The jungle is a notoriously difficult role. It’s heavy in decision-making to ensure you’re in the right place at the right time (or ideally everywhere at the same time, as some pro players seem to be) to help in skirmishes while constantly counter jungling and defending against getting counter jungled.
So who does it best? Oracle’s Elixir published a great article to show Korea farms the hardest in the first 15 minutes, unsurprising considering their traditional dominance over other regions in the strategy sphere of eSports. There seems to be a distinct split between the way eastern teams play the jungle role and the way the west does it.
Which got us wondering which of these two sides of the world is best overall? Mobalytics is working on a data-driven personal performance tool for LoL players, and has been steeped in LoL eSports data for the past few months. It only made sense to partner with GosuGamers to see which region of the world truly was mechanically superior, strategically superior, and statistically superior.
Not all of the data is published for all League of Legends tournaments. Sadly there are no LPL stats at this time. But data from two major leagues for East (LCK and LMS) and the West (EULCS and NALSC) is available. So, the competition was on, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that anyone was salty about SK Telecom T1’s perfect series against Counter Logic Gaming that won them the Midseason Invitational, or the fact the east wins Worlds again and again and again and again...
Ahem. To avoid the article becoming a scrollathon, we aggregated the data from tournaments. But, if you want to know how your favorite team contributed to the scores in each graph, you’ll find links at the end of section leading to the individual tournament graphs of the different metrics we looked at.
There are 12 metrics and the winner for each one will score a point, with the totals rounded up at the end, and honorable mentions for teams in each league that smashed the scores for each metric.
Kills, deaths, assists, and KDA
Because it’s such a roam-heavy role, the contributions junglers make to kills and assists per game is a good way to testify they’re in the right places at the right times. So let’s start with KDA numbers.
|
Region |
East |
West |
|
KPG |
Win |
Loss |
|
DPG |
Win |
Loss |
|
APG |
Loss |
Win |
|
KDA |
Win |
Loss |
|
Score |
3 |
1 |
There were a few teams KDA’s that really stood out in the jungle. Especially the Flash Wolves in the LMS with an average KDA of 10.42, with their fellow LMS’ers J Gaming (formerly Taipei Assassins) pulling in an impressive 8.8. In the West, G2 Esports and Immortals’ junglers also scored 8+ KDA’s. But, with the East securing more kills at the cost of less deaths, it’s the East that comes up top this time.
Individual team scores per league
Percentage of kills, deaths and first blood
Some games are scrappier than others so let’s look at jungler's kills and deaths as an average percentage to add a bit more depth. Also distributed by Riot’s AP is the percentage of first bloods the jungle is involved in; clearly critical metric for those lurking in the fog of war alongside lanes.
|
Region |
East |
West |
|
Kill% |
Loss |
Win |
|
DTH% |
Loss |
Win |
|
FB% |
Draw | Draw |
|
Score |
0 |
2 |
Overall the western junglers proved more effective in getting involved in more of the team fights and gave away less deaths for it. Junglers from G2 Esports and Echo Fox had especially impressive involvement with percentages of 79% and 83% respectively.
Flash Wolves had another high score entry with their jungler involved in 66% of first blood kills. But, overall, the West these categories (which means it’s starting to look like the east could actually win something).
Individual team scores per league
EGPM and DPM
Farming effectively to keep up with lanes is another important one, and so is damage dealt to champions. Being present in fights with enough DPS gained from good farm means these are good metrics to look at. Earned Gold Per Minute (EGPM) excludes starting gold and inherent gold generation over time.
|
Region |
East |
West |
|
GPM |
Win |
Loss |
|
DPM |
Loss |
Win |
|
Score |
1 |
1 |
As mentioned above, lot of the eastern teams are known to have strong farming, so you know where to put your money there. Again the Flash Wolves showed their mettle in the scores, with an average of 250 being the top GPM for the jungle role in Spring 2016. As for DPM, G2 Esports come out top of all the teams recorded with 370DPM.
Individual team scores per league
CSPM, WPPM, WCPM
Few things have as short a lifespan on the Rift as creeps and wards. So let’s see these numbers per minute for the jungle role.
|
Region |
East |
West |
|
CSPM |
Win |
Loss |
|
WPM |
Loss |
Win |
|
WCPM |
Win |
Loss |
|
Score |
2 |
1 |
LCK comes out on top here. While all the other leagues came close in the scores, there’s a clear win to the East. It seems like the Europeans like to place quite a few more wards than the other leagues we’re looking at, so there's another point for the west. But, when it comes to clearing wards out, the east does it best.
Individual team scores per league
And the winner is…
|
Region |
East |
West |
|
Total score |
6 |
6 |
Damn, it’s a draw. But the key takeaway here is clear...
While League of Legends goes through a phase where Asian teams win everything, the West can at least salvage some face by taking a bunch of data, chopping it up in as convenient a manner as possible and presenting in graphs that at least give us a draw.
