Saturday, June 2, 2012 at 12:58PMJungle Speed Does Not Equal Win
Since the Mundo craze that began after IPL a few months ago, the only thing summoners seem to care about when it comes to the jungle is jungle speed. Sejuani’s free week made me decide to pick her up (and buy a skin to prove I’m not a noob :) after not playing her since she came out, and I am having a blast and participating in some very one sided matches.
Nowadays, when people discuss junglers and their relative strengths, the first thing they say is “this champion has a slow jungle” or “this champion’s jungle is faster than that one” as if a jungler’s worth in League of Legends is only the speed with which he or she can clear the jungle.
This is simply ridiculous and a result of a ranked solo-queue mindset that is cancerous to both the fun of League of Legends as a game and it’s purity as an eSport.
Solo-queue creates some REALLY bad habits in summoners. Firstly, everyone attaches far too much importance on the first 5-10 minutes of the game, aka the “laning phase.” Summoners select champions, runes and even masteries based on their expectations of who they will be laning against.
How many times have you seen a solo-top lane summoner purchase ninja tabi because their opponent is AD? Even when in team fights Mercury Treads might be more important?
Since the pros discovered how to lose with Mundo, all they talk about is his fast jungle speed. And although it pains me to admit it, Mundo is really, really strong in the first 15 minutes of a game, but once team fights begin, I think he’s extremely weak and therefore a bad choice.
The reason I’ve always been a fan of Nautilus (who is receiving some attention at the pro level and likely receiving a nerf because of it in the upcoming patch-sadface) is not because of his jungle speed but because of the utility he brings to teamfights.
People in solo-queue are looking for a reason to give up. They let early ganks and kills make them think the game is lost. This is why jungle speed is considered valuable, and it’s a very bad reason.
Team fights win and lose games. Not jungle speed.
Reader Comments (5)
The idea behind doing anything in solo q that you described is quite simply snowballing. Before IEM Kiev, the biggest talk in the pro scene was the snowball meta or the stall meta. Picking champs that snowball very well when given some kills allow them to control the game without care for what the other 4 players of the team do. This made champs like Karthus and Kogmaw see lots of competitive play and/or banned. Consider once Karthus gets his AP, him pressing R can drop the whole enemy team down to half health, allowing them to easily win a teamfight or force them back to take free dragon/baron while KogMaw is probably the strongest AD hypercarry in the game when he gets 6 items, simply because there's no real means of mitigating his damage.
This snowball meta is what is behind the pros saying early ganks are a must (Team SoloMid of course are huge proponents to the snowball meta). When done correctly, a jungle gank instantly gives your lane an advantage or ability to recover from a disadvantage. The issue with ganking is that the jungler needs time to gank. For junglers, time means farm as their only reliable source of gold and experience is from farming jungle creeps. This means with this version of the jungle, a faster jungle clear means more time you can choose to either counterjungle or gank lanes to help swing the advantage for your lanes.
You are quite correct that the team who wins teamfights tend to win the game 80-90% of the time, and probably 99% of the time at the pro level. Many of the pros who do things like build Ninja Tabi so they can win their lane do actually advocate selling them in favor of Merc Treads if needed in the teamfight aspect for the CC reduction. This is the idea that you don't want the enemy player to snowball off you by getting fed.
That said, I do agree with you on your liking champs like Nautilus. I feel like TheOddOne that the jungler's role is an extended form of support. Excellent junglers are those that share similar responsibilities as supports - Obtaining map control through ward/counterwards (Oracles is ideal on jungler since they are naturally roaming and the investment can improve their own gold income as their ganks should be that much more effective), and bringing utility to teamfights rather than raw damage. While many commonly believe any champ that can solotop well do good in the jungle, they should also wonder if the champ can do well from the support role, since junglers really don't get the same amount of gold as the carries from any of the lanes in a typical game. Nautilus of course is one such champ that does pretty well as support. Other common junglers that also have or do see time as support are gangplank, alistar, and maokai. It's also why i hate junglers who try playing glass cannons, ie most shacos, master yis, fioras, rivens, fiddlesticks, and some pantheons.
How to counter a slow clear speed: send another lane along for a level 2 gank. 3v1 at top never looked so good.
Thanks for your thoughts Chen. The snowball meta has been popular as you say, and it is a legitimate strategy, but too many summoners believe that means that those "glass cannon" junglers (my personal hatred is for Shaco - when he's on MY team) are actually HELPING their team.
My point is that I believe teamfights are the single most important thing in the game and decide 99% of matches. So rather than choosing a champion based on their early ganking power, go for one who can bring a lot of utility to a teamfight.
The reason jungle clear times USED TO BE so important is, in the old jungle, that after you cleared all the camps, there was a significant "dwell time" before the camps respawned. So, what was a jungler to do while he waited for his creeps to respawn? Of course, the answer is, "Gank."
Therefore, the jungle clear time simply used to mean, "how quickly can my jungler come in for a gank without losing CS?" Now, with the jungle camps respawning as quickly as one can clear them, this is no longer an quantifiable advantage. Now, when a jungler comes in for a gank, no matter when it is, he is sacrificing his own CS/min to do it because there is always a creep camp available to him.
I think this is what less-experienced junglers are having a hard time understanding. Jungling is no longer the following: Clear my jungle as fast as possible because the sooner I gank, the sooner my team has an advantage. If you don't get the kill, you just wasted gold + experience / min for the jungler AND left him open to being counter-jungled.
The new jungle should now be played like this: I'm going to get as much CS as I can and keeping my team up-to-date with map awareness (because I can afford to pay that much attention to it.) When my teammates in lane are ready for me to come gank, THEN it is my job to come and do it.
I have a friend that loves Mundo... and in all fairness he is a great player. He states that Mundo has one of the best 'Q's for ganking because it is spam-able... for me... I would rather have Rammus, Udyr, Nautilus, or Alistar gank for me when I am solo top.