How to Jungle - The Facts

Introduction

This is currently an BETA VERSION of the guide, there's a lot of assumptions and margin for maths errors at the moment, so I'd like to have a few people read it over and check it out before making it a finished release.

Thanks!

Stats Table

What does that all mean?

The table shows a lot of information, but what does it all mean?

What we're trying to do is look at at the effort/reward comparison for the different creep camps. Creeps with higher EHP take longer to kill, so should provide more gold, experience or both to make up for it.

Different creeps are tuned in various ways, so some will do more damage to compensate, or have particular auras or abilities than can cause different heroes problems. Some look very efficient, but don't actually provide very much in total, making them less useful after travel time is taken into account.

The final Combined Rating is a mixture of all of the above - the best ratio of gold, experience, ease of killing and lowest damage, for a standard hero with right click damage.

Easy Camps:

Kobolds. Very easy to kill, offers a good mixture of gold and experience gain. Numerous and with weak aura from leader. Total gain is a bit low.

Medium Camps:

Golems. The equal lowest damage of any camp, combined with a solid gold and experience return per EHP dealt. Horrible for magic users, great for everyone else.

Medium Satyrs. Extremely high experience return combined with low damage output. Numerous and with aura to boost them, they're great for pretty much everyone.

Hard Camps:

Large Satyrs. Offers the highest gold bounty of any camp and a low damage output. Healing aura is not particularly strong.

Melee Hitters

Doom Bringer

These heroes move camp to camp, killing enemies mainly with repeated physical attacks. They rely on some combination of lifesteal, regeneration and/or hitting power to keep them farming.

There's a pretty good case to be made that jungling them is slower than laning them overall, but they are frequently played in the jungle anyway.

There are two items and one technique that particularly benefit these heroes. Generally they want to avoid stacking early on, as the additional health loss outweighs the reduced travel time.



First of all, the Stout Shield is an incredibly important item for any jungler who needs to tank damage. It has a 60% chance of activating when you're hit, and reduces the incoming damage by 20 if it does. This averages out to a reduction of 12 per hit.

Even the hardest hitting jungle creeps maxes out at about 55 damage per hit (it can be slightly higher for a critting Alpha Wolf), so knocking 20 off that gives us a 37% damage reduction, or 22% for the average. Most jungle creeps do less damage than this, so the overall effect is actually much bigger.

We would need 10 points of armour to achieve the 37% reduction, or 5 points for the 22%. Armour obviously helps junglers, but nothing like as effectively as damage block. Even in the absolute best case scenario a Ring of Protection is 2.5x less beneficial.

A Stout Shield fully pays for itself (compared to 2 packs of Tangos) after you take 77 hits (on average).

The Quelling Blade increases our damage against creeps by 32%, so is easily worth 15-20 more per hit, far better than any available alternative. It also allows us to employ a damage reduction technique:

Tunnelling:

This is a simple technique for an old tactic known as "bottle-necking". You'll see this at work in almost any castle or other defensive structure. You draw the enemy into a narrow killing zone where attacking numbers are neutralised by the terrain, allowing a small force to effectively fight a much larger one.

How do we do this in DOTA? Easy, we use the Quelling Blade to cut tunnels through the trees that lead into the neutral camps. When we engage any melee creeps, we fight them 1v1 while their allies stomp about trying to get round to attack us, but aren't actually doing any damage. This markedly reduces the amount of damage we have to tank from many kinds of camp.

Minioneers

Lycanthrope

These heroes primarily use minions to do their fighting for them, allowing them to avoid damage and farm more quickly.

The main technique these heroes need to use is called "Damage Juggling". If one or more of your minions die, you lose the additional damage that they deliver, making your jungling slower and less efficient.

This means that you want to rotate your minions (and occasionally tank yourself) as they reach low health to avoid losing them completely. Neutral creeps behave very similarly to lane creeps - they will target enemies who are attacking them or their allies. Back a minion off (even do a deny-click on your hero to get rid of ranged aggro), and then let them rejoin the fight after the focus has switched.

There are also more advanced situations with various creeps yet - you have to beware the 3 unit limit when fighting Centaurs and Hellbears, this will unleash their special attacks. This may require you to split your minions into groups, or intentionally lose one before engaging with your main force.

Be aware here that the different abilities of some heroes can alter farming rates quite radically:

- Demonic Conversion is incredibly efficient against Wolf camps, as you can target the Alpha Wolf with it. This is your preferred camp.

- Holy Persuasion and Enchant radically alter jungling compared to the other heroes. Your main criteria is getting the most useful large creeps, and using them to clear other camps quickly or gank/push the lanes.

Magic Stackers

These guys then to be regarded more as semi-junglers, although they may be capable of jungling from the start. Why you'd want them to is a slightly trickier question!

They all primarily use their AOE/magical damage abilities to clear camps - this makes them very poor against golems, and means that they get much better efficiency by "Stacking" camps before farming them. How? Attack a neutral on approx 00:51 in minute, and move away from the camp. The neutrals will follow you, and more will spawn in the empty camp. You now have 2 sets of neutrals in the same place. Rinse and repeat.

Safe lane supports should also consider stacking for their pull camp, but also for any other camps including Ancients. Stacked camps offer considerably better GPM/XPM and reduced travel times, as long as your carry is capable of farming them at their current stage. Some supports like Earthshaker can also get a quick headstart on their core this way.

Axe

AXE LIKES GETTING HIS OWN CHAPTER, YES.

Axe is most similar to the Melee Hitters, but takes a different path. He relies on the damage from Counter Helix procs to do damage, so actually wants to get hit by lots of weak attacks. He still needs Stout Shield badly, but shouldn't tunnel as it reduces both his chance of proccing, and the damage that the procs do.

Examples

Example 1:

Lets look at the Wolf camp.

The Alpha Wolf has 600hp, 3 armour, 30-33 damage, plus crits and +30% damage aura.
The two Wolves have 500hp each, 1 armour and 21-24 damage.

With all three wolves attacking, taking into account possible crits and the damage aura, they will inflict on average:

(22.5 x 2) x 1.3 (30%) = 58.5 (45 without packleader aura)
(31.5 x 6) / 5 (crits) x 1.3 = 49.14
Total = 107.64

Obviously this is before damage reductions, and the min/max range is a fair bit wider.

Effective Hitpoints (inc Armour):

(500 x 1.06) x 2 = 1060
(600 x 1.15) = 690
Total = 1750

This means that the Alpha Wolf is responsible for 58% of the damage the wolves inflict, but only has 39% of the EHP they possess in total. Therefore, it always makes sense to kill the Alpha Wolf first.

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Example 2:



The Wildwing camp has 1 Ripper, and 2 standard birds. The ripper has 950hp, 4 armour, 53 damage and an aura that gives 3 additional armour to allies. The standard birds have 350hp, 2 armour and 22.5 damage.

Average Damage:

22.5 x 2 = 45
53 x 1 = 53
Total = 98

Total EHP:

(350 x 1.231) x 2 = 862 (775 without toughness aura)
(950 x 1.296) = 1231
Total = 2093

So, the Ripper is responsible for 54% of the damage, and 59/63% of the HP. It's slightly faster to kill the ripper first, but you'll take less damage by killing the other birds first.

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Example 3:



The large Satyr camp has 1 Tormenter, 1 Mindstealer and 1 Banisher. The Tormenter has 1100hp, 0 armour, 52 damage and an aura that gives 4 hp/sec regen to allies. The Mindstealer has 600hp, 1 armour, 25.5 damage. The Banisher has 240hp, 0 armour and 8.5 damage.

Average Damage:

52 + 25.5 + 8.5 = 86

Total EHP:

1100 + (600 x 1.06) + 240 = 1976

However, we can't stop there. For every second the Tormenter is alive, each creep in the camp gains +4hp. If we're sensible, we will attack each creep in turn, so the camp will only heal at 4hp/s or 0hp/s.

The maths becomes quite complicated at this point - how long will it take to kill the Tormenter? Different heroes do completely different damages, so it's very hard to say.

Even without the healing, the Tormenter is responsible for 56% of the HP in the camp, and 60% of the damage. Lets assume it takes 30 seconds to clear the camp completely, with 20 seconds of that being required to kill the Tormentor.

If we kill the Tormentor first, he'll heal approx 20 x 4 = 80hp. If we kill the Tormentor last, he'll heal approx 30 x 4 = 120hp.

In terms of damage (reductions ignored as dont know what they'll be) - this is either 20 x 52 = 1040, or 30 x 52 = 1560. The other minions combined will do either 10 x 34 = 340, or ~25 x ~35 (averaging out the death timings) = 875.

Kill Tormentor first: 1040 + 875 (+80) = 1995
Kill Tormentor last: 1560 + 340 (+120) = 2020*

As you can see, this is pretty equal overall - so, if it takes you less than 30 seconds to clear the camp, kill the minions first to minimise damage, or kill the Tormenter first to maximise efficiency. If it takes you longer than 30 seconds to clear the camp, kill the Tormenter first.

20 Seconds:

12 x 4 = 48 heal
20 x 4 = 80 heal
12 x 52 = 624
20 x 52 = 1040
6 x 35 = 210
17 x 35 = 595

TMF = 624 + 595 (+48) = 1267
TML = 1040 + 210 (+80) = 1330

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Centaurs:



Big: 1100hp 4armour 52damage
Little 550hp 2armour 19.5damage

Total EHP:

1100 x 1.194 = 1313.4
550 x 1.107 = 608.85
Total = 1922

52 + 19.5 = 71.5

68% Hp, 73% Dam

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Hellbears:



950hp, 4/3 armour, 52-41.5damage

950 x 1.194 = 1134.3
950 x 1.153 = 1095.35
Total = 2230

52 + 41.5 = 93.5

55.6% dam, 51% hp

Limitations

In order to make the maths a bit more managable there are certain shortcuts I've taken - averaged damages, assumptions about heals, roundings, BATs not used etc. I fully acknowledge the numbers here are not 100% accurate, but they are "accurate enough" to draw conclusions from I feel.

The other major factor to bear in mind is travel time between camps - some camps are further away, some contain more total XP or farm, so may be more efficient when travel time is taken into account.

Late game you can kill so fast you're far more interested in totals than relative rates of return.

Stacking techniques and different jungling methods also make a difference - we use Effective Hitpoints (EHP) throughout this guide almost all early junglers use physical damage rather than magical. EHP is basically the amount of damage you will have to inflict in total when their armour reductions are taken into account.

This means the sums don't apply so much to heroes like Storm Spirit, Sand King or Keeper of the Light who use magic damage primarily - but they are not usual junglers. About the only exceptions are Batrider and Dark Seer, but hey, I think you should always lane them anyway :)