Quote:
Originally Posted by Fireside Poet
Whenever I jungle, I feel as though I have pretty good map control and awareness, and my ganks are around average. I seem to have a hard time successfully building a decent CS by 10-15 minutes though. I can't seem to balance ganking and farming effectively, and in addition, i feel it takes me much too long to clear camps.
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This is something that takes lots of time and practice to learn. Basically, I focus primarily on two things: camp timers/clearing efficiently and wards/map control. When I get near a lane for any reason, I'll do a brief look and see if it's worth it to gank, and if not, I'll just keep going about my business. However, since I usually only do Wraiths and Wolves then run around and clear wards, I'm almost always near a lane, so I attempt to gank quite frequently. If you focus on ganking first, you will be behind levels when you just keep running up and down the river doing ganks and never get any CS.
My ganking usually looks something like this (as Purple starting after a top gank):
Run to mid. Check if mid's gankable; if not, get Wraiths.
Check if mid's gankable again. If not, run behind the tower and go to Wolves if it's up, or to their Blue if not and clear wards.
If I went to their Blue and did a bit of counterjungling, gank mid while running through it regardless of the circumstances.
Clear the river of wards while going bot. Check to see if it's gankable or pulled; if so, gank, and if not, either establish lane presence, debate about a lane/bush gank, or go to Wolves.
Clear Wolves. Check to see if mid's gankable. If not, run to Wraiths. They should be up.
Clear Wraiths. Check if mid's gankable. Debate about running to mid, top, Red, bot, base, golems, or to clear a newly-placed ward somewhere.
etc.
In some circumstances, you have to be proactive. If one of your lanes is pushed and, playing it from the other side in your head, you can assume their jungler wants to come and gank it, run straight for that lane and try to meet him to stave off the gank or to join the fight and countergank.
You should also keep map awareness at all times. If their jungler is ganking bot, you can zone top for a brief period of time and try to harass him back 2v1. If their jungler just ganked top, you can quickly 3v2 bot and push hard then have mid force a dragon (since their ADC and Support will be forced to miss lots of CS and XP to their tower if they want to stop it or force you back).
Always have timers on buffs and try to meet them either for a gank or a steal. If lots of enemies are missing, it may not be wise since you can get caught, but if they're in lane, it's easy to tell who's going which path and when (for calculating escape routes).
Personally, if I can't get about 5 kills+assists by 10 minutes, I'm generally far behind since I haven't cleared many camps near the start. Once you can clear camps really fast, your CS should stay relatively level (as in, if you were behind 50 CS early on, you should still only be 50 CS behind throughout the game). This is due to fast camp clearing and taking lane CS after ganks or when your team isn't grouped. If you pick a clearing jungler who doesn't gank often, your CS will be much higher, but I prefer level 3-4 gankers the most (Lee being my only often-played exception).