What you're looking for is a combination of the enemy having taken poke and having their lane pushed too far. Often times early ganks won't result in a kill vs competent opponents but forcing a flash or them to go back is a very good result for your laner.

Don't force a gank if it's not there. If your lanes are all pushed you can't do much so either go back and buy or keep farming. Be communicative. Ask your laners to keep lanes less pushed.

Number one thing is to give your laner a 10-15s warning when you're coming to gank. I always hate when the jungler shows up unannounced and I don't have cooldowns up or I'm out of position to engage. Just those little things can make a huge difference in a moderately successful gank and one that gets a kill.

I'm just a gold scrub but heres some tips:

1) start at your buff on the bottom part of the map unless you are a blue dependent champ.
2)use smite on first buff
3)small camp
4)smite other buff
5)Check out top lane and mid lane while killing last buff to see where you should go. Where to gank depends on who your lane is, who their laner is, who their jungle is, who you are, where the lane is, which way is it pushing, minion counts, etc.
6) gank if possible
7) if no gank is possible, keep farming until you have to go back or can get a spirit stone or spirit stone + boots. Don't try to force it unless you are relatively sure it will be successful. Don't waste time early on if a gank isn't there, the time spent walking to/from that lane and waiting could be spent clearing camps.

When you gank, don't blow your cc or gap closer immediately. Ping as you head to gank, hopefully to alert your laner that you are on the way and let them engage/all in the enemy. Try to pretty much save your gap closer and cc until they flash or use their escape. Sometimes you need to use it immediately obv but try to save. This is 1 of the biggest things I see when i spec low ranking friends games. For example as mumu they will run in for the gank and initiate with a bandage toss on the enemy. This is horrible because if you miss it, which is pretty likely due to long range/minion block/you being bad/them dodging, you now have nothing else due to the huge cd at lvl 1. Plus even if you hit, you probably can't burst him down, and he can possibly flash away. Instead you just run in behind him cutting off escape, try to apply red buff, and wait for the flash, which gives you an easy target for Q and now he can't escape.

Also if at all possible you want to let your teammate get the kill to let them snowball better.

Once you get a jungle item you want to be efficient in clearing camps. If you are sitting at 80 stacks midgame you are leaving free gold on the table. You want to get a jungle item asap since its basically a gp5 item and the earlier you get it the more gold you earn.

I usually build damage early and then tanky after 1-2 items. Damage early when you can blow people up easily and help secure kills, tanky later for teamfights.

Pay attention to enemy jungler position, and ping him out on the map when you see him. That ping might save lives if he is going to gank, and also can alert people that they can dive/all in/whatever and not fear an enemy jungler helping. If their jungler is ganking top that usually means a pretty easy dragon since its 4v3.

Also, something I am really bad at remembering to do is typing out buff/drag/baron timers in chat. I do baron/drag but always forget blue/red. If you know the enemy red or blue is going to be up at X time, and their jungler isn't on the minimap, you can get a reasonable idea where he is, and can either contest/steal it or make plays on another part of the map while knowing they can't help.

Another thing, remember that there are other gank paths besides through the river. If you run up the river to gank and the enemy reacts and its clearly warded, run away out of sight and then try to lane gank or gank through tribush. Lane ganks can be very strong, especially bot lane.

As a jungler you should be doing one thing from the moment the game starts: gathering information. You are the man behind the curtain for the bulk of the game, and you need to be one step ahead of their team to have the greatest effect on the outcome.

You should be watching the minimap constantly, always ready to ping information for your teammates and to see if their jungler pops up. Make sure to find out where their jungler started, counter-jungle if you play a jungler who can duel.

While taking your 2nd buff tell your teammates to care for a gank. If they started at bottom buff, tell top/mid to be careful. They'll usually take the hint and use their yellow trinket at this point. If one of your lanes is pushed, you can bet the other jungler will be ganking any time. I usually tell that lane that I'm going to go for a counter gank and position myself for an easy interception of their incoming jungler. It's pretty rare you lose a 2v2 if you have the element of surprise, so counter-ganking is usually a great idea. But you need to know what the other jungler is thinking. This early in the game it's obvious, later on you really need to be paying attention or warding extremely well.

Some other ideas/reinforcements of nonfiction's sound advice:

• Diligently record buff timers, even late game so it becomes automatic
• Ward early and often, swap yellow trinket to red on first or second back.
• Ask your team to communicate with you as much as possible about summoner spells and ward placements. Knowing is >50% of the battle, imo.
• Don't be afraid to be test the limits of your champ, and own up to overextensions quickly to keep your team on your side.
• Learn to buy your starting items while moving to the nexus, and rush their jungle for an easy first blood. (When my game loads I instantly move to the side of the nexus where I can still shop from, press P, buy things with right-click, ESC, spam "trundle is on his way" pings to a brush in their jungle.) The higher level I attain the more people I see out of base in under 15 seconds, you can get summoners or first blood with 3 people depending on champs.
• Learn to mute people very early if they are abusive towards you as jungle or just don't understand that there are 3 lanes, not just one. If you remember you can unmute later when they cooled off and you need to communicate.
• Use travel time to communicate
• Rush jungle item, sometime before boots if all lanes are even!
• Ward their starting buff and surrounding area at 6:40, even if you don't steal your dumb teammates will mobilize for a counter-attack to the gank that usually happens after.
• Get good at checking your smite damage and maximizing your burst when taking buffs.
• If you expose yourself to the enemy team, make sure it's for a good reason. Just the information that you are bot lane for a split second can affect the decisions their team makes. Think about what you are telling the other team every time you show yourself.
• Play Trundle if possible

Probably a lot repeating:

Vision is Key, a lot of junglers make the mistake to just walk trough vision(They just held midlane and you see them walk towards bot).
Check their HP,Items,CS/Kills. If they are really low they most likely will just do another camp and then TP base. If you see trough their items that they must have a lot of gold they most likely will base too. Estimate how long this process will take, you oftentimes can then predict their movements.

For example:

Was low HP - can`t gank must go to base. Way to camp ~10seconds - cleartime 10 seconds - TP back 7 seconds --> 30 seconds he will be in base. Then after 30 seconds look at your Lanes. Is any of the Lanes pushed to make a gank easy for him? If no he most likely will go to opposite side he was on before because that`s were farmable camps are.

Use this information to counterjungle and mirror his movements if you can win 3v3 or 2v2.
In one of my last games, I was sitting in a bush on botlane - the lane was quite pushed and I was about to leave but saw that their Elise just left mid towards bot. Our support was even tping I pinged like crazy and told him to stay and kite back to the bush where I`m at , once Elise is there. Like predicted she came and ganked the lane which resulted in a triplekill for me and nothing but pain for them.

Every junglers plays different, Wukong is amazing at counterganking botlane post 6. There is like no way you are going to lose the 3 v 3 if you engage well.

Some specific Tipps against different champions:

Evelynn:

If you are for example Wukong and you both finish the laningphase 0/0/0 then you have won, you outscale her by a margin. If one of your lanes lost on their own then that`s unfortunate. But if you kept mirroring her movements well and denied her you did your job. A normal ward at wraiths is worth gold against her.

Amumu:

He is pretty weak 1on1, you oftentimes should look for him in his jungle and actively contest his buffs/camps.

Shaco:

Pretty much the same as Eve if you deny him he is going to be useless. It`s oftentimes nice to invade his first buff early and get rid of his boxes. He can clear his buff and go over to yours and clear it insanely fast if you don`t deny him early.

Pantheon:

Post 6 he is gonna ulti botlane 90% of the time, he should be 6 after his third buff you can use this information to easily countergank him.

Is jungle Pantheon a thing now? because it was awful last season for so many reasons: like his lol clear time, blue hungry, needs a lot of gold to be good

You can use w on jungle minions now which gives him a bit faster clear and lets him take a bit less damage on camps where his shield can block an attack. Spirit stone and the jungle items now have life leech/mana leech on jungle camps, which helps with his mana issues. Overall his clear is still subpar, but he fits in well with the high burst strong early gank jungle meta, and his ganks with ult are very strong, especially bot lane.

He's probably a top 6ish jungler and has seen LCS play this season.

Well his W does basically no dmg whatsoever. It`s just a stun, but yeah Spiritstone change made him viable.

Don`t think he is Top 6 in Soloq, in competitive play yes but in Solo q no chance, you have to rely on your team too much to make him work well.

Yes and I'm tired of getting berated in champ select for picking him when he's being used as a jungler in lcs every week.

LOL LCS copycat gtfo troll reported

Ultimately can't a ton of champs be made to work in the jungle? I watch Nightblue play stuff like Diana jungle which I wouldn't consider on my own. I'm happy to try all kinds of champs to find a couple I love jungling with. So far I like mumu, and in my experience playing some Nocturne in Aram I think I should try him. Would like to try Trundle too.

Yeah there are plenty of random junglers out there, including karthus.

I basically stopped reading when you questioned Diana jungle, since she's been jungle since she was released.

-_-

Jack is lying. He reads every post in full

Jungle teemo is terror

Jungle Leo ganks are so good. If her clear speed was just a little better she'd be so op.

And by a "little better" I mean if it wasn't complete aids

Truth

And weaker there than top/mid the whole time

She has god awful pre6ganks and her level 6 isnt too great either(for ult dependent junglers)

She does combo with lulu/ori for pretty absurd easy wombos

Her gap closer being on ult hurts a lot

Is there a decent overview guide for newb junglers?

I've found a few guides, but nothing that really clicked for me. My first attempt at jungling (used Malph) was an embarassment.

http://www.twitch.tv/nightblue3 Usually streams later on at night. If you look around 9-2am he's usually streaming.

Nightblue is good, I would also recommend theoddone, he pretty much always explains things while hes playing.

Do we have any good lee sin players on the board?

Paging Cruzer... :/

I used to be. I've been retired since S4 started tho