Yes, it's worth it to pick another jungler. It does not necessarily have to be a counter-pick though, which probably needs some explanation:
- The advantages you gave for having a jungler hold for your team as well.
- What you labelled as 'more effective' does not really require a jungler at all (coordinate your team to kill the enemy jungler [wards!] or steal a buff)
- Your downsides are too situation dependent:
- If behind enemy lines, you better know what you're doing. You have to be sure that your champ can live up to the enemy jungler and you have to make double sure that all other enemies are on their lanes. While it is a downside, it's one for which the risk can be dealt with.
- If their jungler is higher level than you, then either you have to improve your jungling, or you got killed/hindered before. Shouldn't happen for the first creep round, unless someone messed up their early game (see below)
- same as 1. Do not get killed in the enemy jungle. The enemy jungler shouldn't be able to kill you (or you shouldn't enter his lair!) and if you get ganked it's your fault for losing track of your enemies. If you suspect only a single enemy missing that might come for you, you better be on your way back to your jungle.
Anyways, double jungle teams are quite a common thing, because neither team wants to ignore the advantages gained by having a jungler. However, it also means that your team should know how to deal with that situation. Here's a few tips for general two-junglers-play:
- Prepare for more ganks on both sides. For both junglers it's usually safer to gank, than to visit the other side's forest.
- Make your jungle starting save. Not getting harassed while you get your first buff is extremely important. The team should realize this and protect you. Place your mates into the forest access points near the river to watch out for early ganks. Only let them leave, once the buff is save.
- Of course, you can turn this around too and try to gank the enemy jungler with your team. Not just a single counter-picked champ, but 2+ champs.
As you can see, two junglers are possible, do make sense, and generally lead to very fast and intensive gameplay. Beware on random groups though, as a two-jungler game demands a lot more from all players and failure is easy to achieve in that setting.
My question is: Should i switch to a
jungler so that we have one, even if
it means missing out on farm for my
team?
Depends on the draft pick order, if you are a good jungler and you are first pick, you can pick one immediately; if you are not first pick and notice the enemy team has already picked a jungler, you can ask in chat if anyone is jungling. If not, it is recommended that your team has a jungler as well, then top lane will be 1v1, you can control the Dragon on bottom lane, and you can set up ganks.
What soft skills do i need as a
jungler, e.g what should i pay most
attention to when going into the
jungle?
You need all of these amongst others:
- Map awareness: Control (a.k.a) warding the river sides during early game usually after your first blue pill, doing so will prevent your bottom and top lanes of being ganked. Warding strategic places during mid/late game can win fights, baron and some of the enemy jungle bushes or even your own jungle bushes.
- Wise use of Smite: If you are going to jungle, you should almost always have smite summoner spell with you (very few exceptions here, perhaps Nunu), it will make your jungling faster and you can also kill Dragon/Baron faster having the possibility of kill stealing if you are aware of the enemy team killing them.
- Lane awareness: One of the most important things a jungler should do is besides killing the neutral creeps and roaming around, is setting up ganks / denying / defending turrets; whenever you see any lane is being outpushed you must leave jungle and defend the turret while the laner pills back, also harassing mid, by just making the enemy mid laner blue pill back will make your mid lane gain more exp/gold by killing creeps alone.
Probably another question, but what
else can i do to carry harder? I
mostly only lasthit and that means
playing safe and not getting many
kills mid in favor of harass.
Last hit is a very important thing to do overall, not only carries should do it, however you can easily harass while last hitting, it just takes a little bit of practice and knowing exactly what your champion skills are. In order to effetively carry, you should just play smart and aggresive when possible during team fights and laning phase, meaning letting your tanks engage and start the fights, targeting the enemy AD/AP carries. Also a very importing thing a carry should do is pick items accordingly to what the enemy team comp is, perhaps maybe just stacking AP flat items would not be the greatest idea if the enemy team is heavy on MR, stacking AP + Magic Pen items would do much better, same idea applies to AD carries; additionally if you as carry are having a good early/mid game, you should also buy some defensive items, such as Guardian Angel / Banshees Veil in order to have a little more survivability.
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Best Answer
Like so many things in League of Legends, it depends upon and changes based on your team composition and the enemy's team composition. If you have more poke than they do, just sit outside tower range and throw your poke abilities at them until they're so low that staying near the tower risks dying. This is generally the safest way to force an enemy team off of a tower and then you can kill it uncontested.
Another strat is to instantly clear their wave of minions just outside of tower range and then have your ranged carry get a few hits in every time your minion waves is tanking the tower. However, this requires an ad carry that is very good with positioning and understanding how to not get caught.
Generally you only want to go all in under a tower if you KNOW it will results in good kills for your team. Diving Taric but losing your farmed Vayne is a bad trade, for instance. Other times you would go all in is if someone on their team makes an obvious overextension mistake and because of this you can kill them for "free." Taking down a damage dealer on their team allows your team to engage in more favorable terms - 5v4, even under a tower, is still a pretty good fight to engage on. If you're fighting over a lane tower, teams will usually retreat to avoid the 4v5 fight and defend later.
And, of course, there is the CLG/Hotshot strat: split push. This should generally only be done in a coordinated team setting. Have a champ with teleport, strong pushing, and escape abilities push top(for instance) by himself, and the rest of the team can hover near a tower in bottom lane and force the enemy team to split themselves. When this happens, the person pushing top should teleport in and you can force a 5v4 engage to take the tower.
Importantly, try to never get hit by the tower unnecessarily. If there's not a minion wave there to take the initial agro from the tower, you should just stay out of range. There is almost no chance diving into a more well-equipped team with no minion support will work out in your favor, baron buff or no.