Jungle Ezreal is HOT in KR SoloQ.

Korean League players have been irked by a new pick that keeps appearing in the solo ranked queues recently- Ezreal. Ezreal was SKT T1 Bang’s signature pick and is also beloved by many league fans for his mobility. He didn’t go through a rework like Graves, and the current meta has kicked him out of the bot lane, leading many Ezreal fans to dive into the jungle.

The community is abuzz about this- it seems as though almost half of the posts made by junglers on Inven KR are related to Ezreal. There were a variety of topics within these posts, from tips on playing Ezreal in the jungle to reviews on jungle Ezreal, or how a team suffered from a troll jungle Ezreal.

The number of jungle Ezreal plays are increasing as the KR player reactions continue to build up. One of Ezreal’s positions is set as jungle even on a statistics site, where the stats are not recorded unless the position is played a certain number of times, and these are the stats from tiers above platinum.

The error range may be big considering how there aren’t that many games played so far, but the current stats for jungle Ezreal are quite interesting. The win rate for Ezreal’s original position, ADC, is 47.73%, which is similar to that of jungle Ezreal, which is 47.65% (Based on August 30th). The win rate doesn’t go over 50%, but it’s still higher than that of champions that are used solely as junglers - Lee Sin (47.3%), Graves (47.49%), and Zac (46.81%). Furthermore, there is a high possibility of jungle Ezreal appearing in the Korean pro scene when so many people play and study it. After all, there was one time Afreeca Freecs played a jungle Lulu in the last LCK Regional Qualifiers.

Given all of that, what do the people who actually play him say? Some people say it’s worth playing as 1.5~2 tier, and some say they can’t understand those who do play him. Those who opt for the pick say it’s better to play him when countering junglers that are hard to escape from, like Kha’Zix or Elise, or against ranged junglers like Graves and Kindred, rather than just insta-locking Ezreal first. They also say that even after using all his spells, Ezreal can still go after enemy top laners with his outstanding mobility, which is a huge advantage. Anyhow, those who play jungle Ezreal all say one thing in common- jungle Ezreal should never ever buy Ionian Boots of Lucidity or Tear of the Goddess like they usually do in the bot lane for the late game since jungle Ezreal needs to make good use of their early phase advantage to actively harass the enemy team.

Even though there have been positive evaluations of jungle Ezreal, many players continue to criticize him as a ‘good pick for the enemy team to get kills’. In the case of UmTi from Jin Air Greenwings, “Please stop recommending jungle Ezreal to me. It sucks.” was his comment to people recommending such a pick, showing that it still lacks practicality compared to the attention it’s been getting.