Riot Games introduced a mid-scope update for Neeko in Patch 13.9 on May 3, with the hopes of turning her into a premiere trickster among the League of Legends roster.
Aside from transforming into her allies, Neeko can now take the form of minions, jungle monsters, wards, and even plants that can be found across the map. Paired with a small damage increase to jungle camps, Neeko can now also be played as a jungler, utilizing her passive to surprise the moments with creative ganks.
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That said, the champion is not as easy as people might think when played in the jungle. Therefore, we will be going over the builds and runes for her, as well as some important tricks to quickly learn her peculiarities and make the most out of her kit. Here is how you play Neeko jungle in League.
Neeko in the jungle: Runes and Build
Neeko’s rune setup for the jungle is slightly different from the one used in the mid lane. The main keystone rune is going to be Dark Harvest since your goal will be to take down champions while performing sneaky ganks with your passive. Thanks to the scaling nature of the rune, it will also boost your damage once you have built items and have lots of burst damage to kill the enemies.
The minor runes from the Domination tree are going to be Cheap Shot, Eyeball Collection, and Ultimate Hunter. Never change any of these as they grant the most benefit for Neeko. In particular, Ultimate Hunter is vital since it lowers the cooldown of the ultimate even further, allowing Neeko to get more burst damage combos which convert to higher chances of getting kills. Cheap Shot can always be procced with her E, Tangle Barbs, or her R, Pop Blossom, for extra damage.
For the secondary rune tree, instead, players are currently picking Inspiration the most, with Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight often comboed together. The latter is necessary to lower Smite’s cooldown, as well as having Flash ready sooner. Magical Footwear, on the other hand, allows Neeko to save 300 gold, and considering the great ganks she can pull off, it’s almost certain that she can get them well before the 12-minute mark.
When it comes to the items, the best Mythic purchase for Neeko is Hextech Rocketbelt. It grants her all the stats she needs, such as ability power and magic penetration, but also a dash that synergizes with the channeling of her ultimate. By building it, your chances of hitting your ultimate will increase exponentially, especially during chaotic teamfights.
The second core item for her is Shadowflame: it further boosts her burst damage by providing additional ability power and magic penetration. Paired with Sorcerer’s Shoes, Neeko will be able to burst down a squishy target with one combo.
That being said, there are times when getting Zhonya’s Hourglass will be stronger since Neeko will also become a squishy champion herself in the later stages of the game. Getting this item second will still give her a fair amount of damage while also strengthening her resistances—not to mention she will be able to bait the enemies. She can cast the ultimate first, and then use Zhonya’s active effect to become invulnerable, making sure she can get the full channeling.
To round off the build, you always want Rabadon’s Deathcap to further increase your total ability power and Void Staff to amplify your magic penetration. Morellonomicon can be a good situational item if you need anti-healing effects, but you won’t need it in most scenarios.
Neeko’s ability order
Neeko’s maxing order is the same as its mid lane version: R>Q>E>W. Always get her Q, Blooming Burst, at level one and whenever you can: it’s the main spammable spell for her jungle clears and also Neeko’s main source of damage during ganks. Max Tangle-Barbs second to increase the damage and the root duration, which is crucial to concatenate the damage with Blooming Burst. Since Shapesplitter has a high cooldown and doesn’t offer as much damage compared to other abilities, always max it last.
How to play Neeko Jungle
There are several important aspects to know when playing Neeko Jungle, so we will go through them one at a time.
Jungle clearing with Neeko
The jungle clear is extremely important for a champion like Neeko since she’s not as healthy as other champions in the meta. If you cannot farm the camps correctly, you will find yourself low on health, making your ganks harder to pull off.
Always make sure you’re kiting the jungle camps as much as possible. Neeko is a ranged champion, so take advantage of the extra range to space and lower the number of times the camp attacks you. If done correctly, you can have tens or even more than a hundred extra health for every clear, allowing you to stay on the map for longer and make more plays.
The best thing about Neeko is that she can solo start without the need for a leash from allies. When doing so, start from the raptors’ camp: thanks to the AoE damage from Q, Neeko will quickly clear the entire camp and get level two. After that, move to the Red buff and Krugs to clear both camps. By full clearing one side of the jungle, you will be able to get to level three, which is essential for ganking.
Once you get to level three, you always want to clear jungle camps in subsequent order on either side of the map, so you will always have them respawning altogether. That said, Neeko is not a power-farming jungler, which means that ganks will be a lot more important.
Ganking with Neeko
Ganking is where things get interesting for Neeko, as this is what differentiates a good from a great Neeko player. The most common gank you will be pulling off is what I call the “lane minion” gank.
To put it simply, you use Neeko’s passive to transform into a minion and walk to the lane as if you were a normal minion. As soon as you get close to the enemies, you throw your E-Q combo (and ultimate when available) to kill them. The main trick when performing it is understanding how minions behave and trying to replicate those exact movements so that the enemies don’t spot you.
Generally speaking, melee minions are better since you will be able to get closer to the enemies without them noticing. That said, there is one situation when caster minions are the better choice: whenever your allies are pushing the wave.
This is because melee minions would risk walking into the enemy turret, which is something that you want to avoid as Neeko at all times.
There is a chance the enemy spots you by counting the number of minions in the wave, but usually, it will be already too late by then.
Teamfighting as Neeko
Thanks to the Hextech Rocketbelt’s dash, as well as Neeko’s root, it shouldn’t be hard to land her ultimate. That said, landing multi-man ultimates might be a lot trickier than expected.
While the lane minion trick might work, it will be harder to pull off when many enemies are stuck together since they can burst you down and prevent you from fully channeling the ultimate.
When that happens, you can always try the “vision ward” bait: you transform into a ward and have your allies get into position to follow up. As soon as the enemies walk near you, use W to become invisible to get into the right position for a perfect Pop Blossom.
