Jungle on a fundamental level.
What is the jungle supposed to test from the players in terms of the player's ability to clear/sustain?
Obviously it's supposed to reflect largely on character choice (aka, warwick being the sustain champion).
But what else?
For example, laning tests your ability to last hit while forcing you to play around dynamic opponents, and includes many options around denying/killing/harrassing. You have plenty of options during the lane that determine HOW you do it.
Obviously the act of killing jungle monsters is much more static. There IS an optimal way to clear jungle camps with each character, and each optimal method can have varying levels of HP/mana sustain depending on your runes/masteries/micromanagement. A simple example of a character with easy micro would be pantheon. He has a simple passive that you have to manage that gives him TONS of extra HP for a very easy job. I'm now going to give an extreme example of a character who can do the same but it's a harder job: Jayce. I'm aware he's not a jungler, but this character's jungle clear illustrates my point: the jungle camps are static and therefor more knowledge of them can allow faster clear/more sustain when you MICRO properly. Jayce can clear Krugs->Red->Raptors with zero potions with zero leash before the 3:05 with 21-9-0 and full AD reds/quints without using his second smite on Raptors.
I'll bet you 99% of junglers would not be able to do this. This is an extreme example, but I encourage you to try it out in practice games.
The point is this: No matter the character, there are always micromanagement opportunities/rune/mastery tweaks vs jungle camps that allow you to have a better sustain/clear time. Some junglers have more micromanagement opportunities than others.
I'm going to be blunt here and say a couple of things:
- Most junglers have very little idea of how to gain more sustain in the jungle without sacrificing their clear speeds (minor runes changes, monster kill order changes, soft resetting, etc)
- Most junglers have very little idea of how to gain more sustain in the jungle by sacrificing a second or so of their clear speed at any given time.
- Most junglers don't know enough about what runes/masteries will give them the opportunity to prevent individual hits from large monsters properly/efficiently (interrupting the attacks of large monsters in the most optimal way). Jungling has many subtleties to it that can allow players to have up to hundreds of extra HP if they micro manage their character properly in the jungle and chose the right runes/masteries.
What this boils down to is this: Jungling has many subtleties, like laning does, that allow you to be good at your clears. Some optimizations are easier than others. Some give greater rewards than others. Most junglers probably don't do as much as they could to optimize their clears. To me, this is sort of a skill test for many junglers (not all, though, many don't have enough micro opportunities).
Is this a good thing, though? The jungle used to be easy and required very little interaction from the player. The current jungle is similar, in that many of the current meta junglers clear with very minor interaction with the jungle camps, but there are opportunities that most junglers can take to make improvements.
Poor jungle monster management lowering your health is a snowball ish effect in terms of how much worse your sustain becomes. Abusing optimal camp clears is a way to introduce counter jungling because you get easier camp takes, and it becomes easier to mess up your opponents if you attempt to meet them head on @ lvl 2 ish.
The current hard jungle is a good test of knowlege/micro. Is that what it's meant to be?
I don't think most realize this, which is why many are having troubles.
Disclaimer: There are certainly many junglers out there who don't have very many micromanagement options and certainly do have sustain problems. Nerfing the jungle monster's damage will hurt the niche of sustain characters, which i think is a very bad thing. Thus, those characters with poor micromanagement options who can't sustain well enough just need simple buffs to their survivability. For example Wukong has very little micromanagement that can help him and would benefit greatly from having his passive effect large monsters, or by having his Decoy have a reduced cooldown if he auto attacks a large monster. [insert character here] on the other hand, has great sustain, but few implement the means to do it properly. Does this mean the character's sustain needs to be buffed? The character CAN sustain properly, but most don't know how. It's technically there, but it's not recognized by the player base.
Kinda makes the jungle deeper if you ask me. I like gaining subtle advantages in a static jungle.
Please keep the jungle hard so that the player's knowledge has a larger impact. But please buff up either the interaction potential or the sustain of low-interaction junglers who don't have many options.
