My previous article detailing important information necessary to understanding most of the blathering that goes on in this article can be found here:  http://www.slashskill.com/league-of-legends-beginners-guide-to-support/

Well hello there friends! It's certainly that time again! Yes indeedy it certainly is! We get to learn more about the lovely place called Summoner's Rift!

Now that we've come to the last role in the standard meta, I deem it necessary to take a look back on the topics we've covered thus far. Why? Well, merely because I can, and I don't want to hear another word about it!

Now, if you remember, there are three lanes we've covered: Mid lane, Top lane and Bottom lane. Mid lane is usually mages and assassins. Top lane is usually tanks, fighters and mages. Bottom lane is a lovely 2-on-2 lane featuring a marksman and a support. Now that we've gone through that brief review, (I didn't say it was going to be a long discussion looking back) we can come to the most unique role in the entire game; Jungling!

Now remember, the Jungler is not a laner like the other four roles, most of their time is spent between the lanes in the labyrinthine forest known as the Jungle. There are various monsters that make their homes in the jungle, each with different benefits to give you. When you've farmed enough of these monsters and are confident enough, you go sneak into a lane and gank, which of course means murder that asshole.

Before we get to all that fun stuff, let's talk about something I've neglected to mention in previous articles:

Summoner Spells

• Clarity: This spell restores 40% of your mana and also restores 40% of nearby allies' mana.
• Ghost: Boosts your movement speed by 27% for 10 seconds and you can move through other units. (Minions, monsters, champions, etc.)
• Heal: Heals you and a nearby ally (Increases by level) and grants the two of you a slight movement speed boost. (30% for 1 second)
• Barrier: Shields you for a certain amount of damage (Increases with level) for 2 seconds.
• Exhaust: Slows an enemy's movement and attack speed by 30%, their damage dealt by 40% and reduces their armor and magic resist by 10.
• Cleanse: Removes any debuffs and CC from your champion and reduces any incoming debuffs' duration by 65% for 3 seconds.
• Teleport: Takes 3.5 seconds to cast, and it transports you to any ally ward, minion or turret.
• Clairvoyance: Allows your team to see a small area of the map for 5 seconds.
• Flash: Makes your champion poof towards your cursor instantly. Can be used to go over walls. (SUPER USEFUL FOR JUST ABOUT EVERYONE)
• Ignite: Burns a target, causing true damage (Increases with level) over 5 seconds, reveals them and reduces healing received by them.
• Smite: Deals damage (Increases with level) to a monster or minion. (JUNGLER SPELL)

Now, you're going to want to take Smite whenever you're jungling. This is non-negotiable. If you attempt to refute this fact, you will indeed be subjected to torture by way of Lux.

Now, seeing as how you can take two summoner spells each game, the second one you take is up to you really, though Flash is always a solid choice for just about any champion in any role. With that, we move onto the next topic, seguing with all the subtlety of a train wreck. That next topic of course being:

Jungler Items

Now, let's list them shall we? Why yes let's! Starting with the first tier Jungler item:

• Hunter's Machete: Grants 15 extra gold every time you kill a large monster. Deals 30 magic damage every time you attack a monster, and also slowly heals you and gives you mana while in combat with monsters.

Now for tier two:

• Stalker's Blade: (Blue) Grants 30 extra gold every time you kill a large monster. Smite becomes castable on enemy champions, dealing damage to them and slowing them. Deals 45 magic damage to monsters on hit and heals/regenerates mana slowly while in combat with monsters.
• Poacher's Knife: (Grey) Grants 30 extra gold every time you kill a large monster. When you smite a large monster in the enemy side jungle, the cooldown on smite is cut in half and you gain a movement speed boost for 2 seconds. Also deals the usual damage and grants health/mana while in combat with monsters.
• Ranger's Trailblazer: (Purple) Blah blah bonus gold and the damage/healing/mana You get it at this point. Also causes your smite to deal AoE damage to monsters. Also when casting smite, heals you by 15% and gives you 15% of your mana.
• Skirmisher's Sabre: (Red) Yadda yadda gold, healing, mana. Smite becomes castable on champions and causes your auto-attacks to deal true damage over 3 seconds, gives you vision of them and reduces their damage to you by 20% for 6 seconds when you smite them.

Moving now, to tier 3, or rather, the weapon enchants:

• Cinderhulk: (Green Gem) Increases your health by 300 and 25% bonus health. Also has a pulsing fire AoE damage to all enemies around you and this damage increases over time in combat.
• Warrior: (Red Gem) Increases your attack damage by 40, grants you 10% cooldown reduction and 10 armor penetration.
• Magus: (Blue Gem) Increases your ability power by 80 and grants you 20% cooldown reduction.
• Devourer: (Purple Gem) Increases your attack speed by 50% and causes 25 magic damage on hit. Also, large monster and champion kills/assists increases the magic damage dealt by your hits permanently.

Onto the next topic; which of course is the ACTUAL Jungle! Finally! Well actually, we're actually going to learn about the various monster camps within the jungle.

Monsters in the Jungle

• Murk Wolves: This camp is inhabited by two small wolves and a large, two-headed one. Smiting the large wolf creates a cool little spirit in the jungle that provides vision and will follow enemy champions around a little so you can see them invading your precious jungle.
• Krugs: This camp has two rock-monsters, a small one and a big one. Smiting the big one gives you a buff called Gift of the Heavy Hands that causes you to stun a monster every 6 auto-attacks.
• Gromp: Gromp is a big fat frog that spits on you. When you smite him he grants you a buff called Gift of the Toadstool, which causes monsters to take poison damage over time when they attack you.
• Raptors: The Raptors are little-wingless-bird-things. There are three small ones and a larger one. Smiting the larger one grants you a buff called True Sight. This buff allows you to see invisible things such as stealthed champions and wards.
• Blue Sentinel: This camp has two little floaty thingies that Zap you and a big blue rock ogre. (Blue Sentinel) Smiting the Blue Sentinel will give you a 25% of your mana over a few seconds. Killing this camp grants you a buff called Crest of Insight. This buff ramps up your mana/energy regeneration and gives you cooldown reduction. Keep in mind if the champion with this buff is killed, the killer has the buff transferred to them.
• Red Brambleback: This camp features two little tree monsters and a big red tree monster. Smiting the big red tree monster (Red Brambleback) will heal you for 20% of your health. Killing this camp gives you a buff called Crest of Cinders. This buff heals you slightly over the duration and causes your attacks to slow the target and deal a small amount of true damage over time. This buff is also transferred to the person who kills the buffed champion.
• Rift Scuttler: This is a little crab that wanders around the river and when killed, places a circle in the river that provides vision and a movement speed buff to allies that pass through it.

Keep in mind, these monsters will all respawn after a little bit when killed, so no need to worry about killing them like a crazy maniac.

Now we get to the best part: GANKING!

GANKING!

Ganking is defined in the Officially Unofficial League of Legends Dictionary as the process of sneaking into a lane and savagely murdering the enemy laner(s) whilst cackling about it. Ganking is crucial because it helps your laners to win their lanes by getting ahead in gold and pushing if they so choose to push. It's not easy though, you have to always have a good entry point, and try to find out if the entrance to the lane that you're choosing is warded or not. If they don't see you coming it just makes your gank that much more effective. Now, junglers with CC or gap-closers (jumps, dashes, etc.) tend to be better at getting in and sealing the deal, but if you don't have these things as a jungler it just means that you have to be quick and sneaky.

Always try to gank lanes that are being pushed against your team, this creates more distance for your enemy to have to run back to get to their turret, and makes it easier to get a kill. Always try to let your teammates know where you're heading to gank so that they can react appropriately, hopefully to back you up.

Sometimes though, you can't always get a successful gank, but even just showing up in the lane for a second will make aggressive enemies back off a bit, relieving some of the pressure on the lane. When a good gank isn't really available and your jungle is basically empty, you can always try something risky and exciting:

Counter-Jungling

Counter-jungling is something quite interesting you can do when Jungling. Basically you invade the enemy Jungle, kill a camp and book it outta there before they notice anything's different. One important thing to keep in mind about jungling is that you must kill the entire camp before the respawn timer starts, so if you kill the big monster and leave a little one there, your enemy can't start the respawn timer for it until they stumble upon your sloppy seconds.

This is all really dependent on your style of jungling, and what champion you're playing. If your champion is a weak duelist such as Amumu, it's generally unwise to counter jungle unless you're sure the enemy won't catch you. Now if you're a great duelist or somebody with lots of escapes/mobility such as Lee Sin, you can counter jungle all day long.

Speaking of champions and poor segues, we've come to the final part of the article:

Recommended Champions

#1 - Warwick

Warwick is easily the most beginner-friendly jungler, he's got it all, effective, steady clearing of the jungle, self-healing and strong ganking potential He also has pretty good damage and is pretty tanky. Plus he's a goddamn werewolf. Like seriously. Despite semi-recent nerfs, (he was super overpowered to the point of being game-breaking for a brief time a few months back) he's still quite strong.

• His passive is called Eternal Thirst, and this makes it so that each auto-attack Warwick makes will heal him, and each subsequent attack will heal him more and more.
• His first ability (Q) is called Hungering Strike. This ability is a single-target attack that makes Warwick bite his enemy's dirty face and it heals him.
• His second ability (W) is called Hunters Call. This ability makes Warwick howl and increases the attack speed of himself and all nearby allies.
• His third ability (E) is called Blood Scent. This ability causes Warwick to move very fast when near low-health enemy champions.
• His ultimate ability (R) is called Infinite Duress. This is what he's most well-known for. It is a single target ability that when used, makes Warwick jump to the enemy and rapidly attack them, dealing damage and suppressing them for a few seconds. Essentially this renders that target useless for a few seconds and allows his allies to stomp their butt in.

This all comes together to make a hard-to-run-away-from-while-also-tanky-and-strong-CC-monster-of-doom. And he's cheap too! All of this is very beginner friendly and he's mostly just a point and click champion with excellent utility.

#2 - Master Yi

Master Yi is one of the quintessential Junglers, and with good reason. He has very strong damage, his jungle clear speeds are fast, his teamfighting is scary, and he can heal himself. Yeah. That's basically everything, except he has no CC. That's really the only downside, but he's very easy to play and forgiving for new players just trying him out for the first time.

• His passive is called Double Strike, and this causes every fourth attack Master Yi makes will strike a second time instantly.
• His first ability (Q) is called Alpha Strike. This, when activated, will make Master Yi untargetable for a second and after that second will deal damage to all nearby enemies. This deals bonus damage to minions and monsters, and it's cooldown is shortened with every auto-attack he makes.
• His second ability (W) is called Meditate, which causes Master Yi to channel a spell that makes him take reduced damage and heals him over time while channelling it.
• His third ability (E) is called Wuju Style, and this passively increases his attack damage. When activated, it causes his auto-attacks to deal bonus true damage. Keep in mind though, the passive attack damage bonus is gone while this is on cooldown.
• His ultimate ability (R) is called Highlander. This passively causes champion kills and assists to reduce Master Yi's cooldowns. When activated, this greatly increases his movement and attack speeds, and also makes him immune to slowing effects. Champion kills or assists extend the duration of this ability.

Master Yi's potential to tear apart an entire team in a few seconds is scary. Pair that with his easy to learn playstyle, decent ganks, great chasing and disengage ability, and you've got an awesome champion to learn Jungling on. Plus, he's totally super cheap!

#3 - Amumu

Hello my dear sweet Amumu! Amumu holds a very special place in my heart because when I first started playing League of Legends, I wanted Amumu more than any other champion in the game. Plus he's super cute, I just wanna give him a hug. Now Amumu is a champion that's quite fun to play. He's got lots of AoE abilities and very strong single-target and AoE CC. He's also very tanks and on top of that, his damage isn't too bad.

• Amumu's passive is called Cursed Touch. This makes Amumu's auto-attacks reduce the target's magic resist.
• His first ability (Q) is called Bandage Toss. This ability is a skillshot ability that damages the target hit by it and pulls Amumu to them, stunning them for a second.
• His second ability (W) is called Despair. This is a toggle ability that when turned on, caosts mana each second and deals damage all around Amumu. This also deal percentage of health damage, which means it can't be resisted.
• His third ability (E) is called Tantrum. This passively reduces the physical damage Amumu takes. When activated, Amumu attacks all enemies around him, dealing AoE damage. The cooldown is lowered each time Amumu is hit.
• His ultimate ability (R) is called Curse of the Sad Mummy. This ability is glorious. It's a large AoE around Amumu that damages and stuns all enemies caught in it.

All in all, Amumu is a really strong teamfighting champion with fast clear speeds and very effective ganks. He's not so scary on his own, but when he has a teammate with him, he's deadly. He's also, as I assume you've guessed at this point, CHEAP!

Well, well, well, we've finally made it to the end of my series of Beginner's Guides on the Meta of League of Legends. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves as much as I have the last few weeks posting these. I plan to continue writing articles about League of Legends in the future, so keep your eyes peeled.

And now I take my leave for now, thank you for reading and good luck on the rift you silly summoners!

~Bazzlie