How To Think & Play Like A Challenger - Jungle Guide
In this 30‑minute live‑commentated gameplay video, Challenger‑rank player Perry Norman walks viewers through a Viego jungle match from start to finish, explaining his thought process, decision‑making, and mechanics at every stage. He begins by outlining optimal early‑game clear routes (Q on Gromp and blue buff, top‑down clearing, prioritizing bot lane for tempo), then continuously evaluates map information—enemy jungler positions, camp respawn timers, and objective timers—to decide when to contest dragons, heralds, or secure crabs. Throughout the match he discusses itemization choices (early Merc Treads, Guardian Angel, Death's Dance, Zhonya's, Elixir of Iron, and situational lethality items), vision placement, and communication with teammates via pings and chat. Perry also critiques teammate mistakes, adapts to dynamic game states (e.g., losing a bot lane fight, enemy CC composition), and emphasizes maintaining lead by farming safely when ahead. The video ends with a hard‑fought victory, highlighting the importance of patience, map awareness, and flexible play‑calling for high‑elo Viego jungle performance.
Chapters
Hey guys, it's Perry here. Today I'm going to show you guys how to play and think like a Challenger Viego player. If you guys don't know me, I've been Challenger for about 7 years now. I've played professionally as well on Disguised and Dignitas. So for those of you guys who are new, we are going to show you how to stomp on Viego, how to play Viego very cleanly. For those of you guys who already know who I am, who know me, well, welcome, welcome back. Let's get into some more Viego gameplay and let's freaking get some LP and show you guys all the fun little tips and tricks that you can do on this champion. So first things first, You can do a little Q like this. I like clearing like that. Sometimes I don't feel confident. If I don't feel confident, I won't do it. But if I do feel confident, going for a Q on both the blue and the Gromp is actually just the fastest by far to clear because you get your Q passive on both and then you pull the camp as well for the aggro range. It's huge. Let's go for our wolves. We'll go for our raptors. We're going to clear all the way top down. I always recommend clearing towards the bot side. And the reason why is a winning bot lane means there's a winning support and a winning support can usually take over the game with you. ADC is also generally just— can be strong if you play around them. So that's why I'm interested in playing through bot lane pretty often. And I think Dragon is almost always going to be stronger than the Grubs. But of course, the game is dynamic and not every time you can play through bot lanes. Things happen, things change. In this case, my bot lane seems to be doing pretty good. My mid lane is doing exceptionally well. Both mid laners have Ignite. My mid laner is roping the enemy mid laner. Oh, that's a good one.
That's huge.
Bot lane's fighting hard. I'm going to stick to my full clear first. And here's like something that's like I need you guys to do for yourself is use good tempo. So as a Challenger player, what I'm thinking of right now is this is spawning. If you look at the map in 1 minute and 20 seconds and it takes around 30 seconds to recall or 28 seconds to recall, 22 seconds to walk to your first camp. And so I'm thinking about how do I make it to my first camp respawn? Like, that's my top priority. Top, top, top priority. And so I want to make this bot play, make it happen fast and then go for the top camp respawn. Okay, so in this picture here, I want to see if Kha'Zix is on the crab or not. What is Kha'Zix doing? He's not here. And so that probably means that he's up in the top side. So I'm going to ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Let him know, yo, be careful. Vol'jin seems to be playing chill as well. That was maybe Amumu. I'm walking forward here as well. We see Kha'Zix. This guy is giga fucked now because he slowed down his clear and I'm getting 2 crabs now, which I will always play for 2 crabs. I don't think I play for this. I, again, I want to recall and make it back to my topside respawn. So I'm gonna ping my LeBlanc, let her know I don't want, I don't want any of that. What I'm actually going to do here is go for a nice little ward for my Shen real quick while he lanes. And this way I can just recall here. I could also come help my top laner too if things come to that. Yeah, I'm coming. Let's flash in to secure that. Very nice. And let's go for the wave. I'm gonna go E possess, and let's check a Q out here. I want to possess towards the end, make sure Shen gets his wave in, and then I'll look for a recall here, and we're really good. What up everyone in chat? If you guys don't know, I stream all these games live on twitch.tv/perryjg, so you guys can come watch there to, you know, be a part of these games live, and I always commentate all my games. So yeah, we had to Flash on the Olaf just to guarantee that kill. Otherwise, it's a waste of my time. I'm down to use Flash if it comes to guaranteeing. Kha'Zix will be on his Krugs a little bit faster than I will be on my Gromp, but I have pretty good items, so I'm going to be clearing very, very, very swiftly. We're going to go for Gromp, Wolves, all the way down, just complete full clear. There's a cool thing we can do this game because we got 2 crabs. We will have a bigger Smite than the enemy Kha'Zix. And so because we'll have a bigger smite than the enemy Kha'Zix, we can probably play for either the dragon or guarantee the second crab. Both are, you know, great options to play for. And depending on my mid laner's condition, which my mid laner seems to be doing pretty good, has better items, and depending on my bot lane's condition, which also they seem to be trading decently well right now, I might consider to go for this dragon. Okay, things look pretty good overall. Again, there's this crab here too. I'm gonna save my smites. Bot lane's wave, it looks like they're trying to freeze it a little bit. Mid lane's pushing in. I want to try to ping to them That I want to do this dragon. If we can try to like communicate like, hey, like, yeah, she's like pushing. And so I want to like go ahead and say like, yo, we can go do this because look at my smites and look at the enemy jungler smite. Look at my level. And so my Vayne is perfectly playing around like pushing the wave out essentially, not letting it stay exactly where it is. I'm trying to get my mid laner to come watch this too. Okay, mid laner dies. It is what it is. Just play for this, it's fine. I have a bigger Smite than him. Fuck, this ain't easy. Okay, we can try to kill this guy. I can try to possess here. We killed this guy too. I have Jinx. Jinx this thing here. Whatever, Vayne will kill him. That's fine. I'm not too opposed because if Vayne kills, I get my item. So I was really close to my item there and that's huge. Honestly, that Kha'Zix did way more damage than I expected, but everything was so amazing. Everything was so amazing in that entire sequence. And so now what we're going to do is I know bot crab is up. I got the dragon. I don't actually care necessarily about About this bot crab, what I'm going to do is I'm going to speedrun, clear all my camps towards the bot lane, and then go ahead and play for the bot crab after, or even an invade on his camps. But number one priority here is clear all my camps as swiftly as I possibly can. I'm not going to use my smite because I want to use the remainder of my E. I'm going to auto W auto. The idea there is like if I smite, I lose time on my, my E, and this way I can smite at the end of the Gromp here. And while my E is recharging, it's a little more efficient. Olaf's loss is mine. This is good. So I have my full item. I'm fed as shit. And so what I'm looking to do in this case— Their Amumu is also mid here— Is play to invade the bot side. Now the issue is my mid laner will not be here, but Kha'Zix has decided to already lose, like, lose the game from that top play. And so that gives me full control over his bot camps and Like everything, like his whole fucking family. Honestly, his whole family is mine. So we're gonna go play for this. Yeah, we can go for this Amumu now. We take this kill and then we can go forward here. We get Ahri's ulti, great. And then the idea is we keep playing with the Thresh. We keep playing all of these camps here. And we have our Thresh to support us. And same thing with our Vayne. What? He took— he just took that from me. I didn't heal, so my Thresh actually just took that camp from me. I'm actually kind of salty, like for sure. I think my Thresh is a bit dumb right now. I got that wave. Thresh tank, Thresh tank. And now our LeBlanc is dead as fuck. Okay, this was just played so poorly all around. Like genuinely so poorly. There's a ward here. I need to run for my life. I need to go clean my bot camps after. Okay, so I'm out of here. I'm leaving. And what I want to do is I'm gonna go ahead and grab my bot camps and then go to my top camps right after. But that was just done so poorly from everybody. I want to smite just in case the Kha'Zix is coming around. Drop my E there, and we're gonna keep clearing all of our camps. I might lose my Gromp. Maybe. We'll see.
I'm gonna go for the Gromp.
Let's look to recall. We're gonna full clear down towards the Dragon. And in this case, I might lose one camp here, and I'm not too unhappy about that. They also have like an insane amount of guaranteed CC. What I mean by that is look at the Kha'Zix— not the Kha'Zix, the Amumu and the Ahri. And that's like really crazy high amounts of CC. And so when I see something like that, going for an early Merc Treads is not bad. I'm pretty happy to have an early Merc Treads. We're gonna go Gromp. We're gonna go Wolves. I see top lane. I see the fights. I understand that being a part of this could be nice for my top laner. And for the game itself. But like, in all honesty, playing for the dragon is a little more consistent than going for this top kill. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna say like, hey, I want this dragon. My teammates are going to die, and Olaf is gonna see me, which from the Jinx rocket, which is crazy by the way. He should never be able to see me there, but the damn Jinx rocket just like nails me in the head. Okay, my LeBlanc's gonna push the wave in. I want LeBlanc to come. Yo, come. This guy's gonna tank the Ocean Dragon for a bit. And we can probably just kill this guy ourselves. Your pain is nothing compared to mine. We can kill this guy ourselves too. And get this kill as well. Drop our E down. And then go for this dragon. And these guys are just screwed. Nothing that they can do. I am extremely fed. I am so strong all around and they just keep disrespecting me over and over and over again. And so I'll punish them. I'll punish you. And I put myself in the right position, like, constantly so that I'm allowed to punish them like this. Otherwise, things just won't be as easy. Notice how, like, I chose to stay bot lane. I chose to go down instead of going up and playing for the top laner because there's just better value going bot lane. And then we should look to kill this guy here. We can get the, get the camp here too. Pick this up. And now instead of leaving, or instead of staying, I'm gonna leave and then go top down. I don't have my item necessarily. Um, I'm gonna play for it now. Let's just play for item. Like, it's fine. Oh fuck. Okay, my Vayne should be able to get the kill with an auto. Great. And let's recall and then go top down. And that's like guaranteed like good bot play here. The Amumu and Jinx just thought they can walk through and win. That was like way too disrespectful for them. We get in full IE here, and now that they're gonna start building armor, we're going to go LDR. Okay, Kha'Zix actually went bot lane and just like ignored my top camps. The crazy part, guys, is I'm 2 items and I don't actually know if I can even beat this Olaf. That's the craziest thing. Um, the TP's coming in, so I definitely can look to kill this guy now. Beautiful. I don't actually care who gets that kill there. What matters to me is that guy— this guy can't break the turret. It's a little bit nicer for the game if that turret's alive. And I'm playing Olaf here, which is nice because I can pull that camp there and I can do a little bit of a double camp like this. And then we continue our clear top down all the way towards the bot side. We're playing a natural game. Like, I don't know if you guys noticed, but like, I am always clearing my top respawn camps, going into the bot side and playing towards the bot lane. And then anytime there's activity in the bot side, I go make plays towards the bot lane and I, I win fights pretty much. Everything happens in the bot lane. Okay, I need to be slightly careful here. Reason is they have so much CC, I have to be somewhat cautious. The Shadow Isles are just— Ah yeah, I called it, I called it. I have to be, I have to be somewhat cautious and I went in and I got baited. And so the Amumu at least caught my shutdown. It's like, uh, yo, yo, don't do it, don't do it, bro, and then you do it. So my bad, quite disrespectful of me. And it's going to cost a lot because now my Vayne dies, my Shen dies, and we're actually going to get aced here. And so this game, as good as it feels and as great of a position as we're in, if I don't play perfectly, we're not gonna win this game. And so what am I going to do in this game? Well, we have Dragon stacking, we have Soul pressure. I'm gonna keep pressuring Soul, but the main and most important thing I have to do in a game state like this is maintain my lead. So the way you maintain your lead is you stop making a lot of plays and you start making sure that you're farming all your camps, you're getting all your goodies, all your resources, and you kind of avoid the enemies being grouped. Also, I'm just an idiot for kind of face checking. Like, I am just an idiot as well. So I can't, um, I can't— I'm just gonna go for it. You know, disregard the fact that I just played like an idiot. Um, okay, we can look to go forward here. I don't mind. It can be anybody here, honestly. It's gonna be beautiful. Okay, we're gonna go for the Herald now. I'm gonna clear this and then go for the Herald. We're gonna grab this Herald here and we're gonna go play for this Dragon still. We still want this Dragon, but what's very important to me here Is that again, I'm not going behind for objectives. I want to keep my pacing in this game. So what that means is instead of running straight to the Dragon and setting that up, I could go for my top camps first and then go for this Drake. And especially on this timer here where my Thresh is just killing himself, it might not even— it might even be better for me to like not fight this Dragon because we're down a full teammate. And so I wonder if we can go kill their top laner instead. Because our Teammate's legitimately dead. So maybe we can kill this Olaf who is probably going to overextend, who's probably going to be a little bit greedy here. Okay. Oh my God, my LeBlanc is an actual idiot, by the way. That guy dying there has to be genuinely illegal. Okay, let's finish all of our topside camps. We can hit the turret by a bit here. Let's get like 2 plates, and then we want to leave and then go maybe Herald their mid turret. That should get me the plate. That's right, don't fall behind for objectives, keep getting gold. Yes, that's League of Legends right there. Keep getting gold, keep getting gold. And so it takes a certain level of play and level of understanding to just not put yourself in dogshit situations for gold. Now the enemy, the enemy bot lane, I think— Oh, it's actually just working for them. Which is not ideal because I'm the most fed person on the team, and they're just over here doing all this crazy shit. And I'm gonna go break this mid turret, and Olaf's gonna come around here. And so what I want to do— actually, Olaf went top lane. That's fine. We're gonna go ahead and, you know, this, this whole— all that shit's gonna fall. I can eventually go bot lane from a flank. Honestly, I don't, I don't hate it. This guy better not die and Before I even can make it there. I'm sitting on 3K gold. In all honesty, this is a bit risky, but I don't mind like investigating. I whiffed though. He whiffs too. Oh my God, and she had— she has a fuck— wow, she actually got extremely lucky there. That's wild.
The enemy is unstoppable.
Okay, I ended the game. GG. Not GG, but not good. That's a fat shutdown for us. No way!
I—
oh my God. Wait, this guy has so much armor. Okay, it's fine. I was sitting on 5K gold, but that guy actually has so much armor that I can't kill him there. I should have just stayed as Jinx. I don't know why I melee ranged him. I thought I could kill my Olaf with my Viego ulti, but I don't have my LDR yet. And so I'm just missing out on so much damage. That was a bit dumb of me. It was definitely like a winnable situation. A bit dumb of me. I have 3.5 items with Merc Treads. Super hard game. My teammates, if we evaluate who is strong, who is weak. When it comes to who is strong, Vayne has 2 items. So Vayne has something going for her. We land a hook. Okay. I want to go ahead and play with my teammates here. Fuck, this guy is just dead as hell, huh?
Fine.
Maybe I can kill him in time.
Nope.
Okay, this is not good. I can go for another top wave though. And what we should do here is actually just recall for our item while we have enough gold for our item, pretty much. We can buy one pink ward here and then go defend our bot camps. Kha'Zix is already here, all good. I can go play with Kha'Zix here or go play with, um, LeBlanc. He takes the cone away. And so we want to play Using Fog of War here. Kind of wish I had my pink ward. I want to play using fog. I want to play in this line here, in this bush, kind of pressuring through the side lane, seeing who's going to come in to face check in this position. My Thresh needs to go grab a ward here. It's probably going to be an Olaf, which is fine, I think. He's just going to get one-shot by me because I have my LDR now. That's the funny part. Bro, go! Oh my God, he doesn't hit anyone. Enemy double kill. Oh my God, my Shen. Oh my God, my Shen needs to get investigated. Okay, what's next here? What are we trying to buy? Honestly, like a GA seems good to me. That Ahri is really fed as well. But all around, like, it's a hard game. I don't think the camps are going to make a big difference here. What's going to make a big difference is having a better position on them. And so I want to bring Thresh to play for this guy in the top lane. Yeah, he just teleported. He has too much tempo here, essentially. Bro, give me a lantern away. It's fine, I have Shieldbow. Thresh is completely lost. Fuck, he had a sweeper going on there. I can't tank it. I won't, I won't tank it. I am playing Viego. I will not tank that. It's my Shen or nothing, bro. I'm not tanking that. I'm gonna go for it.
Okay, bro, that—
oh my God. Bro, nah, like, I got hit by the thing, but like, genuinely, genuinely, like, this Shen is so disgusting. I will just keep doing my best to win this game and maybe the enemies will make mistakes. And you know, like, that's kind of the best you can do, the best you can hope for in games like this. You know, maybe the enemies will make mistakes. Like, they're human at the end of the day. Maybe they will fuck something up. Just maybe those positive things can happen, but there's no guarantee. And so you just, you just fucking hope. You just pray. You just be in the right position at the right time, and you just pray that like, you're not— like, people aren't that braindead. You know, you hope, you pray that your Shen doesn't ult the Thresh who's dying. You know, it is what it is. It is what it is, guys. Not every game is winnable, but I'm gonna try to be in a spot where I can win the game. Your inhibitor has been destroyed.
Okay.
Anybody has anything? This Shen is like so confused and he thinks I'm the problem. It's like the worst part. The fun part is like I don't have any teammate to play through. Like, this is like the worst case scenario, like no teammate to play through. Ah, she lost the— I need anybody to walk up and give me some space. Like, essentially, like, they need to walk forward and give me space, otherwise I can't play the game. Not you, LeBlanc. Anybody but you, bro. I know you want to, we kind of need you to go later. Okay, let's give up the bot side here. Like, it's fine. I have to give every dragon this game. But I will keep— I'll keep trying to farm, keep trying to stay up in the game, get my 5th item. I'm not level 18, I'm not full items yet. Like, I'm not full build, and so I can get stronger. My Thresh is just AFK in a bush, just no idea what's going on. It sucks. It does. Don't show yourself there. You're just so— you're just so dumb, bro. There's a revolution to fight. Don't show yourself in that bush like that, man. We have this Ahri kill. Beautiful.
Beautiful.
My LeBlanc is so funny. My LeBlanc is so funny for that. Like, actually so funny for that. Like, I, I, like, I can't do anything and my top laner is going to get himself killed now. And like, we could go GA. We could also stop ourselves from dying so fast by going Death's Dance. I think it'll be a team fight. I also want like Tenacity. I think GA is good. Already a monster. I agree, I agree, I agree. I just wanted to do one scan of over the bot side here. I don't want to show. I genuinely just don't want to show. Showing the least you can is great. I don't, I don't want to ever go in and start Okay, we killed them all. I just pop off here. I don't think we can end the game, so just focus this. Shen, come tank, bro. Just focus the burn. I still have GA as well. Huge. Holy moly. The elixir was like the best purchase so far in this game. And honestly, what we can do here instead, we can't go Sterak's. So what gives me tenacity? QSS, Endless Hunger, 5%. No, 20%. I think it's a— I think Endless Hunger is fine actually. We need tenacity. So, oh, whoa, whoa. Oh my God, I got rid of the HUD there. There's a button that can get rid of the HUD. I, I fucking thought I was losing my mind there. I should have bought another elixir as well, cuz my tenacity is going to expire soon. Okay, dude, dude. Oh my God. I'm getting the craziest angles on these guys. Actually, the craziest angles on these guys. Oh, I knew she was there too. I should have just tried Q'ing her in the bush. Fuck, that could have been game over for them. I knew she was in that bush too. Bro, bro, bro, bro, just go. He's dead there. Really? The melee range Kha'Zix, you don't eat him?
Really? Really?
Genuinely, you got me fucked up. If the melee range fucking guy, you're not gonna eat the— he's melee range to you. You have 4 teammates next to you and you don't eat him? Like, what is going on in your sick, sick mind? Like, what is happening, bro? Okay, should play for the turrets. My Thresh has ward there. Good. I don't want to overstay here. Okay, let's buy the defensive elixir. For tenacity, then go towards top lane. Maybe we can jump this Olaf who's overextending. He's gonna ghost away. That's good. We got a ghost at least. My Thresh just yoinks the blue buff. Like, is is everybody just not? Mentally here right now, my Thresh just like took the blue buff from LeBlanc. I'm at a loss for words at this point, guys. I'm at a loss for fucking words, but I just have to try to— I just have to just keep playing the best I can. That's how you win games. Bro, just wait. Just chill, chill and wait. They're going to get restless and face check. One million percent they will get restless and face check. Just wait. Wow, everybody's just conceding. Why are they conceding? Actually, actually, that's fine. Okay, that's fine, that's fine. Y'all want to recall? Y'all can recall. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Help this guy out though. Okay, what the fuck? Nice. Okay, can we end the game? I don't know. I actually don't think we can. I actually don't think we can. She, she waves too hard and Amumu will be up. I think it's genuinely too hard. I'm not even trying to like, like lie. I don't know, the game, it's just too hard. And so I think we should just play for Baron and Soul. Jinx flashed at least. That was huge. Let's go here. I still have my GA as well. Oh no, wrong potion. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I'm a robot. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Should I ever sell this Collector? Like, the lethality is getting less value, right? Is it like ever a Stormrazor or like an Essence Reaver maybe? Like, it could very well be. I'm not fully sure. Okay, I'm here. I found the pick. I always find the pick. I always play fog of war better than these motherfuckers. Always fog of war. I'm the fog of war fucking king, bro. Yo, yo, yo! Do you die here? Doesn't matter if this guy hits me or not. I have GA. I have I have everything. I have everything in the world to kill you. Okay, they have a pink ward there. Let's clear that pink ward. Damn it! Clear that pink ward. Bro, okay, if he landed that, that would have been sick, but I kind of need to just like get this thing off of him. Your team has destroyed— That's what I'm trying to do right now. I killed him through my ulti. That's crazy, by the way. Okay, I'm in my Viego E here, and I'm playing Kha'Zix. Okay, no, nobody disrespects too hard. Okay, that's fine. I kind of just E here and I sit and I wait and I just control space. Yo, stop! Just hit the fucking thing, for fuck's sake! What is wrong with you, man? Jesus! All right, do I— do we retire the Collector, guys? I don't think so, man. I don't know what else is better than Collector. Collector is just too good. Everything is just too good. Swap GA now. Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right, chat. You're right, chat. You're right, Death's Dance is better here. Lowkey, that's the best item in slot here. I'm not even LARPing. This is the best item in slot here. I'm not even LARPing. This is the best item in slot to win a to win a siege fight like this. They aren't going to expect it. Why not Death Dance? The shit you can do with with a Zhonya is just so powerful, like actually so powerful.
There we go.
Get the fight going. Okay, but my Thresh is just dead.
There we go.
Zhonya's death right there. I just showed y'all. I just showed y'all why. And guess what? We won. We just— we literally just won the game. Like I would have died there. I would have died there, chat. I actually would have died there without Zonias. Thirty-two kills. My teammates are so bad.
Oh my god!
I haven't had a worse set of teammates. I wouldn't have. I haven't had a worse set of teammates in a minute. I had to holy shit! I had to fucking work overtime for this win. This game was so fucking hard, but we did it. We did it. We did it. We did it, chat. This is why you never fucking surrender. I'll honor all my teammates, bro. I don't care. Y'all did an FF at least. I can respect that. 66,000 damage. Holy. And what rank? I mean, this is high diamond. I mean, I'm assuming this guy's like masters. It's kind of like low masters MMR. So it's not like, you know, Willy Wonka low. It's like low master. Just kind of Willy Wonka, but still, fuck me, man. That game was so fucking hard to win. So fucking hard. Oh my God. If you guys enjoyed that video, enjoy that performance, leave me a like, comment, subscribe. Peace, peace.
