I really miss jungling...

But I can't stand this "Gank always, and then gank some more" play style.

Jungling used to be the most cerebral role in the game. It was like playing chess. Cat and mouse. It was as much about playing your champion as it was about playing your opponent.

Now its just whoever ganks more, wins.

And I don't play any of these early game champions that can just spend the whole time out on the map and not give a shit about EXP or gold. I play tanks, mainly, and without an item or two I'm just as likely to die as I am to perform a successful gank. I don't do any damage. I'm a tank.

So unless my play is flawless, or unless my team mates are cooperative, I'm pretty much rolling the dice every time I gank pre-6 or pre-items. It needs to be a cooperative effort to be successful. And with the way lanes are snowballing these days, thats a huge risk to take. Yuge™ risk. If my gank goes south or I get counter ganked, I basically just lost us the game. ESPECIALLY bot lane.

Champions like amumu, sejuani, zac... 8 games out of 10 I feel like I never even got a chance to be relevant. By the time I'm ready to do my thing, my team is either already 12-0 pushing inner turrets, or 0-12 losing inner turrets, with nothing in between.

So either I'm completely worthless because my team is just roflstomping (and I could have not even been a part of this game and they'd still have been fine), or i'm completely worthless because my team is being stomped. I just feel like I have zero impact. I'm at the mercy of whatever my team does in the first 5-10 minutes of the game - which is long before the champions I play really come online.

I've tried retiring from the jungle and going mid lane, bot lane, but my skill level is just not as high in those positions, so my LP is just tanking. In the past week or 2 I went from Gold 1 with 40 LP to Gold 4 with 15 LP, and if I keep playing, its just gonna get worse.

I really hope my champion pool becomes relevant again soon. But that would mean the games have to still be "Yet to be decided" at 8-12 minutes, instead of basically over already.

I do miss jungling, though. But there's just no place in the current meta for my playstyle/champion pool. The game just moves too goddamn fast anymore. :(