Choose Strong Champions Early and Mid Game
Given the nature of solo queue, fights in lanes happen extremely frequently, therefore the requirement for the jungler position is to select champions that are strong and deal good damage in the early game. During his rank climb, SofM always chooses champions like Graves, Olaf, Lee Sin, and sometimes Ekko, champions that have good early game fighting capabilities to gank and intervene effectively in lanes.
Furthermore, League of Legends is inherently a very strong snowball game; a slight advantage in terms of champion quality early game translates to a gold and item difference… and helps you finish the game extremely quickly. With a somewhat “industrial” playstyle to climb to the Challenger tier like SofM, the strong early game champions mentioned above are the most suitable and effective.
Always Seek to Achieve 40% Cooldown Reduction
There are two main ways to deal damage in League of Legends: one is using skills, and the other is basic attacks on enemies. With ranked matches having an incredibly fast snowball pace, the time to farm and build items to enhance basic attack damage (like critical strike items or attack speed) is almost non-existent, so if you want to be strong, you must use your skills more and “hurt” the opponent more.
Understanding this, SofM always focuses on achieving 40% cooldown reduction as quickly as possible, the goal being, as mentioned above, to cast more skills on the opponent. We can see this in how SofM buys items for Graves, as he always seeks to complete Warrior Enchantment, Black Cleaver, and at least one Caulfield’s Warhammer. Building lethality with Graves is extremely wrong; you should learn from SofM’s playstyle.
Do Not Feel Obligated to Use Flash if Other Summoner Spells Are Better
Flash is the most common summoner spell in League of Legends, and everyone knows its benefits; however, because it’s used so much, we sometimes forget that there are other summoner spells that can be stronger in specific matches. Just a few days ago, SofM spammed Graves in the jungle without Flash repeatedly; that wasn’t just for show, but rather he realized he needed the Grievous Wounds effect to quickly take down enemies, so SofM chose Ignite as a solution.
In such a match, when SofM had to face Darius, Volibear, Soraka – champions with strong healing, and Aphelios with Conqueror, taking the Ignite rune was reasonable, instead of spending 800 gold to buy a Butcher’s Knife and slowing down the item build. That’s just a very small example, of course, Flash is always a good choice; however, if you need a specific effect, like Grievous Wounds, don’t hesitate to sacrifice Flash for it.
