(skip to the end if you don't care about details)
I'm duo-queueing him to gold rank, so basically I'll be team leader everytime. Last match we played together I went 7/1/2 as jungling Amumu. He went 3/1/5 as Brand. On his own, he managed to get up to the 1400s before he dropped back down to 1200.

Basically I've decided the following to insure victory:
1. I am banning Morde every game because people at 1400-1500 can't counter him
2. I am going to jungle every single game except in extreme cases. If I lane, it will be as Mordekaiser, Garen, or another near invincible champ that does loads of damage. No exceptions. I'm not touching support or squishy carries. This is me tryharding to win.

And things to know:
1. He is always going to be our solo/mid laner. He plays a lot of laning powerhouses very well, especially Brand, Zilean, Heimerdinger, and Udyr. But he's only decent at ranged carries and support. I'm going to make sure he is played to his strengths.
2. I've got runes to support basically everything, with only real exceptions being energy and movespeed quints

So out of Nocturne, Lee Sin, Udyr, Master Yi, Warwick, Jarvan, Gangplank, and Xin Zhao, who's my best bet (I play all of these quite often and jungle well on all of them)? I KNOW Amumu is technically "it", but even with me being captain every round, he's a hard champ to get and a risky one to leave unbanned.

I've got plenty of lee way to lose elo, but he doesn't, since each set back hits harder with the coming deadline. Someone care to help me help out a friend?

First of all you should not think in terms of which champion (singularis) if your goal is to climb the solo ladder but rather which viable champions (pluralis) for which roles (also pluralis).

Now this can be elaborated quite a bit but I think realizing the above is a good start.

My first thought was morde, but you covered that Out of the ones you listed Noc and Xin are the scariest junglers to go against. Their ganks are undodgable, except only by flash. Lee Sin is a good pick too

there really isnt a "best" champ to carry you to gold. the best way to get there is pick champs around your team. let the stubborn A-holes pick whomever they want, then pick your champ that best fits the comp. and get WARDS.

I'm a strong jungle player as well, and from one strong jungler to another, it all depends on what you want to do at lvl 3 or 4. I personally think the Xin Zhao Q+E(Knock Up+Slow) initiation is much more devastating and harder to dodge than Noc's E+Q(Speed Increase+Fear). Now this is all at early game, towards late game, Xin starts to become an easy target and he's usually easy to kill with CC. While Noc gets stronger and his Ult is a lot more useful than Xin's. So again, they're both great candidates, one has a better early game while the other has a better end game.

Personally I used noc, he can gank early if needed, can devastate after 6 and even carry a bit if needed. I took a long break, came back to a 1350 account, and used noc to get to 1530 - I'm currently 73% noc.


HOWEVER, more important than who i've picked was the fact that i was willing to submit to trolls and let them jungle isntead of being stubborn. Pick what your team needs but kindly ask for jungle.

out of those in bold, nocturne

nocturne if he gets fed its gg