Newer players trying to climb or learn the game always have this question somewhere in their mind: What is the best role to climb with? Contrary to what many people may think, jungling is actually the most impactful role in the game and the easiest to climb with. Here are the reasons why:
1. Junglers make the most game-changing decisions
Every decision a jungler decides to give has the potentially to completely shift the tide of a lane or even the entire game. A gank top for a snowbally matchup can give your top laner the lead for the rest of the game. A gank bot could start a team fight that leads to both solo laners rotating down. An invade at the enemy’s blue buff at the 7 minute mark or a call for the team to come over and dragon could cause a huge collapse and team fight. Even the tiniest things like starting your first camp at the top side of the map so your bot lane gets either krugs or golems at level 1 is huge.
Giving a successful gank, not being there for a counter-gank, greedily doing a camp while you should be preventing a tower dive are all are all decisions the junglers must make starting at the very early stages of the game. On the other hand think about the significance of the small decisions everyone else is making. The mid laner is asking himself whether to go for this creep or give it up in order to harass. They are looking to see whether to push their lane or freeze. Everyone on the map is fighting tooth and nail for every small advantage they can get. Many lanes would consider a creep lead of 15 at the 6-7 minute mark to be a huge victory. However, the reality of the game is that this type of lead barely matters at all. This 300 gold lead is inconsequential when your other lanes are getting stomped over and over. If you’re just a little overextended and die, there goes that entire 15 creep lead or perhaps the health advantage you’ve gained by out-laning.
The point is, other roles often find themselves fighting for very minuscule advantages like CS advantages and health leads while everything the jungler does have a far larger impact on the game and who will ultimately end up with the win.
2. It’s far easier to gain huge advantages over the enemy jungler
As a mid-main, I find that it’s actually pretty rare to be super ahead or behind the mid laner I’m up against. It is so easy if someone falls a little behind to just simply wave clear under tower and be perfectly fine. If someone is chunked low, it is so easy to just back and perhaps lose the majority of a wave and be down half a level or so. On the contrary, junglers can often get way ahead of the other jungler by counter jungling and completely denying any jungle camps. Its not too uncommon for junglers to get as much as 2 levels ahead or behind their counterpart. Even more importantly is that it’s not that hard to do it. Invading at the right time or simply picking a fast jungle clearing champion can easily give junglers a huge lead without any mechanical outplaying.
3. Junglers are particularly strong right now
Junglers in general are just pretty strong right now. Jungle champions like Nidalee, Graves, Kha’Zix, Master Yi, and many others can easily 1v1 even top or mid laners in many scenarios. These power farming champions when a little ahead are actually a higher level than top and mid laners as well. In general, there seems to be a very inaccurate assertion that junglers are always going to be weaker than solo laners and a lot of this might be due to watching LCS where teams prioritize gold onto the mid and AD carry. However, this is quite different from solo queue.
4. Smiting matters
Ever get frustrated because your jungler misses smite and this ends up costing you the game? That’s because its so crucial to secure baron and dragon objectives using smite and it’s pretty much always up to the jungler to do this unless there’s a Chogath or Kalista on your team. Though some of this is luck based, being able to have some sort of control in whether these objectives are secured or stolen away as a jungler is huge and often times forgotten about when accessing the impact that each role brings to the table.
