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Catch-Up Experience and Jungle Changes in 7.22

RiotRiot Sotere·10/24/2017, 9:07:58 PM·1 votes·80,593 views

Hi Summoners!,

Wanted to give an update for some changes coming to PBE in the 7.22 cycle that will probably sneak under the radar. We’ve heard players’ laments about catch-up experience and taken them to heart. We don’t like the overall potency of catch-up mechanics available. Players that establish early game leads should not feel cheated out of their advantage by mostly invisible systems that are difficult to intuit. At the same time, these mechanics serve the important role of making it so games don’t seem over at the outset, and often drive a lot of action. With that said, in most even-ish games, we expect our changes to have minimal actual and perceived impact.

Not going to get too technical or specific about the changes, but wanted to touch on some highlights that indicate our direction:

Catch-up experience is only granted on Large or Epic Monsters. The amount per large monster kill is up, but the overall generated catch-up experience is going to be down substantially. Equally as important, there’s a clear path for an opponent to keep their enemy down further: don’t give them access to large monsters.

Wolf camp at level 1 will grant a full level. This was a casualty of there being too much experience in the jungle at the start of S2017. We’re hoping some routes are opened up as wolves are more relevant and razorbeaks are less so (catch-up experience changes make mini-razorbeaks no longer the only optimal XP path).

Rolling back the bonus teamwork catch-up experience we introduced in 7.4. In 7.4 we introduced some measures so that players that were substantially lower level than their team would get a boost in experience. Upon reflection, this acted more as a snowball mechanic than it served its original intent to provide a safety net for experience starved roles.

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/item/3252.png Poacher’s Dirk buffs. The Poacher’s Dirk no longer has a cooldown between enemy camps stolen, allowing for quicker stacking. For most of League’s history, counter-jungling’s main purpose has been to set the enemy jungler way behind. This is one exploration into a world where counter-jungling gets the successful jungler ahead in a meaningful way.

Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent.

With these set of changes (and a large number of supporting ones), players should feel like their leads gained are more meaningful. Particularly junglers should be able to flex their advantages into feeling they have a larger impact on winning the game. In addition to being more impactful, it should be understandable how and why a lead exists and less of a mystery when an opponent overcomes their early disadvantage to draw even. We’ll be watching closely over the next couple of patches and ensure a variety of roles still feel like they can contribute from the jungle, and that the jungler is engaging frequently with enemy champions.

245 Comments

LUNARY CHAP10/24/2017, 10:28:34 PM981 votes

"Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent."

Please, you really need to revert that, jungle tracking is a HUGE part of being a good jungler. I appreciate the other changes but this one is just perfectly reducing the skillcap of jungle.

Salron10/24/2017, 9:39:51 PM70 votes

How are we supposed to keep track of what camps the enemy has cleared then? This is a terrible change Currently if I see the enemy jungler ganking with 3 CS with double buffs, i'd know they only cleared buffs + gromp and the rest is up for me to potentially steal. Or if they came out with 6 CS that means they have done Gromp/scuttle + buffs + wolves. A sudden spike in 10 CS would mean they did Krugs, etc.

Please do not go through with this change.

Mysticman8910/24/2017, 9:20:18 PM23 votes

So how do partial camps work in terms of creep score?

If I steal a single mini-chicken from razorbeaks, do I get no cs for it? If the jungler comes along and clears the camp minus the 1 chicken I stole, do they only have a creep score of 3 resulting from it?

AwesomeGuyDj10/24/2017, 9:46:21 PM16 votes

"Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent."

Any clarity concerns that its (atleast looks like) no longer possible to determine the camps cleared by the jungler from CS score?

Pokemonred20010/25/2017, 12:05:36 AM11 votes

Not a fan of the CS changes, if I'm being honest. The different CS values per camp gave a good idea on what the enemy's path was if you've played jungle long enough to know how much CS a camp gives (10 for krugs, 6 for raptors, 1 for gromp, 3 for wolves, 1 for red buff, 1 for blue buff), as it gave you a good idea for a jungle path.

Also, how are we going to not give the enemy access to large monsters if we're not constantly in the enemy jungle? Back in Season 5 and Season 6, we could leave a tiny monster at every camp (barring Gromp), and as of Season 7, this is only possible with Raptors and Wolves, as Red and Blue Buff lost their small monsters, while broken-apart krugs despawn when the camp has been left. Will there be small monsters added back at more camps? Will split krugs stop despawning after the camps go down? Just some questions I have so far.

Helwïn10/25/2017, 6:45:43 AM11 votes

Lol jungle camps are all worth the same creep score.. Wtf is this. It will highly reduce the skillcap in jungle. Guess there wont be much difference anymore between bronze and chall jungler if u can't track the ennemy jungler anymore. Bullshit change inc.

When Riot smokes weed.

Sun Wu Ryuumoku10/24/2017, 10:02:40 PM8 votes

Poacher’s Dirk buffs. The Poacher’s Dirk no longer has a cooldown between enemy camps stolen, allowing for quicker stacking. For most of League’s history, counter-jungling’s main purpose has been to set the enemy jungler way behind. This is one exploration into a world where counter-jungling gets the successful jungler ahead in a meaningful way.

why so late ?

w56456745710/25/2017, 9:06:22 PM7 votes

I understand that jungle tracking is a valuable skill. As someone who capped at Diamond 4, I've only begun mastering it. It adds to the experience of jungling. It increases the ability one has to be truly skilled or truly indifferent about the game, which I think is great.

However!

Does jungle tracking solely rely on knowing the CS count? Of course not! If a Lee Sin shows up top at 3:20, what route did he take? Well, unless he's been AFK for 30 seconds or got help from his support half the route, he's done Buff - Wolves - Buff - Toplane Gank. There you go. And if you're really good, you can even tell exactly when those camps respawn. You don't need a CS count for that. It's now even harder to track someone in the jungle. But it's not at all impossible. So I heavily disagree with the idea that this change would lower the skillcap on jungling. In my mind, if people were to complain, it ought to be because it increases it.

Another problem is that even if you don't know the jungle route someone took and you didn't look at the timing, you have a fairly good idea of what the route was. You know most skirmish junglers go for a standard route with 5 CS, and you know most scaling junglers go for a full clear unless they see they are desperately needed for a (counter)gank. So even if you had no information on the jungler's CS at all and learning the time it takes to clear certain camps, you would still have a very good indication of what route someone took. This is all aided by the fact that some junglers are better at doing one camp over the other, meaning if only one camp was taken, you can guess which one it was.

As you can tell, there are boatloads of ways to infer or at least guess what camps a jungler cleared, only one of which is to do the CS arithmetic whenever the jungler shows himself on the map. The change caused by evening out the CS scores is marginal.

One last thing is that the cost of this in my mind minor change to how jungle tracking is done must also be weighed up against the benefit of allowing the millions and millions of players that are not in the highest percentile of competitive play an easy way to compare jungler CS. I think the clarity from this for 99.5% of the playerbase vastly outweighs what I think is not that bad of a change for jungle tracking.

I'd say: even out the CS score.

LostFr0st10/24/2017, 9:28:17 PM6 votes

Wolf camp at level 1 will grant a full level. This was a casualty of there being too much experience in the jungle at the start of S2017. We’re hoping some routes are opened up as wolves are more relevant and razorbeaks are less so (catch-up experience changes make mini-razorbeaks no longer the only optimal XP path).

For all the junglers who don't get leashed (as few as there may be) or get pushed off of their first camp by invade this is huge news. It is also greatly appreciated.

Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent.

This is huge. Won't be able to derive early jungle pathing 100% from creep score and be sure X camp is up anymore.

Ashen Rider10/24/2017, 9:41:08 PM6 votes

How much is added to your cs if you don't clear the entire camp?

NotSoEvilDead10/26/2017, 11:03:39 AM5 votes

arbitrarily changing CS for jungle camps is incredibly stupid. If you're worried about the clarity of gold gains, allow players to see total gold earned on the scoreboard. Either directly or via hovering over the current creep score.

This is just a ridiculous change.

ThatHaleState10/25/2017, 2:42:28 AM5 votes

This will make counter-jungling the big monsters and leaving a piece of the camp up to starve them more common.

How will the Creep Score show the amount taken from an unfinished camp?

xxxDogmanxxx10/25/2017, 4:15:35 AM5 votes

Wait, how are we supposed to know what camps the enemy jungler has taken if they're all going to show 4 cs??

TomiMan710/25/2017, 10:55:47 AM4 votes

Rolling back the bonus teamwork catch-up experience we introduced in 7.4. In 7.4 we introduced some measures so that players that were substantially lower level than their team would get a boost in experience. Upon reflection, this acted more as a snowball mechanic than it served its original intent to provide a safety net for experience starved roles.

This^^ will fck up support. How about this. Roll it back BUT if you have a support item this extra catch up xp will still work on you? This way junglers wont be affected but support will still have a chance to stay in game and not get beind by like 4-5 levels.

Kr1sys10/25/2017, 2:36:25 AM4 votes

I liked everything until you said jungle camps are worth the same creep score.

That's a stupid change. Tracking creep score from the jungler early can give a lot of intel on what's available to take when they expose themselves early and you don't have the resources to scout or ward their jungle yet.

Just Brian10/29/2017, 4:54:08 AM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sotere,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=24K8ORZQ,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-10-24T21:07:58.424+0000)

Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent.

@RiotSotere, whose conundrum is this? Consistent issue for whom? The analysts who talk about creep score tracking? The coaches who train people to do it? It's a valuable and HIGHLY informative tool and it's being considered for the reductionist role of a score board? Don't we already have that in the form of seeing enemy items?

And, let's just cut to brass tacks. There are the players who don't need or want this change, because they are able to track the pulse of the game without some arbitrary jungle camp cs and there are the players who won't care. They lose duels to enemy champions that are 2 levels and 30cs ahead of them and you think they will appreciate jungle cs being rounded? Huh?

And that's the other thing. The AoE monster you mentioned will have _more gold and higher cs _ because the camps they are clearing are worth more gold...and cs...Krugs=160g, Raptors=112g, Gromp=86g. This change makes it more inaccurate for your scenario because the champions that have cleared 4 raptors camps and 3 Krug camps by 10:00 are not merely 28cs ahead of the enemy. They are 54 ahead. They are not 7camps*100g=700g ahead. They are 928g ahead. The reason for the change doesn't even hold water.

And as to arguments by @Gixia that removing cs tracking increases the jungler skill cap by requiring more deep wards, I must simply say, "How?" They are not mutually exclusive activities. And, even more importantly for the sake of arguing the state of competitive macro, one informs the other. Deep wards can tell you whether they are skipping camps for more expedient gank routes and, with other information (like enemy HP), you can make calls to try to catch them at a camp you know they haven't cleared. When they pop up and have X cs in bot lane and they had X-4 before, you know they just did wolves/Gromp. You can steal raptors and...wait for it...place a deep ward. More safely. Cause...you know...you gained more information.

Limiting risks is one of the pillars of competitive gaming. You think it's, what? Brave to face check enemy fog of war to place wards? Knowing none of the enemy team is where you will ward is a benefit. Even better, knowing the enemy jungler cleared a top side camp and is ganking bottom tells you were they will likely be in a minute or two. There is just SO MUCH depth available to the cs score tracking and you're missing it, friend.

Spideraxe10/24/2017, 9:33:52 PM3 votes

Hey John Frank can I ask for your thoughts on counter jungling as a whole, do you feel it should be a main playstyle or an alternative tactic because I dont want to feel forced to do it and would prefer it to be organic

Mag1c10/24/2017, 10:11:52 PM3 votes

Creep score has to absolutely always count actual creep kills. Having "counting" that is not actually counting is really messed up and weird.

If you want to have mechanisms or statistics that count all jungle camps equally, then add a separate counter that uses weighted jungle CS, or whatever you want to do. But it is essential that jungle CS continue to be viewable in actual counts based on real events, not some edited/weighted "score" value.

A much, much better solution here would be to make sure no in-game mechanics (like catch-up XP or whatever) are being driven by simple jungle CS, and then report a raw CS value and support it with a secondary metric like "gold from CS" or "jungle camps cleared" or some other thing that is weighted or balanced or whatever.

TDS Blurryface10/26/2017, 5:44:01 AM3 votes

Jungle camps are all worth the same creep score. One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things. This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent.

If i have well understood this change will eliminate one of the main moments of jungler's early game: when the enemy jungler decides to gank early or i have vision of him i can see his creepes, in this way I know which camps he have just cleaned and I can predict which will be the next one (this is really important for counter jungling). After this change this mini-strategy won't exist anymore.

Bjartan10/25/2017, 1:31:28 PM2 votes

Do you want to prioritize ''invader'' junglers with this change to the Creep Score ? It will be really hard early game to track ennemy jungler without this and we will need to mostly invade because of this because just putting vision will put us under if we don't take mobs.

SuperPewPew10/25/2017, 2:43:24 AM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Sotere,realm=NA,application-id=A7LBtoKc,discussion-id=24K8ORZQ,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-10-24T21:07:58.424+0000)

Rolling back the bonus teamwork catch-up experience we introduced in 7.4. In 7.4 we introduced some measures so that players that were substantially lower level than their team would get a boost in experience. Upon reflection, this acted more as a snowball mechanic than it served its original intent to provide a safety net for experience starved roles.

Isn't this going to hurt supports though? On Live I'm always one or two levels behind, even after staying for most of the laning phase with the adc :/

ModDaenrysTargaryen10/24/2017, 9:11:27 PM2 votes

this is going to be one ride im probably going to have a love/hate relationship but if it makes me better im all for it.

ShadyGecko10/25/2017, 12:22:25 AM2 votes

I'm a bit worried these changes will make tank junglers too weak like they were pre-Mid Season. Especially the dirk changes, that is only a buff for lethality champions. Will other junglers receive some sort of compensation?

Also, I feel like the catchup changes are double dipping. Catchup EXP is down overall and it's now easier to steal that catchup exp (single target champs like Nunu can burst that part down and move on). Would it be less extreme overall to just reduce the catchup exp overall (maybe by a bit more)?

AUD1OSL4V310/27/2017, 6:25:32 PM2 votes

I like the Poacher's Knife buffs, but I wish there were multiple options available than just an option that builds into lethality. What is a Zac or Elise going to do with a serrated dirk? Nothing. I think a tank and mage option should be added at least.

Melvinizzle10/25/2017, 10:46:11 AM2 votes

Seriously, the 4 CS per jungle camp is rediculous as it removes an entire mechanic of jungleing AND for laners since it completely stops the enemy jungler being traceable which will completely destroy counterjungling which is contrary to the Poachers Dirk point.

To oversimplify this would be the equivalent of wave management from laning since you’re just stopping outplay potential by junglers who actaully play the role, it’s also impossible to pretend that this helps the jungle since it lowers the skill cap of all junglers which means there’s less reward for being good at the role in general and rewards brain dead players who haven’t put in any effort to improve as a player given how many ways there are to learn this skill.

Coaching exists, videos exist and tracking a jungler based on camps is not exactly the least intuitive thing to just figure out, people can learn and should have to if they want to improve. Whereas the only foreseeable "benefits" are that junglers who are proactive gankers can’t be punished (going against the buff to poachers along with the logic behind the catch up exp changes) and is low-key giving toxic players another way to say how great they did at 1v9ing and blaming others.

If you don’t understand the mechanic of tracking the enemy jungler so ignorance is the preferred route please watch some guides, google it or get a coach (myself included) and understand it then you’ll see regardless of role you can use this to outplay junglers in a noticeable way.

The catchup exp change is a different thing, I initially hated it for the Lee Sin/Elise/Graves exclusive meta that ensued for far too long however I’m now in the camp (which shouldn’t be worth 4CS) of that it’s good for the game in a toned down state since a completely farm/safe jungle is almost as toxic for the game for different reasons since it shuts out the aggressive junglers almost completely along with other stuff.