Alright those of you who do not suck, enlighten me. I jungle, and the laning phase typically goes well. I'm pretty good at map awareness, I ward, and I countergank pretty well. Problem areas are counterjungling(where do people find the time?) and team fighting. I play Cho and Zac pretty much exclusively. What I have a hard time with is when it gets to team fighting. As Zac I try to initiate but it's so fucking hard to know when the carries are poking and when they are actively engaging. So to counter this I starting playing more passively, looking to protect our carries. Unfortunately this feels bad because it leaves almost no pressure on their back line. I've tried to find some good guides on team fighting but they all seem to require so much more information/coordination that solo queue games provide. I don't know what the shit my teammates are going to do at any time, so I don't know how to support that.
There is no exact science to it, you'll get a "feel" for it if you keep doing it. With regard to counterjungling, well Cho Gath is probably not a jungler I'd counterjungle with very often, he's a bit slow and doesn't have very good escapes. Zac is an excellent counterjungler because you can take unconvential ways into enemy jungle that bypasses wards (jump over baron/dragon walls for example).
I had a perfect Udyr Jungle start last night, I created a highlight (read the chat between myself & shen for insight into the future):
http://www.twitch.tv/mfplayer/c/2660728
I haven't been recording my games recently because I had some issues with computer crashing from it but decided to try again. Had 0 frames dropped and went pretty smooth. Anyway, was a shitty night, got demoted once more, now in Gold III. The highlight above was one of my best starts and we lost that game. I won 3 and lost 5 last night. I played a pretty decent Nunu jungle game before this Udyr game where I got my team 2 Barons and we still lose. Just UGH.
Anyway, its not worth watching any of the full games, they were losses, but here's the full vid anyway in case anyone is interested:
http://www.twitch.tv/mfplayer/b/437859390Starts with the Nunu jungle game then the Udyr jungle game is @ 50:10
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Dissecting the Udyr highlight above and my thought process and why I lost:
So as jungler I look at what the enemy jungler picks and try to figure out if they are going to want to counterjungle me. Zac is 50/50 on counterjungling, its hard to tell, but I figure he might be an aggressive jungler since most Zacs are. When I'm against an aggressive jungler I like to start red buff, this way I waste their time as they'll come to find no red and it actually allows me to steal theirs. So I do my red start but for some reason Shen was adamant I start Blue and gank top right away.
If the enemy jungler is more passive, like a Sejuani or something, I'll just do the standard Blue start then go their red or my red then gank depending how I feel about the lanes and risks. You'll notice I never touched a jungle camp until I was already level 5. I don't always play this way, but imo if you have red buff you should be ganking, otherwise you are just wasting it. If I'm passive I'll go Blue-->My Red without clearing any other camps first because I want to secure the buff asap. Don't let the enemy jungler get your shit!
Anyway, everything goes perfect, I pick up red & blue and my support was nice enough to ward their red which rarely happens, but was definitely helpful. I would have gone to his red anyway and discovered him being there but the ward allowed me to know he was there for sure and I went all-in right away. So what happened was that I definitely overestimated this Zac. He was probably a 1st time Zac or something because he actually played super passive and did his wolves/wraiths after Blue. Not too smart when facing an Udyr since Udyr is renown for counterjungling. I could have easily did my blue and taken his red before he even finished wraiths. So I get both of my buffs and easily get to his while he's doing it. Luckily their mid & bot lanes didn't react fast enough and having my own red buff helped tremendously when it came to killing Zac blobs as I only had to AA each one once. If I didn't start my own Red he would have respawned or TF would have got me or both as it would have taken 2x longer to kill him.
Since Shen was crying I decide to bypass bot lane and make my way top. First I make TF burn his flash, normally that's good, then I camp top lane and make Panth flash and eventually get Shen a kill on him... Then I end the video with my Cait dying to TF gank and the whole game goes downhill from there.
Basically I fucked up. I didn't realize my shen actually sucked ass, plus Shen in general can't really carry. He cried all game about needing to shut down Panth when Shen outright counters Panth on his own. I should have known. I fucked up by not feeding mid or bot (actual carries). I realized too late. I was too busy trying to appease the crybaby and it backfired. As a jungler you want to feed the champions that will make the largest impact in the game and I fucked up. Probably should have won the game if I just camped bot/mid. As our Nexus was dying Shen went as far to say I was at fault for the loss because I didn't gank Panth quickly enough. I wish I knew how bad he was earlier, the 1st conversation I had with him (in the highlight) should have tipped me off. Oh well!
I got my revenge by having 2 fantastic Udyr games to end the night so I feel better now. I wasn't streaming them unfortunately. My last game I made a Shyvana AFK because she got fucked so hard in the jungle. I started red again.