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New Jungle

The Boy Smiles·11/21/2014, 11:46:11 PM·1 votes·915 views

With the pre-season starting and the new SR update, I have noticed that the jungle has become a bit of a hellhole to almost anyone trying to play their role correctly.

First off, Junglers now start off with a 60 second cooldown on their smite, so If you are a jungler with slow clear speeds or low sustain you are screwed in the early game. I find this bad because you cannot effectively clear a buff other than red with your smite if you want to have a full jungle clear. If you smite blue, by the time you make it to your red after clearing wolves and the chickens, you still wont have smite up. This is crippling to Purple side, due to the fact that most of the time you will not get a leash if you start your red, but blue side gets to have a leash, smite their red for the 20% health regen AND clear the rest of their jungle no problem.

Secondly, the fact that jungle got hit in terms of sustain in S4, with the health pots with Hunter's Machete going from 4 to 3 now going even further and being reduced to 2 health pots in S5. I feel like this is really hurting the Junglers with bad sustain in the early game like Poppy, Nocturne, Evelynn, Ect.. Not to say that these champions are bad in the lategame for the jungle, I just feel like it is bringing out some of those more pesky junglers that really hurt people early on and snowball hard Udyr, Warwick, Rengar, Lee Sin would be prime examples of this.

I love the new map, it seems like a great experience and atmosphere to play in and it will be fun for this upcoming season. I just feel like with the new Jungle rework, it is doing more harm than good. The jungle is becoming a place wherein the first eight to ten minutes of the game a laner can just walk in and get a free kill. I often find myself constantly walking around with half health or lower in the early game.

I used to feel somewhat threatened in the jungle, never knowing if you were going to get ambushed and killed, but now I feel straight up scared to enter the jungle with any "Non-Meta" Junglers. No matter how much I ward, or help my team, I always have to debate if I want to clear my jungle and not gank, or not clear my jungle and gank.

If the jungle camps either had a bit lower base stats or health, I feel like clearing the jungle would be a more realistic goal to achieve with late game champions. Better yet, reduce the cooldown of smite to 50 or something to make it more practical for clear speeds.

TL;DR: The jungle is no longer a safe place for non-earlygame champions. We need our health pots back, or a more fair smite cooldown.

Sincerely, Nocturne Your fellow Jungler

3 Comments

Togekiss2411/22/2014, 12:01:28 AM3 votes

I have yet to test some of the lower sustain junglers (I've been mainly playing with Jax), but have you considered that you're really not supposed to be smiting red or blue at the start, in this new jungle?

I don't remember the exact player who mentioned it, but he recommended one of two paths:

Krug (Smite for bonus effect) -> Red Buff -> Blue Buff(Smite here) -> Recall Gromp (Smite) -> Blue Buff -> Red Buff(Smite here) -> Recall

The Krug path in particular is one of the safest routes I've played. If you don't have sustain, the buff it gives you allows you to negate some damage from the other monsters, and both routes allowed me to hit level 3, not worry a whole lot about the lack of potions, and get my first machete upgrade.

Both paths take a bit of some time, though. The jungling in this preseason is currently a bit slow in terms of clear time.

Carl Fredrickson11/22/2014, 1:42:26 AM2 votes

I think it is important to note that you can hit lvl 3 by just doing one quadrant of the Jungle. Clear 1 big camp, 2 mini camps, ward other big camp, recall & buy and then do a full jg clear and you are at 5 close to 6 by this point.