Are invading and counterjungling fun?
One of the new preseason changes is to add items to allow for stronger invading and counter-jungling.
Riot say that this will encourage junglers into player-vs-player activities, but I have to ask: are these activities actually fun?
Right now, junglers are very... unbalanced. You mostly see invades happening by the likes of Lee Sin, who is guaranteed to win any early-game 1v1 against all but a very small number of junglers, so instead of "an interesting 1v1 fight in the jungle", being invaded by him tends to be more "I got invaded at level 2 by Lee Sin, since he's an unbeatable duellist, I'm either dead, or blew my flash and lost my buffs."
Counterjungling is similar; you get someone like Udyr, who is almost impossible to catch, running into the jungle, taking buffs, and then running away. He's less like to murder you, but his combination of tankiness and damage means that most junglers can't punish him for invading since he will also win a 1v1, and if the laners try to collapse on him, he can usually just outrun anyone and get away.
What this tends to mean is that, instead of an interesting 1v1 interaction, you get one player (the one with the strong duellist jungler) making life a complete pain for another (the one with the weaker duellist jungler), and often effectively removing that player's presence from the game.
Maybe it's just me, because I tend to play junglers who are not the handful of top-tier duellists, but I don't find this particularly fun.
Are there plans to add something else to help support the junglers being invaded, so they have a chance against these strong duellist champions?
) But it sure as hell ain't fun. Usually when I'm playing as Trundle, I start blue and save my smite so I can mosey on over to the enemy's red buff and take a good ol smite out of it, then working my bot camps that I left behind, and proceeding to gank the shit out of some lanes. This kind of invade I'm all for because it's easily counterable by a well placed ward, and it doesn't hinder jungler options.
. If Shaco didnt' have that ridiculous buff identifier on his clones, he'd probably be up there too. Of course Lee Sin is the brown top hat of the shit show that is jungler diversity because he fosters an unhealthy fanbase of rabid freelo whiners that derailed his rework that would have arguably balanced the champion.