One of the main reasons for the lack of mid lane diversity that still hasn't been addressed

Oakleaf Ranger·Jul 19, 2016·7 votes·597 views

Early game junglers, with these guys being the best example of this Early game junglers can exist while being healthy for the game but when they have versatile gank paths, very healthy strong fast clears, powerful cc, damage, and survivability that surpasses the vast majority of junglers early on creates a situation that limits and favors the mid lane pool to champions who can deal with that like

Which could be fair except these same junglers are able to keep up in farm and EXP of the junglers who were farming the jungle instead of ganking meaning that there was no significant trade off for the time spent on a failed gank instead of farming.

8 Comments

BlåbæretJul 19, 20163 votes

Plenty of viable mid picks. Jng is what lacks diversity. Gragas needs to be nerfed and it would seem Reksai didn't get nerfed enough.

Oakleaf RangerJul 19, 20164 votes

Jungle is a role that has the power impact any lane so any significant changes there ends up impacting other lanes as well. So when early game junglers are significantly stronger then other junglers more emphasis is put on laners to play champions who can deal with early game threats. I would definitely like to see an overall nerf to those champions or greater emphasis on their weaknesses. The nerf to Reksai was just adding realistic counterplay to an ability that was basically large AOE vison. It didn't actually nerf the main reasons she is so strong.

Sire HippingtonJul 19, 20162 votes

That's been the issue eve since S3, the jungle in the highest elos is always dominated by a few champs that just do everything one could dream of in the early. Outside of a few niche picks, all competetive junglers since then combined strong ganks, fast and sustained clears and either good duels or atleast reliable escape to avoid bad fights, makeing them the gods of the early jungle if properly used. Also, the idea of very powerfull early ganks strikes me wrong. The only 'balanced' way is a really bad clear, which results in a hit or miss situation, where your entire game depends on how succesfull your first 1-3 ganks are(hello shaco), cause if those ganks are succesfullyou just keep impacting lanes left and right, and if they fail you'll fall so far behind that you most likely won't have good ganks in the future, just falling more behind because of bad cleartimes. It also means as long as this type of champ is open to pick, one needs to pick save laners.

Imo no jungler that has rather reliable cc and good mobillity or alot cc should also have high early damage. This is what breaks rek, gragas lee and co, they can easily get to you and even cc you while also heaving enough early damage to kill laners all by them self. If you compare that to nauti and seju(that also have worse clears which ads to it), they have the cc and mobillity, but they don't have as much damage, or atleast it's more backloaded, or a champ like graves(that guy has other issues though) that can bring alot damage, but has no cc and not the best mobillity. Those champs either require damage followup or a cc setup from their lanes for a succesfull gank.

Oakleaf RangerJul 20, 20161 votes

Khazix is great example of what an early game jungler should be like. He is pretty decent on everything but he actually takes quite a bit of damage during the first clear unless you kite more (which leads to a longer clear route so its pretty fair IMO). Even then his survivability and health are high enough to gank after a full clear (without taking scuttle crab) but not good enough where he can just brute force his ganks.

Silly NeekoJul 19, 20161 votes

Wait...... and here I thought it was about being able to get away and burst entire teams like the mid lane is pretty much supposed to do..... they assassinate people. Sustained damage (Ziggs, Xerath, etc) are less played because for most people, its all about that burst. Poking champions are less seen, burst champions are more seen. The difference is, if a burst champion falls behind, they have a REEEAAALLYY hard time to catch up. MR hurts them horribly as well. A poke sustained damage champion however can poke and not care how much MR the enemy has. Meaning they just play a bit smarter when they are behind and they can win. Burst champions tend to just try to burst, burst fail, and then die.

Oakleaf RangerJul 19, 20161 votes

Sry having difficulty trying to understand the meaning behind your post, can you be a bit more clear so I can get a better understanding?

ZerenzaJul 19, 20161 votes

Ahri, Azir, Vlad, Lissandra, Cass, Viktor, Malzahar. All of these are great picks and if your good with certain champions, Katarina, Diana, Ekko, Zed and Yasuo are also good.

The mid lane has plenty of viable picks just remember that it's the hardest lane for a reason, and it's mostly due to the enemy jungler. Mid lane gets camped, it gets snow balled and it gets grouped frequently as well. Thats just how midlane is, on another note though. A good jungler will be able to balance ganking with farming, thats kind of the key to playing early game champions like Kindred,Nidalee,Elise,Gragas and Lee Sin. Early game pressure is really hard to do right but it's also one of the reasons experienced jungler in high ELO play those champions so much and so well.

Oakleaf RangerJul 19, 20162 votes

My gripe is mainly with the fact that some of these early game jungler are so efficient in the jungle that combined with their CC, mobility, damage, and survivability are to able to essentially brute force ganks at level 3 with double buffs with little cost or risk of backfiring. Most of the champions you named for mid lane have either strong mobility or defense mechanics that even these early game champions have "some" difficulty ganking. So if a mid laner doesn't have either one then their viability suffers a lot which shuts out a lot of champions mid or any lane in general simply because they lack the tools to play around these junglers.