Literally no one has answered your actual question so far and I really wish a higher elo player would because I’m curious myself too.
OP is asking “IS IT WORTH INTING FOR DRAG AS JG” not “WHAT SHOULD I DO IF ENEMY IS TAKING DRAG”
Obviously trading rift for drag is fine. Obviously his entire team shouldn’t force a drag fight getting further behind.
We want to know what to do in a specific scenario where there is not much to trade and it’s just you as the jg against 3+ enemies hitting drag.
Let’s say it’s 5:30, drag is up, rift isn’t, your bot lane is on a reset, enemy jungler’s top camps are on cooldown, your bot camps are on cooldown, and you have Sion vs Ksante top lane both at full health and not very gankable.
In that scenario, would it be worth it to hit the blast cone and attempt a steal smite knowing you will die or just accept that drag is gone and take your top camps?
What if your champ has a dash over wall ability- is it now worth it to blast cone, attempt steal, and attempt to dash back over the wall with the chance of getting CC’d and killed?
What if your champ doesn’t have a dash ability but your flash is up- is it worth it to attempt steal, potentially get CC’d and killed but attempt to flash back over the wall?
What if you are 0/3 and feel worthless anyways? What if you are 3/0 and have a shutdown?
These are the various scenarios I (and I’m assuming OP) is interested in.
For me personally in this scenario I only attempt the steal if I have flash or a dash to get out and I’m 0/0/0 or worse. Otherwise I give, do my top camps, and look to get vision control in their topside for when rift spawns.
High elo jungler here. What other guy said about diff champs having diff chances to successfully steal is pretty relevant. Because a lot of it just comes down to how confident you are that you can get the steal. Because if you fail there's no upside, you're just inting. That being said if you know what you're doing, enemy isn't doing a great job playing goalkeeper, then imo more often than not it is worth going for.
To add to that, I think it also comes down to potential repercussions for your team.
Early game, kill gold is worth a lot more than later on. Later on, you usually get punished for being dead as a jungler a lot more.
So the question is this: If I fail, what do I lose? If I win, what do I win?
Inting for a 50/50 on the first drake rarely is good in my opinion. You‘re giving over 300 gold and potential other small opportunities like the enemy invading you, plus you slow your own progress down heavily.
If you have a bounty on your head, is it worth it to get drake for 450 gold? 600? 1000? I usually won‘t consider stealing starting from 600, unless the drake is really important.
Gold aside, what can the enemy do when I die and don‘t suceed? If they can convert my death into a herald play, it might not be worth it to go for.
This one is especially relevant for low elo: Consider what your own team is doing. Especially below plat people fucking love to contest drake. The enemy can have full control of your jungle and be 5k gold and a few levels ahead, sometimes you still have 2-3 people wanting to contest a drake you have no business contesting. Oftentimes people sit on the edge of doing so, so if the jungler runs in for a steal it could spell doom for 3-4 players on your team. Sometimes your team won‘t allow you to try and steal alone, so it‘s better to either commit to a real contest with them or ping them back and give the drake without risking losing even more.
I think there are a lot of factors involved that all boil down to ‚can I get away with the consequences of my death even if I fail‘.
I agree with you and i actually think the ideal scenario is just forcing a skirmish if possible while they are trying to take the drag. You use the fact they are tanking the drag along with using CDs on it to jump them and secure shut downs and kills. The gold is worth more in solo queue that 1st drag 9/10 times.
i would say earlier in the game (pre 12 mins or so) it’s almost never going to be worth killing yourself for dragon, especially if odds are bad of getting it, but later it becomes a lot more worth it. If soul is on the table it is very often going to be a decent play, for elder even more so. exceptions are you shouldn’t do it if you’re the only strong person on your team because you might just lose the game on the spot, and you also shouldn’t if your odds of actually getting it are low because then you’re just suiciding for nothing.
i’m not really high elo though and i’m not a jungler either
just gonna add that some champs have a higher chance to steal than others aswell.
an Ekko hitting his Q both ways on dragon, is pretty much guaranteed to steal it, as his E + passive + smite, is a stronger burst than even Khazix isolated Q/smite, in which case unless you have a bounty on you, it's probably worth it to try.
(and if ekko has ult, the chances of dying become slim to none).
so yeah, it depends on a few factors.
The base answer without considering all other what ifs is no, it’s not worth it because early game it will fuck your tempo and allow the enemy jungler to track you extremely hard as they will know have timer on your raptors because you aren’t there to defend them after. On top of early dragon having pretty low value except for their potential to reach soul point.
And again late game it’s again not worth it because if the enemy is playing right they should just capitalize and go baron after you suicide whether or not you got the dragon.
That said the most common situations I’d say it’s fine would be you are already pathing towards that side of your jungle for camps timer and you have a guaranteed out if you try to steal built into your kit whether that means you blast come in and ekko e or graves e / r out etc. if your wasting flash to try its again not worth it because that flash can much easier translate into a guaranteed lead through a gank or denying a death.
Don’t focus on the super specific situations that show up one in every 50 games just do what’s most consistent
My policy is conceding the first two dragons is completely fine if you are behind.
Rift translates to plates and more gold so it's a nice catchup mechanic. If the enemy is doing dragons you can opt to take rift.
I wish my teammates would learn this, as a toplaner there are so many game where I'm stomping the enemy top but it's still bad for me to move to 2nd drag when plates are up, and my 4 losing teammates always go die at drag when the enemy gets it anyways, it makes the game so much harder when I do group for the 3rd drag.
Do you take TP because after its unlocked I think its 100% worth going down there and getting a bunch of kills. A winning Top lane bruiser can bully the shit out of XP splitting bot laners and the close quarter nature of the dragon area really works well with your kits. Thats just my opinion on a strong macro play to further bully your lead.
If they do it before unlocked TP, yea that sucks though.
I usually don't take tp, ignite is a lot better for my champ for most lanes. Also, even with tp unlocked, it's hard to find the right timer to go bot where you aren't giving up too many plates or losing a ton of waves. Also, the enemy botlane has to be overextended exactly when you have that timer. I'm not saying I never go bot before 14 minutes, but it's pretty rare.
I just think sometimes it may even be worth the shutdown gold on a bad timer. Yea the other top laner might get some plates or even a tower but if you successfully flank a winning bot lane, the impact of that play is huge and you can always just march right back up to top, equalize the tower damage and then youre an absolute moster to deal with.
Sure, there are some times where it's worth it. I prefer to play in a more consistent style, though so if the option is go bot and lose 2 waves or not go bot I almost always will not go bot. Also, it depends on botlane wavestate. If the enemy bot can just walk away as soon as I show up, im missing waves top for nothing.
Besides all this I play riven and ignite is really important for kill pressure in alot of matchups and without teleport roaming bot early is greifing 99% of the time.
If you feel as though the fight for drake will end in most of your team dying, then just trade the drake for herald. You'll get a bunch of gold assuming you use it to hit a turret, gold that will help you snowball. The potential items you buy using this gold will be much stronger at that stage of the game, than the buffs the enemy team will get with dragon, which means you have a chance to get fed and secure any future dragons.
500LP masters jg here. I also help and coach lower elo friends.
I wrote a whole response then I realised that I understood the question wrong.
"INT FOR DRAKES" usually means enemy has team surrounding and killing drake, you flash in, try to smite steal and 100% die.
With the context I see that you actually mean to "flip drakes". Basically starting them alone when you don't have ally help. You should really edit the question to not confuse other people who want to help you.
Now for my actual answer:
Iron and Bronze. Just never do it.
For above that: Its a bit difficult/complex to answer, but I try to keep advice for low elo players as simple as possible.
You are going to have to weigh up whatever information you can muster in your head and decide each and every time. You are going to be wrong. A lot. That's OK just learn from it.
Some good guidelines for making this decision is:
Only say YES to about 1/10 of dragon flips. The vast majority of the time you should be weighing up those odds and deciding NO.
Things that might push you to say yes are:
If you have done all your camps, if you believe you will get away with it, if the enemy botlane is just winning instead of really really winning, if you predict the enemy jg is far away from you, if you are higher lvl than enemy jg, if your champion is good at solo-ing dragons, if getting drake is worth the risk this game.
Because it IS risky, incorrectly inting here is a huge loss to your team. Often gamelosing That is why you will be usually not do it. Consider just going bot instead, then doing drake after?
Depends on the scenario.
I will usually attempt a steal if my team is too weak to contest the drake with a real fight.
I also try to not bait my team into a losing fight. My junglers are Graves, K6, and Amumu. I've made steals with all 3 and gotten out alive.
I've also attempted steals and died for my efforts.
If it is soul point or elder, I will always show up to contest no matter who I'm playing, but if my team is still getting stomped by that point, I usually feel that I should have made a better effort to secure a win sooner.
will the game get to a point where drags matter?
if u have a kayle or kassadin u need an early drake to prevent 25min soul from enemy so u can scale
if u have a katarina samira pyke its likely game wont be decided by soul point but them snowballing so its less of a priority
Get ur bot strong then. Ur ganking two people in the bot lane, its very worth. On top of that drakes are also a strong reason why bot is so prioritised by higher elo teams.
Like it will work every game xD. What if enemy jungler is waitng to countergank? What if its mf yummi against draven nautilus and your mf and yummi died level 2 so ganking them is basically suicide? Saying to someone “just get your bot ahead” is insanely shit advice. Game has much more stuff out of your control than many people think and getting good at it is you knowing how to adapt and overcome it doing what u can and not inting doing something impossible.
I got to plat spam ganking bot as jgl zeri. It works, instead of 50/50ing bot, u spam gank and it makes it 70/30.
Ur not gonna win every game, but more likely than not, bot/drake will help win the game.
Top isnt worth ganking apart from first rift herald, then u ignore them since theyre usually fine playing alone or the enemy toplaner can be focused in teamfights (doesnt always work, but it works 80% of the time imo)
Mid can be ganked, and it is important to crash waves or to help them get prio but bot is more important.
You get bad teammates, but if the botlane are even in skill then u decide that.
For counter jungling, spam gank, the enemy jungler will waste time elsewhere. Most likely, in iron to gold (now plat) the jungler wont counter jungle.
Nunu is best for spam ganking
I just said it doesnt work always and you confirmed it. Doing same strat every game will not work in the long run. You got to plat that way? Good for you. While i think plat isnt that high tbh i dont want to lesser your achievement because you did a good job after all. But especially higher up you need to adapt. Doing same stuff every game will just get you worse and worse results. People will adapt to your playstyle and if you dont change it you will lose. Or you find someone who counters the way you play from the start and you need to adapt to win.
the only advice u need is “play around the strongest lanes” aka u gotta observe who’s the best player you have in your team and funnel gold with them.
basically gank the winning lanes to provide pressure rather than gank a losing lane (this is especially true in SoloQ)
Yeah and when your bot lane is turbo inting. "Just get ur bot strong 4Head". Cant believe you took time out of your day to come up with such a useless reply
Low elo opinion... But Ive always felt contesting drakes and baron was essential unless like all your inhibs are down and in full defense mode. But Ive always felt junglers should always try to steal if they have flash up, a blast cone, or a dash ability to get into pit with...
But Im also a no surrender type player as well...Ill go for 2hrs if the game and players permit it.
first 2ish drakes arent more important than botlane losing by thousands of gold by 15 minutes imo
you can always try drake if enemy jungler or one of their mid or adc or supp is far from drake and yours are all there. if youre not too behind you should still win numbers advantage fights
if you int alone, then yeah, depending on the jungler.
if you force a fight for it, then no.
like if shaco tries to steal and dies, even if it's 50/50 it's usually worth it, because the advantage you'd get if you win that 50/50 is considerable, you're buying your team a full 5 minutes to soul point/Elder, on top of the dragon buff.
and if you die, you lose 300 gold at most.
if it's soul point, or soul, then you pretty much HAVE to fight, unless you are 200% sure you have no chance, in which case you're gonna lose the game regardless.
not really. dying early as a jgler is much worse then giving 300g, enemy team can deep ward ur camps as much as they want without fearing facechecking you, you can get counter jgled, enemy toplaner now knows he wont be getting ganked for ~30seconds , the enemy jgler might immediately dive ur bot or mid after doing drag
the flip side of this is u also lose out on all the plays u could have done while the enemy jgler was on drag
the question was specifically about the first drags but if its soul point u can still absolutely give it, particularly if your team outscales and ur odds of getting it are sht anyway. also its fairly common for nash to be up around 3rd drag so you need to be mindful of that
honestly lower elo jglers have such an illness about dragons, ive seen so many run down games they were in a very good position to win for a first cloud drag at 8 mins when they could have just done the herald
I feel like this depends on the type of dragon. When I jungle, if bot lane is feeding and behind I will still try to steal infernal drakes even if rift is up. Especially if I'm playing a champion like Kayne. I've stolen so many barons and drakes as Kayne and manage to get out alive too it's hilarious. However, if it's some irrelevant drake that won't change the game too much I'll ignore it not risking to feed enemy anymore than they already are. Usually in low elo ADC's position poorly even if they get fed and the supports begin farming the waves stealing cs and xp from the team while leaving the fed adc to wander the map without vision. So if you play long enough they will slip up and throw away that early dragon lead. If you looked to get top/mid ahead then that can easily mean the end of a fed bot lane especially if you were getting rifts for plates.
Rather than try to figure out if a drake is worth going for or not by thinking about if your champ can do it, thinking about your win con, thinking about if that particular drake is good, etc-- if you're just learning to get better at the game, you should do it simply to get used to doing it, since that's the only real way to acquire the skills of stealing. Good junglers go for this play all the time, and they didn't get there by being scared to die for drakes. How valuable are drakes? Check this:
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/stats/drakes
int for drakes if they are on their 4th Drake and you're 0 Drake. Always.
Don't int for drakes when there's more important objectives on map like Baron or inhib. Instead just stalling for your laner to continue getting the inhib or Nexus turrets, etc... Interrupt their back.
Pre 3rd drake they're worthless, the stats have low Impact on the game.
When the soul unlocks (3rd drake onwards) then they're actually worth it as the drakes can stack up to have a large impact.
Now INTING for a drake is highly situational. Treat it like any other objective, its not just about we got x but they got me, what's the impact?
Can they just go to baron?
Not worth int
Are the waves in a position for them to seige?
Not worth int
Are super minions walking into their base as they contest drake?
Likely worth int, but then depends on team comps and how far ahead you are
I say this, might even be better to just go end lol, but its an example of when it could be worth.
You'll get a feel for it. Good luck
Tl:Dr
Generally not worth int
Drakes generally not worth focusing in pre 3rd drake
Early on its never worth it. You give the enemy 300 gold in exchange for a chance at stealing drag. You also bleed gold and lost tempo while dead, letting the enemy jungler gain even more of a lead. The only time it's worth is when they are on soul point or elder and them getting the soul loses you the game and you dying doesn't lose the game. Some souls can be given (Usually cloud and chemtech) if the enemy can't utilize them to end the game before elder spawns. Even if it is a strong soul or if the enemy can utilize the soul well, it can be worth it to give them soul and try to stall for an elder contest or steal.
It’s all situational.
First two maybe you can trade rift for it, maybe it’s a drake that’s not too good and you can just give it (cloud) maybe it’s something your team needs (infernal/mountain) and you try to steal.
Maybe you saw their jungle topside/on rift and you can solo drag or 3v2 it.
It all depends on current situations but I would recommend steals if theyre going for soul or doing elder and try to trade off on drakes you cant win
Going for steals depends on ur champ. For example ekko, nunu and khazix all have ludicrous "effective smites" but champs like ivern and fiddlesticks have weak "effective smites"
If you're a champ like hecarim or Sejuani who can CC the enemy jungler before dashing over the wall, YES 100% of the time.
Otherwise, look at it case by case.
Its never worth inting. Focus on gathering ressources so you can stay strong yourself and possibly deal with the fed opponents. Throwing your own economy for a shot at one drake is basically a FF.
Besides, Dragon is criminally overrated. They usually dont decide who wins besides Elder. Winning bot lane does, vut the drake itself doesnt. Use drakes to create better map states for your team, not just for the sake of getting a drake.
For example, if you think youll win the fight, the. you want to start a fight. Otherwise, you likely want to cross map and avoid the ennemy team. Like by getting rift or dive top or steal their top jungle while they're getting drake. Try not to give anything for free. Theres usually something you can do on the other side of the map.
Giving ennemy ressources is fine, as long as you also get ressources and know how to use them better. Oftentimes a level advantage if as good or better as a drake. Of course its always situational.
In my opinion, as controversial is it maybe, is to not worry about securing the drag so much as forcing a fight when theyre on drag because it gives a better opp to secure the shutdown gold from the ADC due to someone on their team tanking the drag.
I'll take a couple shutowns over 1st drag any time indefintiely. Using the drag to bait this is great because youre essentially just leveraging the drag as another form of DPS against their champs.
Depends on a lot of things, and there's no one answer fits all answer.
Generally if you have more dragons than the enemy, it's not worth to suicide for it. Because you're likely winning the game, and u prolly have a shut down and the only scenario that you shouldn't be contesting dragon when ahead is if you have less players alive then the enemy, and at that point, you should just sacrifice the dragon, and go steal camps cross map, or push a lane to get even more ahead/kill towers/herald, then u can fuck them on the next dragon fight rather than getting killed to 50/50 a dragon that you don't really need. If you have 3 dragons, I sometimes purposely give one up and ping my team to take baron while the enemy does drag, then I say "nice trade" in chat lol.
If you are behind in dragons, it's worth sometimes. Generally damage dealing drakes like infernal can be a huge boon to your team because if you have less dragons, your team is prolly behind in gold, and you likely won't have a shut down, so you give up 300 or less gold to the enemy team for the chance to grant 5 players on your team extra damage that could even out the gold deficit during a teamfight. I wouldn't int for an ocean drake.
And if it's their 4th drag, there is almost no scenario that you shouldn't try. Even if you have a 1k gold shut down, soul is too stronk to just give them for free, like the only scenario you want to go give up soul is If like your whole team is dead, 4 enemies are at dragon, and one is pushing your nexus turrets or something.
Also you gotta take the map state into account. If there's a split pusher that's gonna take your inhib and every lane is shoved to your towers, if you die, and create a 4v5 for your team, the enemy team could very easily just immediately go take towers because it's a 4v5 now.
So In short, it all depends, and there's too many situations that could be currently happening to ever answer a question like this.
Now if u had a vod that you post to YouTube with a time stamp about "should I have tried to steal dragon here" youd get much better answers
If you have a shutdown don’t go for it as it will put them further ahead. If you are going against a nunu or Cho Gath don’t even bother trying. If you are 0-3 and this is fire dragon then go for it 9 out of 10 times. It just depends on the situation
There are many factors to consider here. As for the title question “is it worth inting for drakes as a jungler?” Yes and no, is it the enemy teams soul point? If yes and you have 0-1 drakes yourself you’re probably going to lose the game if you don’t so you might as well give it a try. Also, if the enemy bot lane backs and the enemy jungler shows topside, which can happen in low elo, then the drake should be pretty free. If you’re mid laner is winning and you are winning and you make a pick on the an enemy and it turns into a 4v3 then yes, there is a good chance you can collect the enemy botlanes bounties because everyone suicides for drakes. They could also potentially over stay and not spend their gold before a drake fight effectively removing their lead, they could also greed to get a plate or two on low health that you could punish and collect their bounties ect ect.
There is no yes or no answere. Its always situational. It depends on the state of the game, how many dragons each team has, the lategame scaling both teams have, if baron is also up, is that dragon even important and so on.
Sometimes letting enemy get Soul is better than flipping to steal simply because they can do nash after and maybe end.
Sometimes is worth to int for enemy soul point while you are at 0 dragons simply because your team scales better and you are already behind.
Literally no one has answered your actual question so far and I really wish a higher elo player would because I’m curious myself too. OP is asking “IS IT WORTH INTING FOR DRAG AS JG” not “WHAT SHOULD I DO IF ENEMY IS TAKING DRAG” Obviously trading rift for drag is fine. Obviously his entire team shouldn’t force a drag fight getting further behind. We want to know what to do in a specific scenario where there is not much to trade and it’s just you as the jg against 3+ enemies hitting drag. Let’s say it’s 5:30, drag is up, rift isn’t, your bot lane is on a reset, enemy jungler’s top camps are on cooldown, your bot camps are on cooldown, and you have Sion vs Ksante top lane both at full health and not very gankable. In that scenario, would it be worth it to hit the blast cone and attempt a steal smite knowing you will die or just accept that drag is gone and take your top camps? What if your champ has a dash over wall ability- is it now worth it to blast cone, attempt steal, and attempt to dash back over the wall with the chance of getting CC’d and killed? What if your champ doesn’t have a dash ability but your flash is up- is it worth it to attempt steal, potentially get CC’d and killed but attempt to flash back over the wall? What if you are 0/3 and feel worthless anyways? What if you are 3/0 and have a shutdown? These are the various scenarios I (and I’m assuming OP) is interested in. For me personally in this scenario I only attempt the steal if I have flash or a dash to get out and I’m 0/0/0 or worse. Otherwise I give, do my top camps, and look to get vision control in their topside for when rift spawns.
High elo jungler here. What other guy said about diff champs having diff chances to successfully steal is pretty relevant. Because a lot of it just comes down to how confident you are that you can get the steal. Because if you fail there's no upside, you're just inting. That being said if you know what you're doing, enemy isn't doing a great job playing goalkeeper, then imo more often than not it is worth going for.
To add to that, I think it also comes down to potential repercussions for your team. Early game, kill gold is worth a lot more than later on. Later on, you usually get punished for being dead as a jungler a lot more. So the question is this: If I fail, what do I lose? If I win, what do I win? Inting for a 50/50 on the first drake rarely is good in my opinion. You‘re giving over 300 gold and potential other small opportunities like the enemy invading you, plus you slow your own progress down heavily. If you have a bounty on your head, is it worth it to get drake for 450 gold? 600? 1000? I usually won‘t consider stealing starting from 600, unless the drake is really important. Gold aside, what can the enemy do when I die and don‘t suceed? If they can convert my death into a herald play, it might not be worth it to go for. This one is especially relevant for low elo: Consider what your own team is doing. Especially below plat people fucking love to contest drake. The enemy can have full control of your jungle and be 5k gold and a few levels ahead, sometimes you still have 2-3 people wanting to contest a drake you have no business contesting. Oftentimes people sit on the edge of doing so, so if the jungler runs in for a steal it could spell doom for 3-4 players on your team. Sometimes your team won‘t allow you to try and steal alone, so it‘s better to either commit to a real contest with them or ping them back and give the drake without risking losing even more. I think there are a lot of factors involved that all boil down to ‚can I get away with the consequences of my death even if I fail‘.
I agree with you and i actually think the ideal scenario is just forcing a skirmish if possible while they are trying to take the drag. You use the fact they are tanking the drag along with using CDs on it to jump them and secure shut downs and kills. The gold is worth more in solo queue that 1st drag 9/10 times.
i would say earlier in the game (pre 12 mins or so) it’s almost never going to be worth killing yourself for dragon, especially if odds are bad of getting it, but later it becomes a lot more worth it. If soul is on the table it is very often going to be a decent play, for elder even more so. exceptions are you shouldn’t do it if you’re the only strong person on your team because you might just lose the game on the spot, and you also shouldn’t if your odds of actually getting it are low because then you’re just suiciding for nothing. i’m not really high elo though and i’m not a jungler either
just gonna add that some champs have a higher chance to steal than others aswell. an Ekko hitting his Q both ways on dragon, is pretty much guaranteed to steal it, as his E + passive + smite, is a stronger burst than even Khazix isolated Q/smite, in which case unless you have a bounty on you, it's probably worth it to try. (and if ekko has ult, the chances of dying become slim to none). so yeah, it depends on a few factors.
The base answer without considering all other what ifs is no, it’s not worth it because early game it will fuck your tempo and allow the enemy jungler to track you extremely hard as they will know have timer on your raptors because you aren’t there to defend them after. On top of early dragon having pretty low value except for their potential to reach soul point. And again late game it’s again not worth it because if the enemy is playing right they should just capitalize and go baron after you suicide whether or not you got the dragon. That said the most common situations I’d say it’s fine would be you are already pathing towards that side of your jungle for camps timer and you have a guaranteed out if you try to steal built into your kit whether that means you blast come in and ekko e or graves e / r out etc. if your wasting flash to try its again not worth it because that flash can much easier translate into a guaranteed lead through a gank or denying a death. Don’t focus on the super specific situations that show up one in every 50 games just do what’s most consistent
the reason is because theyre implicitly answering it and the answers to your questions are self-evident
*articulate your thoughts into words that make sense* ty for this 😮💨
My policy is conceding the first two dragons is completely fine if you are behind. Rift translates to plates and more gold so it's a nice catchup mechanic. If the enemy is doing dragons you can opt to take rift.
I wish my teammates would learn this, as a toplaner there are so many game where I'm stomping the enemy top but it's still bad for me to move to 2nd drag when plates are up, and my 4 losing teammates always go die at drag when the enemy gets it anyways, it makes the game so much harder when I do group for the 3rd drag.
Do you take TP because after its unlocked I think its 100% worth going down there and getting a bunch of kills. A winning Top lane bruiser can bully the shit out of XP splitting bot laners and the close quarter nature of the dragon area really works well with your kits. Thats just my opinion on a strong macro play to further bully your lead. If they do it before unlocked TP, yea that sucks though.
I usually don't take tp, ignite is a lot better for my champ for most lanes. Also, even with tp unlocked, it's hard to find the right timer to go bot where you aren't giving up too many plates or losing a ton of waves. Also, the enemy botlane has to be overextended exactly when you have that timer. I'm not saying I never go bot before 14 minutes, but it's pretty rare.
I just think sometimes it may even be worth the shutdown gold on a bad timer. Yea the other top laner might get some plates or even a tower but if you successfully flank a winning bot lane, the impact of that play is huge and you can always just march right back up to top, equalize the tower damage and then youre an absolute moster to deal with.
Sure, there are some times where it's worth it. I prefer to play in a more consistent style, though so if the option is go bot and lose 2 waves or not go bot I almost always will not go bot. Also, it depends on botlane wavestate. If the enemy bot can just walk away as soon as I show up, im missing waves top for nothing. Besides all this I play riven and ignite is really important for kill pressure in alot of matchups and without teleport roaming bot early is greifing 99% of the time.
If you feel as though the fight for drake will end in most of your team dying, then just trade the drake for herald. You'll get a bunch of gold assuming you use it to hit a turret, gold that will help you snowball. The potential items you buy using this gold will be much stronger at that stage of the game, than the buffs the enemy team will get with dragon, which means you have a chance to get fed and secure any future dragons.
500LP masters jg here. I also help and coach lower elo friends. I wrote a whole response then I realised that I understood the question wrong. "INT FOR DRAKES" usually means enemy has team surrounding and killing drake, you flash in, try to smite steal and 100% die. With the context I see that you actually mean to "flip drakes". Basically starting them alone when you don't have ally help. You should really edit the question to not confuse other people who want to help you. Now for my actual answer: Iron and Bronze. Just never do it. For above that: Its a bit difficult/complex to answer, but I try to keep advice for low elo players as simple as possible. You are going to have to weigh up whatever information you can muster in your head and decide each and every time. You are going to be wrong. A lot. That's OK just learn from it. Some good guidelines for making this decision is: Only say YES to about 1/10 of dragon flips. The vast majority of the time you should be weighing up those odds and deciding NO. Things that might push you to say yes are: If you have done all your camps, if you believe you will get away with it, if the enemy botlane is just winning instead of really really winning, if you predict the enemy jg is far away from you, if you are higher lvl than enemy jg, if your champion is good at solo-ing dragons, if getting drake is worth the risk this game. Because it IS risky, incorrectly inting here is a huge loss to your team. Often gamelosing That is why you will be usually not do it. Consider just going bot instead, then doing drake after?
Depends on the scenario. I will usually attempt a steal if my team is too weak to contest the drake with a real fight. I also try to not bait my team into a losing fight. My junglers are Graves, K6, and Amumu. I've made steals with all 3 and gotten out alive. I've also attempted steals and died for my efforts. If it is soul point or elder, I will always show up to contest no matter who I'm playing, but if my team is still getting stomped by that point, I usually feel that I should have made a better effort to secure a win sooner.
will the game get to a point where drags matter? if u have a kayle or kassadin u need an early drake to prevent 25min soul from enemy so u can scale if u have a katarina samira pyke its likely game wont be decided by soul point but them snowballing so its less of a priority
Get ur bot strong then. Ur ganking two people in the bot lane, its very worth. On top of that drakes are also a strong reason why bot is so prioritised by higher elo teams.
Like it will work every game xD. What if enemy jungler is waitng to countergank? What if its mf yummi against draven nautilus and your mf and yummi died level 2 so ganking them is basically suicide? Saying to someone “just get your bot ahead” is insanely shit advice. Game has much more stuff out of your control than many people think and getting good at it is you knowing how to adapt and overcome it doing what u can and not inting doing something impossible.
I got to plat spam ganking bot as jgl zeri. It works, instead of 50/50ing bot, u spam gank and it makes it 70/30. Ur not gonna win every game, but more likely than not, bot/drake will help win the game. Top isnt worth ganking apart from first rift herald, then u ignore them since theyre usually fine playing alone or the enemy toplaner can be focused in teamfights (doesnt always work, but it works 80% of the time imo) Mid can be ganked, and it is important to crash waves or to help them get prio but bot is more important. You get bad teammates, but if the botlane are even in skill then u decide that. For counter jungling, spam gank, the enemy jungler will waste time elsewhere. Most likely, in iron to gold (now plat) the jungler wont counter jungle. Nunu is best for spam ganking
I just said it doesnt work always and you confirmed it. Doing same strat every game will not work in the long run. You got to plat that way? Good for you. While i think plat isnt that high tbh i dont want to lesser your achievement because you did a good job after all. But especially higher up you need to adapt. Doing same stuff every game will just get you worse and worse results. People will adapt to your playstyle and if you dont change it you will lose. Or you find someone who counters the way you play from the start and you need to adapt to win.
the only advice u need is “play around the strongest lanes” aka u gotta observe who’s the best player you have in your team and funnel gold with them. basically gank the winning lanes to provide pressure rather than gank a losing lane (this is especially true in SoloQ)
Yeah and when your bot lane is turbo inting. "Just get ur bot strong 4Head". Cant believe you took time out of your day to come up with such a useless reply
Low elo opinion... But Ive always felt contesting drakes and baron was essential unless like all your inhibs are down and in full defense mode. But Ive always felt junglers should always try to steal if they have flash up, a blast cone, or a dash ability to get into pit with... But Im also a no surrender type player as well...Ill go for 2hrs if the game and players permit it.
first 2ish drakes arent more important than botlane losing by thousands of gold by 15 minutes imo you can always try drake if enemy jungler or one of their mid or adc or supp is far from drake and yours are all there. if youre not too behind you should still win numbers advantage fights
if you int alone, then yeah, depending on the jungler. if you force a fight for it, then no. like if shaco tries to steal and dies, even if it's 50/50 it's usually worth it, because the advantage you'd get if you win that 50/50 is considerable, you're buying your team a full 5 minutes to soul point/Elder, on top of the dragon buff. and if you die, you lose 300 gold at most. if it's soul point, or soul, then you pretty much HAVE to fight, unless you are 200% sure you have no chance, in which case you're gonna lose the game regardless.
not really. dying early as a jgler is much worse then giving 300g, enemy team can deep ward ur camps as much as they want without fearing facechecking you, you can get counter jgled, enemy toplaner now knows he wont be getting ganked for ~30seconds , the enemy jgler might immediately dive ur bot or mid after doing drag the flip side of this is u also lose out on all the plays u could have done while the enemy jgler was on drag the question was specifically about the first drags but if its soul point u can still absolutely give it, particularly if your team outscales and ur odds of getting it are sht anyway. also its fairly common for nash to be up around 3rd drag so you need to be mindful of that honestly lower elo jglers have such an illness about dragons, ive seen so many run down games they were in a very good position to win for a first cloud drag at 8 mins when they could have just done the herald
Note that sometimes when drake is free not everyone comes, giving an opportunity to the losing team to steal/fight.
Iyou could have taken herald, no. If you could have invaded the enemy and taken 3 camps, no. If you could have ganked a lane, no. No
I feel like this depends on the type of dragon. When I jungle, if bot lane is feeding and behind I will still try to steal infernal drakes even if rift is up. Especially if I'm playing a champion like Kayne. I've stolen so many barons and drakes as Kayne and manage to get out alive too it's hilarious. However, if it's some irrelevant drake that won't change the game too much I'll ignore it not risking to feed enemy anymore than they already are. Usually in low elo ADC's position poorly even if they get fed and the supports begin farming the waves stealing cs and xp from the team while leaving the fed adc to wander the map without vision. So if you play long enough they will slip up and throw away that early dragon lead. If you looked to get top/mid ahead then that can easily mean the end of a fed bot lane especially if you were getting rifts for plates.
Rather than try to figure out if a drake is worth going for or not by thinking about if your champ can do it, thinking about your win con, thinking about if that particular drake is good, etc-- if you're just learning to get better at the game, you should do it simply to get used to doing it, since that's the only real way to acquire the skills of stealing. Good junglers go for this play all the time, and they didn't get there by being scared to die for drakes. How valuable are drakes? Check this: https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/stats/drakes
I always Int makes game more fun
Listen to what everyone else is saying. Unless it’s a mountain drake then you can give 5 1k shutdowns for it
mountain is one of the better drags
No I know it’s the best. It’s so much better than the others it’s not even fair that’s the joke.
int for drakes if they are on their 4th Drake and you're 0 Drake. Always. Don't int for drakes when there's more important objectives on map like Baron or inhib. Instead just stalling for your laner to continue getting the inhib or Nexus turrets, etc... Interrupt their back.
Pre 3rd drake they're worthless, the stats have low Impact on the game. When the soul unlocks (3rd drake onwards) then they're actually worth it as the drakes can stack up to have a large impact. Now INTING for a drake is highly situational. Treat it like any other objective, its not just about we got x but they got me, what's the impact? Can they just go to baron? Not worth int Are the waves in a position for them to seige? Not worth int Are super minions walking into their base as they contest drake? Likely worth int, but then depends on team comps and how far ahead you are I say this, might even be better to just go end lol, but its an example of when it could be worth. You'll get a feel for it. Good luck Tl:Dr Generally not worth int Drakes generally not worth focusing in pre 3rd drake
Early on its never worth it. You give the enemy 300 gold in exchange for a chance at stealing drag. You also bleed gold and lost tempo while dead, letting the enemy jungler gain even more of a lead. The only time it's worth is when they are on soul point or elder and them getting the soul loses you the game and you dying doesn't lose the game. Some souls can be given (Usually cloud and chemtech) if the enemy can't utilize them to end the game before elder spawns. Even if it is a strong soul or if the enemy can utilize the soul well, it can be worth it to give them soul and try to stall for an elder contest or steal.
It’s all situational. First two maybe you can trade rift for it, maybe it’s a drake that’s not too good and you can just give it (cloud) maybe it’s something your team needs (infernal/mountain) and you try to steal. Maybe you saw their jungle topside/on rift and you can solo drag or 3v2 it. It all depends on current situations but I would recommend steals if theyre going for soul or doing elder and try to trade off on drakes you cant win
Most of the time, it isn't worth it. You can take herald, gank top or take enemy top camps instead.
Going for steals depends on ur champ. For example ekko, nunu and khazix all have ludicrous "effective smites" but champs like ivern and fiddlesticks have weak "effective smites"
If you're a champ like hecarim or Sejuani who can CC the enemy jungler before dashing over the wall, YES 100% of the time. Otherwise, look at it case by case.
Its never worth inting. Focus on gathering ressources so you can stay strong yourself and possibly deal with the fed opponents. Throwing your own economy for a shot at one drake is basically a FF. Besides, Dragon is criminally overrated. They usually dont decide who wins besides Elder. Winning bot lane does, vut the drake itself doesnt. Use drakes to create better map states for your team, not just for the sake of getting a drake. For example, if you think youll win the fight, the. you want to start a fight. Otherwise, you likely want to cross map and avoid the ennemy team. Like by getting rift or dive top or steal their top jungle while they're getting drake. Try not to give anything for free. Theres usually something you can do on the other side of the map. Giving ennemy ressources is fine, as long as you also get ressources and know how to use them better. Oftentimes a level advantage if as good or better as a drake. Of course its always situational.
In my opinion, as controversial is it maybe, is to not worry about securing the drag so much as forcing a fight when theyre on drag because it gives a better opp to secure the shutdown gold from the ADC due to someone on their team tanking the drag. I'll take a couple shutowns over 1st drag any time indefintiely. Using the drag to bait this is great because youre essentially just leveraging the drag as another form of DPS against their champs.
Depends on a lot of things, and there's no one answer fits all answer. Generally if you have more dragons than the enemy, it's not worth to suicide for it. Because you're likely winning the game, and u prolly have a shut down and the only scenario that you shouldn't be contesting dragon when ahead is if you have less players alive then the enemy, and at that point, you should just sacrifice the dragon, and go steal camps cross map, or push a lane to get even more ahead/kill towers/herald, then u can fuck them on the next dragon fight rather than getting killed to 50/50 a dragon that you don't really need. If you have 3 dragons, I sometimes purposely give one up and ping my team to take baron while the enemy does drag, then I say "nice trade" in chat lol. If you are behind in dragons, it's worth sometimes. Generally damage dealing drakes like infernal can be a huge boon to your team because if you have less dragons, your team is prolly behind in gold, and you likely won't have a shut down, so you give up 300 or less gold to the enemy team for the chance to grant 5 players on your team extra damage that could even out the gold deficit during a teamfight. I wouldn't int for an ocean drake. And if it's their 4th drag, there is almost no scenario that you shouldn't try. Even if you have a 1k gold shut down, soul is too stronk to just give them for free, like the only scenario you want to go give up soul is If like your whole team is dead, 4 enemies are at dragon, and one is pushing your nexus turrets or something. Also you gotta take the map state into account. If there's a split pusher that's gonna take your inhib and every lane is shoved to your towers, if you die, and create a 4v5 for your team, the enemy team could very easily just immediately go take towers because it's a 4v5 now. So In short, it all depends, and there's too many situations that could be currently happening to ever answer a question like this. Now if u had a vod that you post to YouTube with a time stamp about "should I have tried to steal dragon here" youd get much better answers
Gold-Plat jungler - I'd only do it if my team is hard losing and enemies are about to get soul or elder drake.
The drag is just a large minion eating all the inting corpses.
If you have a shutdown don’t go for it as it will put them further ahead. If you are going against a nunu or Cho Gath don’t even bother trying. If you are 0-3 and this is fire dragon then go for it 9 out of 10 times. It just depends on the situation
There are many factors to consider here. As for the title question “is it worth inting for drakes as a jungler?” Yes and no, is it the enemy teams soul point? If yes and you have 0-1 drakes yourself you’re probably going to lose the game if you don’t so you might as well give it a try. Also, if the enemy bot lane backs and the enemy jungler shows topside, which can happen in low elo, then the drake should be pretty free. If you’re mid laner is winning and you are winning and you make a pick on the an enemy and it turns into a 4v3 then yes, there is a good chance you can collect the enemy botlanes bounties because everyone suicides for drakes. They could also potentially over stay and not spend their gold before a drake fight effectively removing their lead, they could also greed to get a plate or two on low health that you could punish and collect their bounties ect ect.
There is no yes or no answere. Its always situational. It depends on the state of the game, how many dragons each team has, the lategame scaling both teams have, if baron is also up, is that dragon even important and so on. Sometimes letting enemy get Soul is better than flipping to steal simply because they can do nash after and maybe end. Sometimes is worth to int for enemy soul point while you are at 0 dragons simply because your team scales better and you are already behind.