Vainglory Forums

This has been probably my biggest issue, defending against the triple jungle invade at the start of the game. Do we just have to always have all 3 players sitting in the bush waiting for the invade, hoping our comp doesn't screw us up? Do we ignore their invasion and just go push lane turret, or sneak around and head into their jungle? Are we just screwed from the get-go if our comp is not ideal for an initial level 1 team fight?

What are your tactics/strategies?

My tactics is just to pretend we are going to invade, make sure you have a powerful jungler just like krul to scare them away lol

Your best option is to bring all of your teammates into the jungle with you. Without them, you risk getting trampled by the other team, or losing valuable jungle minions. As you progress into higher skill tiers, you'll find that pretty much every team waits in the bush at the start of the game, so you shouldn't have to worry about the issue later on.

The other tactics you mentioned- entering the enemy jungle to steal their's or attacking their turret- do work... To an extent. Turret attacks slow farming abilities A LOT early game, & that's the time when you need to farm the most, so it wouldn't be my first choice. Entering the enemy jungle holds the potential to get killed, however, this can be limited if you start out with sprint boots & pick a character that has an obvious escape mechanism- taka, joule, Glaive, Catherine, etc.

But anyways, your best bet is a good team that sticks together. Teamwork & group fighting is the key in vain glory, so if your teammates can't help you ward off a jungle invasion, your team probably won't be that successful.

Also- certain characters do good early game, others don't. Petal & skaarf (for their range), saw (high attack speed), koshka (mobility), joule (good abilities & tanks), & such all do great early game. The above poster mentioned krul, but krul actually does VERY bad in early game fights because he's slow & his life steal is very small. Stay away from krul & other characters that have a low damage output early game if you want to win those jungle fights.

You don't always need to have your entire team waiting in the Jungle, what you can try to do is purchase a flare and then use it when the game timer reaches 30 - 40 seconds.

That way, you'll know when the enemy is attempting to invade, then you can ping your team to enter the jungle to counter invade. Using a flare might also potentially scare the enemy off.

of course you should use flare at 39-41 seconds, not 30-40

By looking at the enemy positioning when you flare at 30+ seconds, you can already tell if the enemy has any intentions of doing a triple jungle invade

It is default at SA+ level that 3 players gather at shop.
If you have no boots then you usually can get to shop at ~36-40 sec. So at 30 sec you will just see that people are running towards shop, it doesn't tell you much.

You can infer if the enemy is prepared for an invasion when you flare at 30+ seconds, if all 3 of them are sticking together and are running towards the jungle shop, they are prepared to invade / counter an invasion.

If one enemy is running towards the lane, and the other is staying put at the jungle creeps closer to the enemy base, the enemy is not prepared for an invasion.

This is for lower tier matches where players are not very cooperative and not all matches start with an early invasion. In this case, flaring at 30+ seconds gives you enough information to infer whether the enemy will invade.


For high tier games, pretty much all games start with an early invade. In that case, the flare isn't used to determine whether the enemy will invade, because you know they very likely will.

In that case, if the flares are used, it will be used at around 40+ seconds to gain vision on the enemy position. With this information, you then determine whether the conditions are favourable for you to engage the enemy team.

Personally, if I'm the only jungler on my team and all 3 enemies are on my side of the jungle, I try to ping my team down. They usually don't care since they are laners so I go to the lane, take the lower bushes to sneak to their side and farm their minions. Scout traps early game is always a deterrent.

So, assuming at higher tiers everyone starts with essentially a level 1 team fight/invade, what is your tactic if you happen to have chars that are not ideal for early game (i.e - Krul)?