You end up being one of the strongest players in the game, giving you an incredible strategical advantage
- The early game farming is simple and easy to do

Cons:
- It's hard to play it around some solo queue players, as they may not understand you not ganking as much and not grouping to 5v5
- Farm/carry junglers are normally not very good at team fighting if you build them as an assassin to split push, causing you to die quite quickly without dealing much damage in a 5v5 situation

 

Sub-Carry Jungler

The Sub-Carry Jungler is a jungler that is pretty much bits of every other type of jungler. Champions like Lee Sin and Jarvan, early pressure on their jungler or the enemy lanes from lots of ganks is what these champions are good at. They focus on building off-tank, with a couple of damage items early followed by tanky items to bring utility to the team. Sub-Carry Junglers thrive at providing the their team with kills, with mobility, and CC utility.

Pros:
- It's easy to carry your team through the laning phase
- The utility of these junglers can be applied through all the game (i.e. Jarvan's Cataclysm)

Cons:
- These junglers often deal no damage late game in order to be tanky and be useful in teamfights
- If your lanes fall behind then there isn't that much you can do to get back in the game

 

Tank/Support Jungler

The Tank/Support Jungler usually does exactly what it says on the tin. They build almost exclusively tank items and have large amounts of CC and utility to assist the team in mainly the mid-late game. Champions like Nautilus, Sejuan,i and Amumu all fit into this category. As a Support/Tank Jungler you often have at least one form of hard CC (stun, snare, root etc) before level 6, and use this to get yourself through the early game. Once the mid and late game hits, all you want to be doing as a Tank/Support Jungler is forcing 5v5 teamfights which strong initiations onto squishy opponents, whilst soaking up damage for your team.

Pros:
- Your CC is game changing in late game teamfights and can easily turn a lost fight around
- Innate tankiness and itemisation makes you incredibly difficult to kill

Cons:
- Prone to early game counter jungling and counter ganking
- Loses early game trades against all the other types of jungler

 

Anti-Jungler

An Anti-Jungler, also known more commonly as a counter-jungler, uses early game strength to shut down the opposing jungler, this usually turns the game into a 4v4 for most of the mid-game, as the enemy jungler would be made useless but anti-junglers don't scale well (Shaco for example). Anti-Junglers are usually good at 1v1 dueling.

Pros:
- Significantly reduces pressure on your lanes from their jungler
- Early game dominance in the jungle can translate to dominance in lanes

Cons:
- Squishy and ineffective in teamfights
- Forced to split push late game in order to be useful