By Kevin “Kez” Jeon of Complexity Gaming
League of Legends is a really well-designed competitive e-sports game because the meta shifts with every single patch. This happens because champions that are considered “op” sometimes gets nerfed and people look for a replacement and while doing so, the counter-picks to that replacement also rises and vise versa. Players are not tied to a set of champions or rely on only a couple of strategies.
Some champions fall off the current meta or stay op. As of right now, the lane that has been most affected by the recent patches is top lane. In this blog, however, I will be talking about the current meta of the jungle.
Top Jungle Picks
Junglers have always been like the supports. Since it is quite hard for both roles to acquire a constant flow of gold, the champion pools have always been limited. Champions who require items to perform well were usually neglected
for either role.
As of right now, the top-tier jungle picks are – Lee Sin, Elise, and Evelyn.
- Lee Sin – Strong Early, Decent Mid, Weak Late
- Elise: Decent Early – Strong Mid, Strong Late
- Evelyn: Weak Early, Decent Mid, Strong Late
These are the power spikes of theses champions throughout the game. Although I listed Lee Sin as weak late, there is still a chance to make an insec play and carry a team to victory. So it really depends on what your team composition iswhen it comes to picking a jungle champion. If your team composition is strong early on, you need to decide whether to snowball early game harder by picking a Lee Sin or to pick Elise so that even if the game goes too late, you arestill able to stay impactful and vice versa. This is only affected by your team’s style, but you usually want to balance the power curve out when it comes to building a team composition. For example, you do not want to have five early game champions that fall off in late game. Always balance your champion composition.
Sightstone
Lee Sin was considered one of the strongest jungle champions because he could build Sightstone. I am not saying you cannot build Sightstone on other champions, but Lee Sin can use the wards most effectively with his w. People didn’t even consider building this item on other junglers because not every champion has the ability to jump over walls with wards. However, more and more professional players are starting to build Sightstone on other junglers, such as Elise, Evelyn, and Nunu. Why is this starting to happen all of a sudden? People are starting to understand that junglers buy wards as much as supports do and Sightstone is high cost-efficient item if you are buying wards every time you recall to base. 800 gold for rechargeable wards every time you base that gives some health? Perfect for junglers! We probably won’t see junglers in solo queue building Sightstone except Lee Sin, but we will see more and more professional players building this item.
Second Tier Junglers
In every meta, there are top-tier junglers followed by second tier junglers. As of right now in my opinion, Rengar, Nunu, Nocturn, Jarvan, and Khazix are the junglers that are worth picking up as a fall back. You will notice that Rengar, Nocturn, and Khazix require a lot of damage items to stay relevant in any game, which makes them the second tier junglers. Top tier junglers usually have percentile damage which makes them able to stay relevant just by building tanky items (Evelyn is an exception because of her great passive). However, if you can use these junglers in the right team composition, you will find these junglers as strong as the top-tier junglers, but it just takes a lot more effort and time to get there in-game.
Follow Kevin on twitter @coL_Kez