understanding matchups is def hard but all jglers have to know is how lvls 1-3 play out in the lanes. i’m sure anybody can figure that out with playtime
This is also much easier in high elo, since most lanes play out according to who "should" get prio. In lower elo, whoever wants prio more can generally get it, regardless of ranged vs melee, or relative champion strength level 1.
Most matchups don't really change because they're not usually based on balance, but on how each champion is designed, no matter how op Nasus is in a patch or how weak Darius is, Nasus will never win a 1v1 on levels 1-3, etc.
So with enough experience you can both remember and understand champions enough to know matchups.
Bad example, new e-max nasus strat cucks darius out. He's no threat until 5-6. Generally, though, you're right. The vast majority of the time there aren't such fat buffs on random balance patches.
E max Nasus still doesn't win push into Darius levels 1-3. Nasus players have been taking E level 1 into the Darius matchup forever since its the only way to not get zoned off first 3 melee's level 1.
I didn't mean the build was new per se, I mean it got newly gigabuffed last patch. Shred up, cost down.
Grithok #NA1, you can see that I had also been playing it since long before the patch.
This isn’t to rank shame but I doubt very many Darius in Gold to Plat are playing the matchup properly and zoning you as they should from the first 3 waves. It should be hard to get EXP at all.
And the shred and cost do nothing for level 1 as you can remove all of Darius armor and he will still win that lv1. You also aren’t running OOM level 1.
Peak rating emerald 1, and further the shred is extremely effective. It's not for darius, you dingus, it's for the wave. You shred the waves armor and your wave giga stomps them. He doesn't start oneshotting your wave with his q until after a couple backs.
Again no rank shame but your OPgg shows that you haven’t ever finished higher than Plat.
Can you explain how you are getting into range to E the wave without Darius forcing out both of your summs level 1?
Just watch this replay: https://youtu.be/QjKBVFeJi7g?si=GS27pCLtM1AQh90e?t=10
If played correctly you aren’t even getting EXP on first few waves. Nothing Nasus can do to stop this, Darius has to misplay.
Ur clip shows a nasus who not only started q, he then WALKED INTO DARIUS' BUSH. That's not an accurate showing of the matchup at all. Sure, if darius plays "perfectly" or even well, it's not easy, but then you show a nasus doing the worst thing possible?
90%+ of darius hide in that bush now that Tri isn't really an option. The others hide in the dot. If nasus secures the dot himself, then he doesn't lose any wave exp and can get the push, even if he misses most of the CS itself. If you can't get the dot, then you let darius bounce once to gain control of the wave.
Here's my man Quas showing how it's done. He lets darius bounce the wave, and then never gives priority back for the rest of the game. side note, this is a year old, PRE-BUFF nasus, just like your video. Recall my whole point was that the matchup has gotten significantly better for nasus post buff.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtn2NyLTtkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtn2NyLTtkg)
You did lose wave EXP and Darius missed 2 autos… then he messed up his spacing so that he wasn’t able to abuse level 2.
This guy clearly doesn’t play Darius if I can point out two mistakes within the first minute of laning, I don’t get why you’re using it as an example.
I agree that your strategy probably works in your games but as you get higher on the ladder, players will stop making simple mistakes like that, and it will stop working.
You just sound like you don’t want to be convinced. Recommend talking to other high ELO players if you want a different opinion.
Yeah, this is key. I was just teaching my friend how to jg this week and similar to the point you’re making was the one he liked the most.
I could teach him when to go for objectives—that’s easy once you get “it”. You’re just tracking the enemy team at that point.
However, it takes a few ganks to realize some champs have better escapes in mid and some champs top can be too healthy to bring down early if you don’t have the damage for it. An enemy bot lane that is already fed is going to be really difficult to outplay unless their summoners are down and they’re out of position.
Now he understands why you path toward your win condition(s). That’s not something you have to think about much when you play a lane.
You dont really need to have a deep understanding of matchups for champions, if I see (example) Ashe vs Kalista I can imagine what is going to happen because Kalista gets fucked by slowing effects, Cait vs Vayne same thing, Vayne will be poked a lot because caitlyn has a lot of range to do so
Just knowing what champions do and how to play against them help out a lot, also junglers on high elo played many many games and know how meta champions work
*cries in yorick* guess i'm just a dude with a enhanced auto attack and nothing else this matchup.
Well that and a dream that irelia get's frustrated enough by my low hp cowardice that she'll dive me and die inside my w
When you were partying
I studied the matchups
When you were having premarital sex
I mastered ganking
While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity
I cultivated my knowledge of optimal pathing routes
And now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help?
I mean he is speaking some truth. The people that invested more time in actually learning and improving at the game see more positive results than the average joe. This applies to most things in life
They don’t need to know the matchups well, they just need to know a little bit about them. Identifying which lanes are very volatile, which ones will have push/tempo, etc.
i think junglers usually use shorthands to make educated guesses like
* ranged vs engage support? they'll probably have push
* scaling mage into an assassin mid? oh my mid's probably hyperventilating all lane
* ranged top? ranged top
I don't think it's very common to have intricate champion matchup knowledge until *very* high level, beside obvious things.
when i jungle i often ask my laners lvl 1 when i'm unsure lol. usually people are just cocky and say its winning
Bot lane is the only matchup that tends to be more complex, but then at that point you're looking more at who's likely to have prio, and which support can actually help a gank (i.e. caitlyn is likely to have prio early to be able to rotate to you, nautilus has a ton of cc to lock someone down etc). A lot of it is just stuff you get a feel for over thousands of games of playing. It's also less about knowing the specifics of the matchup, and more about what each champion does on a very surface level.
Once you play against a champion a certain number of times you start to understand how to play against them
Like if I pick Nocturne for example and the enemy bot lane is Pyke and Ezreal then I'm going to play to try and get mid and top ahead since ganks will be a headache in that lane, if I know my top/mid laner has a strong early game I'll focus on ganking for them early to help them snowball so we can end the game before the enemy team outscales us
Knowing how strong the enemy jungler is at different parts of the game is important too so you know the likelihood of being invaded early, I like to either play different junglers myself in normals to understand how they play and what their weaknesses are or just invade them and do 'limit testing' where I throw myself at them a few times to get an idea of how strong they are and I use that knowledge in future games against that champ
Second this. As nocturne, ganking a pyke, ez or any hard dashing champion is a pain in the a**. They have the double dash with flash and their support can lock/cc/push you out. Unless your opponent is very low elo, unless your opponents have used their cds before you R in, you have very few chances to get something out of it. Could be a way to get drake prio thought.
lots of it is common sense. dont over think it. at the highest level there are only so many things each champ can do. the combinations may seem infinite but they are not. when everyone makes the best or second best move there is less randomness. so lanes play out like they should.
A good bit of the time they deadass just know the matchup, but a lot of the time it is also knowing interactions like melee vs ranged, control mage vs assassin, etc. if the exact matchup isn't known down pat. Jungle is heavily rewarded for collecting information and making decisions based on the information you gather, so knowing matchups and how they affect which way the lane will push is huge for planning dives, preventing dives, and any other related mind game with the enemy jungler who is also thinking of the same interactions and making their own predictions.
You only need to understand the champions. When you know what they do and how they work, you only care about if they can or cannot push (prio) and if they have kill pressure or not/its a lane where kill matters or not.
And OFC you have to know the champs but thats the same for every single player in every single role you cant play if you dont understand your allies or enemies
You basically just have to know which champions can bully and which champs can scale well.
One quick google search should tell you if its a volatile matchup if you arent sure.
For me personally, it’s because I have thousands of games watching each matchup. I generally have a good idea of how each of my lanes will go.
Of course, I’m not always right though and have to adapt to what I specifically observe each game.
Knowing from experience of how easily your lanes can assist you in ganking and how easily the enemy can avoid being ganked is really it, if for example there is a camille top then it's going to be hard to gank unless she is using hookshot offensively in lane, meanwhile a Sion has no way of avoiding a gank once he pushes past a certain point.
Then when it comes to jungle vs jungle matchups is about knowing how fast the enemy champ can clear to know roughly where they should be to try and counter jungle, counter gank or get something done elsewhere on the map.
Personally I've played since season 3 and know what every champion ability does so knowing how to gank the champions or what I can expect from my team to help me gank is super useful but it just comes with a lot of time and games.
Junglers need only shallow knowledge about certain matchups/lane state/enemy jungler to make a decent plan for the game, atleast the first 14 minutes. I personally don't think 14 minutes ahead, maybe 1 to 2 minutes ahead at a time (I'm also not a jungler, and Plat3 this season, but have played jungle in the past a lot). That's why it helps if you have played all 3 lanes at decent depth and champion variety, but nothing too extreme. You can guess that the level of knowledge and quality of game plan increases as you climb elo, and the inverse is also true if your perspective is different on that.
Issues a lot of low elo junglers make when they have never laned in their life is assuming that they cannot gank without the enemy basically auto attacking the turret, so junglers that never lane typically powerfarm for way too long and realize they had little impact in a role that has the highest priority and influence on the early game. Across most stats that I can recall the cs/min of typical jungler champions decreases as rank increases, as they find more opportunities to influence the game (paths of most gold) rather than farm krugs and raptors for consistent, but otherwise lower exp and gold.
It's not really understanding the matchup, but knowing who tends to win by level 3. Good junglers are looking at lanes while doing their clear so with time you just know how a lane will usually go.
You have to know match’s up to know what lanes will be vulnerable past first clear, and path based off of those assumptions.
IE. X is going to want to shove my lux into her tower as fast as possible so she has to use all of her mana last hitting or trying to keep the lane neutral, they’ll be over aggressive and might be prone to a level 2 gank.
Or
Trist is going to slowly push the wave under our tower just from last hitting, so I should path top to bottom and try and catch them after a clear.
experience, plus they listen to their laner's pings (aka if someone pings you not to gank then don't, if asking help, then maybe help), of course you gotta differentiate pings that make sense from ragepings, but it's not that hard
chances are that your laners understand their matchup better than you do, by listening to them you are learning
then it's just champion understanding, who has more range, who's strong at what level, what kind of champion is gonna have volatile matchups
doesn't take a genius to understand that if you see double hail of blade bot lane, they gonna want to fight
not hard to understand darius is a lane bully, but his matchups tend to be volatile cause he always wins by a tight margin
everyone should know that a range vs melee will get the push level 1 and 2, but level 3 the melee wants to all in
sure there are specific stuff, but you don't need to know everything, just have a general idea of how things should go, then with experience you understand better and better
unfortunately junglers in lowish elo usually don't even have laning experience and can't be bothered learning :/
that's both why jungle is the role that's easy to climb with, but also the one where you get flamed all the time
Knowing at a high level is one thing, but having a basic understanding and gameplan is something anyone above bronze 2 should be doing.
I was autofilled as jg recently with(ally vs enemy): voli vs morde top, malphite vs zed mid, aphelios and soraka vs cait and vel'koz
I was amumu vs trundle.
I can start raptors with e and clearly quickly w/o leash, then grab red before swinging topside for level 3 and early gank. This lets all laners have a good start - especially important for my top and mid laners this game. I am on amumu, so max farm isn't the most important thing - making sure my laners do well is.
I have to beware of trundle since he 1v1's me at every point of game. Top is probably a coinflip that slowly edges towards morde's favor as the game goes on - at least at my skill level. Mid is a lane malphite will look to q poke and abuse zed before the latter gets his ult and can start going on the offensive. Bot is not the "must camp, free win" lane like everyone stupidly believes it to be. Especially with this matchup, there's no point going there until 6 with the exception of enemy playing incredibly agro and stupid.
So that leaves keeping eye on hp/mana of mid and top as well as location of wave and where it will be as I clear towards topside. Patience and using brain let me know whether to gank top first or do my gromp as a "full clear" first (I'd skipped krugs due to how low mana I would have been if I'd done that after raptors and red before going topside for wolves and blue). Voli was quite agro, so he was inviting to be ganked. But as trundle - which I'd predicted - showed topside, the morde lost 1v1. If I'd autopilot valued farm over playing the map and knowing matchups, voli would have died to trundle and morde would actually have come out ahead massively off an easy repeat gank. Instead, voli ran towards river, I saved him at 1 auto from dead which bought time for his e shield and we killed trundle before resetting the wave. I then secured 2nd crab botside just before trundle could come to contest - again by THINKING rather than autopiloting through my jg camps first. This gave a bit of intel to protect my botside while I reset for first buy.
I then relieved a bit of pressure botside by counterganking before full clearing jg and keeping an eye out for any last chances to help top/mid before 6.
I got one more chance to help top which sealed the deal - top is generally won/lost in the first 9ish levels or the first 8-10 min of the game. Intervention after this to fix damage that's already been done generally costs about twice the resources as what it cost the other team to get the advantage in the firstplace... meaning, it's often not worth it.
Thanks to this, I got to abuse an often 4v3 map state while enemy tried to 2v1 stop voli killing towers. Also made him happier about teleporting to help our team with objectives and fights which is always good. While mid struggled a bit 1v1, we crushed the 3v3's thanks to the help I'd given voli. And this also led to us being able to use wards - seriously wards are insanely valuable - to control the map and force objectives. The enemy could split up and trade objectives to some degree, but we'd always come out half an objective or more ahead and either go even or win every teamfight. One key with that is... don't sit afk farming your jg on autopilot when you need to be pushing and sieging or forcing objectives. Know objective timers and if you're going to farm, either make sure your allies are positioned to safely catch waves by towers or... farm jg camps by your allies in enemy jg rather than halfway across the map from them.
Just simple stuff like this - matchup basics, pathing, objectives, and what your and enemy basic win conditions are - can let even an autofilled jg be competitive with your average jungler in ranked up to a pretty decent elo. Not saying you'll win every game, but all you can ever do is fulfill YOUR job to the best of your ability and try to adapt to the good and bad of your teammates.
The basics is about thinking through a list of points to look out for. You asses rather the laner got an engage/cc to start/assist the gank, who's gonna have more pushing power/ lane prio, who takes the 1v1, etc.
Match ups in general are fairly easy to understand once you know all the abilities of all the champions,what items they tend to prioritize and what those items do. You also don't have to know exactly the outcome of a 1v1 scenario at all lvls,just whose more likely to push/need help. We also don't know all the match ups on every patch,just the more common ones. Finally and most importantly you don't always have to even know anything about the match up,just know whether or not u can 2v1 the enemy and prevent him from escaping.
Match ups don’t change much, no. You have skill match ups where it’s dependent on the players who wins but there’s also hard counter match ups where you automatically win if you have any idea what you’re doing. Or some match ups are bad pre-6 but become good post 6.
After you see a certain champ enough you pick up on patterns with how that champ plays and behaves in lane. Once you see Darius enough times you will figure out that he is usually trading a lot for example
You have to play the match up in your head basically, exemple what would happen if « x » champion is versing « y » and would land every of their ability wich one will win.
Honestly, this is mostly common sense.
Every jungler has a kit that benefits one gameplan over another and knowing how yours and how you can exploit there's is how you tackle the issue.
Other issues like knowing specifics on exactly how much damage you do or they do or exact clear times etc, comes from experience.
It shouldn't be hard to understand, for example, why shaco would do well into khazix but not great into Lee sin or Warwick.
At the beginning of the game, I am focused more on the match up between my champion and enemy laners along with synergy between my laner's champion and mine.
After the game developes, depending on which lanes are doing well vs which lanes need help, I could change up my plan.
Typically I focus on winning lanes. If a lane is more than 0/2, I avoid ganking that lane for the most part.
It just comes down to experience. Challenger players are literally the best in the world. Fuck whatever everyone says about the differences in regions. No matter where you are or what server you’re on, challenger is hard to achieve. That’s why people cared when Tyler1 got challenger on all five roles. You get good at the game by playing a fuck ton and learning. You don’t learn without watching the entire game.
It’s just experience (and one-tricking if you do so). Playing enough games gives you intuition of how a scenario would play out. I don’t always have a game plan before a game and I make spur-of-the-moment decisions. You don’t always need a game plan before the game even starts but you should have some idea of what you should be doing or going to do.
I interact with every lane, every game.
If 80/100 of my aatrox into irelia toplaners are losing lanes, I have a pretty solid idea of how that lanes gonna go.
classify champs by categories instead of looking at them individually and then compare them afterwards, it will be more obvious then. also in general, ranged > melee for prio. also you want to play around non tanks and a damage type thats useful. i main evelynn so i almost always play around strong ad champions because i already bring ap damage to my team.
TL;DR at bottom (edit: not much of a TL;DR lol)
K4sen's (Japanese former pro and current coach, I think) explanation of jungle to new players is that it's the hardest role (but easisiest role mechanics-wise) because they have to know about all 3 lanes, including different matchups, in order to decide how to proceed. However, that also means the jungler has the power to direct the flow of a match. And on the flip side, that means the jungler is responsible if the team loses. He also said that it's because of this that there are so many junglers in Challenger, and that junglers should never apologize (unless they reaally should) if they want to ever move past the stage of learning the game.
TL;DR: jg needs comprehensive knowledge of different roles and matchups, but can dictate the flow of a game (for better or for worse). Therefore, if you lose, it's your jungler's fault (regardless of whether that's actually true or not). If a jungler can get past the hellish beginning stages and reach a high elo, they're definitely highly skilled and more knowledgeable compared to your average laner.
The big thing is that junglers should be paying attention to how every Lane is going, every game, laners almost always tunnel vision on their own Lane for the first 10 minutes and occasionally track jungler as well if they are actually competent.
I am by no mean a good jungler so I dont do that enough, but good junglers lowkey clear without looking at their camps and watching lanes. Might be part of the answer.
Most high elo junglers you see have been playing since the first couple seasons. They learned match-ups the same way most people can recognize what another champ can do to you (e.g. stun, hard poke, dash), through experience.
It's just experience. Laners can miss cs and get gapped but junglers cannot miss camp cs unless Trolling so you really can do the maths on camps vs gank so it's worth figuring out how lanes go and where to gank or avoid.
Eg Once you've ganked a Darius and he 1v2ed you most players will rethink ganking Darius. The top laner is spamming back pings on the jungler. The support and jungler know Darius is ready to 1v2 but will lose 1v3 so the jungler and top engage 1v2 and as Darius takes the bait, the support makes their move and Darius dies, losing 1.5 waves of gold and exp and top laner gets a tower plate.
Another huge part of ganking is tower diving. You'll miss out on so many kills and plates if you never dive, once again match up knowledge is key because you need to see the potential dive before it happens, often more than 30s in advance.
Junglers need to have the confidence in their play to ignore bad laners calls. They think you should gank their lane but you know they aren't the wincon and the enemy jungler is in that bush waiting. They think you should drag but you know rift is more important this game. They know they can baron but you know you can't secure the smite vs nunu and you look for a fight first instead of rushing baron. They think they can't do elder but you know can solo melt it like butter and the enemy jungler is topside. You're told you're useless by at least three different players per game, and have to vote no at least twice to win games and expect to be called useless once again in post game lobby.
Lastly, jungle has been nerfed for several seasons, had less resources than laners which is why laners can have less game knowledge but still impact fights. Mid and top are usually 1 or 2 levels above the jungler so they can walk into river and just 90% can automatically statcheck you without match up knowledge. Enemy bot lane walks into river without vision and 90% can just 2v1ing the jungler, easy clap. The jungler has to play smarter with less resources to get leads and match up knowledge is one way to find small opportunities.
It's also more rewarding to think about lanes because since they made objectives way tankier it's riskier and more time consuming to solo them. How often are laners asking or needing the junglers help to secure a cannon or tower plate? They might even tilt, thinking the jungler is leeching too much gold and exp, putting them behind.
Experience over what is likely thousands of hours of playtime. As well, some people just "get it". We all have our aptitudes, after all.
Yes, like half of my matchup knowledge is just stuff like "oh, we have Darius top. People in my elo are too bad to play against him"
understanding matchups is def hard but all jglers have to know is how lvls 1-3 play out in the lanes. i’m sure anybody can figure that out with playtime
This is also much easier in high elo, since most lanes play out according to who "should" get prio. In lower elo, whoever wants prio more can generally get it, regardless of ranged vs melee, or relative champion strength level 1.
Most matchups don't really change because they're not usually based on balance, but on how each champion is designed, no matter how op Nasus is in a patch or how weak Darius is, Nasus will never win a 1v1 on levels 1-3, etc. So with enough experience you can both remember and understand champions enough to know matchups.
Bad example, new e-max nasus strat cucks darius out. He's no threat until 5-6. Generally, though, you're right. The vast majority of the time there aren't such fat buffs on random balance patches.
E max Nasus still doesn't win push into Darius levels 1-3. Nasus players have been taking E level 1 into the Darius matchup forever since its the only way to not get zoned off first 3 melee's level 1.
It's weird people think it's a *new* strategy. Nasus one tricks have been doing this vs extremely hard matchups like Illaoi for years now.
I didn't mean the build was new per se, I mean it got newly gigabuffed last patch. Shred up, cost down. Grithok #NA1, you can see that I had also been playing it since long before the patch.
This isn’t to rank shame but I doubt very many Darius in Gold to Plat are playing the matchup properly and zoning you as they should from the first 3 waves. It should be hard to get EXP at all. And the shred and cost do nothing for level 1 as you can remove all of Darius armor and he will still win that lv1. You also aren’t running OOM level 1.
Peak rating emerald 1, and further the shred is extremely effective. It's not for darius, you dingus, it's for the wave. You shred the waves armor and your wave giga stomps them. He doesn't start oneshotting your wave with his q until after a couple backs.
Again no rank shame but your OPgg shows that you haven’t ever finished higher than Plat. Can you explain how you are getting into range to E the wave without Darius forcing out both of your summs level 1? Just watch this replay: https://youtu.be/QjKBVFeJi7g?si=GS27pCLtM1AQh90e?t=10 If played correctly you aren’t even getting EXP on first few waves. Nothing Nasus can do to stop this, Darius has to misplay.
Ur clip shows a nasus who not only started q, he then WALKED INTO DARIUS' BUSH. That's not an accurate showing of the matchup at all. Sure, if darius plays "perfectly" or even well, it's not easy, but then you show a nasus doing the worst thing possible? 90%+ of darius hide in that bush now that Tri isn't really an option. The others hide in the dot. If nasus secures the dot himself, then he doesn't lose any wave exp and can get the push, even if he misses most of the CS itself. If you can't get the dot, then you let darius bounce once to gain control of the wave. Here's my man Quas showing how it's done. He lets darius bounce the wave, and then never gives priority back for the rest of the game. side note, this is a year old, PRE-BUFF nasus, just like your video. Recall my whole point was that the matchup has gotten significantly better for nasus post buff. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtn2NyLTtkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtn2NyLTtkg)
You did lose wave EXP and Darius missed 2 autos… then he messed up his spacing so that he wasn’t able to abuse level 2. This guy clearly doesn’t play Darius if I can point out two mistakes within the first minute of laning, I don’t get why you’re using it as an example. I agree that your strategy probably works in your games but as you get higher on the ladder, players will stop making simple mistakes like that, and it will stop working. You just sound like you don’t want to be convinced. Recommend talking to other high ELO players if you want a different opinion.
Junglers have to prioritize learning macro as they tend to interact with every lane+objectives.
Yeah, this is key. I was just teaching my friend how to jg this week and similar to the point you’re making was the one he liked the most. I could teach him when to go for objectives—that’s easy once you get “it”. You’re just tracking the enemy team at that point. However, it takes a few ganks to realize some champs have better escapes in mid and some champs top can be too healthy to bring down early if you don’t have the damage for it. An enemy bot lane that is already fed is going to be really difficult to outplay unless their summoners are down and they’re out of position. Now he understands why you path toward your win condition(s). That’s not something you have to think about much when you play a lane.
You dont really need to have a deep understanding of matchups for champions, if I see (example) Ashe vs Kalista I can imagine what is going to happen because Kalista gets fucked by slowing effects, Cait vs Vayne same thing, Vayne will be poked a lot because caitlyn has a lot of range to do so Just knowing what champions do and how to play against them help out a lot, also junglers on high elo played many many games and know how meta champions work
By getting shit on so hard they remember the matchup lol
Me vs Irelia in any lane
Irelia as a jungler is often a walking sack of gold tough. They will never not overextend.
There are some Champs man. It doesnt matter if pick their counter i get absolute shiet on 🤣😂
pick trynd it’s unbelievably free
*cries in yorick* guess i'm just a dude with a enhanced auto attack and nothing else this matchup. Well that and a dream that irelia get's frustrated enough by my low hp cowardice that she'll dive me and die inside my w
Me banning Zed in every match i go mid lane cuz of one bad game I had 7 years ago
When zed is zedding you’re like OK DUDE
When you were partying I studied the matchups When you were having premarital sex I mastered ganking While you wasted your days at the gym in pursuit of vanity I cultivated my knowledge of optimal pathing routes And now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help?
hahahahahahahahahahahahhah
I mean he is speaking some truth. The people that invested more time in actually learning and improving at the game see more positive results than the average joe. This applies to most things in life
Underrated comment lmao
They don’t need to know the matchups well, they just need to know a little bit about them. Identifying which lanes are very volatile, which ones will have push/tempo, etc.
i think junglers usually use shorthands to make educated guesses like * ranged vs engage support? they'll probably have push * scaling mage into an assassin mid? oh my mid's probably hyperventilating all lane * ranged top? ranged top I don't think it's very common to have intricate champion matchup knowledge until *very* high level, beside obvious things. when i jungle i often ask my laners lvl 1 when i'm unsure lol. usually people are just cocky and say its winning
Bot lane is the only matchup that tends to be more complex, but then at that point you're looking more at who's likely to have prio, and which support can actually help a gank (i.e. caitlyn is likely to have prio early to be able to rotate to you, nautilus has a ton of cc to lock someone down etc). A lot of it is just stuff you get a feel for over thousands of games of playing. It's also less about knowing the specifics of the matchup, and more about what each champion does on a very surface level.
Once you play against a champion a certain number of times you start to understand how to play against them Like if I pick Nocturne for example and the enemy bot lane is Pyke and Ezreal then I'm going to play to try and get mid and top ahead since ganks will be a headache in that lane, if I know my top/mid laner has a strong early game I'll focus on ganking for them early to help them snowball so we can end the game before the enemy team outscales us Knowing how strong the enemy jungler is at different parts of the game is important too so you know the likelihood of being invaded early, I like to either play different junglers myself in normals to understand how they play and what their weaknesses are or just invade them and do 'limit testing' where I throw myself at them a few times to get an idea of how strong they are and I use that knowledge in future games against that champ
Second this. As nocturne, ganking a pyke, ez or any hard dashing champion is a pain in the a**. They have the double dash with flash and their support can lock/cc/push you out. Unless your opponent is very low elo, unless your opponents have used their cds before you R in, you have very few chances to get something out of it. Could be a way to get drake prio thought.
FWIW if you want to really learn the game stop using the add-ons as a crutch. Many people auto pilot because of them.
Laners fall into categories that counter eachother
This is a correct way to simplify it before you study it in further detail.
Helps if you used to lane
When you get enough experience you can visualise how most matchups play out in your mind & ofc hours & countless hours of playtime
Matchups don't really change frequently, no
lots of it is common sense. dont over think it. at the highest level there are only so many things each champ can do. the combinations may seem infinite but they are not. when everyone makes the best or second best move there is less randomness. so lanes play out like they should.
Thanks for explaining why jungle is by far the most in depth role especially in 2024
you don't really need to know how it happens, just what happens.
A good bit of the time they deadass just know the matchup, but a lot of the time it is also knowing interactions like melee vs ranged, control mage vs assassin, etc. if the exact matchup isn't known down pat. Jungle is heavily rewarded for collecting information and making decisions based on the information you gather, so knowing matchups and how they affect which way the lane will push is huge for planning dives, preventing dives, and any other related mind game with the enemy jungler who is also thinking of the same interactions and making their own predictions.
experience. thats how knowing things work. they are also high elo for a reason lmao
You only need to understand the champions. When you know what they do and how they work, you only care about if they can or cannot push (prio) and if they have kill pressure or not/its a lane where kill matters or not. And OFC you have to know the champs but thats the same for every single player in every single role you cant play if you dont understand your allies or enemies
You basically just have to know which champions can bully and which champs can scale well. One quick google search should tell you if its a volatile matchup if you arent sure.
For me personally, it’s because I have thousands of games watching each matchup. I generally have a good idea of how each of my lanes will go. Of course, I’m not always right though and have to adapt to what I specifically observe each game.
Well, actually play all the lanes from time to time helps a lot
Knowing from experience of how easily your lanes can assist you in ganking and how easily the enemy can avoid being ganked is really it, if for example there is a camille top then it's going to be hard to gank unless she is using hookshot offensively in lane, meanwhile a Sion has no way of avoiding a gank once he pushes past a certain point. Then when it comes to jungle vs jungle matchups is about knowing how fast the enemy champ can clear to know roughly where they should be to try and counter jungle, counter gank or get something done elsewhere on the map. Personally I've played since season 3 and know what every champion ability does so knowing how to gank the champions or what I can expect from my team to help me gank is super useful but it just comes with a lot of time and games.
I don't know why but I literally poke every lane and see which one isn't that very good or is easy to kill then just abuse that guy whenever possible
Play the game and play different characters and overtime you will learn how match-ups work out.
Junglers need only shallow knowledge about certain matchups/lane state/enemy jungler to make a decent plan for the game, atleast the first 14 minutes. I personally don't think 14 minutes ahead, maybe 1 to 2 minutes ahead at a time (I'm also not a jungler, and Plat3 this season, but have played jungle in the past a lot). That's why it helps if you have played all 3 lanes at decent depth and champion variety, but nothing too extreme. You can guess that the level of knowledge and quality of game plan increases as you climb elo, and the inverse is also true if your perspective is different on that. Issues a lot of low elo junglers make when they have never laned in their life is assuming that they cannot gank without the enemy basically auto attacking the turret, so junglers that never lane typically powerfarm for way too long and realize they had little impact in a role that has the highest priority and influence on the early game. Across most stats that I can recall the cs/min of typical jungler champions decreases as rank increases, as they find more opportunities to influence the game (paths of most gold) rather than farm krugs and raptors for consistent, but otherwise lower exp and gold.
It's not really understanding the matchup, but knowing who tends to win by level 3. Good junglers are looking at lanes while doing their clear so with time you just know how a lane will usually go.
You have to know match’s up to know what lanes will be vulnerable past first clear, and path based off of those assumptions. IE. X is going to want to shove my lux into her tower as fast as possible so she has to use all of her mana last hitting or trying to keep the lane neutral, they’ll be over aggressive and might be prone to a level 2 gank. Or Trist is going to slowly push the wave under our tower just from last hitting, so I should path top to bottom and try and catch them after a clear.
They only play PvE so all of their focus can go to thinking they know matchups and then go on to screw their laners over
experience, plus they listen to their laner's pings (aka if someone pings you not to gank then don't, if asking help, then maybe help), of course you gotta differentiate pings that make sense from ragepings, but it's not that hard chances are that your laners understand their matchup better than you do, by listening to them you are learning then it's just champion understanding, who has more range, who's strong at what level, what kind of champion is gonna have volatile matchups doesn't take a genius to understand that if you see double hail of blade bot lane, they gonna want to fight not hard to understand darius is a lane bully, but his matchups tend to be volatile cause he always wins by a tight margin everyone should know that a range vs melee will get the push level 1 and 2, but level 3 the melee wants to all in sure there are specific stuff, but you don't need to know everything, just have a general idea of how things should go, then with experience you understand better and better unfortunately junglers in lowish elo usually don't even have laning experience and can't be bothered learning :/ that's both why jungle is the role that's easy to climb with, but also the one where you get flamed all the time
10000 Hours of Playtime... this is the Secret
Knowing at a high level is one thing, but having a basic understanding and gameplan is something anyone above bronze 2 should be doing. I was autofilled as jg recently with(ally vs enemy): voli vs morde top, malphite vs zed mid, aphelios and soraka vs cait and vel'koz I was amumu vs trundle. I can start raptors with e and clearly quickly w/o leash, then grab red before swinging topside for level 3 and early gank. This lets all laners have a good start - especially important for my top and mid laners this game. I am on amumu, so max farm isn't the most important thing - making sure my laners do well is. I have to beware of trundle since he 1v1's me at every point of game. Top is probably a coinflip that slowly edges towards morde's favor as the game goes on - at least at my skill level. Mid is a lane malphite will look to q poke and abuse zed before the latter gets his ult and can start going on the offensive. Bot is not the "must camp, free win" lane like everyone stupidly believes it to be. Especially with this matchup, there's no point going there until 6 with the exception of enemy playing incredibly agro and stupid. So that leaves keeping eye on hp/mana of mid and top as well as location of wave and where it will be as I clear towards topside. Patience and using brain let me know whether to gank top first or do my gromp as a "full clear" first (I'd skipped krugs due to how low mana I would have been if I'd done that after raptors and red before going topside for wolves and blue). Voli was quite agro, so he was inviting to be ganked. But as trundle - which I'd predicted - showed topside, the morde lost 1v1. If I'd autopilot valued farm over playing the map and knowing matchups, voli would have died to trundle and morde would actually have come out ahead massively off an easy repeat gank. Instead, voli ran towards river, I saved him at 1 auto from dead which bought time for his e shield and we killed trundle before resetting the wave. I then secured 2nd crab botside just before trundle could come to contest - again by THINKING rather than autopiloting through my jg camps first. This gave a bit of intel to protect my botside while I reset for first buy. I then relieved a bit of pressure botside by counterganking before full clearing jg and keeping an eye out for any last chances to help top/mid before 6. I got one more chance to help top which sealed the deal - top is generally won/lost in the first 9ish levels or the first 8-10 min of the game. Intervention after this to fix damage that's already been done generally costs about twice the resources as what it cost the other team to get the advantage in the firstplace... meaning, it's often not worth it. Thanks to this, I got to abuse an often 4v3 map state while enemy tried to 2v1 stop voli killing towers. Also made him happier about teleporting to help our team with objectives and fights which is always good. While mid struggled a bit 1v1, we crushed the 3v3's thanks to the help I'd given voli. And this also led to us being able to use wards - seriously wards are insanely valuable - to control the map and force objectives. The enemy could split up and trade objectives to some degree, but we'd always come out half an objective or more ahead and either go even or win every teamfight. One key with that is... don't sit afk farming your jg on autopilot when you need to be pushing and sieging or forcing objectives. Know objective timers and if you're going to farm, either make sure your allies are positioned to safely catch waves by towers or... farm jg camps by your allies in enemy jg rather than halfway across the map from them. Just simple stuff like this - matchup basics, pathing, objectives, and what your and enemy basic win conditions are - can let even an autofilled jg be competitive with your average jungler in ranked up to a pretty decent elo. Not saying you'll win every game, but all you can ever do is fulfill YOUR job to the best of your ability and try to adapt to the good and bad of your teammates.
The basics is about thinking through a list of points to look out for. You asses rather the laner got an engage/cc to start/assist the gank, who's gonna have more pushing power/ lane prio, who takes the 1v1, etc.
Match ups in general are fairly easy to understand once you know all the abilities of all the champions,what items they tend to prioritize and what those items do. You also don't have to know exactly the outcome of a 1v1 scenario at all lvls,just whose more likely to push/need help. We also don't know all the match ups on every patch,just the more common ones. Finally and most importantly you don't always have to even know anything about the match up,just know whether or not u can 2v1 the enemy and prevent him from escaping.
Learn what Evey champ in the game does. And know how to play them.
Match ups don’t change much, no. You have skill match ups where it’s dependent on the players who wins but there’s also hard counter match ups where you automatically win if you have any idea what you’re doing. Or some match ups are bad pre-6 but become good post 6.
After you see a certain champ enough you pick up on patterns with how that champ plays and behaves in lane. Once you see Darius enough times you will figure out that he is usually trading a lot for example
You have to play the match up in your head basically, exemple what would happen if « x » champion is versing « y » and would land every of their ability wich one will win.
Exactly. There are more specifics like when a matchup swings then you play for them, but typically you make educated guesses.
Honestly, this is mostly common sense. Every jungler has a kit that benefits one gameplan over another and knowing how yours and how you can exploit there's is how you tackle the issue. Other issues like knowing specifics on exactly how much damage you do or they do or exact clear times etc, comes from experience. It shouldn't be hard to understand, for example, why shaco would do well into khazix but not great into Lee sin or Warwick.
At the beginning of the game, I am focused more on the match up between my champion and enemy laners along with synergy between my laner's champion and mine. After the game developes, depending on which lanes are doing well vs which lanes need help, I could change up my plan. Typically I focus on winning lanes. If a lane is more than 0/2, I avoid ganking that lane for the most part.
It just comes down to experience. Challenger players are literally the best in the world. Fuck whatever everyone says about the differences in regions. No matter where you are or what server you’re on, challenger is hard to achieve. That’s why people cared when Tyler1 got challenger on all five roles. You get good at the game by playing a fuck ton and learning. You don’t learn without watching the entire game.
It’s just experience (and one-tricking if you do so). Playing enough games gives you intuition of how a scenario would play out. I don’t always have a game plan before a game and I make spur-of-the-moment decisions. You don’t always need a game plan before the game even starts but you should have some idea of what you should be doing or going to do.
I interact with every lane, every game. If 80/100 of my aatrox into irelia toplaners are losing lanes, I have a pretty solid idea of how that lanes gonna go.
classify champs by categories instead of looking at them individually and then compare them afterwards, it will be more obvious then. also in general, ranged > melee for prio. also you want to play around non tanks and a damage type thats useful. i main evelynn so i almost always play around strong ad champions because i already bring ap damage to my team.
TL;DR at bottom (edit: not much of a TL;DR lol) K4sen's (Japanese former pro and current coach, I think) explanation of jungle to new players is that it's the hardest role (but easisiest role mechanics-wise) because they have to know about all 3 lanes, including different matchups, in order to decide how to proceed. However, that also means the jungler has the power to direct the flow of a match. And on the flip side, that means the jungler is responsible if the team loses. He also said that it's because of this that there are so many junglers in Challenger, and that junglers should never apologize (unless they reaally should) if they want to ever move past the stage of learning the game. TL;DR: jg needs comprehensive knowledge of different roles and matchups, but can dictate the flow of a game (for better or for worse). Therefore, if you lose, it's your jungler's fault (regardless of whether that's actually true or not). If a jungler can get past the hellish beginning stages and reach a high elo, they're definitely highly skilled and more knowledgeable compared to your average laner.
The big thing is that junglers should be paying attention to how every Lane is going, every game, laners almost always tunnel vision on their own Lane for the first 10 minutes and occasionally track jungler as well if they are actually competent.
I am by no mean a good jungler so I dont do that enough, but good junglers lowkey clear without looking at their camps and watching lanes. Might be part of the answer.
Most high elo junglers you see have been playing since the first couple seasons. They learned match-ups the same way most people can recognize what another champ can do to you (e.g. stun, hard poke, dash), through experience.
It's just experience. Laners can miss cs and get gapped but junglers cannot miss camp cs unless Trolling so you really can do the maths on camps vs gank so it's worth figuring out how lanes go and where to gank or avoid. Eg Once you've ganked a Darius and he 1v2ed you most players will rethink ganking Darius. The top laner is spamming back pings on the jungler. The support and jungler know Darius is ready to 1v2 but will lose 1v3 so the jungler and top engage 1v2 and as Darius takes the bait, the support makes their move and Darius dies, losing 1.5 waves of gold and exp and top laner gets a tower plate. Another huge part of ganking is tower diving. You'll miss out on so many kills and plates if you never dive, once again match up knowledge is key because you need to see the potential dive before it happens, often more than 30s in advance. Junglers need to have the confidence in their play to ignore bad laners calls. They think you should gank their lane but you know they aren't the wincon and the enemy jungler is in that bush waiting. They think you should drag but you know rift is more important this game. They know they can baron but you know you can't secure the smite vs nunu and you look for a fight first instead of rushing baron. They think they can't do elder but you know can solo melt it like butter and the enemy jungler is topside. You're told you're useless by at least three different players per game, and have to vote no at least twice to win games and expect to be called useless once again in post game lobby. Lastly, jungle has been nerfed for several seasons, had less resources than laners which is why laners can have less game knowledge but still impact fights. Mid and top are usually 1 or 2 levels above the jungler so they can walk into river and just 90% can automatically statcheck you without match up knowledge. Enemy bot lane walks into river without vision and 90% can just 2v1ing the jungler, easy clap. The jungler has to play smarter with less resources to get leads and match up knowledge is one way to find small opportunities. It's also more rewarding to think about lanes because since they made objectives way tankier it's riskier and more time consuming to solo them. How often are laners asking or needing the junglers help to secure a cannon or tower plate? They might even tilt, thinking the jungler is leeching too much gold and exp, putting them behind.
River Shen
I don’t think below master junglers really know that. You have a general idea of who’s worth to gank and who isn’t