I see all these tips about specific champions but not for the roles themselves. I'm a Plat 1 Jungle Main and I figure that I would share some tips to those who are picking up the role recently, trying to improve in jungle, or are struggling with the role if being forced onto it with hardly any experience.

-1. Holding Mid Lane.

This tip is actually a very important tip as a jungler believe it or not. When you see your ally mid lane going back and the enemy mid lane is pushing out the wave to the turret, you want to soak up the minions that your ally mid laner cannot get. This way, you stay ahead in gold and xp since the new jungle is a little harsh on both those categories.

-2. Respect the enemy solo laners.

They WILL be ahead of you by one or two levels mid-game (unless you got insanely fed within the first 8-10 minutes of the game), and WILL be ahead of you in items. Learn to respect their power spikes and their damage, because they WILL be beating you in a duel unless they are low/out of mana.

-3. Be smart with your item build.

This tip may sound simple, but it's something that most lower elo players get wrong believe it or not. There are several things to consider when item pathing. Knowing who's fed/who's a threat on the enemy team is important and you should usually be building against that. For your boots, you mainly want to go for ninja tabi, but if they have hard CC, merc treads is fine. (Or if you're playing a tank jungler like Sejuani, you want to build the juggernaut enchantment for tenacity, which then leaves the option to build either ninja tabi or mobility boots.)

Another common question is what jungle item should one be building. At the moment, I believe Rangers Trailblazer is the item choice to be building for most of the junglers. Stalkers Blade is the obvious alternative, but I would only recommend this item on a few junglers who has good sustain/good clear/doesn't necessarily have to rely on Rangers Trailblazer to stay even or ahead in the game. These junglers are primarily, but not limited to: Rek'sai, J4, Lee Sin. Skirmishers is okay on a few junglers that mainly rely on auto attacking for damage (Xin, Yi) DO NOT BUILD THE POACHERS KNIFE.

-4. Knowing when to gank and when not to.

This is more complicated of a subject to explain; it really falls down to experience of playing jungle and getting the sense of what's a good gank and what's not. I can, however, give a small list of good ganks and bad ganks.

Good Ganks:

• Enemy is low health/low mana.
• Enemy is overextended to ally tower with no wards .
• Enemy's Defensive summoner(s) are down (Flash, Heal) (NOTE: This DOES mean if you gank a lane and burn their flash, you should be looking to go for another gank in that lane later on before their summoner spell is back up, even if that means immediately going back to the lane after ganking and ganking it again.)
• Burning a summoner spell DOES mean that it was a successful gank!!
• If you're confident enough and it looks guaranteed, you can also go for tower dives with your ally laner when their lane is pushed up. ONLY do this on certain circumstances, such as enemy flash is down.
• When enemy least suspects a gank. (For example, no one expects to be ganked before 4 minutes. Use this knowledge to your advantages in some of your games and try to gank someone before then.)

Bad Ganks:

• Enemy's minion wave is piled up (2-3 waves)
• Ally's health/mana is too low. They won't follow up if you gank, so if you're going to do this then only do it if you can solo kill the enemy that you are ganking.
• Wasting time sitting in a brush waiting to gank a lane. Time is a VERY valuable tool for a jungler, so make sure you're using it wisely. Wasting time results in getting far behind the enemy team and becoming an easy target to kill.
• Ganking with half your health. This is a really common mistake that lower elo junglers do. You should almost NEVER gank when you're too chunked from clearing your jungle. You're really vulnerable to dying to the enemy laner especially if he/she has ignite if you do this.

-5. Know your jungle timers.

• Blue/Red Buff spawns at 1:55 and has a 5 minute respawn time. (Press Tab and you can see your own jungle timers in the top area)
• Scuttle vision lasts for 90 seconds. Do this when it's relevant to. Relevant times are when your team is setting up for dragon/dragon is going to spawn soon (45 seconds is around the good time to clear scuttle)
• Dragon spawns at 2:30 (I think?) And has a 6 minute respawn time. You are able to tell if the enemy has done dragon or not if you do not have vision onto it. If you press tab and look at the dragon icon, if part of the dragon icon is colored in, that means that they did the dragon. This means if that you do not have a timer on it, you want to add 6 minutes to the approximate time that they did it and inform your team about the timer in chat.
• Baron spawns at 20 minutes and has a 7 minute cooldown. You don't want to be doing this unless you have a fed ADC that can burst it down quick on your team, or if you have allies with percantage health damage that can also work well. Do not try to force baron unless your team is really far ahead or if you manage to win a teamfight with most of your team being almost full health, because the biggest throws happen there. Keep in mind that Baron CAN be a game winner with the buff that it gives to minions, so you want to make sure that you're grouped with your team or have someone who can splitpush and being able to 1v1 anyone split and push down towers.

As a small bonus, I'll mention a little tip about the camps, your smite, and what you should be smiting and why.

• Wraith camp (or razor beaks dunno what they are). Smiting this camp gives you a buff that will give you an oracle for a limited time when you walk nearby an enemy ward. Try to spot this ward and clear it if possible. Be aware of missing enemies on the map.
• Enemy wolf camp. If you're in the enemy jungle trying to counter jungle (which I DON'T recommend to do since the camp spawns take longer to spawn now), you usually want to counter jungler and smite the wolf camp. This will give you a little spirit that grants vision of the enemy blue side and alerts your team when an enemy walks near it. Very useful in circumstances to set up counter-ganks, invades, etc.
• Krugs/Gromp. You always want to be starting either one of these and smiting them right when they spawn. This will give you the ability from each of the respective camps and allows you to clear your jungle more effectively early on. Smiting Gromp later on is good to have for when looking to teamfight, since it gives you something extra in your kit (the enemy takes poison damage if they hit you with the gromp buff). Smiting Krugs is also good when you're going to take a tower, because the first hit will do bonus damage to the tower, but will consume the ability afterwards.
• Your smite. Be smart about your smite. It's on a 60 second cooldown when you use it and can be a punishing mistake when used at the wrong time. You'll need it for when dragon and baron is up and being contested, so make sure that you're not using your smite when dragon spawns in 50- seconds. For stalker blade users, try to avoid using your smite so you have it up for when you gank. It's the main point of having that smite, because otherwise it will put you behind if you're not using it to your advantage.

Thanks for reading, I know this was a bit long but I tried to help as much as I could to my knowledge. If you have any questions, concerns, or criticism on what I wrote feel free to reply and/or message me about it.

• Ping ward/trap locations

It seems so simple but a lot of people don't do it. While we're clearing camps we're looking for an opportunity to gank for you. Having said that, we won't be able to notice EVERY ward or trap location. So ping it out and let us know. With that information we can decide to avoid the area when we gank and we don't waste time.

• If we're pinging on our way, don't drain your mana pool before I arrive

I find my teammates doing this at times. Why? I'm not sure. You should always try and save mana for at least one ability. If you're the support, be sure that you can cast your CC on top of mine. If you're the adc be sure you have the mana to get out of there if things turn bad.

• Please don't make it obvious that I'm about to murder them

Yeah I may be sitting in the bush about to gank for you, but you don't need to let them know that. I'm waiting for them to go for a last hit or waste a useful ability. That means whatever you were doing before I arrived, keep doing it. If you were pushed under tower, don't walk past the creep wave. If you were being aggressive don't sit back. Most players aren't
stupid blind and they'll notice the difference.

• Ganks don't always equal kills and that's OKAY

So many players become obsessed with stacking kills. A gank can be successful without giving you the kill, trust me. If we force a summoner, a recall, or help from their Jungler then we did well. If they flashed I'll be sure to come back and get the kill soon. If they recalled chances are you can get a nice lead in CS and/or take the tower/dragon. If the Jungler came to assist then that's a load off of the other lanes. They can now play aggressively and this especially pays off if your other lanes are performing well.

• Be vocal with what you want

This one is more general but it's the best I could think of for the 5th tip while still covering the basics. As a Jungler, it's difficult to keep track with EVERYTHING going on in each lane. I try my best. If you're struggling in lane please let me know. I want to help and I'll be up there as soon as possible. If you're in need of a ward tell me that and I'll buy you one soon. Need to recall and finish an item? Let me know before you do. That's valuable XP someone on our team should be getting, and for no reason should your opponent be getting it for free.

EDIT: Being vocal with us doesn't guarantee that you get your way. Understand that we have other people to take care of, so your request for a babysit may not be obliged. "The farmers who plow their fields first and then pray for rain receive it.

EXTRAS EDIT: Some taken from comments...

• Mr. mid lane, you aren't entitled to blue buff.

If you've given up 3 kills in the first 10 minutes, chances are you won't be getting it. Please don't bash me for that but I'd hate to have you die and give it to Karthus. If you ask nicely and you're playing well, I'll definitely give it to you. Hell, I usually give up the 2nd buff anyways. Just don't do anything to make me change my mind. That includes playing poorly and being an ass. Now good luck. ;)

• If I'm sitting in this bush, I have a reason.

If our other two lanes are pushing up and doing well but you're not, I know there's a ward in this bush. I'm going to sit here and scare your opponent away from the farm. Why? It'll help you reset the wave and gain the XP back. I'm almost leeching some of it so it isn't all bad for me. Don't ping caution like a mad man for me to go away when I'm obviously helping you.

• Don't expect ganks if you're in a dominant lane.

I'm not being a dick, you're just pushed to their tower. If I don't have a decent amount of armor I won't turret dive because it's probably suicide. So either last hit and ward like a smart player or leave me alone so I can focus on counter ganking, because their Jungler WILL be on your ass.

• You don't have to use your Summoner to pick up the kill.

Now if you're absolutely CERTAIN (this really only applies in very few situations) that you can't get the kill and get out, then fine. As long as we picked up an advantage for you as described in tip #4, there is NO NEED to get greedy and lose that advantage.

• Smite has a cooldown and preset damage!

If I say "smite down", you may want to rethink this Dragon attempt. If Zac leaps over the wall and smites our Baron I'm sorry!, but he is 2 levels ahead and his smite does more damage. I'm not perfect and there's a good chance I had some CC thrown my way. Please don't spam "Noob jungle doesn't know how to Smite" after something like that happens. It devastates the little bit of morale I had left.

• You better be a firm believer in lane taxation.

If you're not familiar with what this is, you probably rage at your Jungler for doing it. If a gank is not very successful, I'm probably gonna grab a minion or two. This way I don't entirely waste my time coming to help you out.

• Calm your biscuits, I'm not pushing the lane. Swear!

I ganked for you and you had to back. We killed your opponent, but some of his creep are left sitting. Guess what I'm about to do? Push the lane. That's right, I'm gonna do it. Is it going to hurt you? Nope not in the least. It will deny him XP and gold and by the time you get back, the lane will be reset. I'm not leaving free XP unattended. I better not hear any lip for doing it, either.

• Thou shalt leash for me and do so properly!

If I ask for a Smiteless blue/red, take the extra 4 seconds and do it for me. I'm not asking for it because I'm selfish. Junglers typically request a smiteless clear so they can reach lvl 3 faster and get a gank in or to steal the enemy buff. Getting in one AA and leaving for your lane not only leaves me to burn 2 pots right off the bat, but I'm not going to be a happy camper either.

• Don't get tunnel vision. Help me out if I'm being invaded.

This is a difficult concept for a lot of people to grab. If your Jungler, or anyone for that matter, is having trouble near you, it's okay to leave your lane for 10 seconds to help them. You surely don't want double buffs leaving your team. Be aware and ready for situations like this if you're facing a Shaco or Lee Sin. If your Jungler is Fiddlesticks or Amumu protect their blue buff at all costs. Without it you can bet that they won't get much done early.