Okay what are you guys doing that you're 3+ levels behind your solo laners?
A lot of these comments are floating around in response to the Jungle changes but straight up, I don't understand how you guys are managing to fall behind so much.
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Out of happenstance, was playing Customs with friends and just lazily trying out new builds. As a freefarming jungler paired with a laner that was getting a kill every 5 minutes, I realized I was 2 levels down on not only my mid laner with kills, but also my top laner with 1 kill, and the enemy mid that was 0-4.
Out of that, my initial outlook is how odd that is. If jungle changes are meant to incentivize farming, why does it feel so bad to do? If you didn't want ganks to be prioritized, why is it still so much better? Also, not only that, but my gold felt like nothing for the time I was spending in the jungle taking camps. You have to take them so as not to fall 3 levels behind, yet the only way to make up the gold differential is through the ganks. God forbid you lost a buff, now you don't even have catchup exp to help you.
Which is in a way, alright. More skill to the role and rewards for being a better jungler (provided of course, your team just isn't overall better and makes it streamlined for you to bully the enemy jungler), but at the same time, it just feels even more polarized. We've been seeing how one-sided jungle has become if you do anything to press an advantage on the jungler, sometimes not even with your own jungler.
Like on this account, it's bearable because the entire enemy team won't keep you out of the game if your team is even remotely unable to recover any misplay you make, but when I'm playing into D4 to D2, it's obscenely oppressive. Whether I'm winning and keeping the enemy jungler in a pit, or if I'm being unable to do anything but cheese a lane gank to get back in from a single play going wrong, even if it isn't a misplay on my part, jungler takes the brunt of the consequence into a competent team.
So why make it even more polarized? There are just so many why's, and the answer can be anything (also that Jungle becomes exponentially more impactful past Plat and has a huge disparity between casual and competitive elo brackets creating even more balance nightmares) -- but it's a lot of how: "wow, even though this has become even more stressful, I'll still find a way to play it because the game is built on having a jungler", rather than "balanced around having a jungler".
Which results in... ok, I guess. Solo lanes don't get to worry about junglers being able to 1v1 them early (Even though jungler gold flows far more slowly past 15 minutes since S6, so really when will you ever be able to 1v1 them unless they're inting), and need even more reliance on team members; as if dependent rotations and nerfing vision wasn't enough. Until Jungle is considered optional, it will always find a way to function, just will feel worse.
On the bright side, at least picking a bruiser is considering inting now if you don't play perfect, so maybe the jungler can fight them on their own without needing to try and use Sanguine Blade for it. But, just my thoughts. It is preseason after all, who knows what will come of it. Sorry for the rant.
I always end up matching, if not beating my solo laners in cs and levels.
Thats with having 2 -3 kills/assists so its not like I had been farming all game.
I dont understand how people end up behind either, to me it just seems they ignore their camps and focus entirely on ganks, which should set you behind in xp or gold, you get your teammates ahead at the cost of your income.