UPDATE: This thread was necroed by another forumer. Some of it may not apply anymore, since there are better new champions to jungle, etc. The neutral creep spawn times are different now, they spawn exactly at 1:40 now.

Thought I’d finally make a guide to XZ jungling. Adapt the build as you see fit, which is what I do every game anyways.


Reason to jungle Xin Zhao = GANKING. Do not pick Xin Zhao if you aren't used to ganking well.
With a knock-up, a flash slow, and a lizard slow, Xin Zhao is the best pre-6 jungle ganker since Shaco nerf hands down.

This does require team coordination, as in letting your team know you are going to gank, and letting enemy team push at level 4 to allow you to gank.

Spells

Ghost + Smite

Masteries

9/0/21
Offensive tree: Crit%, Smite, CDR or AS
Utility tree: HP/Mana Regen, Ghost, XP gain, Mana Regen, Buff duration, Movement speed, CDR

Runes

AS Marks
Armor Seals
CDR Glyphs (optional)
AS or Armor or HP Quints

Start of the Game

Step #1: Check if the enemy has clairvoyance.
Step #2: If one of your allies has clairvoyance, clair enemy spawnpoint. Check for wards bought.
Step #3: Check if the enemy has an enemy jungler.
Step #4: Check if enemy jungler has a flash/ghost/exhaust as second spell.
If no – decide if you want to gank enemy jungler/steal enemy blue.
Step #5: If no clairvoyance, check enemies items in lane. If they have boots, cloth armor, rejuvenation bead, and their items don’t add up to ~475 gold, the river brush or buff on that side of the map will be warded. Don't gank this side or wait till ward expires.

Jungle Rotation

Take Cloth + 4 pots.


1. Start at 2 mini-golems. They spawn at ~1:34. Take W or E (if you want to gank enemy jungler after). DON’T USE A HEALTH POT.

If you took W, waste smite right away, kill first golem, and activate W spell when second golem is around 3/4 health.

If you took E, Smite from a distance, the golems will clump up, activate E to do aoe when they’re close together.

2. You level up from mini-golems. Pick Q if you want to do a level 2 gank, or E if you want to continue jungling.

3. Recall. Golem has a delayed spawn (~1:55 seconds) you haven’t lost much time. The longer wait makes any gank at golem impatient and return to lane.

4. From spawnpoint, run to golem. Chug HP pot. Don’t activate W, the passive is much more useful than the active. Save smite till ~450-500 health.

5. Go to wolves, attack middle wolf, then automatically activate E. Chug a HP pot.

6. Go to Lizard. Chug a HP pot. Smite is back off cooldown. Check MIAs, if none, waste it right away.

7. Chug last HP pot. Mini-golems should have respawned by now. You’re low health. Kill 1 golem, and level up. This will give you enough health to finish off the second golem.

Pick Q for ganking. Alert your teammates to let lanes push.

8. You're at 1-2 bars of health. You can only do 1 more creep camp. Go to wraithes. Smite the blue one, Use E --> W&Q. Recall. With my rune/mastery setup, you survive the jungle route.

9. After doing all these exact creep camps, you WILL have enough gold for Madreds Razor + 3 HP pots.

10. GANK as much as possible from here on out. Prioritize the lanes that are beating your teammates (i.e. your 1v2 lane). Shut them down, claim the extra gold bounty. Carry to victory.

TLDR: Mini golems --> Recall --> Golem Rune --> Wolves --> Lizard -->Mini-golems --> Wraithes --> Recall.

Spell Progression: W/E at level 1, E/W at level 2, Pick Q when you finally decide to gank (at level 3 or 4)


Core Build

1. Cloth Armor + 4 HP pots
2. Razor + 3 HP pots or Razor + Ward
3. Wriggles Lantern or Razor + Vamp Sceptre (If you want to build Bloodrazor instead)
4. Boots (vs. enemy comp)


5. Build varies from here on out. Items to consider:

HoG --> Randuin’s Omen (CDR, Turns Xin into an initiator)
Stinger (CDR, AS)
Brutalizer/Youmuu’s (CDR, ArPen)
Black Cleaver (AD, AS, ArPen)
Bloodrazor (AS, %HP Damage)

If you build max cooldown reduction, considering your W lowers your cooldown by one second each autoattack, you can activate your ultimate TWICE per teamfight. Consider CDR important.

TIPS ON GANKING

You will want to gank bottom first.
If you get a successful gank (double kill or recall), push tower. Take tower. Once you take the bottom tower, this gives you map control to dragon and the enemy blue buff (if you're blue side).

You will want to pop ghost --> Dash --> While they're slowed, it lets you knock them up easier --> Activate Q/W simultaneously --> Knock-up --> Lizard slow --> Clean up.

Good luck. Hope it taught you some aspects on jungling properly.

I like this guide, after i unlock him i will try this immediately. I love junglers that no one knows about!

bump

There's no need to recall so soon...you can easily do small golems > wraiths > wolves > blue buff

Doing blue buff so late is ineffective. Here are many reasons why that route will not work as efficiently:

-Wraithes does too much damage for the low XP gained. Especially if you're not smiting the blue one. Your mid can't help but take your XP from Wraithes if lane is pushed.

-Blue Golem gains HP/stats every minute. The longer you prolong him, the longer it will take to kill him, and therefore the more damage you will take, making you even more vulnerable at blue

-Doing blue golem earlier makes jungling much faster because of the cooldown reduction and mana regen

This is the route I take, never been ganked at blue.

Bookmarked your guide - very informative, thx! I like to play jungling Xin and your suggested path is very interesting, especially the recall right after lvl 2. You do it to maximise the effect of Blue buff, right? =) (I know you are a big fan of CDR on Xin)

EDIT: oh, you've already answered while I was typing )

Have you misspelled "E" for "Q"? Because E is not an activated skill of course.

While that's all true, it's still very easy to kill wraiths then go to wolves then to blue after starting at golems, and since you can do it that way, why wouldn't you? It'll be faster overall since you don't have to recall, and you'll get boots on your first recall instead of nothing, which will make the first gank easier to do right after red buff.