With the League of Legends ranked season closing in less than two weeks, we are offering you a brief guide to the LoL jungle. While the Summoner’s Rift map is one all that League players have seen quite a few times, knowing the details can sometimes be the difference that wins you the game.
Ah, the Summoner’s Rift jungle. One of the trickiest and most impactful parts on the map, it is nevertheless one of the least understood. Well, we’ve got your back! Whether you are a budding jungler or want to know just what that… person is doing when they aren’t ganking your lane, read on! In this guide article, we will summarize what you can see on the map and what you can expect.
Plants
While the jungle has many plants in the background, only three have special effects. The Blast Cone, when attacked, will blast everyone near it away. This does not do damage but can launch everyone affected through terrain – handy if you want to go through a wall to bypass a ward or escape from an enemy.
Attacking a Scryer’s Bloom will release a wave of pollen that reveals anyone in its path for a considerable distance, including invisible objects like wards. Finally, when you attack a Honeyfruit, it will burst into five melons. Moving over any of them restores 6% of your missing mana and either 3.5% of your max health or a fixed amount (14-116, depending on your level).
Dead plants respawn in 5-7 minutes. Depending on what elemental map you have, you might have more spawns of one type of plants – an Infernal Rift gets more Blast Cones, a Cloud Rift gets more Scryer’s Blooms and an Ocean Rift will have more Honeyfruits.
Jungle Monsters
The Rift is green and full of monsters… but thankfully, they tend to ignore you until attacked, at which point they will attack the nearest enemy or chase them. If they are unable to hit someone for a certain amount of time (represented by their red patience bar), they will start to rapidly regenerate health and hurry back to their spawn location.
After killing them, they eventually respawn, but for camps that have more than one monster, you need to kill all of them for the respawn timer to start – leaving only one enemy in a big camp alive is a valid way to slow down the enemy jungler’s progress.
Finally, monsters level up which increases their stats – and makes a jungler’s job even harder if they are set back from an early invade. Here are a few factoids about the monsters you can expect to see:
- Wolves: The wolf camp features two regular murk wolves and a greater murk wolf. The trio is fairly simple to handle. The first spawn is at 1:30 and it respawns 2 minutes after the last wolf is killed. They are fast but have poor armor and no magic resistance, as well as mediocre damage. This camp and the raptor camp spawn at 1:30 and respawn 2 minutes after all monsters are killed.
- Raptors: This is the most numerous camp with one crimson raptor and five lesser raptors. Having area of effect spells is quite useful here, as the raptors have low health but quite high combined damage.
- Krugs: One of the slower but most rewarding camps early on, this camp features an Ancient Krug and a regular Krug. An Ancient Krug splits into two regular Krugs when killed and each regular Krug splits into two Mini Krugs. They are slow, however, and their negative MR makes magic damage junglers like Elise very fast around them. The Krug camp spawns first at 1:42 and respawns every 2 minutes.
- Gromp: The Gromp is a large frog-like creature with a fair bit of health but no armor and negative magic resistance. Unlike most other monsters, its own attacks do magic damage and the first five attacks have higher speed and damage than later ones. The Gromp spawn follows the same pattern as the Krugs.
- Blue Sentinel: The golem-like creature opposite the Gromp is a typical starting point for any jungle champion who relies on abilities and cooldowns for their clear. Defeating it gives its killer the Crest of Insight buff – more commonly called simply the “blue buff”. This buff gives +10% cooldown reduction and bonus mana or energy regeneration for 120 seconds. However, killing the champion before the buff expires transfers the buff to their killer and refreshes the duration. The Blue Sentinel spawns at 1:30 and every 5 minutes after it is killed.
- Red Brambleback:The counterpart to the Blue Sentinel, the Brambleback gives the Crest of Cinders, also known as the “red buff” when killed. This buff gives a champion extra health regeneration outside of a fight, makes their autoattacks slow the enemy and apply a damage over time effect. It has the same duration as the blue buff and is also transferred if the champion with it is killed. The Red Brambleback has the same spawn pattern as the Blue Sentinel.
- Rift Scuttler: The little crab-like monster scurrying around in the river is one of the Rift’s more unusual inhabitants. For starters, she is a confirmed pacifist and will not attack anyone even if attacked. Instead, she runs away with increased movement speed. Any hard crowd control like stuns or roots are extra effective: they have a longer duration and strip away her armor and magic resistance. Killing this defenseless lady gives the fiend who lands the last blow bonus health and mana and makes a 90-second zone in front of the dragon or Baron pit where the killer’s team has vision and gets a short movement speed boost. The Scuttler spawns at 3:15 in both river halves and then a single Scuttler respawns 2:30 minutes after both have been killed; after that, there can only be one Scuttler on the map.
READ MORE:
- LoL Patch 10.22: Seraphine Takes the Stage on Summoner’s Rift!
- Top 5 Strongest Junglers in LoL Patch 10.21
- League of Legends’ Jungle to Change Again!
That’s it for now! Good luck on the Summoner’s Rift and remember - flaming the jungler doesn’t magically make them play better!
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