Best LoL Junglers in 2025 Season 1
The 2025 League of Legends season has unveiled a completely new format to the game, making the jungle meta confusing to understand.
Last patch, farming throughout the early game was the right call as late-game scaling junglers excelled in Ranked Games. However, as the 2025 League of Legends season begins, players are navigating a new terrain of gameplay that can be quite confusing to understand what the new winning formula for jungle is.
What is the Current Jungle Meta?
The current jungle meta is centered around early game junglers. So any jungler that is centered around farming up early for late game powerspikes like Amumu are going to struggle. So if you truly want to find success as a jungler in January 2025, be sure to think of champions that excel in the early game.
With that, let's talk about the seven best League of Legends junglers to pick up in League of Legends Patch 25.S1.1.
Play these junglers to climb the ranked ladder in Season 2025:
- Nunu
- Lee Sin
- Xin Zhao
- Viego
- Kha'Zix
- Elise
- Hecarim
1. Nunu
Nunu is a really great early-game champion with a lot of mobility to move around the map and collect kills. That strong mobility in the early game is what makes Nunu one of the top junglers of the 2025 League of Legends season. The key to finding success with Nunu all throughout the early game is prioritizing control over one of the river scuttle crabs.
Whenever you kill the river scuttle crab, you will gain extra mobility to move around the jungle. This will make your snowball build up even faster as you enter a lane and pick up a free kill and control. Finally, even if you fail to make a deep impact in the early game, you can gain comfort knowing that you will at least be a tanky wall in the late game. So, in the end, it is low risk, high reward for Nunu players.
2. Lee Sin
Lee Sin is quite literally the King of the Early Game and is perfect to pick up during this meta. because his ability to create plays by ganking is top tier. Players that pick up Lee Sin will be able to pick up kills as early as level two. That means you will only need to do one camp before going into another lane and ganking. Additionally, your strong early game allows you to invade jungles and disrupt your opponent's first clear.
Just be sure to get in some reps with Lee Sin before taking him to Ranked Games. He is a very difficult champion to pick and the movements for beginners can be quite difficult to learn. However, once you get a hang of his ward jumps, you are going to be unstoppable in the early game as there won’t be any bad matchups early for him.
3. Xin Zhao
This is a great pick for players new to jungling in League of Legends. Xin Zhao has a fairly simple kit to use in the game. All you need to do is get to level two and then go and gank one singular lane pushing in past the halfway point of the lane. Once you get that done, then you will find success as the mechanics are quite simple for Xin Zhao and your damage is amazing early on. The toughest decision you will face as Xin Zhao is deciding if you want to gamble a few kills early on for even more damage to end the game in 20 minutes or if you place priority on a safer approach by going a tanky method later on.
That being said, make sure your first item is always a damage item like Black Cleaver. From there, it's up to you. Just be sure you know that if you go for full damage, you won’t be able to instantly kill the backline in the late game, so closing out the game early is a must for Xin Zhao players.
4. Viego
The recent buffs to Viego’s ability cooldowns and overall damage place him firmly on this list of top junglers in the current patch of League of Legends. Viego is likely the most well-rounded entry on this list as he is strong throughout the entire game because of his ability to stack damage depending on how many kills he is able to get.
So, on top of being a great early-game ganker, he is a reliable option past the first 15 minutes, as a lot of his power will still remain if you play those first 15 minutes wisely. However, it is extremely important to at least have an even early game as you will struggle past the first 15 minutes if you play passively. Similar to other entries on this list in the current meta, Virgo will struggle without an early lead going into the later stages of the game.
5. Kha'Zix
Kha’Zix received a lot of major benefits from the boots buffs that have graced recent League of Legends patch notes. Additionally, Kha’Zix is known for its ability to snowball a lead through early game ganking pressure. League of Legends players looking to play an aggressive playstyle and rack up numerous kills should be sure to check out Kha’Zix.
Just be warned, Kha’Zix is incredibly frail when it comes to taking damage, so if you only get one kill before dying in a team fight, do not get discouraged. Additionally, it's completely normal to have some games where your ganks will do absolutely nothing, and you are of no use throughout the game. This will not matter because you will be the driving factor behind your teams' wins in most of your games.
Related Article: League of Legends 2025 Patch Schedule
6. Elise
While she doesn’t have very fast clears she is really good at being able to provide instant support to her lanes because of her strong early game ganking.
That being said, Elise is also another champion that we recommend playing in a few normal games first in order to get used to her unorthodox style of gameplay. As Elise, you will have two forms in the game and being able to understand when to use each form is incredibly important. However, those that give her the time of day will be on the receiving side of one of the best tower diving gankers in the game.
If you trust your teammates, we would recommend just collecting assists over kills, though, as your primary role is setting up your lanes for success. That said, you certainly can’t go wrong if you just pick up the kills for yourself. Just expect a lot less damage if the game goes past 40 minutes.
7. Hecarim
This is a great meta for Hecarim primarily because of all the boost to mobility and the scuttlecrab changes. For those unaware, Hecarim gains more attack the faster he is. So if you prioritize grabbing scuttlecrabs similar to Nunu, you are going to be a very fast pony jumping into your enemy lanes and picking up kills.
Our recommendation is to rack up early kills so that you can quickly reach your spike with Trinity Force and upgraded boots. While you will be pretty strong early, Hecarim’s midgame is what really makes him one of the best options in the current meta. Just be sure to start building some tank items to round out your items towards the end, as your damage does begin to scale off by the end of the game.
League of Legends players looking for more comprehensive guides like this should start by checking out our most recent patch notes of the game. Additionally, players looking to stay up-to-date with the full schedule of patch note updates in 2025 should check out our piece highlighting the patch schedule.
Sage got his start in esports as a volunteer writer in 2016 for esports organization, Dignitas. Since then, he has continued to work on his craft as a journalist and reporter for a number of established esports publications, such as esports.gg, Unikrn, Akshon Esports, Howla, The Player’s Lobby, Nerd Street Gamers, and most recently Dot Esports. Now, as a member of Esports Illustrated’s content team, Sage’s primary duties are centered around creating groundbreaking written and video content about the esports industry that impacts the community in a meaningful way. Sage graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and Informatics. There, he was a member of the Rutgers Esports Executive Board, both as the head of the fighting game community and a videographer/photographer for the Content team.