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5 jungle champions often picked by League of Legends pros
Why do these five picks have such high priority in professional play?
If you watch enough professional League of Legends from any of the major regions (LCS -- North America, LEC -- Europe, LCK -- Korea, or LPL -- China) you’ll start to notice that picks can vary wildly between solo queue and professional matches. This is mostly because powerful strategies often require a lot of teamwork, trust, and synergy between teammates.
That said, there are junglers who are extremely powerful in both solo queue and professional play, like the (absolutely broken) entity known as Evelynn. However, there are still certain picks you’ll see in professional play that you would hardly ever see in ranked matches, and vice versa.
The strategy surrounding junglers in the pick/ban phase often includes picking what’s strong, while taking away powerful picks that may counter them or any of their laners. This varies between flex picks, counterpicks, drafting a specific team fighting comp, or even niche/cheese picks aimed at throwing a wrench in the draft phase. Some of these champions will make total sense at first, because of their pure power in a professional setting, but some are chosen specifically to counter one enemy champion or interaction. Here are five jungle champions that see a lot of professional play, and why that is.
1. Nidalee, the Beastial Huntress
No, not that kind of cougar.
© League of Legends
Nidalee is a shapeshifting assassin that packs incredibly high damage and high range, assuming she can land her long-ranged skillshot, Javelin Toss. While in her human form, Nidalee can throw a long-ranged spear that goes very far but has a small hitbox, meaning that these spears can be dodged easily since they don’t go particularly fast. If these spears land, Nidalee can almost guarantee a kill when she switches into her cougar form, which allows for a long-ranged pounce if your spears or traps mark your targets. She hits hard and has an execution that does more damage on target’s with lower HP. For these reasons, and her raw carry potential, you will see her a lot in solo queue.
She is picked professionally not only for her high damage and artillery/assassin playstyle, but also because there are very specific champions that work extremely well with her currently. While any form of CC works great with her, characters that have point-and-click stuns and snares synergize extremely well. With Renekton, for example, Nidalee can land an easy long-ranged spear as a follow-up to his easy point-and-click stun, then switch into her primal form to go for the assassination. For this reason, characters like Renekton, Lissandra, and Twisted Fate are often picked (or banned) alongside Nidalee, because they enable her to pretty much guarantee a long-ranged spear. Oh, she also has a healing ability that increases her target’s attack speed, so she can also play a supportive role to her ADCs if she ever falls behind.
The risk of this strategy lies in whether the bot lane can survive the neglect from the jungler, though a strong roaming meta midlaner like Twisted Fate can counter this by teleporting bot lane every time his ultimate is up. Drafting a self-sufficient, safe bot lane is the key to unlocking this champion.
2. Olaf, the Berserker
Angry viking man go vroom
© League of Legends
Olaf is an axe-wielding berserker who excels in shutting down disengage/peel comps and long-ranged carries (be it artillery mages or traditional, long-range marksmen). With a small lead, he can be both extremely tanky and also very deadly, as his damage is still incredibly high even when building full-tank. He snowballs incredibly well, counters hard CC, and poses a risk to the enemy backline every time he uses his ultimate. You see him in solo queue often enough, but his presence is much more visible in professional play.
His strength in professional play revolves around a few things. First, his clear speed in the jungle is very good, because he naturally gets stronger with lower HP, along with a lot of built-in healing. A good Olaf player will stay relatively low health and maintain that while tearing through his whole jungle early, trying to reach level 6 to unlock his ultimate as soon as possible. The second Olaf hits level 6, he is suddenly a massive mid-game threat that can take over the game with brute force alone. His ultimate, Ragnarok, gives him bonus armor and magic resistance, a huge temporary movement speed increase, bonus damage, and most importantly, allows him to be completely immune to any forms of CC. When this angry viking man uses his ultimate, he becomes an unstoppable killing machine who will run down any champion that happens to be in his way. It’s a struggle unless they have a lot of mobility, strong disengage tools, or something to put them into a temporary stasis (Zhonya’s Hourglass or Bard ultimate, for example). Olaf has great synergy with champions who can heal, shield, and speed him up (Yuumi, Zilean, Orianna, Lulu, Karma, etc.) as well, because they enable him to close the distance between him and his targets with no real way of stopping him.
He only really gets slowed down by two things: getting shut down early and champions who can provide a lot of healing and shielding to the carries (or Tahm Kench, who can simply eat his own allies and scurry away). Since Olaf doesn’t have many options for ganking before unlocking his ultimate, he often power clears his jungle then tries to take both crabs or steal enemy jungle camps, to give himself a lead over the enemy jungle. If enemies shut him down early, steal his jungle camps, fight for the river crabs, or collapse on him and kill him when he’s in the enemy jungle, he becomes completely useless and won’t have the tankiness needed for team fights. He also struggles when the enemy has a lot of ways to protect their squishy targets, be it healing, shielding, etc. With proper drafting in professional play, an Olaf can be picked after his counters have been banned or picked away from the enemy team.
3. Trundle, the Troll King
How many bridges do you reckon are in Freljord?
© League of Legends
Trundle is a melee bruiser who primarily plays into teams with one or two primary tanks, because of his ability to steal resistances and hurt targets based on a percentage of their maximum HP. His clear speed is solid, his 1 vs 1 dueling is pretty strong for the most of the game, he has a lot of built-in healing, and his ganks are effective thanks to his PIllar of Ice ability (especially on targets that lack a blink or dash of some kind). His ultimate, Subjugate, allows him to deal approximately 35% of his target’s HP over time, while healing himself for the same amount. If that wasn’t enough, his ultimate also steals 40% of his target’s resistances, leaving them extremely frail for the next four seconds. In a late-game team fight, four seconds is all your team needs to focus-fire and delete a tank before they can interrupt any carries or split the allied team up. For this reason, he is often picked in direct response to the enemy drafting tanks.
His strength in professional play revolves around the fact that he counters pretty much any team that runs one or two tanks, as he can steal all of their resistances and leave them exposed to his team’s damage dealers, with Ornn being his key target. Now, while he is strong against any team with prominent tanks, the fact that he can turn Ornn, possibly the best tank in the game, into nothing more than an item upgrading bot makes him much more likely to pop up in professional games. Also, during Ornn’s ultimate, Trundle can interrupt Ornn’s long-ranged AoE knockup with his Pillar of Ice, a basic ability that summons a small pillar that pushes enemies away from its centre and slows anyone around it. Therefore, a good Trundle can make Ornn squishy with his ultimate then neutralize his game-winning ultimate with a basic ability. If a team drafts Trundle in response to an enemy Ornn, it can be argued that the draft has already been won.
Trundle’s biggest weakness, at a professional level, is that he relies on the enemy team having tanks with high resistances. Otherwise, he wouldn’t see much play as there are better choices for damage, ganking, taking objectives, and soaking up damage or pressure in team fights. While Trundle isn’t necessarily bad at any of these things, his identity revolves entirely around whether his ultimate can be useful or not. For this reason, you very rarely see Trundle paired with tanks, as he needs his team to do damage to be made effective. If he is drafted early, he can be made useless by simply not picking any tanks, which means he can be a liability in the pick/ban phase if he isn’t picked as a direct response to a tank. In some cases, Trundle can be flexed top or bot lane (as a support), but he doesn’t exactly excel in those roles, especially if he can’t get much value out of his ultimate in team fights.
4. Sett, the Boss
Sett, the Boss
© League of Legends
Yes, this character’s canon title is “the Boss” and yes, his appearance doesn’t match the absolute brutality this character can inflict onto the enemy team. Sett is a buff cat man who packs a lot of damage, tankiness, CC, and stylishness with his WWE-esque abilities. His ultimate, The Show Stopper, allows him to dash towards an enemy, pick them up, and slam them into the ground, damaging the target and anyone caught in the slam.
The reason Sett is such a high priority jungle pick is not so much because of his capability as a jungler, which is perfectly serviceable, but because he can be flexed into four different roles. Top, mid, jungle, and support are all roles Sett can fit into without instantly losing lane. His damage allows him to farm and skirmish fairly well, his tankiness allows him to survive and soak up plenty of damage in lane and in fights (even if he engages with his stun/ultimate combo), his CC allows him to bring utility to team fights, and his ultimate allows him to grab a target and suplex them away or towards his team, based on what is needed.
Sett has been nerfed plenty of times since his release in January 2020, but still finds himself in a very strong position as his role flexibility outweighs any shortcomings (of which there are few) he may have now. His only downfalls as a jungler are that there are better alternatives for damage, tankiness, CC, and ganking potential but, oftentimes, he is prioritized for being able to flex into the jungle if a strong counter becomes available in one of the solo lanes.
Sett will always take one for the team and look stylish as heck doing it.
5. Lillia, the Bashful Bloom
Not going to lie, we thought Lillia was a Neeko cosmetic for a long time
© League of Legends
Lillia is a hit-and-run mage that deals a lot of damage and has great engage tools with her ultimate. One thing that is a little odd about her, at first, is that all her damage is front-loaded into short-range abilities that put her in great danger.She has a very long-ranged ability in Swirlseed that works very well as an engage tool, as all of her basic abilities apply Dream Dust to enemies, allowing her to CC targets from approximately two screens away, though. Her passive, Dream Dust, applies with all her basic abilities and deals 5% max HP in damage to her targets over a period of three seconds. Her ultimate, Lilting Lullaby, allows her to put enemies affected by Dream Dust to sleep, from a very far range.
Since her release in July of 2020, Lillia has seen quite a bit of attention in professional play throughout all of the major regions, especially in playoffs with a best-of-five setting since she’s still new and most people haven’t completely mastered her yet. Her bread-and-butter abilities are her Swirlseed into Lilting Lullaby (her ultimate) combo that puts enemies to sleep hit by her long-ranged ability, something that poses a great threat late-game as the cooldown of her long-ranged ability is so low, and unless the enemy team has a Tahm Kench or Lulu to bail them out, targets put to sleep will likely get engaged on by the entire team. She also generally dishes out a lot of magic damage, making her a good carry pick for teams that are lacking magic damage. She can also be flexed top, on occasion, if she gets counterpicked in the jungle. We’re probably going to see her a lot at World’s this year.
Her biggest weakness is that her clear speed in the jungle isn’t particularly strong, her ganks before level 6 are fairly weak (compared to other meta junglers), and she is very squishy for a character designed around a hit-and-run playstyle, where she often will not survive past her first or second rotation of abilities. Also, while not inherently a weakness, many players have yet to optimize and master this character, making her seem completely useless in the wrong hands, much like the “my Yasuo vs. the enemy Yasuo” conundrum. By the time people start to figure this champion out, there’s a chance Riot Games will nerf her directly into the ground or suddenly force her into another role for no real reason.
