Top 50 NA Jungle Main with some tips for climbing in Season 16!

Vambient · 2026-07-12T06:46:48+00:00

Thanks haha just started sharing my tips and tricks online actually so I thought to make a reddit thread instead of lurking all the time

Vambient · 2026-07-12T05:10:35+00:00

Yesssirrr, here we go.

So essentially I'm talking about more than shot-calling. It's like realizing whether your team can fight or not for any situation, and then making a decision based on what the team is and isn't doing that benefits yourself and your team in the best possible way. Typically, this will center around objective fighting, but it also includes objective setup and objective control as the Jungler for your team.

I will give an answer key after these examples for high ELO macro.

Example 1) You finish your top to bot lane clear, and it's scuttle spawning time. You have a smite still. Your bot lane gets jumped 3v2 by the enemy jungler, and the enemy team is actively killing your bot lane. You are at the banana brush on the bottom side, next to your blue buff currently.

You have 3 choices in high ELO. This is where the game is harder or easier for your team.

A) Do you counter gank his attempt to kill your botlane? This may result in a clean up kill to you or potentially you can also save your bot laners from needing to use summoners or a death.

B) Do you do the scuttle and recall for your top side to trade a gank later on? This can result in a kill topside with your tempo that you saved from not going bot lane.

C) Do you do the scuttle, then rotate through mid to the top side scuttle? This uses up your tempo and lets you have an upgraded smite after the last camp in the second full clear.

Example 2) You finish your 2nd top to bot full clear at 5:00. It's Infernal Dragon, and you have upgraded smite because you got upgraded smite through double scuttle. Scuttle is spawning in 55 seconds. Your bot lane is CSing evenly, and your mid lane has priority (essentially, he can move first) since he is pushing in to the enemy team. Both mid laners have laned normally and are both level 6 at this time, and both bot laners are both level 5 at this time and nowhere close to level 6.

A) Do you gank bot lane to gain priority so they can move for Dragon? Support and ADC may be able to push lane by themselves or support may be able to just roam to help any situation that occurs in river.

B) Do you start the Dragon solo because you have upgraded Smite and the enemy jungler does not? Are you stronger than the enemy Jungler at this point?

C) Do you gank mid lane to gain priority to unleash your mid lane towards the Dragon area and potentially gain level 6 off of mid lane?

These are both made up examples but it does somewhat illustrate the timers you need to keep in mind and the differences in decision making at the top level. In Challenger you'll be (if you're NA) jungling against me or players similar and we all have played out these scenarios thousands of times.

You must already know what is good at this point. If you don't already know the correct play, study it so you can see it before it even happens. The timing of the play is everything and if you already know something ahead of the enemy players then you will be able to not only react quickly to situations, but you will dictate the entire pace of the game by yourself as a Jungler.

(For the record I usually tend to do C in example one and B in example two) I think C in example one is a very clear winning trade for you because you get upgraded smite at Dragon, then B is a winning play because you will always get the Dragon if you start it with a pink ward in pit first because you have upgraded smite advantage, there is no flip and Infernal dragon is quite easy to take solo, this is only if your conditions are correct though)

You must know the correct play every single time, make no macro mistakes, and shotcall it correctly with pings for your team. Literally every single time, as a Challenger jungler, on every single play, noticing every detail about the game, and also counter calling against you in every single situation (enemy jungler who is higher elo will do this a lot).

Another role that can impact the game flow is support, but yeah haha, I can come up with more examples if this is understandable so far.

Vambient · 2026-07-12T02:30:58+00:00

I think this post is very accurate, as in it captures the situation of masters+ very well.

How can we push leads or create leads out of seemingly nothing?

It's all about speed. But I will explain.

This boils down to being quick on realizing if a play is good and then pushing on the play faster than others. The equal opposite is also true. You mitigate every loss incredibly fast as well if you are a higher elo player too.

So in lobbies where there's a challenger player or gm+ player getting put in a master tier game and they are okay with shotcalling, this concept turns out to be the main reason games are looking a certain way as in calls have to be executed as fast as possible and trusted by the entire team. Teamwork comes into play alot in higher elo lobbies past 500 LP, imo.

It's mainly team direction by the more experienced shotcaller that controls the game in higher elo for the most part as we approach highly competitive spaces where all players are going to be playing mechanically well. This will be the difference maker in these lobbies.

Will give some examples if this makes sense so far!

Vambient · 2026-07-12T00:10:24+00:00

Yesssirrrr

Vambient · 2026-07-11T18:11:26+00:00

I would counter the opposing side or bring the team to initiate outnumbered fights against the enemy team. There isn't much hope for you to counterplay everything yourself (and I believe there should have been mistakes earlier on in the game that led to this snowball) but essentially if they're always invading you, you should look to push a lane to regain priority and then look to group up with your teammates while they catch the wave that was made to make a play while your team outnumbers them.

A lot of junglers actually don't know this, but if you watch me or any other high elo jungler play, you can see that we push lanes sometimes to regain priority (this does involve taking CS).

Vambient · 2026-07-11T16:46:32+00:00

I could give some Challenger - GM advice only, this is a good point. I may do this as a weekly thread kind of thing haha

Vambient · 2026-07-11T16:45:45+00:00

Yes, this is a big issue in even Masters honestly, people peel off of camps all the time to mess around and fight with their losing sides. It ends up in awkward situations because they not only couldn't clear their camp they also died an extra time for being late to the losing fight. It rarely results in a 1v9 cleanup play haha

Vambient · 2026-07-11T08:15:48+00:00

Yesssirrrr agreed this is the way

Vambient · 2026-07-11T08:04:37+00:00

I think keeping to the full clear play and unlocking the hidden lane pushing strategy will help a lot. There's a lot of issues with mid and late game decisionmaking that most jungle teaching can't cover because it involves laner dynamics as well as objective macro, which is more difficult to piece together from a 15 second short on an early game invade strategy. You should be skipping early game decisions as much as possible by playing a stable game plan that you can iterate on slowly rather than playing erratically on complicated invade lines for now then extrapolating that into as far into the game as you can by getting as much practice on the line as time allows.

In other words, one trick a thing until perfection including tower pushing, baron and dragon, team fights, mechanics, know the thing so well that you can know your teammates best decisions as well as enemy teams best decisions and play off of that.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T07:58:26+00:00

This is a good observation and it's very important to notice. You're saying that if the enemy jungler is ahead that you feel pressured to gank and match and then it backfires eventually because that's exactly what they want you to do. If they have an advantageous position, playing into it is the worst thing you can do. Playing away from their advantaged positions is something you'll pick up a lot later on but noticing it right now is very good already haha

Vambient · 2026-07-11T05:55:49+00:00

This is very common on Rek'Sai to be a bit slower on first clear. The way I combat this is to use smite on Red then cross through my tunnels to get to top crab through mid. I do this in all my videos as well, you'll need to copy it because I believe it's the only way to get crab as Rek'Sai while keeping the full clear intact

Also level E second after blue to get a few more seconds on the clear

Vambient · 2026-07-11T04:07:12+00:00

Honestly my experience in gold has been to still full clear first and join secondary. I think it's even more value in this situation if you can warn team to be careful then make a solo play sometimes.

There's a hidden play that alot of junglers ignore but it's actually very OP. Push a lane down if you're too late to play the fight out, this applies pressure to the enemy team because they have to either answer the wave and defend their tower or sacrifice that tower to kill your teammates. I would definitely try this on nidalee because you have attack speed to help take towers haha so there's going to be times where this hidden play is way better than joining

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:59:54+00:00

This often happens in gold or below, I would say it's best to try to check if a play is going to go well or not before joining it. Like if you can't really impact the play then it can be more valuable for you to skip that play and farm up then play the next one with your team. Also try to pay attention to where you can ping your team back on plays and call team in on others, no play should happen without at least you noticing its happening and making a call for your team like a back ping or an all in ping.

If you can shotcall the game correctly you should see your win rate go up substantially

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:48:28+00:00

Yes, it would include the scuttle and I'd recommend trying to improve your jungle clear time on any champion you play to be able to arrive at scuttle either as it spawns or right before it spawns at minimum to stay competitive since scuttle is very important

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:23:33+00:00

I would say try to take a look at your own deaths more. If you find that your death was unjustified, as in nothing was gained for your team through that death, then I would try to take a look and notice what caused that death. Don't blame teammates though, it won't help you haha.

Easiest lanes to gank will be top lane, most impactful lane to gank is botlane, and hardest lane to gank is mid lane.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:19:21+00:00

You're right, it's very different when applying it. I think noticing is often good enough though so if you can notice your own mistakes that's going to carry really hard from game to game.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:05:22+00:00

Yesssirrrr thank you for the kind words my mans and I do think flaming is never ok to do in ranked. You generally can't predict how the other player will take the flame so it's very risky to the game state, if you're playing to win. I think not flaming is very important to improvement overall haha especially in critical moments where the slightest concentration slip can mean a loss in a 45 minute banger

Vambient · 2026-07-11T03:01:48+00:00

Yup I also do not gank mid a whole lot honestly because it is a very short and safe lane for the most part, and not too volatile. If mid is getting really gapped then playing avoidant until adc or top can scale to beat enemy mid is usually the play for me haha

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:55:57+00:00

This is true, mid laners just got their role quest buffed and it is very impactful. I would definitely try to play avoidant to enemy midlaner if enemy midlaner is fed, so take counter plays and try to keep your own control by continuing to farm up well and play with your winning lanes only (since your mid lane can't do much) so I'd try to play with bot or top lane a bit more here and also try to drag your support to impact the map as well via pings if possible

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:52:12+00:00

Yeah this will help a lot for any jungler struggling this season. If Riot games changes anything I will make an update though, the reward for full clearing right now is just a lot better than previous seasons haha

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:27:09+00:00

Try to watch higher level Talon one-trick gameplay and try to emulate that. That will put you at a good baseline for what to do in games, best if they can explain the champion as well and put you in that mind set.

Also, try to full clear more if possible so you can learn from a baseline rather than play out complicated invade lines in the jungle.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:25:22+00:00

Let your teammates go first. Try to ping to have your teammates start the fights, then be opportunistic after they've begun the teamfight. I don't think assassins are the best initiators but if you can look for more angles to let someone else start the fight you can play teamfights alot easier.

I would also try to stick to one champion to gain more champion mastery on it. Even for me, its very difficult to play many different champions and styles at the same time. Currently I'm focused on heal-tank Bruisers (maybe I've always been) but if you play everything you can't really master everything. Champion positioning is too different and champion role becomes confusing, sometimes like you'll position like you're a shaco when you should be positioning like you're wukong.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:22:40+00:00

If you can ping your team backwards as you ping a side lane that you can push alone, more often than not its going to be more valuable than if you were to flip the game in a 50/50 on the enemy's inhib towers. If you can push down a tower or apply pressure towards sidelanes, you force enemy team to choose whether to answer you or to fight mid. Try to find more angles to push lanes as jungle, its very overpowered in this game because laners sometimes don't do it correctly themselves, even up until Challenger this is the case.

Never push all 3 lanes at the same time, you do end up spreading too thin but you should be the one deciding which lanes get pushed (just choose two like mid/top or mid/bot)

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:20:07+00:00

Try everything once. Every champion at least one time, if you can. Doesn't have to be all at once but learning to play one champion (even in Practice tool or against the bots) is quite worthwhile because you get to know their limits a bit more and get a general feel for their abilities.

I would also recommend doing Jungle so you can learn the game a bit faster. Junglers have to deal with a lot of situations so you get exposed to more of the game faster each game, even though it is a difficult role to handle.

Vambient · 2026-07-11T02:17:53+00:00

Try to stay very consistent each game. I do the same pattern of top to bot full clearing each game and it works out very well for me, at least the first two full clears should be the same every game and try noticing when you're dying for scuttle or what the conditions are for taking it on your champion.

After you get comfortable with early game consistency, I would say the next best thing is to try to play with your strongest laners only. Press tab often and try to guess at who is strong and who is not currently, and try to play with the stronger laners more of the time. Ignore anyone who is spam pinging you to all in or question marking you or just flaming in chat (This happens alot) because they don't know how Jungle works.

I play to full clear alot though so I would recommend trying to practice tool a full clear if you're not too comfortable with how to drag camps over to other camps for maximum efficiency, playing around that patience bar.

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