Hey there! It’s Librarian Husky here. Today, we’re diving deep into essential Jungle mechanics every jungler should know. Whether you’re new or looking to refine your skills, this guide covers efficient jungle clearing, pet management, and strategic map awareness. Let’s get started!

Did you know you can Smite Rift Herald for 2100 damage or that the player tanking Baron gets a 50% damage debuff? Standing in the right spot can give you 1,000% more Mana per second. You can pull camps outside their patience range, hide them in brushes, or leave one small monster alive and still hit level three off three camps. Let’s take your jungling to the next level!

Mastering Your Jungle Pet

The first mechanic you need to master has to do with your Jungle pet. Here’s what you need to know: after you deal damage to a camp, your pet is going to deal AOE damage to that entire camp two times. This means the fastest way to clear multi-monster camps like Krugs, Raptors, and Wolves is to always focus the highest health monster. This way you maximize the amount of damage your pet does over time.

Optimizing DPS in Camps

There’s a trick though. Let’s say you start your Raptors; obviously, the big Raptor has the highest health, so you focus that first. However, you want to left-click on the smaller Raptors to bring up the panel in the top left. When you see that the big monster you’re focusing has lower health than the HP in the panel, that’s your time to switch focus to the smaller monsters. This maximizes your DPS and you kill the camp as fast as possible.

Efficient Jungle Clearing

If you only focus the big Raptor the entire time, it will take 24 seconds to clear it. Simply using this one trick, you’ll clear it in 21 seconds instead, 3 seconds faster. You should also be aware your Jungle pet heals you and restores Mana after killing large monsters. This is actually increased based on your missing health.

Optimizing Health and Mana Management

So often, unless you are expecting to be invaded, you should be saving your potion until after your entire clear is done to maximize your healing. At the same time, when you’re in the jungle or river, you gain insane bonus Mana regeneration based on missing Mana from your pet. You don’t have to be attacking camps; just by being in those areas, you gain it. This means you should really never be recalling because you’re low on Mana as a jungler.

Understanding Jungle Pet Debuffs

Jungle pets also come with two debuffs you absolutely need to know. First, you get massively reduced experience from all Lane minions early on. This is based on the time in the game. At the start, you’ll only get 30% of Minion XP. At 5 minutes, you get 44% of the XP. At 10 minutes, you get 65% of the XP, and at 15 minutes, you get 79% of the XP. At 20 minutes, this penalty is finally removed.

Minion XP and Gold Penalty

The only exception is if you’re 1.5 levels behind the average game level, then you don’t get this penalty. But honestly, if you’re that far behind this early on in the game, a lane minion XP debuff is the least of your worries. So here’s an easy general rule to remember: minion experience is terrible for junglers until the turret plates fall at 14 minutes, and it’s completely removed once Baron spawns.

Minion Gold Penalty

There’s also another debuff where if your total gold earned from Minion kills is greater than 40% of your gold from Monster kills, killing a minion grants you 13 less gold and 50% reduced experience. This should rarely occur, but you’ll know.

Understanding Jungle Minion Debuffs

If you have this debuff, as it shows this icon above your skill bar, basically, if you have it, just ignore lane minions; they’re going to be worthless. This penalty is actually removed earlier at 14 minutes, which again makes turret plates falling a good indicator of when you can actually start farming minion waves as a jungler.

Experience Management in the Jungle

While we’re on the topic of experience, there are two important things you should know. First, in your opening clear, you can actually leave either one small wolf, one small raptor, or one mini Krug alive, and you’ll still hit level three off three camps and level four off a full clear. Just be aware that when you do this, you delay the respawn of that camp by around 5 seconds.

Jungle Pet Experience Bonus

The second thing you should know is your Jungle pet gives you 80 bonus experience when killing large monsters. This is very important for the void grubs, where that XP bonus only applies to the first one you kill. This can let you hit a really fast level six timing as a jungler. If you full clear into getting both scuttles from the enemy jungler into full clearing a second time, you’ll have enough experience to hit level six off the first void grub kill.

Scuttle Crab Strategy

If you are only able to

take one scuttle after full clearing, then after your second full clear, you have to clear the entire void grub camp to hit six. If you don’t take any scuttles after full clearing, then you won’t hit six even if you kill all the void grubs.

Kiting Your Jungle Camps

Next, let’s get into kiting your jungle camps. Here’s why Jungle mechanics like kiting your camps are so important. If you don’t kite your camps at all, you miss out on significant advantages that can make a big difference in your jungle clearing efficiency and overall game performance.

Impact of Kiting on Jungle Clearing

You can see Master Yi finishes a full clear by 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Now, if you just do pretty basic kiting, nothing too crazy, you’re going to finish that same full clear by 3 minutes and 27 seconds. That’s 15 seconds you save just by kiting your camps.

Advantages of Efficient Clearing

This means after just four clears, you’ll have had a whole extra minute of time to gank, invade, and take objectives. Not to mention, 15 seconds is the difference between getting to the Scuttle right as it spawns or being able to gank 15 seconds before it, getting First Blood you otherwise would have missed.

Collaborating with Expert Junglers

That’s why we knew we had to collaborate with a jungler known as Shape Shift. She’s a jungler with multiple world record clear times and just finished designing a brand new course that teaches you the fastest way to clear on your champion. For example, here’s a silver Master Yi starting at his red with no leash. He ends his full clear at 3 minutes and 31 seconds.

Learning from the Best

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It’s five whole chapters teaching you everything you’ll ever need to know to climb ranks fast as a jungler. This is around 3 hours of content where you’ll be walked through step-by-step on how to carry as a jungler from the start of the game to the end. The best part is you can try all of this out completely risk-free since if you don’t rank up while actively using Skill CA.

Advanced Kiting Techniques

As you get more experience kiting your camps, you’re going to notice a few issues come up. The first issue is sometimes you click back to kite, but you’ll notice the camp has a long delay before it follows you. This is a real problem since now you’re not even kiting the camp; you just walk back to attack it.

Dealing with Animation Delays

If you do wait for it to finally follow you, you’re missing out on damage since your auto attack is already off cooldown. This happens when you try to kite back during the camp’s auto attack animation. Specifically, there are two parts to every auto animation: the windup and the wind down. The windup is the animation up until the damage is applied to you. Once the damage is applied, it goes into a wind down recovery animation. This can be canceled by walking back, and it will follow you.

Timing Your Kites

An easy fix to this problem is to try to kite back once the camp damages you or when you visually see them finish their attack. The second issue that you may run into is that sometimes you’ll be kiting a camp, you’ll right-click them, but then you’ll walk really far into them instead of staying at your max auto attack range.

Mastering Auto Attack Timing

I walk back quite a bit after this and still auto attack. I am way closer than my max attack range. This is a problem since now you have more distance to cover when you go for your next kite. This issue occurs when you try to attack the camp when your auto attack is still on cooldown.

Developing Muscle Memory

That’s why you want to try to develop muscle memory of the timing of your auto attack cooldown. Then, you input an attack command right when it comes off cooldown, not earlier and not later. Here’s an easy way to understand this mechanic: just auto attack the camp and out loud count your auto attacks like this: 1, 2, 3, 4. Then just kite and time your auto attack with each number: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Handling Cooldown Issues

Now, jungle camps run into that same issue when the camp’s auto attack is on cooldown. If you run out of range, it can end up chasing you closer than its max attack range. You can see how I can walk back quite a bit after this and the camp can still attack; it’s way closer than its max range. Again, this is a problem since now we have more distance we have to cover on our next kite.

Correcting Your Position

The solution to this is to do a very quick, short step back to put yourself at your maximum auto attack range without kiting the camp. Then, on your next attack, you can kite as normal. So all of this is great to understand, but how do you actually apply this in a real game?

Applying Techniques in Real Games

Step one, you need to make sure you’re kiting based on your auto attack cooldown; that’s your kiting rhythm, so to speak. Step two is to recognize when you and the camp end up closer than your max auto attack range after one of your kites. When this happens, do a small adjustment clicking back to your max auto range. Then, after your next auto attack, go back to kiting as normal.

Using the Stop Command

You can actually use your S hotkey, which is the stop command. Some players find that it makes kiting easier. Basically, if you are just inputting movement and attack commands, your champion is going to always be going back and forth like this. This is a big reason why you end up moving so close to camps.

Managing Patience for Large Monsters

It dies. You need to kill it within 4 seconds after pulling it outside the circle or the patience will run out and it’s going to reset. A good general rule to follow is that typically if a camp drops below 300 health, you can kite outside of its patience range and it will die before it resets.

Hidden Mechanic in Multi-Monster Camps

There’s actually a really big issue that nearly every jungler runs into and has no idea why it happens. When you kill the large monster in multi-monster camps like Krugs, Raptors, and Wolves, you’ll find the small ones will reset really fast. There’s a hidden mechanic at play here.

New Patience Circle for Small Monsters

When the large monster dies, those smaller monsters now get a new patience circle that you cannot see and is much smaller. For example, here you can see I pull the Raptor camp to its max patience circle and none of the small Raptors are going to reset. But as soon as the big Raptor dies, I can no longer pull them to that range; the small ones are going to reset instead.

Kiting Post-Large Monster Death

You need to be aware that you won’t be able to kite camps as far if the large monster dies early on. To complicate things even further, there’s actually another hidden issue. When you aggro a camp, you’ll see how their patience circle extends outside of walls. This is a lie. If you or the camp try to kite to those areas, they’re going to lose patience and reset.

Maintaining Line of Sight

So just assume as soon as it cuts line of sight with its original spawn location, the camp will start losing patience. Understanding these nuances is crucial for efficient jungle clearing and preventing frustrating resets.

Applying Patience Mechanics in Real Games

It’s going to start losing patience. Okay, so once again, this is all cool to know, but how do you actually apply this in a real game? Step one is you need to be Kiting camps outside of their patience circle to save time in your clears. Do this when the large monster drops below 300 health or when you can kill the camp within 4 seconds.

Managing Large and Small Monsters

Step two is to recognize when you killed the large monster much earlier than the small monsters. You need to make sure not to kite as far as usual. This shouldn’t happen with the Raptor and Wolf camps if you spread out your pet damage properly like we taught you earlier. However, it’s completely unavoidable with the Krug camp.

Fixing Krug Camp Issues

There are two fixes to this. The first fix is to simply hold an ability to clear the mini Krugs instantly once they spawn. This will let you kite the Krugs really far outside their patience range with no issue. The second fix is if you don’t have an ability to instantly clear them, then you just don’t kite the Krug camp past this point. Once the mini Krugs have spawned, land two autos first before you start kiting. This will give your pet enough time to do damage to then kill the entire camp by you landing one more auto as you kite.

Pulling Camps Efficiently

The fourth mechanic you need to know is pulling camps. The simplest example of this would be if you’re finishing your Blue, you could actually Smite your Gromp to aggro it and pull it towards you. This will save time in your clear since you now don’t have to walk to your Gromp to start damaging it. Another common example is when you start Raptors, you actually want to aggro the small Raptor first.

Effective Camp Pulling

This will pull the camp in a way that makes it group much closer together, which then lets a lot of abilities hit the whole camp instead of just a few. At its most basic, though, if you’re about to move to the next camp, if you have a ranged ability, you want to look for opportunities to use it early on to pull aggro on the next camp. That way, you can start damaging it earlier, increasing your clear speed.

Advanced Pulling Techniques

A more advanced way of doing this is if you have a strong AOE ability. You can pull the camp you’re on while also aggroing the next one to then use your AOE ability on both, finishing off your previous camp. The most common way this advanced mechanic is used is when you’re going from Blue to Wolves. A lot of champions have a dash ability that lets them get to Blue, pulling Wolves towards them, and then AOEing both camps at the same time, finishing off the Wolves.

Using Smite Efficiently

Now let’s move on to the smiting mechanic. A common question players have is when should they be using Smite, especially in their opening clears. The general rules are as follows: if you get no leash or a really weak leash, you always Smite the first camp you start at. This will let you hit level two faster, which increases your overall clear time since

you do more damage at level two.

Smite Timing Based on Leash

If you get a strong leash, though, then you want to save your Smite for your next camp. If you’re starting Blue, use the pull mechanic to Smite Gromp as you finish Blue to save more time. If you’re starting Red, save Smite for the large Krug; it makes it split earlier, letting you clear the camp much faster.

Champion-Specific Smite Strategies

Another question players have is when should they be smiting the camp itself. Do you Smite it as soon as possible or wait to Smite to last-hit it? This can be champion-specific, so be aware of what abilities you have that do damage based on current or missing health.

Champion-Specific Smite Strategies

For example, the second portion of Leon‘s Q is an execute based on missing health. For Leon players, it’s best to Smite early to get maximum damage on his Q ability since on larger camps you’ll end up getting two Q’s off before it dies. For Viego players, though, his Q passive makes his autos do damage based on the target’s current health, so in that case, you would want to save your Smite to basically last hit the camp for maximum speed.

General Smite Timing

Now for champions that don’t have this specific interaction, you want to follow this general rule: if you have no threat of being invaded, you actually want to Smite a little bit before the camp dies. For example, at the start of the game, Smite does 600 true damage. Remember what we taught you earlier: you can kite camps out of their patience range at around 300 health.

Early Game Smite Tips

A nice trick is to either Smite early at 900 HP then begin your kite outside of the patience range, or you kite early at 900 HP and then Smite at 600. Either way, just realize if you’re sitting there and smiting at 600 HP without kiting to your next camp, you’re losing a lot of time in your clear.

Combining Smite with Abilities

When it comes to smiting objectives to either secure them or steal them, there are just a few mechanics you need to know. First is the basics, knowing how much damage your Smite does. At the start of the game, your Smite does 600 true damage. Then, once your pet has consumed 20 treats, it upgrades to do 900 true damage. Once your pet has consumed 40 treats, it upgrades once again to do 1,200 true damage.

Optimizing Objective Secures

Next is to then combine this Smite damage with one of your abilities. For example, let’s say you’re playing Graves. What you do is while you’re autoing the objective, take note of how much damage each auto attack is doing. You then add that damage number to your Smite damage to know the new health value to Smite at. Then, once the monster drops below that health level, you auto attack and Smite right at the same time to combine the damage.

Combining Smite with Abilities

To Smite well, identify an ability or auto attack that does a lot of damage. Get a good estimate of the damage value, add that to your Smite damage, and combine the two at the same time at the new health range to Smite.

Champion-Specific Smite Combos

Some champions have better abilities to combine with Smite. For example, the second portion of Leon‘s Q is an execute based on missing health. If something like Dragon is getting low and the enemy Leon lands that first Q on it, you want to stop damaging it since Leon will have that Q Smite combo that will likely out-Smite you.

Examples of Effective Smite Combos

Another example is Blue Kayn with his E ability. He’s able to stay in walls and always try a Smite steal. His W will hit like an absolute truck, making for a very safe and easy Smite steal attempt where he just Ws into Smite, and most junglers can’t actually out-Smite that.

Real-Game Smite Challenges

In a real game, it’s usually much messier than in a practice tool. For example, if you’re on Graves going for a Smite steal, you might not be able to auto anything beforehand to know your exact damage. Additionally, with crit chance, you can’t know if you’re going to crit or not on your next auto. You have to do your best to estimate.

Practical Example of a Smite Steal

Let’s say your Smite does

1,200 true damage. If the Dragon gets anywhere between 1,200 and 1,600 health, you might think you could Smite steal with an auto and Smite combo. If it drops below 1,600 health, you flash to Smite steal, but after your auto, it’s at 1,287. You were 87 damage off. However, at that exact tick, someone else damaged it, putting it below 1,200 right as you Smite steal. If you’re wondering why you didn’t just use your ultimate instead of your auto attack to try and steal, there might be strategic reasons for that decision in the heat of the moment.

Securing and Stealing Objectives

I was saving that to get back out of the pit anyway. The point is, it’s not an exact science when you’re the one going for the steal since you won’t know an exact number. Now, if you’re the one securing the objective instead, while you’re doing the objective, you should be choosing which ability you’re going to combine with your Smite.

Choosing Abilities for Smite

Early on, when you start the objective, use that ability and look at the damage it does. Then add that to your Smite damage to get an exact number you’re going to be smiting at.

Speeding Up Camp Clears

Next, let’s talk about the mechanics you need to speed up how fast you actually damage your camps. For any champion that has an ability that locks them out of auto attacking, you should weave these in between the natural rhythm of your auto attacks. For example, auto-ability-auto on many champions will lead to nice, smooth camp clears without losing any DPS from auto attacks.

Using Abilities Efficiently

Any ability that interrupts your auto attack should be used in this way. Secondly, abilities that reset your auto attack come into play when your champion has an empowered auto attack. These will directly change the rhythm that you attack in because they will alter the start and end points of your animations.

Combining Animations

Make sure when using these that you allow your auto attack to finish releasing before using the ability. Even if your ability comes up at the start of your auto attack, it’s going to be more efficient to wait just to get one more auto in, as most of your damage will be coming from your basic attacks. The next thing to be on the lookout for are abilities that have animations you can combine together. This reduces the amount of time they’re stuck in their cast animation and fits multiple abilities between auto attacks. For example, on Kha’Zix, you’d want to use Q and W together during the camp clear to increase DPS.

Combining Abilities Efficiently

If we simply use one ability between each auto attack, we would have to do something like auto-Q-auto-W-auto. This means that our W would be up for longer not being used, which causes us to lose DPS and clear slower. Instead, we can cancel our W animation wind down with Q and fit both within our auto attack window, meaning we can do auto-W-Q-auto, getting more spells within the same amount of time.

Animation Cancels on Mobility Spells

You should also be aware of animation cancels on mobility spells. The most famous example is Kayn, where if you Q point-blank into a wall, it’s going to cast way faster than if you use it regularly. A more advanced example of this is with Graves, where with the right angle, you can basically completely cancel the E animation while still getting the auto reset.

Jungle Clear Optimization

The last spell optimization to be aware of is to not treat your jungle clear as individual camp speedruns. Sometimes you need to make a decision that will slow down the time it takes to kill one camp but leads to an overall faster clear because it saves more time on a future camp. If you can’t pull the next camp towards you, you’re going to have to walk the entire distance, which can really slow you down.

Movement Efficiency

Obviously, going over terrain saves a lot of walking time, and because of this, you can sacrifice DPS on one camp to make up for it with movement efficiency getting to the next. For example, even though Jarvan could E here to increase damage on his Red Buff, it will be more efficient to have his EQ up to dash to Krugs to save the hassle of walking around. If he just used E right away, he would not have it up after killing Red, meaning any DPS he gains now by using it, he simply loses more by having to walk to Krugs.