WindRaven
01-26-2011, 11:13 PM
-------------------WORK IN PROGRESS---------------------------
So I was playing around with scout the other day, and was thinking to myself: how awesome would it be if I didn't have to lane with this hero? His biggest weakness is the early game, and with stealth - his ganks would be ludicrous. So I tried to jungle scout. Needless to say, that didn't work very well.
My next thought was - are there any bad laning heroes out there that would really benefit from being able to jungle - even if it's slow? Bonus points if it has stealth for fun ganks!
And so was born jungle tree.
:keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep:
Jungle Tree
:keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep:
Disclaimer
This is not for high tier games.
This is not powerful.
This is not efficient.
This is for FUN.
There may be a better way to do this strat, it's still in development.
How it's done
Skill build:
Quick format: 3-1-3-2/stats-3-4-3-whatever
1-Nature's protection
2-Camouflage
3-Nature's protection
4-Stats/Tree sight*
5-Nature's protection
6-Root
7-Nature's protection
*If you get tree sight, courier yourself a mana potion. This allows you to camo->root at level 6. If you cast the eye, and don't have a mana potion, you won't have enough.
The rest is how you like. I prefer to max tree sight after this, as it really is quite a good skill, followed by maxing camouflage. Maxing stats after a single point in camo can also work.
Items:
:LoggersHatchet: :IronBuckler: :RunesOfTheBlight:
Start with a hatchet, a shield, and a pair of runes. I have found this is the fastest and safest way to do the first few camps. Courier yourself more runes of blight as needed.
:Lifetube: OR :HelmOfTheVictim:
As you build up, you're going to want to get hp regen as fast as possible. This and rank 3 shield will let you jungle continuously on any camp that's not catmen. For initator tree, you're going to want to get hotbl to continue your jungle, but carry tree will want to get HotV for an insanitarius later on. You can even build the HotV into a shaman's headdress if the situation really calls for it, but it WILL slow down your jungle significantly, so beware.
:Steamboots: :HelmOfTheBlackLegio :Portalkey: OR :EnhancedMarchers: :ElderParasite: :Insanitarius:
After that, you can do whatever. I like to pickup steamboots and then go portal key. Anything else you want is fine, though. Keep in mind more damage DOES speed up your jungling, so picking up ghost+parasite can lead to a rather fast insani. (personal best - 24min ghost/para/insani)
NOTE: Alch Bones -:AlchemistBones:
I really don't think this item is as good as the above options when tree is in the jungle. The carry build will let you farm gold faster and scale up faster. If you're going initiator, spending the 1900 gold on alch bones doesnt speed up your other items any when all is said and done - it actually slows down your jungle through lack of applicable stats. You will find that if you dont get some sort of hp regen, you'll have to courier a LOT more regen, and you'll be spending MUCH more time waiting instead of killing. Given that tree kills slow enough as it is, waiting more is bad. Alch bones can make sense on laning tree, but it really doesn't make sense in the jungle IMO.
Method:
Start with the easy creep camp as soon as it spawns at 30s. You should be able to kill any one of these camps pretty easily at level 1, with a decent amount of health to spare. The only hard one is the spore creep that slows you, make sure you target it first and kill it asap.
Next, go to any medium camp. Try to avoid minotaurs or wolves if you can. Use your runes to heal up as needed on this camp, and start couriering yourself new ones.
Go back to the easy camp next. Kill them off.
Head back and do another medium camp now. You'll be needing extra regen at this point with bad spawns. If you're out of runes and have no courier, you'll have to go back to base to heal. Be sure to use this time to yell at your support for being a noob.
After these camps, you're probably level 3. If not, you may have to pull, or wait for a 3rd easy camp spawn. At level 3, you can start taking on any medium spawn, and skeleton camps in the hard spawns. This process is slow, but should be continuous unless you need to wait for extra hp regen.
At level 5, you might try hitting the vulture or hard-vagabond camps. Make sure you don't make your hp fall too low, though. Around this time, you'll also be able to pick up a lifetube. Courier it, or grab it from the sideshop, whichever is easier. If you want to pick up your lifetube at level 6, though...
GANK! At level 6, assuming you have at least 240 mana, you can pull off one (1) gank. This should be at about the 10th minute if you did everything just right. Camo into the lane, root unsuspecting victims, get teammates to kill them. Victory! Visit the sideshop after if the gank was on the sidelane. Moneyz!
After level 7, jungling should be pretty easy. I find you can pick up your hotbl at about the 13th minute - not fast, but better than if you had 0 farm in lane.
Tips/Tricks
A few weird things to keep in mind when playing jungle tree:
SNOTTERS FIRST SPAWN: Pull these guys back just out of the respawn range and kill them there. With snotters as a first stack, you can kill them and then get the next 1min stack with relative ease. This will speed up your jungling significantly, but is hard to do right, and won't happen often.
SPORE CAMPS(EASY): Target the slowing ranged mob first. These are the hardest easy camp already, don't make them harder by ignoring the thing that's stopping you from doing damage.
VAGABOND ASSASSINS(MED/HARD): These things come with purge, which will take off your nature's protection. If you have an elder parasite, it will also take off the active effect of that, so beware. When fighting them, wait for the assassin(s) to purge twice before casting either. You don't want to have to waste the mana, time, and cooldown just to have it purged. It is sometimes useful to pull these camps back and let the purge hit you just as the other mobs run back - this keeps the assassins with you for some easy kills. If you manage these camps properly, you'll actually be glad when they spawn. If you don't, they'll be one of the hardest.
USING YOUR HATCHET: Don't forget to use your hatchet to get to places faster. Especially in the legion medium camp, you can use your hatchets to get between them much faster. You can even use the 1-tree space to force the neutrals to fight you 1 at a time, this can be useful if you need to take less damage.
STACKING: Don't do it until you've got your hotbl, or unless you're denying creep waves at the pull camp. You can't take them early, and you're slow enough that it really doesn't matter to you. Feel free to stack if you have someone else helping you clear a stack, though (soulstealer, for example)
Benefits/Drawbacks
Now, here's the the thing. People might ask you, WHY would you jungle tree? THAT'S SUCH A BAD IDEA. But here's why it's a good idea:
1. Tree is TERRIBLE in a duo lane. We all kinda know this. Unless he's solo, he tends to just be there sapping xp, making you lose a lane. Jungling him removes that problem - it gives an additional solo, and lets you have a tanky initiatior later on, without having to suffer his laning phase. Or, you know, if you go carry tree, you get to faceroll people without even having to fight over farm. But hey, who's counting, right?
2. Tree is very hard to gank. Anyone who plays against him knows how hard it is to kill a tree unless you religiously pick up anti-invis items. If people just happen to wander through, he can just camo and be safe. He also tends to stay at decent hp, and never really should be wandering around in the red.
3. Tree is actually a very strong ganker after level 6, and occasionally before that too. His invis lets him get superior positioning, he hits hard, and his ult is very strong.
4. Very few mana issues while jungling. He regens mana as fast as he uses his armor, you should always be at or near max mana. This lets you use your other abilities when needed, rather than being low on mana just cause you were jungling. (I'm looking at you, tempest)
Yeah, okay. So he has some advantages. But it sucks right? If it didn't suck, pro players would be using it! So here's why it's bad:
1. Tree jungle is SLOW. He just doesn't do a lot of damage, so has a hard time clearing out camps fast. He won't be clearing the whole jungle easily until about level 11, at which point you won't want to be jungling much anyway. You won't be keeping up in level or farm with anyone with a solo lane, so don't set that as a benchmark.
2. He can't give much support to the solo lane. While he ganks well at 6, he usually can't do a whole lot before that. And even then, the LONG cooldown on his ult means he won't be able to do much AFTER that either, at least till the cooldown comes 'round.
And those are pretty big flaws.
Conclusion
Jungle tree is POSSIBLE.
He is capable of jungling continously, and without returning to base, with the right spawns and no interruption. With a courier, he can do so even with bad spawns.
Jungle tree is NOT IDEAL.
This is not something that will stomp games. This is not something that you want to plan on doing. As far as viability is concerned, this lands somewhere in 1500 bracket AR games where you have two solo heroes (valk/hag) and a tree that doesn't fit anywhere. So please don't do this unless a) you've tried it in practice at least once, and b) you know it's best for the team.
Jungle tree is WEIRD.
Nobody expects you to jungle. I mean, NOONE. Often, people will spend 5 minutes eating trees around a solo lane just to try to find you, because they think you're hiding there somewhere. Have fun with it - and be sure to invis gank them at least once, just to show them you're a baws for running jungle tree.
-------------------WORK IN PROGRESS--------------------------
Will update as I get more data.
Will be adding pictures instead of it being a wall of text.
Needs more real-game practice. (feel free to help!)
Build/path is not optimized, feel free to submit your builds and the associated times.
MY BUILD: lifetube 7/8 mins, lvl 6 10-11 min, hotbl ~13min.
Enjoy and please help me out finishing this guide!
So I was playing around with scout the other day, and was thinking to myself: how awesome would it be if I didn't have to lane with this hero? His biggest weakness is the early game, and with stealth - his ganks would be ludicrous. So I tried to jungle scout. Needless to say, that didn't work very well.
My next thought was - are there any bad laning heroes out there that would really benefit from being able to jungle - even if it's slow? Bonus points if it has stealth for fun ganks!
And so was born jungle tree.
:keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep:
Jungle Tree
:keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep::keep:
Disclaimer
This is not for high tier games.
This is not powerful.
This is not efficient.
This is for FUN.
There may be a better way to do this strat, it's still in development.
How it's done
Skill build:
Quick format: 3-1-3-2/stats-3-4-3-whatever
1-Nature's protection
2-Camouflage
3-Nature's protection
4-Stats/Tree sight*
5-Nature's protection
6-Root
7-Nature's protection
*If you get tree sight, courier yourself a mana potion. This allows you to camo->root at level 6. If you cast the eye, and don't have a mana potion, you won't have enough.
The rest is how you like. I prefer to max tree sight after this, as it really is quite a good skill, followed by maxing camouflage. Maxing stats after a single point in camo can also work.
Items:
:LoggersHatchet: :IronBuckler: :RunesOfTheBlight:
Start with a hatchet, a shield, and a pair of runes. I have found this is the fastest and safest way to do the first few camps. Courier yourself more runes of blight as needed.
:Lifetube: OR :HelmOfTheVictim:
As you build up, you're going to want to get hp regen as fast as possible. This and rank 3 shield will let you jungle continuously on any camp that's not catmen. For initator tree, you're going to want to get hotbl to continue your jungle, but carry tree will want to get HotV for an insanitarius later on. You can even build the HotV into a shaman's headdress if the situation really calls for it, but it WILL slow down your jungle significantly, so beware.
:Steamboots: :HelmOfTheBlackLegio :Portalkey: OR :EnhancedMarchers: :ElderParasite: :Insanitarius:
After that, you can do whatever. I like to pickup steamboots and then go portal key. Anything else you want is fine, though. Keep in mind more damage DOES speed up your jungling, so picking up ghost+parasite can lead to a rather fast insani. (personal best - 24min ghost/para/insani)
NOTE: Alch Bones -:AlchemistBones:
I really don't think this item is as good as the above options when tree is in the jungle. The carry build will let you farm gold faster and scale up faster. If you're going initiator, spending the 1900 gold on alch bones doesnt speed up your other items any when all is said and done - it actually slows down your jungle through lack of applicable stats. You will find that if you dont get some sort of hp regen, you'll have to courier a LOT more regen, and you'll be spending MUCH more time waiting instead of killing. Given that tree kills slow enough as it is, waiting more is bad. Alch bones can make sense on laning tree, but it really doesn't make sense in the jungle IMO.
Method:
Start with the easy creep camp as soon as it spawns at 30s. You should be able to kill any one of these camps pretty easily at level 1, with a decent amount of health to spare. The only hard one is the spore creep that slows you, make sure you target it first and kill it asap.
Next, go to any medium camp. Try to avoid minotaurs or wolves if you can. Use your runes to heal up as needed on this camp, and start couriering yourself new ones.
Go back to the easy camp next. Kill them off.
Head back and do another medium camp now. You'll be needing extra regen at this point with bad spawns. If you're out of runes and have no courier, you'll have to go back to base to heal. Be sure to use this time to yell at your support for being a noob.
After these camps, you're probably level 3. If not, you may have to pull, or wait for a 3rd easy camp spawn. At level 3, you can start taking on any medium spawn, and skeleton camps in the hard spawns. This process is slow, but should be continuous unless you need to wait for extra hp regen.
At level 5, you might try hitting the vulture or hard-vagabond camps. Make sure you don't make your hp fall too low, though. Around this time, you'll also be able to pick up a lifetube. Courier it, or grab it from the sideshop, whichever is easier. If you want to pick up your lifetube at level 6, though...
GANK! At level 6, assuming you have at least 240 mana, you can pull off one (1) gank. This should be at about the 10th minute if you did everything just right. Camo into the lane, root unsuspecting victims, get teammates to kill them. Victory! Visit the sideshop after if the gank was on the sidelane. Moneyz!
After level 7, jungling should be pretty easy. I find you can pick up your hotbl at about the 13th minute - not fast, but better than if you had 0 farm in lane.
Tips/Tricks
A few weird things to keep in mind when playing jungle tree:
SNOTTERS FIRST SPAWN: Pull these guys back just out of the respawn range and kill them there. With snotters as a first stack, you can kill them and then get the next 1min stack with relative ease. This will speed up your jungling significantly, but is hard to do right, and won't happen often.
SPORE CAMPS(EASY): Target the slowing ranged mob first. These are the hardest easy camp already, don't make them harder by ignoring the thing that's stopping you from doing damage.
VAGABOND ASSASSINS(MED/HARD): These things come with purge, which will take off your nature's protection. If you have an elder parasite, it will also take off the active effect of that, so beware. When fighting them, wait for the assassin(s) to purge twice before casting either. You don't want to have to waste the mana, time, and cooldown just to have it purged. It is sometimes useful to pull these camps back and let the purge hit you just as the other mobs run back - this keeps the assassins with you for some easy kills. If you manage these camps properly, you'll actually be glad when they spawn. If you don't, they'll be one of the hardest.
USING YOUR HATCHET: Don't forget to use your hatchet to get to places faster. Especially in the legion medium camp, you can use your hatchets to get between them much faster. You can even use the 1-tree space to force the neutrals to fight you 1 at a time, this can be useful if you need to take less damage.
STACKING: Don't do it until you've got your hotbl, or unless you're denying creep waves at the pull camp. You can't take them early, and you're slow enough that it really doesn't matter to you. Feel free to stack if you have someone else helping you clear a stack, though (soulstealer, for example)
Benefits/Drawbacks
Now, here's the the thing. People might ask you, WHY would you jungle tree? THAT'S SUCH A BAD IDEA. But here's why it's a good idea:
1. Tree is TERRIBLE in a duo lane. We all kinda know this. Unless he's solo, he tends to just be there sapping xp, making you lose a lane. Jungling him removes that problem - it gives an additional solo, and lets you have a tanky initiatior later on, without having to suffer his laning phase. Or, you know, if you go carry tree, you get to faceroll people without even having to fight over farm. But hey, who's counting, right?
2. Tree is very hard to gank. Anyone who plays against him knows how hard it is to kill a tree unless you religiously pick up anti-invis items. If people just happen to wander through, he can just camo and be safe. He also tends to stay at decent hp, and never really should be wandering around in the red.
3. Tree is actually a very strong ganker after level 6, and occasionally before that too. His invis lets him get superior positioning, he hits hard, and his ult is very strong.
4. Very few mana issues while jungling. He regens mana as fast as he uses his armor, you should always be at or near max mana. This lets you use your other abilities when needed, rather than being low on mana just cause you were jungling. (I'm looking at you, tempest)
Yeah, okay. So he has some advantages. But it sucks right? If it didn't suck, pro players would be using it! So here's why it's bad:
1. Tree jungle is SLOW. He just doesn't do a lot of damage, so has a hard time clearing out camps fast. He won't be clearing the whole jungle easily until about level 11, at which point you won't want to be jungling much anyway. You won't be keeping up in level or farm with anyone with a solo lane, so don't set that as a benchmark.
2. He can't give much support to the solo lane. While he ganks well at 6, he usually can't do a whole lot before that. And even then, the LONG cooldown on his ult means he won't be able to do much AFTER that either, at least till the cooldown comes 'round.
And those are pretty big flaws.
Conclusion
Jungle tree is POSSIBLE.
He is capable of jungling continously, and without returning to base, with the right spawns and no interruption. With a courier, he can do so even with bad spawns.
Jungle tree is NOT IDEAL.
This is not something that will stomp games. This is not something that you want to plan on doing. As far as viability is concerned, this lands somewhere in 1500 bracket AR games where you have two solo heroes (valk/hag) and a tree that doesn't fit anywhere. So please don't do this unless a) you've tried it in practice at least once, and b) you know it's best for the team.
Jungle tree is WEIRD.
Nobody expects you to jungle. I mean, NOONE. Often, people will spend 5 minutes eating trees around a solo lane just to try to find you, because they think you're hiding there somewhere. Have fun with it - and be sure to invis gank them at least once, just to show them you're a baws for running jungle tree.
-------------------WORK IN PROGRESS--------------------------
Will update as I get more data.
Will be adding pictures instead of it being a wall of text.
Needs more real-game practice. (feel free to help!)
Build/path is not optimized, feel free to submit your builds and the associated times.
MY BUILD: lifetube 7/8 mins, lvl 6 10-11 min, hotbl ~13min.
Enjoy and please help me out finishing this guide!