This. You also need to realize that certain junglers just dish out ridiculous amounts of punishment early game compared to otehrs.

Udyr, Lee, Twitch, Shaco. All of them are incredibly strong early gankers and can put out insane damage before the enemy gets to really respond.

These four, from level 2 on, can easily bypass wards and just fuck with the lanes all day.

Malphite, WW, Hecarim, and Gragas? Their ganks are pretty lack-luster pre-6 so it's a racing game for them in the jungle.

But yeah, if your laners are weak and can't really hold out without incredibly frequent ganks, Malphite's not really goign to help that.

 

Clairvoyance is the best thing you can have against an early invader like Shaco. Do your blue, then ask the support to CV your red. If it isn't there, go and take his red while he wastes his time sitting in your jungle waiting to throw a dagger in your spine.

 

The thing with Shaco, a good Shaco could finish his wolves and blue, jump over to your red, finish your red (since his smite should still be up), before you reach that camp. Unless you want your top solo to miss two waves, it's not practical to defend it aside from the early invasion.

The solution, is as you say, an early ward. There are many junglers that doesn't need all the pots, and could afford an early ward. If not, then sometimes asking a support to do so works too. If you catch the Shaco in your jungle and kill him, the ward will be more than worth it. (CV always works too and saves that ward).

Nevertheless, it's as you say. Shaco has a really strong early game in both the jungle and ganking phase.

 

I've got a question, and I guess this is the best place to put it. In terms of Nocturne's ult, what happens with wards? Can the entire team still see with them, just the ward placer, or do they stop working all-together?

 

They stop working all together, Shado.

 

Ah, thanks.

 

A bit late, but an example of how stealing blue can be awesome, yesterday I was playing support Alistar, and our jungle decided that he wanted to invade their olaf at blue, we almost killed olaf, but our Nasus was a bit derpy and left the bush too early. So even though all we did was take blue, that made a huge difference in how long it took Olaf to clear his jungle, which dramatically reduced the amount of ganks he could do, which put him even further behind.

 

When I end up jungling it's either Nocturne, Skarner, or Amumu.

 

Jungle invading can also backfire heavily.
One time the enemy team invaded me (Jarvan). They got a kill on our swain because he was an idiot and stood in the brush between blue buff and mid by the river, but in the turn of it and not at the edge. Essentially, he stood in a spot where he was completely blind to invades and so got raped as they turned the corner to find a free kill.

Despite this firstblood however, they really screwed over their jungle. To facilitate the first blood, the shen took taunt. After the blue buff pull (they didn't have time for wolves) he was underleveled and had Q/E instead of Q/W. On top of that, Teemo/Heimer immediately took off into their jungle (since we were waiting by blue buff and they came via mid, they had to run around and we had a free path to their jungle. We took his red buff (because heimer turret pulls are the best pulls ever) and also his big wraith.

So Shen was left with no red buff for ganks, only a half of a jungle to clear out, and the wrong skills for doing it (which hurts SEVERELY when you have no jungle to clear but golems). It just meant that teemo and I were able to catch their top lane as he ran from our blue buff and kill him with red buff in the middle of the river, then consistently stay ahead. Since their bot lane had to run half the world to get to their lane, our bot lane had a level/cs advantage.

Just be sure you actually gain from doing a level 1 invasion.

 

What is it with the random double posts? Click once and go to a different tab and it double posts

 

I think it's a server thing, it's been happening to a lot of people randomly.

 

Maoki, Volibear, Jarvan 4, and Diana are my mains these days. Rengar will be missed.

 

Vi, Xin, Amumu, Maokai, Olaf and Udyr are my jungle favorites. Though Xin and Vi are the hot favorites right now, so strong currently.

 

Hecarim is the only jungler I'm any good with, though I do okay with J4 sometimes.

 

Amumumumumumumumumumumumumu

 

The answer is Amumu.


Always.

 

Lee Sin can go step on a Lego. Mundo for worst giver of fucks, though it seems his utility falls off a bit. Also, I'm probably doing something wrong if I go 7-0 as the jungler while all the laners have negative scores.

I probably do better with Cho in the jungle than in lane too, because double smite and the insane sustain/innate tankiness.

 

Jax, Udyr, Evelynn, Diana and Annie.

 

Well, I haven't jungled much lately, but I've stuck to Nocturne, Lee Sin and Mundo since the start of Season 3. But my Lee Sin is crap right now, so if I want to win I just play Noct or Mundo.