A recent discussion with one of my Bronze-rated friends led to him stating that he can’t carry games with a jungler in Bronze. I promptly disagreed with him and it’s my opinion that if you’re a decent player you’ll be able to have some sort of positive impact in most of your games regardless of your role. Support may be the least effective in Bronze but any other role can be highly successful for getting out of the fabled Elo hell.
A skilled jungler is able to get all of his lanes ahead with well-timed ganks. Understandably it’s not always possible but if you believe you belong in a higher ranked tier then you shouldn’t be struggling. If you consider yourself to be a good jungler then you know monster spawn times, how to make the most out of your buffs, you know ganking paths and are creative in finding an alternate way. Hopefully you also pay attention to whether enemies bought wards or not, and most importantly you know how to counterjungle properly or prevent it from happening to you.
I’ve seen how Bronze tier looks like and I can tell you that most players there have a very limited skills and understanding of the game and junglers are no exception. Any gold-rated player should be able to dominate every single match in Bronze even if jungle isn’t his main role. Even if you are or consider yourself to be Silver-rated, if you can’t make ganks happen then you’re doing something wrong, plain and simple.
Do note how I mentioned that you must make a positive impact in the match: that doesn’t mean you’ll still win every one. Players often play poorly, feed the other team or get confused. Making a few successful ganks doesn’t mean your teammates know how to take an advantage of it but still do everything you can to increase the chances of winning the match. However don’t take one good gank as an excuse to flame your team for their bad plays.
Best champions to carry you in Bronze games are any that you can play well. First priority is always to pick what you’re comfortable with and then focus on other things (in no particular order): clear speed, crowd control, sustain, ganking potential, counter-jungle, teamfights. Champions like Olaf or Nocturne should work well if your goal is to take out carries out of the team fight or at least distract them long enough, while Nautilus, Maokai or Nunu are more heavily focused on ganking to get ahead. This is by no means a full list but just an example of a few picks that might work well for you.
In Bronze or Silver I’d recommend picking junglers which can stand on their own two or more feet in teamfights, meaning you might want to avoid supportive ones such as Maokai or Nautilus despite their strong ganking power. Often in teamfights the best thing you can do for your team is to dive in and take out the enemy AD carry, so Nocturne, Kha’Zix and similar champs might work well. But do remember to primarily play what you’re comfortable with: just because a particular jungler may seem strong doesn’t mean you can play him well enough to take advantage of it.
My aforementioned friend plays Warwick almost exclusively, and not only is WW a semi-successful jungler in most matches but he also doesn’t play him nearly as well as he thinks. Still I never told him not to play Warwick since the champion requires very little mechanical skills and experience and can work well if you do your best.
To wrap this up I’d say that junglers may potentially be the best role to make the most impact in Bronze and Silver. You can help all of your lanes get ahead and with experience you should be able to counter the enemy jungler extremely effectively.
