How To Not Last Pick A Jungle Hero
Credit: Sandara
Just because a hero is capable of jungling doesn’t mean that you should, but in pubs it seems to be option A. Take a look at our lane statistics for heroes like Lone Druid, Legion Commander, Lifestealer, Nature’s Prophet—all are top notch laners in their own right, but a significant percentage of pub players play those heroes in the jungle (>50% for LC and NP). In pro and high skill games, jungling is either a backup plan for a disadvantageous lane, or it’s a deliberate decision, with the team understanding the laning sacrifices they make in the early game to essentially make space for their jungler to farm. They’re buying time for a hero like Enigma, who is one of the fastest junglers in the game.
Why Jungle In Pubs
The reasons for jungling in pubs can be a little more complex, ranging from:
- You don’t know or want to play support.
- You don’t know how to lane.
- You have anxiety.
- Pubs don’t know how to punish junglers.
The last one is actually a valid reason and not a rationalization. Dedicating a hero to the jungle is inherently greedy. The team with the jungling hero will be able to extract more gold from the map, provided they’re allowed to do so. It’s up to the opposing team make something happen, or else they’ll fall behind in farm.
The opportunity cost of picking a jungler is that now your team won’t have a second support (and in some cases, none at all). There are some factors that can mitigate the effect of losing all your lanes so that you can play PvE in the jungle. For one, pubs rarely identify the weaknesses of a jungling lineup and punish the opposing team during the laning phase. Sometimes there’s a plucky Bounty Hunter or Riki player who takes the mantle of harassing the jungler, but it’s not too often a team will pick strong lanes and pressure early.
The other thing about pubs is that mistakes don’t compound as they usually would in a pro game, since so many more of them occur throughout the game. Lost lanes don’t always mean lost games, as they would most of the time in higher skill level games. So it might just be fine that your team lost the lane, but now it’s up to you to help them come back, with all that gold you’ve been making on your lonesome.
Legion Commander auto-attacking her way to victory
Losing The Lanes And Wining The Game
Laning is a highly tense affair. Every click matters, each last hit and deny matters, and all your successes and mistakes add up to either a “win” or a “loss” that can have significant repercussions for the rest of the game. That’s why the jungle is so alluring. You will always get the last hit. And it’s easy to get good at it if you know the right patterns and routines.
But while you’re in your own mini-game, the rest of your team suffers. Yes, jungle heroes pressure your opponent to not fall behind in gold, but it also saddles your own teammates with the responsibility of surviving their lanes with one less player, like a hockey power play. You are trying to extract early game gold at the risk of losing all your lanes. For most heroes, it’s high risk and medium reward. It can work if your team can handle their lanes, but in that case the jungle is just a “win more” strategy and not a sound foundation for a team.
Losing the lane and winning the game is an idealistic strategy. It’s a thin rationalization for being selfish. You’re burdening your team to not only carry the early game for you, but also to buy in to the strategy that it’s all for the greater good. Because of that, it’s easy to point fingers elsewhere when things go wrong as they happens, rather than the moment you picked that hero, which is the root cause. You can say that your jungling LC would have fared better if every lane could’ve just held their own until you hit level 6. Or only if they could’ve survived for a few more minutes for that first Blink Dagger.
If Anything, Be Active
Despite the weaknesses of jungling, it’s still going to happen on a consistent basis. And if you are going to jungle, then you’ll need to still be active on the map. It requires a bit of multi-tasking, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to do if you’re just auto-attacking creeps.
Look around the map and be another set of eyes for your team. This is especially important for Nature’s Prophet players, who can literally jump in at anytime. Try to identify when you can make a rotation and pop in the lane to secure a kill. That’s one psychological advantage of playing the jungle—it’s that you’re off the map and your opponent has to be aware of where you are. That’s why Chen or Enchantress rotations can be so devastating, since they can rotate for a gank within the first five minutes—in any lane.
Jungling has its purposes, but it shouldn’t be the norm. Pub players would fare better in learning about when and why they should jungle, rather than defaulting to it. Step out of the comfort zone of the jungle and into the lane. Learn how to lane with heroes that are the usual pub junglers. And learn how to lane as a support, even if it ends up more disastrous than if you had jungled.
sea 5k = us 7k
Valve should just remove the jungler tag. Everytime I see someone jungle LD or legion my hope in humanity fades just a little bit more.
If I recall correctly, 7.00 did significantly nerf the exp and gold yield of early jungling. That really hasnt affected whether players jungle it seems. The kind of person that jungles is not typically the kind of person who would give a second thought as to whether it is within the teams best interest, let alone if level 1 jungling is viable at all. The relation between jungling and skill is definitely there as some jungle since theyre awful laners and others because they dont want to support. But I really strongly believe that playing jungle really doesnt help you better yourself as a dota player, no matter how many hundreds of LC jungle matches one may have. It doesnt involve practicing the fundamentals of dota like lasthitting, harassing, warding or drafting advantageously. These people, it is not really their toxicity or low skill that is the issue, it is their shallow view of the ocean deep game of dota (which i guess can be considered low skill mentality idk).
Now you're level 4 as any jungler when solo offlaner is already six.
i actually hate jungling right now. Even though i know i can farm faster than my teammates in the jungle, i feel like it wasn't as worth as the old 6.XX patch
A junggler is a bunch of selfish people who does not understand the meta of the current patch.. and thinks that everything will be fine and handy to the team but it is not. It's so harmful and toxic to think that way..
so... if I use Enchantress (i hate Chen, OSfrog please buff him again) at the jungle, is it not worth anymore?
Occasionally i go jungle. Reasons?
- lazy to lane
- hangover
- we just want with my friend play dusa-drow combo and mid is taken.
- i hate the world after screwing up last game and my favourite positions and heroes are taken so i go for safety of jungle.
Ps jungling like 1-2 games in 20.
Its hard to tell someone with 75% jungle win rate that its a bad strategy in 2k-4k pubs.
what bothers me the most, is when this clasic jungle LC goes first item hand of midas! ugg.. and it happens a lot!
I blame league of legends for popularizing the jungle. anything i can blame them for, i will
when you're the one player that feels way more comfortable laning rather than jungling. Whenever I jungle i just feel so disconnected with the pace of the game and I don't know what I should be doing.
Unfortunately this article isn't translated in to Spanish or Russian. And the fact that this site isn't well-known in those communities.
Jungle is insta lose in 4k, 3k and also in most of 2k's matches as well. Youre not getting bonus gold or xp to compensate 3 lost lanes and a bunch of kills in the first 10min.
Quoted from an unknown jungle player
I've been saying stuff like this for months- I hate HATE having to play with a jungler on my team. Even if you win it's an exhausting, not-fun match.
And if you look at the winrates right here on DotAbuff, in many cases jungling is actually a lower winrate than laning.
I grinded 1.0k - 3.7k MMR by mostly jungling. People just do not punish it enough in sub 4k.
Don't look at this guy matches for your own sake ^
Idk I don't like playing enigma oflane and since the jungle is super nerfed this patch it just feels like a garbage hero even though I used to love plaaying it. :(
Max calibrate mmr stay in 3.500 ?
Hey, thats true, this isn't in russian or spanish, I could help translate to spanish
I think the general consensus is to start jungling at 3/4 instead of lvl 1. The benefit is not just in the hero itself but in the extra experience the solo laner is getting as well. And a good jungler who is paying attention can get a lot of good ganks as well. Jungling isn't going anywhere but junging at level 1 is bad idea imo.
Jungling was nerfed... -20% gold/exp at minute 0 and increasing slowly after that. IceFrog please nerf the jungle again! I only want to see real junglers (Chen, Enigma, and Enchantress) in there at lvl 1.
RPQ-sama, your matches disgust me haha
Players who pick LC jungle should also be banned from MM until 2018
setan ya
I very frequently play Jungle Legion Commander, and here's why.
- I don't give a shit about you and your whining. Everyone has a right to play this game however they choose.
- Everytime I go to lane, I'm either with an asshole who picked carry after me and proceeds to take every last hit possible while ignoring the enemy in lane gradually softening BOTH of us up for the inevitable gank.. OR I'm with an asshole who picked support hero then comes to lane and INSTANTLY starts autoattcking lane creeps, pushes the lane, never sidepulls, never attempts to zone the enemy and wholly ignores my polite requests to stop or start doing any of these things.
- 2k players are TRASH, almost every single one of them, myself included. I've been playing this game since 2013 and as far as I'm concerned until Valve does something to fix the matchmaker I'm gonna continue to treat every game as the joke it is and play it however the f*ck I want to.
And by "fix the matchmaker" I mean stop fking matching me against 5k players on a team with a 1k player and thinking "oh... that's balanced". Also IF there is significantly higher or lower MMR player in the game then that person should be FLAGGED. So when a dipshit 1k player starts demanding mid in a 3k average game, the rest of the team can say "listen pal, you're 1k we have a 4k mid player. just let him mid".
I spent years tryharding this game, reading guides, learning mechanics, counterpicking, etc, etc. and NOTHING changed. I still got matched up with numpty f*cktards game after frustrating game until I just gave the f*ck up and decided to play like I don't give a sht.
Have fun with your wholly predictable responses about "Dunning-Kruger", "No wonder you'll never get to 5k" or "thank god I don't have to play with guys like you", I won't be here to read them.
^^Guys we got a SJW style complaint. You jungle in very high ranked with LC; you crush your team's early game potential with ease.
lol @ asd 2k easy to get out of, i didn't even spam and I got to 3k within a few months.
I don't mind jungler if I see he fits in my team's line up at best case scenario with 1 or 2 farming cores (excluding jungler) and strong laning heroes, unlike 1 of my latest games with off weaver, mid tinker, safe bloodseeker, jungle LC and me spporting with rubick. That game was a waste, from the start it was clear we were at big disadvantage, and supporting 4 greedy carries is always awful.
lc is actually one of the strongest laners in the game...cant match upto ursa and huskar but then who can...moment of courage is ez sustain and kills in lane...for lc drawing creep aggro is the best thing ever so you can just run down your lane opponents and if they hit back BOOM counter attack with lifesteal bitch
one of the best laners ever...her true lane is actually mid
5. You already have/decided a jungle hero in mind to test your skill.
I despise people who jungle. They lose more games outright than anything else.
I randomed Riki last into a jungling Bloodseeker & jungling Legion Commander. Their Tiny was also struggling so he decided to jungle to, Well that has a hilariously fun game
@Peelioka But my jungle winrate is 56.67% ..not saying that I'm in any high level play, I just get out of the jungle to gank min 7 ..after the wards are gone if there is a lane with a possibility of ganking going successfully.
I just don't like how people hate on the junglers and ask for roam, yknow if roam fails, he feeds hard, but if the enemies dedicate someone for the jungler.. > Space created.
yeah in 5k whoever has jungler lose the game
>step out of the jungle to play support
YeahNo.
when I play offlane I want my team to have a jungler so I can get more farm and xp ... all I need is a ward for 65 gold and some map awareness ... that's why I think jungling is a better option than having 2 offlaners or a roamer who gets no farm ... as long as there's some map awareness roamers will be useless but not junglers
You forgot jungle Troll T_T
Ну если блуд или легинка норм, а если лесный инвокер , тинкер,тракса то всё пиздес )
What I want to says to SEA Jungler, "Can you guys stop jungling and pick some support and tries to play properly?"
But you know the end anyways
pick support yourself there Sword
Want to know why I go jungle? Look my win rate with jungler hero and one with not jungle.
I can do better in jungle like Anti-mage jungle, Troll jungle, Lycan and CK. This heroes won't do much in lane anyway and the most part i go jungle is because core stealer. I always mark core first as I'm not good at supporting people but still some asshole steal my role.
I'm not good at off maybe mid sometime but people always mark mid first so yeah only option left for me is jungle and jungle help me climb up from 1.9k to 4k. I will never stop jungle. It's part of my dota life now. I will continue jungle with CK, AM, Lycan(100% jungle).
Also people who hate jungling when they see CK jungle or AM jungle they always panick and gg calling these kind of people will never get higher than their present their bracket.
Just because you never see an AM jungle doesn't mean he is bad at jungle. I can jungle and get bf before 12 min. He has potential to cliff jungle and farm stack of hard camp/ancient before 10min.
Also Chaos knight is ridiculously good at jungle and even farm faster than lane himself. People just don't know why CK can upgrade his ultimate at lvl 6. Phantasm lvl 1 It's useless I know but not in jungle. CK can also farm ancient stack before 10min if have Phantasm and by 20min the game is already won cuz jungle give armlet and blink dagger faster than the stupid lane.
I know jungle will make 4 people disadvantage but who's care? If we still won in the end. That's why i go jungle CK most game end in 28-36 min with this strategy. So why it's bad when we can win just like this .
Wanna jungle go to League of Legends!
So much hate for junglers
if everybody is jungling still, that means there's a jungler on the enemy team as well, so it becomes justified :D
Gold Bird,ex dee dee dee,agree w u babe ahaha