New Jungle Broken

[There is a "too long, didn't read" summary at the bottom.]

I started playing LoL at just about the beginning of season 4. I didn't really want to get sucked into LoL because I saw how addicted some of my friends got. For some reason, I just decided to let them introduce me to it some day, and because I am Asian, I asked them which role was the hardest. They told me ADC required the most mechanical skill, and jungle required the most technical/tactical skill. I chose jungle, and thus began my journey from level 1 to level 30.

I learned all the roles, as anyone should, bought some champs, filled out my first masteries and rune pages, and before preseason 5 began, I would play nothing but draft jungle. I wanted to find the champion I wanted to main; the one that would become my life. Each new champion I bought seemed to be the one I would main for a bit. "OMG OP!" I said. "OMG such a troll!" I said. "LMAO = a dick!" I said. I look back on those days with nostalgia, even though they occured barely a few weeks ago.

I started to find 'my homies': a diamond I smurf and a guy who was banned from ranked because he won every single match he played (Rito thought he was cheating, though I seriously doubt he is). We used to play the team builder pre-S5 beta.

"DiamondSmurf: LoL the new baron design givs me ebola Me: LoL BannedRank: LoL ya but teh grompm is cool Me: LoL srsly but jk guys I luv u DiamondSmurf: LoL BannedRank: LoL"

As you remember, when pre-S5 was only in teambuilder, it wasn't broken. It was practically season 4, save for a few visual and minor mechanical changes.

I'm not one of those people that immediately hate change. In fact, I was looking forward to the jungle changes. After all, who wouldn't want to contest a river crab camp? Smite champions? A permanent, team--wide dragon buff?! How cool, I thought. A fool, I was!

When the pre-S5 with all the new items hit all queues, I was excited to try it out. I remember the first time I played pre-S5. I didn't know the new jungle path. I started as with leash at blue buff. The memory is fresh in my mind: I didn't reach level 2. I snapped at my team mates, thinking they leashed too much and sapped XP. They said, "o rly? sry man lol," and I said, "nah man lol i sry it's cool bro i'ma go frarm teh wraths--- i mean chickens lol," and to which they replied, "lol." So I go over to farm raptors: "Executed." I didn't realize at the time that I only had two potions. I also didn't realize I was getting my ass kicked by the camp long considered the easiest. I was observing my team's lanes and watching the minimap, only returning to my character to throw abilites at the bird. I waited for like, 50 gold at the summoner's platform to upgrade my . I went back to farming, and by the time I was level 3, the people in lane were already level 6. I remember the update said something about nerfing the efficiency of power-farming jungle camps. I didn't realize they negated it completely. I went top to gangbang (yes I call "ganks" "gangbangs" because that's what they are anyway) because the opponent was rather low. I realized I was pretty much useless there except for baiting the opponent into unsuccessfully trying to get an easy kill off me. Bottom lane took dragon 1 without me. I just felt small and impotent. I was playing as usual, while dealing with being levels behind, but by the time we took dragon 2, we pretty much destroyed the enemy, despite being slightly behind.

I'm not going to create a narrative of all the pre-S5 games I've played, but here's the two blatantly obvious issues I've had:

• The game is extremely snowbally. Well, not so much "snowbally" as "avalanchey." If we try to invade but end up losing 2 people, then the killers are immediately fed, as in "gg" fed. They get their item faster, zone out the enemy, get more items faster, and their opponent is out of the game unless they have effective poking methods like or (even though Rito said they wanted to tone down the effectiveness of poke comps). If the enemy is a poke champion and they're fed? Forget about it. Surrender at 5. Also, dragon buff OP as all hell! I am not exaggerating. Every single game in pre-S5 I've played -- first team to get dragon 2 wins. No exceptions. I mentioned this above, where our team was falling behind slowly, but come dragon 2 and gg. Dead serious. Even if it looks like the team with dragon 2 is losing, they're not. They're gonna regroup mid, poke the enemy down, tower dive the weak-ass inhibitor turret, and end. There's no point in taking Baron because he's just way too strong. If your team is behind, Baron will make you all nice and tender, and your whole team will give some lucky passerby an easy penta. There's no "sneaking a quick Baron" anymore, either, unless of course everybody is level 18 full build with upgraded . Your whole team is gonna be missing for a minute, then the enemy will take dragon 2 and end.
• The new jungle camps are way too 他妈的 strong. Following the generally accepted pre-S5 meta (start gromp or minigolems), you have to back after taking your second camp, unless you're or something. If I remember correctly, Rito wanted to nerf the efficiency of farming in the jungle, as if to promote gangbanging. Well, following this, the only jungles that are gonna survive season 5 are the ones that thrive off of gangbanging ( ), have insane sustain ( , ), or thrive off of counterjungling ( ). Rito said they wanted to enable "stategic diversity," when in reality, they have simply disabled all conventional jungles while leaving a few to barely get by. Why play a squishy jungle like where you're gonna be jungling at 10% health with 2 potions active when the enemy or is just gonna waltz in and swipe an easy kill, and especially at level 2/3 where they can get their snowball rolling early, as in "gg" early.

My proposed solutions:

• To solve the unbelievably powerful snowballing, simply nerf the benefit of level 1-2 kills. Make it so that the killer can benefit without receiving an obscene advantage. As for dragon, you should give the buffs a time limit, perhaps only letting it last 1-2 minutes past the next dragon's respawn, so that way, the team with dragon 1 can't just sit on their buff until the enemy is killed, securing them the dragon 2 necessary to end the game. There becomes a sense of urgency in taking dragon 2, and allows the losing team a chance to contest it. Alternatively, you could nerf the buff itself. In a stalemate, even a 2% advantage would make all the difference. Another possible solution is allowing the dragon buff to be transferable to the killer, though if the buff was not timed, this could simply lead to one player snowballing beyond control. Better yet, you could revert dragon back to what it used to do: give global gold. If you want drake to be a more desirable objective, have it give more gold! After all, the villagers terrorized by that dragon would certainly pay handsomely to those who would slay it.
• To solve the absolutely broken jungle, you could have the regeneration sigil give more health. To prevent laners from abusing this, you could have the jungle items give more health from monsters slain based on missing health. This would allow junglers to stay in and continue to farm, so they don't fall behind. Also, if I remember correctly, Rito nerfed the XP gained from jungle monsters based on how many times you leveled up without leaving. I suppose this is to encourage gangbanging. Well, that was kinda retarded because how is someone supposed to go gangbang if they can't level up fast enough? I understand they could go gangbang at level 3-5, but many champions' gangbangs are pathetic pre-level 6. Think about it: the jungle comes in to gangbang, but they have no effective CC, and don't have enough damage to kill the enemy fast enough. The enemy gets away, and it's a failed gangbang. Failed gangbang = the laner misses CS + the jungle just wasted one whole minute falling further behind = everybody's screwed over. Once again, that's not enabling strategic diversity, that's disabling most things that work just to see if other things will. Please disable the XP nerf. Another possible solution is bringing down the monsters' damage back to what it was before. The buffs seem fine, but the monsters' damage, holy shit. As an engineer, I can attest to the fact that such systems like a MOBA's game mechanics are extremely difficult and finicky to optimize, but the season 4 jungle is the closest to optimal that has been observed thus far, so while the game is public, we might as well give the people the most optimal configuration currently, while working on finding the most optimal one behind the scenes.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• The game became extremely toxic. There used to be a troll like, every 5 matches, but now, there's like 3 trolls every single match. They must be former jungle mains who just went batshit insane. In one instance, there was a pair of people who queued in together, insisting on running double jungle. We let them, but they got executed 4 times and quit, leaving us in a 3v5. Most recently, there was an support that kept using the ice wall to trap allies and get them killed. Furthermore, I have seen a number of laners taking . This actually doesn't qualify as toxic, I'd say, because it works remarkably well. There's that one enchantment that gives 80 AP and 20% CDR. It's rather OP, actually. Plus, laners can use the to secure a siege minion kill, or even use the champion to initiate a trade. Maybe laning with isn't so bad after all. Besides, if you're a top laner, you could invade the enemy jungle, destroy him because of your superior level, and steal his buff, or better yet, a camp and walk away because you get the buff whether you kill the camp or not (by the way, Rito, you should still have people kill the camps before they get the buff).
• My friend and I were planning to screw around in blind normals and run duo top for a few matches. We actually did remarkably well. One might even come to the conclusion that duo top is more viable than jungle now. Perhaps there will be LoL Pro LCS duo tops in season 5.
• I am sick of the pre-S5 jungle apologists who aren't even jungle mains. They don't even play jungle. They just parrot exactly what Rito says like, "Greetings, summoners! You can smite champions now! There's an item that encourages counter jungling! With recent changes to the jungle, your jungle is now forced to gank for you! How wonderful!" and then they just say you suck, citing times where their jungle did well one time in pre-S5.
• As of when this was written, the game is patch 4.20. I have come to the realization that Rito probably has a heavenly, super-well-balanced game waiting, but they just gave us this piece of insufferable crap because 4-20 (a marijuana culture refernce). Jokes over, it's not funny, sorry.

Too long, didn't read summary: Snowballing is out of control and the jungle is nearly unplayable. Rito needs to make some changes.