Its all extremely situational.

Reasons to counter jungle:

You have lane pushers not people with CC (Vlad/Teemo/Nidalee), basically heroes who dont need ganks that just farm and push the lane, that have no real hard cc to help with the gank. (can really only gank if there laning mirror over extends).
They have a slower Jungler than yours, or you're playing a champion designed to mostly farm with your quick clear speeds (mundo/shyvana/udyr etc).
You can 1v1 there jungler in the event that you two meet in the jungle.


Also, one other big thing about counter jungling is, if your teams lanes are being pushed to the turret, its probably not smart for you to counter jungle not just because you should help your lanes, but if the enemy team collapses on you, your team wont be able to come and assist you because they're busy at their turret trying to push the wave back. If they're not doing that, then they're saving you and probably losing a good bit of CS which is counter productive, considering your job as the jungler is to put your lanes ahead, or at least help them sustain in lane.

TL:DR- Prioritize keeping your lanes ahead, and if they are and you have nothing else to do, you put yourself ahead and the opposing jungler behind via counterjungling.

Have you tried a Volibear jungle? Those ganks are my favorite in the game.

So that's basically what I wrote, with some little details on the situational choice and reactions you do as a jungler.
Thank you for your input.



Volibear is a bad Singed for me, but maybe thats just me. He has no hard CC, if I'm not missing something, so Singed got about the same movement speed, depending on the masteries/runes/summoners/cds, his fling, which is about the same as the one that Volibear has, and in addition he has his slow. So Volibear is maybe a better choice if you have enough CC but not enough damage.

The best ganks in the game for me has Nautilus, his CC is incredible and almost unstopable on level 6.

This post was edited by KirkHammett on May 7 2012 06:29am

at your service



Volibear is a bad Singed for me, but maybe thats just me. He has no hard CC, if I'm not missing something, so Singed got about the same movement speed, depending on the masteries/runes/summoners/cds, his fling, which is about the same as the one that Volibear has, and in addition he has his slow. So Volibear is maybe a better choice if you have enough CC but not enough damage.

The best ganks in the game for me has Nautilus, his CC is incredible and almost unstopable on level 6.

volibear has a slow, that is very strong and is his main source of damage early on

volibear is also way better than singed imo

This post was edited by pirateradio on May 7 2012 06:32am

brilliant!

Ok, I just rarely see Volibear, so I didn't know him too much. He seems to be a better Singed in many situations then.
Still Nautilus, Alistar and Rammus are the CC beasts when it comes to ganking, but just as Nytro said before, it's extremely situational, sometimes you got not enough damage, sometimes not enough cc.

which is why i like voli, hes got 2 cc's that do nice damage and one of them could be considered a "gap closer" provided it gives you more movement speed than your oponnent

Most of the time I tend to do more counter jungling and counter ganking certain lanes and buying oracles and clearing wards to give my lanes safety. And champions like Udyr/Mundo favor this as they clear fast/safe and are good counter gankers and are really tanky early/mid game so not as much risk with the oracle.

The biggest thing is just having a plan for what you want to do and then adapt to what happens and just learn how to outplay the enemy jungler and assist your team. You need to help your team but at the same time not stop farming so you aren't useless with no gold.

Sometimes you might just have to gank a lane to burn summoners because your top lane won't be able to farm if you don't, just have to keep playing and figure things out. But in most situations I find putting too much effort in ganking can gimp you too hard, so picking champs like Udyr/Mundo who can do most things decently are the best choices, as they clear well, are safe, and are decent ganks. And Mundo scales really well.

I think many people underestimate the junglespeed of Alistar a slight bit, because the wraiths and wolves camp can usually be cleared with 2 (max 3) spells, then you can go on. Also he's pretty save in the jungle, mainly because he doesn't spend too much time there and being tanky as hell with high movement speed and all his cc.

Maybe it's just my thing, I don't know. But I like Nocturne alot aswell. Nautilus needs some testing, aswell as Shyvana (I know the theory but I didn't play them yet). Mundo is cool too, but I dislike his playstyle.

This post was edited by KirkHammett on May 7 2012 08:24am

Depends on how you build alistar. Some people build him gp10s+aegis+frozen heart or BV (what I mainly do), some people play him bursty ap or ad with a sheen (lichbane/tri force or plain sheen). If you build him the gp10 tanky way you wont clear camps that fast or as consistent as other junglers.