Pokemon Unite: How To Carry, the Jungle - Tips and Tricks

 

 

 In Pokemon Unite, the jungle is a safe place for the player to farm safely, and accrual a strong level advantage over the enemy team. I'm sure you have seen the myriad of advices people give, "Just go jungle", "Just pick Greninja jungle lol", but, you're still having trouble carrying the game as the jungler, else you wouldn't be here reading this, would you?

Below, instead of telling you what to do "Just go jungle", "Just pick Greninja jungle lol", I'll also explain why it is done that way.

Why Jungle? It's how to carry a game.

Jungling allows the player to dictate the pace of the game. As the player with the highest amount of farm on the team, the jungler can make risker, power plays to grant your team an advantage and put your opponents on the backfoot. There may be 5 players on the team, but the jungler will have a higher game impact than a laner. If you want to increase your winrate, you neeed to ensure that when you are playing jungle, you actually provide that high impact to your team.

Jungle Tips - How to Jungle without getting your farm stolen?

We all know the terrors of having to fight your teammate for the jungle role. Maybe you already picked Greninja and claimed jungle, but someone on the team last picks a Zeraora and also demands jungle. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about this, so you can either ruin both your games by fighting it out in the jungle, or head to lane and try to carry as a laner. It'll be harder, but if you employ jungler tactics you'll be able to close the gap yourself.

Maybe no one contested you for the jungle role, but sometime before Drednaw, a laner steals your corphish, and now you're lower levelled than the enemy jungler.

Play in a party

It's pretty obvious that playing in a premade reduces the chances of someone else on your team contesting you for the jungle role. The more people you have in your party, the lesser the chance of a random pub demanding jungle from you.

Have an efficient farming pattern

One thing that people may not notice is that Lilipup moves in the direction of the Ludicolo. Ludicolo grants a buff that makes you deal more damage to jungle pokemon. Convenient, isn't it? Your standard route will always be Lilipup -> Ludicolo. But! From there, the pattern deviates.

Did you notice that it's a lot more common for top lane to take that jungle corphish, than it is for bot lane? An interesting thing of note is how the wild Pokemon in top lane are much closer together compared to bottom lane. This means that the pokemon top will finish farming their side of the map quicker, and may decide to go for that corphish you unknowingly left for last. The closer wild pokemon also makes it easier for the enemy team to invade and steal your team's pokemon, which may leave them hungry for more exp (and that juicy corphish). 

You can minimise this risk by taking top corphish as early as you conveniently can. This means making a Z path if Ludicolo spawns top, and the usual upside-down U if Ludicolo spawns bot. 

 

This has the added benefit of allowing you to gank bot lane. Why bot, will be explained later, though you can probably figure out the reason yourself. (Hint: Drednaw) 

Time Management

Pay careful attention to the time remaining. After you clear the first jungle spawn and rotate for bees, don't overstay your welcome in lane, or someone may return to base and take your second round of jungle spawns before you do. This second round of spawns is important for you to hit your power spike as a jungler.

How to Jungle?

Get to lv9

We're finally at the meat of this blog. But, before I explain how to actually play the Jungle role, I have to explain what makes the Jungle role exceptionally strong in the current meta. 

The most important thing is that:

Done well, the Jungle will reach lv9 by first Drednaw spawns.

Now, what exactly does this mean? It means that the jungle Cinderace/Greninja will have their Unite Move for first Drednaw. This is a massive power spike, and will always almost lead to a wipeout in bot lane, allowing you to take Drednaw uncontested. How do pro-players counter this? Have their own lv9 Greninja lol to counter the opponent's lv9 Greninja lul. 

This is the reason why everyone takes Greninja to the jungle, and why Cinderace is also a very good jungler. A lv9 speedster will not have the same impact a lv9 Greninja/Cinderace will provide a team.

Clear jungle, take bot bees, clear jungle, take bot bees

To elaborate, after you clear jungle and head bot, there will be two expected situations. Either the enemy is aggressively pushing your team, or they are not. 

If they are aggressively pushing, kill them, or force them back to heal if you can't kill them. The timing of which you kill them/force them to heal should coincide with bees spawning, so you can safely take the bees uncontested.

If they are not aggressively pushing, bide your time. You can choose to bait using the bees with your team, or just go straight for bees if your laning duo is strong. Once the enemy has thrown their spells at the bees or your teammates, you are now safe to jump in and reap havoc. Played well and barring stupid lane compositions like Wigglytuff + Lucario, you should be able to get a kill and get majority of bees. 

There's a slight caveat to this, of course, the enemy team's jungle might rotate bot as well. In this scenario, all you can really do is try to get a kill while not dying. If it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world. You're going to have to work harder for your lv9, but it's not impossible.

After bees, the second round of jungle camps should be respawning. You can choose to be greedy and grab the central audino and corphishes, or just go straight to base to restart the cycle. 

You can attempt ganking top lane after the second round of jungle, or you can gank bot again You should be lv8, or very near to lv8 by this time, so try to get more kills and/or farm some lane pokemon to finish up your lv9. 

Obviously, it won't work all the time. Maybe you got played by the enemy team and died, maybe your teammates stole some jungle farm, maybe you failed to get any kills. Regardless, you should still be lv8 by the time Drednaw spawns, so here you can either gamble on getting some kills for that lv9 while skirmishing for Drednaw, or returning for the third round of jungling and hope your team can stall out Drednaw. 

Why rotate bot and not top for bees?

The reason is fairly simple. You want to give your team as best of a chance to get Drednaw as possible. This means helping your team win the bot lane, since they are more likely to stay bot than it is for a fed top to rotate bot for Drednaw.

Conclusion

If you've come this far, the rest of the game should be the same as usual. 

Avoid dying, since you outlevel the enemy team and will provide them with a lot of catch-up exp if you die. 

Remember to keep up with your farm, if you aren't the highest level in your team, or even the game, win or lose, you've messed up somewhere and should review your own game play before blaming your team for the loss. 

Save your unite moves for objectives, better to die without using it, than to get a kill with it only to get wiped by the enemy team during Zapdos because you didn't have your unite move.

TL;DR Lv9 by first Drednaw or you're doing it wrong.