The Korean server, with its boundless creativity and deep understanding of the game among players, always leads in constructing unique champion picks and playstyles within the meta. While in the Vietnamese server, champions like Lux or Karthus in the jungle are already considered extremely unusual, let’s take a look at the “unbelievable” champions that have been used in this “carry” position in the LCK region.
Lulu
The first is the Faerie Mage – Lulu. This champion emerged in the jungle position after playing a crucial role in helping Afreeca Freecs secure victory against MVP in the playoff series for the LCK 2017 World Championship spot.
At that time, Lulu was exceptionally strong in the early levels. After clearing 3 jungle camps and holding 2 buffs, she was nearly invincible when ganking. Dealing damage with the combo E Help, Pix! – Q Glitterlance, transforming enemies with W Whimsy, and adding auto-attacks from Red Buff made it hard for opponents to escape even with Flash.
Jungle Lulu is suitable for aggressive junglers who want to create advantages proactively. Conversely, if you are a player who prefers to farm jungle, this champion is not for you as Lulu’s farming capability is quite poor; she is almost always ready to forgo farming to gank early to maximize her power spike.
Zed
In reality, Zed is already a highly mobile mid-lane assassin capable of roaming freely from top to bottom. In Korea, Challenger players have figured out how to utilize Zed in the jungle role, thanks to a slight buff to his damage to monsters in patch 10.5. Additionally, Zed can leverage his burst damage and target access to gank at any time.
With the Keystone rune Conqueror, Zed becomes more powerful in dealing damage over time — overcoming the weakness of lacking damage when his skills are on cooldown, ready to auto-attack enemies instead of running away.
Ezreal
Despite several consecutive buffs, the familiar position of the Explorer marksman is still dominated by champions like Kalista, Tristana, Kai’sa, or Xayah. In a dire situation, Ezreal unexpectedly emerged and became extremely powerful in the jungle position on the Korean server since patch 7.16.
With limited crowd control, he is nearly incapable of ganking proactively and can easily unbalance team composition if the draft is not cohesive, while requiring a lot of player skill to be effective. In return, he has good dueling capabilities, decent early game damage, and mobility. Ezreal is often used to counter the rare remaining meat-eating jungle champions in that meta: Kha’Zix and Elise.
Jungle Ezreal has been a topic of immense debate within the Korean League of Legends community. Whether it’s right or wrong remains to be seen. What is known is that the jungle player from Team WE, Condi, used Ezreal in a crucial match against Invictus Gaming and achieved remarkable results, playing a significant role in securing the World Championship spot for the entire team.
Yasuo
The final champion is none other than Yasuo. Of course, “The Almighty” can dominate in any position! Just kidding, but in reality, Yasuo once had a significantly increased pick and win rate on the Korean server in both top lane and jungle roles.
Jungle Yasuo does not focus on many items that increase critical strike chance as usual but instead emphasizes spinning, disrupting fights, and strong recovery with items like Blade of the Ruined King, Frozen Hammer, and even Titanic Hydra. While lacking explosive damage spikes at the end of the match from critical hits, Yasuo with this playstyle possesses decent durability along with strong percentage health damage.
Even currently, this jungle Yasuo style still exists on the Korean server with many advantages as mentioned above. However, regardless of the server, “The Almighty” is a force that can easily cause internal discord and has a high risk of “blind” plays, so be mentally prepared if you want to try this champion out.