LEFT: Hiding
in bushes is a
classic trick.L
eague of Legends is a
hopelessly
complicated game—it
can take hundreds of
hours to master any
one of its five roles. Of those, the
jungler is the least popular among
players, and it’s easy to see why.
Unlike the others on your team, you
don’t spend the game camped in a
lane, picking off waves of minions
for gold and experience points
while participating in a deadly
dance against opponents who are
trying to do the same. Jungling is
like a whole other game inside of
League of Legends—one that takes a
lot of patience and skill. But once
you understand the mind games,
the clever tricks, and the thrill of
ambushing enemy players, it
becomes clear that jungling is
League of Legends’ coolest role.
If you haven’t played the game,
junglers are basically glorified errand
boys with a license to kill. While
other players face off in the three
lanes that stretch between each
team’s base, your haunt is the
forested regions between them, called
the jungle. You roam about unseen,
fighting camps of respawning
monsters for gold and experience
while looking for ways to give your
teammates an extra edge.
CREEP SHOW
Good junglers are masters of
information and guerrilla warfare.
They know how to get inside the
other team’s head and mess with
them to create openings for a deadly
gank. If the enemy team’s toplaner
overextends too far forward, I can
pop out of the concealment of my
jungle and, along with my own
toplaner, tag-team him. Given how
high stakes League of Legends is, it
has a good chance of getting under
that player’s skin, making them more
prone to mistakes. Sometimes that
player, now feeling pressured to catch
up, will continue to be aggressive and
push forward, giving me another
opportunity to punish them.
Junglers can set up much more
elaborate ganks, though. They mightplace vision-granting wards in the
enemy jungle so they can see where
the enemy jungler is, and orchestrate
a deadly ambush. They might
surprise a weakened enemy under
the powerful defenses of their tower
by diving in to get the kill and then
flashing away before the tower, in
turn, kills them. LoL might seem
complicated, but once you get it, that
gives endless opportunities.
While my team focuses on
farming up experience points and
gold, I get to roam from lane to lane,
jumping on the enemy team and
harassing them. That team’s own
jungler is doing the same thing,
which creates many hilariousNEED TO KNOW
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leagueoflegends.comambushes on top of ambushes. It’s a
role for people who love being
aggressive and taking risks.
But being a jungler is also fun in a
much more wholesome way. Unlike a
lot of League of Legends players, I
don’t enjoy being the star of the show.
For me, it’s fun to lift my teammates
up. Though I might be the one to
initiate a fight against an enemy
player, I’m rarely the one who
finishes it. My job is to weaken and
stun the enemy so my own teammate
can get the kill, earning the bonus
gold and experience points.
Junglers are also natural team
leaders. On either side of the map are
powerful monsters that, when slain,
award powerful buffs or unique
abilities. The Rift Herald, for
example, can be killed and then
summoned to take down enemy
defences. But it’s up to me to
coordinate with my team and make
the call for when we should take
those objectives. If the enemy jungler
is alive and nearby, they might slip in
at the last moment and steal the
monster kill and its benefits for their
own team—leaving us vulnerable.
It’s these layers of strategy,
knowing when to act or turn a bad
situation around, that make jungling
satisfying. It’s an experience unlike
anything else in LoL, and I absolutely
love the unique challenges and
opportunities it presents.MY JOB IS TO WEAKEN AND
STUN THE ENEMY SO MY OWN
TEAMMATE CAN GET THE KILLJUNGLE LOVE The best junglers for newer players
WARWICK
Warwick specializes at
chasing down wounded
enemies and picking them
off, but he’s very tanky too.
Choose him if you like
picking off weak enemies.MASTER YI
People hate Master Yi for a
good reason: He becomes
unstoppable if left
unchecked and his main
ability makes him
impossible to hit.OLAF
This bruiser throws axes
that slow enemies, can take
a beating and can duel most
champions on his own. Pick
Olaf if you like to go
charging into battle.EXTRA LIFE
NOW PLAYING (^) I UPDATE I MOD SPOTLIGHT I HOW TO (^) I WHY I LOVE (^) I REINSTALL I MUS T P L A Y
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