Jungle gank kills, good or bad?

[Rixarius]

So I just picked up Ranked after playing normals forever. A group of 4 of my friends made a team, and our designated 'team captain' mentioned that I, when playing jungle, take too many kills. He made it a point to bring that up and said that I shouldn't be getting kills as the jungler.

I disagreed, and said that if we can secure a kill it's not worth it to back away and let the enemy get a chance to flash away, or whatever. I don't intentionally try to steal kills from laners, but I like to make sure that a kill is a kill and not give the enemy an opportunity.

Is there a balance here, should I be more focused on feeding laners than making sure the kill is secure, or should I keep up what I'm doing now and make sure that we pick up a kill, whether it goes to me or the laner.

(Specifically, I play alot of Udyr, Amumu, J4, and Zac.)

[Segen92]

I would think that a kill is a kill. Depending on who is the laner is probably where it comes down to shifting the kill (if you can) as you don't really want the support getting the kill. No matter who gets the kill, the enemy laner is behind on exp, gold, and possibly tower hp from his death and so it's almost always worth it to finish the enemy. Those are my thoughts, at least.

[Arayaa]

You would have to be taking *a lot* of the kills for me to consider this a problem. So long as you are getting successful ganks, you are already doing your job as a jungler fairly well anyways. That said, if you are are ending up with like 14 of your team's 16 kills, it probably isn't the best thing in the world and spreading them around would help a little.

From the sounds of it though, this isn't really what is happening. I basically agree with what you said, if you're going for a kill you're going for a kill, choosing who gets the kill in a gank isn't easy sometimes, especially when fights are close. Much better to guarantee a kill than risk them getting away (if you were a support, this is a little different, but even then...).

[Deleted]

You play more tank/cc oriented junglers, so you don't NEED the kills, though for some of those you'll need items not to get kited/melt before you can do anything. If you were playing carry junglers, and say your top plays the tank, then you'd want all the kills to snowball.

#1: Get the kill, no matter who
#2: IF possible, let a carry get the kill (so, more than half a lane to go, healthy people on your side, very dead on their side with no escapes/flash up).
#3: Burn flash, it was k.

[Deleted]

You play more tank/cc oriented junglers, so you don't NEED the kills, though for some of those you'll need items not to get kited/melt before you can do anything. If you were playing carry junglers, and say your top plays the tank, then you'd want all the kills to snowball.

This. If you're a tank then try let your lane snowball, if you're a carry, take the kill. I play Fiddle as my main in jungle and take every kill I can knowing late game I can carry even when behind if my team allow me to engage.

[Deleted]

I'd say for a tanky / supporty style jungler, where you may be initiating, soaking damage, peeling, cc'ing, but aren't necessarily dealing out that much damage late game, you're definitely going to want to let your AD carry and AP carry get kills wherever possible. Whether you or top works better with the extra gold depends what type of top you've got - anything that can snowball (or if you yourself decide to switch to a jungler that snowballs heavily), then they get the kills.

I mean, it depends what you're doing to get the kills. If you're securing them and they were at serious risk of leaving then go nuts, if you're burning summoners and cooldowns to get kills when your ADC would have got them anyway then it's overkill; you're taking gold away from the carry and wasting stuff you could use to secure another kill.

At the end of the day a kill > no kill so really if you felt like you were stopping that person from getting away then it's justified.... but a lot of junglers don't give kills to the lanes and it can hurt them later on.

[Deleted]

Ideally you want to give the kills to your lane, the added gold bonus (let's say nobodies died) of 300+ can be huge. Combine that with a pushed lane and you are well on your way to snowballing after one kill.

Generally, I will try to give laners the kill, then tax a few minions as we're pushing so I've got an extra bit of gold to line my pockets. At the end of the day though, as long as they die, it's not too huge of a problem, you can carry pretty damn hard out the jungle and makes your ganks hella scary.

[Rixarius]

Off topic but I didn't wanna start a new thread, at what point is it more beneficial to get Dragon/Baron vs pushing lanes? There is alot of internal dispute about after we win a team fight, what to do. I for one believe that mid-late game Baron will outweigh pushing a lane if we have minions killing it already (Unless of course you could finish the game)

[Deleted]

Off topic but I didn't wanna start a new thread, at what point is it more beneficial to get Dragon/Baron vs pushing lanes? There is alot of internal dispute about after we win a team fight, what to do. I for one believe that mid-late game Baron will outweigh pushing a lane if we have minions killing it already (Unless of course you could finish the game)

It's most beneficial to get an inhib if the game is close. Getting an inhib will create pressure all over the map through super minions in the lane, and buffed minions in the other lanes. This allows you to keep pushing, get objectives like Dragon/Baron or bait them out while minions damage the remaining turrets. They will have to respond to that eventually, so the longer you drag it out, the likely hood of you securing objectives will increase.

Honestly, in Soloqueue, I'd say Baron is inefficient because people don't know how to utilize it correctly. I've seen a lot of people (and done it myself admittedly) get Baron and use it to get Dragon/clear the jungles. While giving you a further gold lead, it's not optimal, as that time you could be besieging turrets. How many times have you gone "all buy and push x lane" but some guy needs 200g more and doesn't back until he does. At this point you've either got to wait for him, or start trying to push down and remaining turrets, putting you at a disadvantage of 4v5 under an enemy turret. The only other options are to clear the jungles again, push lanes, but then everybody is split and you've lost half the time on Baron buff

[Deleted]

Off topic but I didn't wanna start a new thread, at what point is it more beneficial to get Dragon/Baron vs pushing lanes? There is alot of internal dispute about after we win a team fight, what to do. I for one believe that mid-late game Baron will outweigh pushing a lane if we have minions killing it already (Unless of course you could finish the game)

If you can get an inhib it makes the most sense to go for that since this will really put up the pressure. I mostly play support and I try to keep us dragon control as much as possible. That extra 1000g on the team makes a big difference. I have heard so many times people say "but we're even on kills / towers (or even up on kills), why are they stronger" when they've gotten the last 3 dragons uncontested. Because that gold difference isn't tracked, people in normals and the ranked I play (silver), seem to almost forget about it sometimes. So, as soon as you can bully bot out of lane, if you know the jungler isn't around - say you've just made the ADC back, you can see their jungler is top, get your wards out on dragon (try and keep it pinked), and take it asap. Keep a timer and be ready to have a pink on it at the exact time it spawns and if they have no vision, and didn't see it go down, they don't even have an exact timer, meaning you are more likely to be able to snag it again.

If they have a teamfight advantage, you do not want to be caught out at dragon or baron, because then you're already taking damage, you're already not in the best position, they're going to come in, get some kills and possibly steal the objective... which is why pink wards and making sure you can win the fight (ie. someone is dead, too far away to get there in time), is also important - or, if you're confident you have a teamfight advantage then you can force baron, they have to either give it to you for free, or come and fight you when they're comp/strength is at a disadvantage.

I've seen soooo many games thrown at baron though. I always try to keep timers, wards, and I'll ping dragon, but I am always wary about making a baron call because if it's wrong, it can be a disaster so I keep it warded and try to push lanes - and only take baron if we're sure it's safe.

[Axethor]

To add onto your original question, on your main junglers, really only Amumu doesn't gain a huge advantage from the added gold, and even then it's arguable since AP Amumu hits like a truck. J4 does amazing damage when he gets gold and items. I'm assuming you play Tiger Udyr since its the popular build currently, and he also benefits a lot from murder gold. Even on Pheonix extra gold isn't bad. Then you have Zac who scales incredibly well with health items, and the faster he gets them the more dangerous he becomes.

Sure the carries have a little less gold, but it won't matter come team fights wwhen the enemy needs to kill you and your carries can clean up for all the kills they want.

[Jeleh]

In most cases it doesn't matter very few champs "need" kills to become beasts. Secure the kill and your laner gets free farm and exp advantage. Yes if you can give the kill to him that's great but in the end having the advantage of a kill is the most important factor.

[NotValidAnymore]

Tell them to kill harder.

Seriously though, you should probably try to let your laners have the kills, but a kill for someone is better than a kill for no one. They'll probably agree.

[StNimrod]

If somebody wants a kill then he needs to come and get it :P

You're probably fine, I'd say more money for jungler = better ganks = even more kills, enemies don't get enough farm and can be lower lvl, I see only the positives

[Deleted]

If you know how to take advantage of getting the kills then take the kills yourself because you know better than anyone whether or not you can snowball with it.

Personally if I really want to win I'll grab a lot of the kills to myself (yes I'll try to get the last hit) because I know for a fact that chances of me (my team) winning goes higher if I get the chance of snowballing, because I know what to do with the gold and how to keep the advantage growing.

This is all fine and dandy for yolo-queue, but when it comes to team-ranked I know what my teammates are capable of and I wont care who gets the kill. It doesn't matter who gets it, as long as the kill is taken by someone. What matters is what you'll do with a player on the enemy team being dead; shoving a turret, forcing enemy jungler to hold the lane, invading, whatever.

[Deleted]

And you take all my kills. Ass.

[Deleted]

And you take all my kills. Ass.

And your siege minions too.

Muahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahah-har-har *ahem*, har!

[Duronos]

When I play Shaco, I don't care if my adc/mid/top gets the kill, they can be as angry as they want with me... Then I carry the game.

[La]

You should be more focused on feeding the people in their lanes, because you help give them the lane advantage and allow them to win their lane and benefit you in the long run. On top of that you still get gold, and unless you're really close to a very core item toward the mid game, your job is to help your lanes. This is also assuming things like you know the kill is secured or you know the enemies flash ability won't be coming up. You'd know this by making a point of remember when it was cast (around) if they have no mana, etc.

Sometimes it doesn't really matter, but like I said when it really matters is if someone is capable other than you of grabbing a kill for a core item. That's just my thought on it. You never want one person getting too many kills because that can lead to that one person being shut down and everyone else kind of lacking. That's outside of the lane phase, where it can be hard to keep track of things and sometimes there really isn't time to go out of your way and give kills, you just take what you can, whoever can get them. There's also the thought of who you want to farm, who is getting all the creeps if you aren't. It's your teams job to figure that stuff out, it's never as simple as you think.

[Deleted]

And your siege minions too.

Muahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahah-har-har *ahem*, har!

I swear you save smite just for my lane. "Did you smite Baron? Nah, saving it for cannon yo"