Jungling: Farm Forever (Part 2)

Tests were run, with the help of a few brave souls, to ascertain the viability of the "farm forever" style of jungling. A few problems immediately became obvious:

• Lanes must be extremely independent and cannot, under any circumstances, afford to outright lose.
• A roaming mid is an absolute necessity, but is also hamstrung by wards.
• The team coordination needed for passing lane farm to the jungler is beyond the capabilities of the average player.

In essence, the jungler can only afford to farm indefinitely if the game is even or better. When your jungler is planning on taxing lanes without giving anything in return, and the enemy jungler is planning on largely doing the opposite, the probability of such favorable circumstances is slim. Combined with the limited champion options available when picking to ensure independence and roaming potential, the "farm forever" style of jungling seems to be another ill-fated idea.

While the concept of a jungler who perpetually farms is dead, the idea of a carry jungler itself is not. In fact, it turns out removing the "farm forever" restriction from the jungler solves, at least in part, the difficult hurdles facing the carry jungler concept. If, instead of simply farming, the jungler does gank or counter-gank where it is efficient to do so, taxing the lane as they come and go, a very similar approximation of the same idea can be constructed.

By exerting pressure outside of the jungle it is no longer quite as necessary for lanes to be independent, nor is it absolutely necessary for mid to have a strong roaming champion. This frees up champion selection choices immensely, allowing the team composition to be better focused on the needs of the carry champion, rather than the needs of the ill-fated "farm forever" concept. At the same time, having ganks be the indicator for sharing farm with the jungler greatly reduces the level of coordination necessary to execute the concept. In this manner the looming issues facing the carry jungler are mostly dealt with.

To an extent this style of jungling is already being used by XJ9 to top the solo queue ladder. He farms his jungle, ganks lanes, taxes them, farms some more, and becomes a super-farmed force of destruction by the mid-game. Formalizing this style into a team strategy has the potential to make many champions with weaker early laning phases or strong counter-picks viable junglers.

Whether or not this new concept can be applied as a team strategy remains to be seen, but its efficacy in solo queue and less drastic break from current standards give it significantly better odds than the previous, flawed idea.