While in different seasons the weight of neutral monsters and their skills can be more or less significant to a match, the truth is they’re still there. Being aware of the red and blue buffs, the dragons, barons and everything Riot comes up with over the coming years is always important because it gives your team money, experience and upgrades that can make the difference in a tight fight.

There’s also the psychological factor: knowing when an objective is going to come up tells you when the enemy is going to be concentrated in a certain part of the map means you can take advantage to take any other objective.

Knowing when to support the lanes

A Jungle’s job is to take advantage of the jungle’s resources so teammates don’t have to slow down. Plus, given the position, the Jungle’s goal is to support the ones that can get the upper hand in their encounters. This is much more complicated that it seems if you don’t choose the right time to gank.

First off, and this might sound illogical, you can’t support lanes that are getting crushed. The explanation here is simple: numerical advantage is useless against a Darius that is 5-0. You’ll only end up making it 7-0. In these situations, it’s best to support where there is a chance for equal or greater weight on your team that will mean you can take that monster in the future. Secondly, don’t gank when the lane has a lot of enemy subjects to collect, because you’ll probably lose all that experience and gold. Plus, the subjects can balance the scales of damage if you’re not careful.

Take advantage of movement

Playing Jungle gives you the advantage of movement. You’re the only one on your team in the whole game covering the whole map, unless there’s a Bard on your team. This gives you a very important skill: you’re the only one who can position vision guards in strategic places, for example the middle of a river or enemy jungle. Throughout nearly the whole game, the Jungle has more weight in the team vision than Support, so you have to make the most of it.

Support the team with Pings

Playing Jungle means you have to concentrate less on farming. You don’t have to think about dealing the final blow to a monster so you can get the experience and gold, at least in normal times. This leaves you quite a bit of time to watch the map and locate your enemies.

 
Sometimes the lanes are distracted or shopping or helping another lane. If you see an enemy disappear, warn them with pings. It’s easy and doesn’t take any time, yet helps the whole team locate the enemy.