Do you want to hard carry your games from the jungle? Are you sick of having teammates who apparently have a bleach smoothie sitting next to them while they play? Do you want to get so deep inside your opponent's head that they see you as their sleep paralysis demon?
Of course you do, you're a jungler. Today I'm going to show you the psychopath guide to hard carrying with Nocturne, the gigachad on elm street.
A little about me: my name is Oceansong, or just Ocean. I'm a jungler who learned to play in Korea and recently returned to the United States to play in NA. This is a very Korean playstyle and build, which might mean you'll get flamed by your teammates but when you're 26/2/15 and knocking down the nexus they'll thank you.
Runes (Loadout)
Nocturne is the best of both worlds: he's an assassin who has a huge ult, but his abilities make him one of the best duelists in the game. He has extremely high single target damage at all stages of the game, and these runes accentuate this. I take cut down in 90% of my games because this build means you have less health than bruisers and even mages, so you get a lot of value out of it while killing targets you'll normally have trouble with: tanks. If you want, you can take last stand or coup de grace as well, this is just personal preference. This also helps you duel tank junglers that will have more health than you in the early and midgame.
Rune Page
Summoner Spells (Loadout)
Everyone takes flash smite as Nocturne, and so should you. If you want to crank the psychopathy up, you can go ignite smite against high damage duelist junglers. I do this sometimes against high healing bruisers like Warwick or Xin Zhao, but this is rare.
Summs (Role 1)
Skill Path
Nocturne's Q, Duskbringer, gives him an immense amount of AD in the early game, as well as movement speed, great damage, and chase potential. We always max this first. Nocturne's W gives a ton of attack speed per level (300 gold worth) and doubles the attack speed if you block an ability, which is why we max this second. It helps with taking objectives, clearing camps, ganking, and dueling. E is a great ability, but it's much more situational, so we max this last. Level your R whenever you can.
Skill Path
Nocturne
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
6
6
6
6
7
7
7
7
8
8
8
8
9
9
9
9
10
10
10
10
11
11
11
11
12
12
12
12
13
13
13
13
14
14
14
14
15
15
15
15
16
16
16
16
17
17
17
17
18
18
18
18
Item Builds
Nocturne is a duelist-assassin. Building him as a bruiser means that you deal low damage in exchange for survivability, but in 99% of games it's better to go for a hybrid assassin build that lets you blow up a high priority target.
Item Set 1
Breakdown
This item is fantastic for doing Nocturne's primary job, which is to blow up a mispositioned target before the darkness of his ult wears off. Duskblade is fantastic at getting you multikills with the extra damage, invisibility, and slow, and the ability haste it gives you means your ult is on an incredibly low cooldown.
Ravenous Hydra is one of the most overpowered items in the game right now. It has omnivamp, the second highest AD of any item besides infinity edge, insane ability haste, and is extremely cheap. Nocturne already clears his jungle fast, but this item lets you vacuum up minion waves, your jungle camps, enemy jungle camps, neutral objectives and enemies with hilarious speed. I've hit 10cs/min as a jungler just from the power of this item. Especially in low elo, this means that you will be outfarming the entire enemy team at such a rate you automatically outscale them in items and levels.
One spell shield isn't cool. You know what's cool? Two spell shields. The
The biggest issue that Nocturne has is ulting a supposedly alone enemy only to see a Leona, Thresh, or Nautilus standing out of vision. Having Edge of Night gives you a bit of health, some survivability, and safety against a bad choice or getting picked off. With both of your spellshields, you can neutralize the entire burst from an enemy mage without having to react or rely on good ping to use your W to block the first one.
Serylda's Grudge is the best lethality item. Wait, hear me out. First, lethality is NOT flat armor pen. It's flat armor pen per level, which scales. While an item might provide 18 lethality, it scales by level, so at level 11 you have 15 lethality. To get the equivalent armor pen from Serylda's, a target needs to have only 50 armor.
So let's take a hypothetical situation. Everyone in the game is level 11, you have Serylda's in your inventory. You go to assassinate an Ahri who has a stacked armguard and 1 armor shard. Her armor is now 51.71 + 30 + 6 ≈ 82 armor. Ghostblade would reduce this armor by 15, whereas Grudge would provide 30% armor penetration, or ≈25 flat armor pen.
This item is great against squishy targets, tanks, mobile enemies, and just about any other champion. And it also has tons of ability haste. More ults, baby.
This item can be replaced with Chempunk Chainsword for antiheal, but if they don't have a ton of healing, Death's Dance is great. This lets you blow up an enemy that's surrounded by teammates and essentially ignore 30% of the damage that you took. With Ravenous Hydra healing you, Death's Dance will keep you from getting instagibbed and suffering the wrathful question mark pings of your allies. And it has (you guessed it) ability haste.
Boots are for flavor, so depending on the damage that's in the game, you can go either Plated Steelcaps or Mercury Treads. "But why no Lucidity boots?" I hear you asking. I'm glad you brung it up because I been dying to talk about it for a hot minute. With this fairly low health build, Nocturne needs some more survivability. Boots are the fastest, cheapest way to itemize against most of the team and shore up some weaknesses without investing in an item that provides resistances.
If you're insanely fed, you can go for lucidity boots, but at a certain point ability haste is overkill.
This is an often overlooked item on Nocturne. It allows you to find isolated targets in the jungle and ult them. It requires you to have good intuition and tracking, but when used correctly allows you to be almost everywhere. Even if you're a new Nocturne player, you can use it to reestablish vision of a target that slipped out of vision.
These items will be fine most games, but there are always exceptions. You can't expect to go a single build every single game and be successful, so be sure to itemize according to the team. Serpent's Fang, Chempunk Chainsword, and Black Cleaver are all great items I buy on occasion.
How to play Gigachad Nocturne
Many players like to say that Nocturne is an ult reliant jungler. This is a symptom of his ult being SO GOOD for most situations that people forget he has a great kit.
As Nocturne, you are one of the best duelists in the game. There aren't many champions that can go toe-to-toe with you and survive, especially in the early game. As Nocturne, you should be looking to invade early, as soon as you hit level 3.
At level 6, you are looking for ults. Botlaners apparently load into the game without a minimap, so feel free to spam ult them. The first ult will blow their flash, but then 120 seconds later you get another ult and a guaranteed kill. Any time someone is trading a lot in lane, you should be pathing toward that side of the jungle, hard clearing, and waiting for a chance to ult them.
Nocturne's ult is also a fantastic counterganking tool. Once the enemy jungler has used his rotation and the enemy laner has used their rotation, everything is on cooldown. Then you blast in with your R-W-Q-E and lay them out.
Speaking of W, there's two ways to use it. The first is preemptively. If you're ganking someone who has some CC, you'll want to use your W as you ult since their first instinct will be to throw that CC at you. Against champs with more selective CC, you want to hold your W until they use it. For example, Fiora can use her W to Riposte your E. But if you spellshield her W, you aren't stunned and will get a huge amount of attack speed.
But if you're ganking a Vayne or Ahri, for example, you'll probably want to use your W as you're flying in with your R. This means that Vayne can't Condemn you away or Ahri can't charm you once you arrive. This is based a lot on experience, so the more you play Nocturne the better your spell shields will get.
The best way to win as nocturne is to make sure that the enemy jungler doesn't exist before you get your ult. If you are invading and placing constant pressure on them, they won't have the gold, items, or tempo to be impactful on the map.
When you invade, it's very easy to use lethal tempo and your kit to demolish most enemy junglers, especially farming junglers. I'll go over some of Nocturne's best matchups below.
Easy Matchups
Breakdown
Lee Sin is nightmare food. Whenever some poor hapless fool picks this champion, you can make his entire life hell. Many Lee Sin players know their champ has high early game damage, so they won't run when you invade. They'll try to fight you. If you can spell shield his Q, you will autowin the fight. Hit him with your Q, fear him, auto attack him to death.
In the mid game, when he tries to make a pick, usually he'll be out of position. You can ult him, kill him and then take an objective or wipe his team. Lee Sin is a very easy matchup.
I hate poppy, but she's easy as well. All of her damage comes from her E-Q combo, so if you can W her E, you autowin the duel. She'll get obliterated and won't be able to contest any objectives against you unless her team is backing her up.
The Ruined Simp is no match for the nightmare in the jungle. Spellshield his W, fear him, destroy him. His tapped W is not long enough to break your fear, especially if you hit him with your Q and get the extra path movement speed, so dueling him is a joke.
The way you beat Warwick is to either take ignite or just try to outfarm him. Before he gets his tiamat, you will be able to build a significant lead in terms of clear speed.
If you must duel him, be sure to spellshield his Q to deny his healing and you should be able to win. The problem is that even if you win, his healing makes it so that his team has time to rotate and kill you, which is why the Warwick matchup can be sticky or go wrong extremely fast, even if you do counter him. The best part about fighting warwick is when both of your fears go off at the same time and you both wander around each other terrified. It's hilarious.
You can beat graves at 2 items, but he's extremely annoying until that point. He can blind you and juke your Q, your W will only block half of his Q, and with his passive armor he can be surprisingly tanky. Avoid fighting him early unless you're on blue side and can invade him early, since most Graves players like to fullclear.
Vi is extremely easy because most of her damage comes from her E, which you can block one charge of. If you invade her while she is clearing her camps, she will likely have one or both charges used on a camp and you can easily kill her. Vi is item reliant and honestly a worse version of Nocturne, so you should have no trouble the whole game.
Hard Matchups
Breakdown
I hate this champ. She does more damage than you early, is more tanky, more mobile, and sets up her teammates extremely well to rotate and kill you. If you find yourself against her, focus on outclearing her and beating her to 6. Once you're level 6, you can countergank her with your ult or just get tempo on the map that she doesn't have. Overall, she beats you at most stages of the game.
ok.
Dodge.
You beat Kindred pre six, but post-6 her ult turns you into a cute little butterfly so honestly, don't even bother. Powerfarm, look for tempo, win before she has 3 items.
He's tanky, he heals a lot, he out tempos you and will make your life a living hell at objectives. Honestly one of my least favorite matchups. You can beat his farm and try to outscale but otherwise, it's going to be difficult.
Synergies
Nocturne gains movespeed toward all feared targets. That means that any champion that has a fear has fantastic synergy with you.
Breakdown
Another jungler but sometimes seen top or support. His point and click fear is a great CC to set up ganks.
Shaco support or top is great for giving you some synergy with his boxes and clones. You can roam together and make people's lives hell.
Urgot's ultimate fears everyone when it kills its target. If you ult the same target at the same time, it gives you a great deal of mobility in the fight since you're extremely fast and can fear an enemy while they're already feared from his ult.
Shen ult plus nocturne ult is elite, since you fly in at a million miles per hour with a 700 health shield, and then when you hit and start fighting Shen is there with taunts, auto attack blocks, and backup. Great synergy.
Health bot that you can take with you, making you essentially unkillable. Great synergy.
Vex is a wonderful mid for Nocturne jungle. Strong ult setup, strong followup engage, and your ult gives her the space to make plays, or vice versa. Hell for the enemy team.
Malzahar's R is great because when he ults someone, the enemy team will be trying to kill him. Your ult can distract them as he finishes someone off while you're in the backline. Those two ults together can rip a teamfight in half.
Big Nocturne.
500 AD Nocturne.
Healthy Nocturne.
Ganking
Sometimes I watch videos where people talk about how it's impossible to gank on Nocturne pre-six. They're wrong.
Nocturne has great ganks, especially on blue side, since he's able to easily gank top and mid, and bot lane is easy enough if they're pushing. Post six, ganks on blue side are very simple as well. Here's a few easy blue side ganking routes.
On red side, ganks are a bit trickier since A) it's easier to get blown up by bot side pre-six, and if top wards the river ganks are a bit tougher. But here are some routes you can try.
And that's it. Go forth and eat someone for lunch.
