Boards›Gameplay

Jungle Is completely Irrelevant and how to fix this.

Fluppets·2/6/2015, 2:23:18 PM·7 votes·1,448 views

I've mained jungle for well over a year in ranked now, not high-level, starting Bronze and at Low gold atm and never has the jungle been more obsolete.

This isn't just me feeling this way because I lost a few games, since preseason/s5 this is a general Jungle problem. As a Jungler, you're just going through the motions of the game, positive or negative.

  • Now you think, well a Jungler can gank and influence the lanes, right?

More often than not a succesful gank is much more dependent on the ally's ability to follow up or whether or not they're behind in lvls and items. Regardless of ganks, lanes are often decided 1v1 or 2v2, even when you specifically mention you're ganking them, they often give (or take, its not all negative) a kill before you arrive.

  • So you're saying it's never your fault (or your merit), how convenient.

Well when you gank, you're sorta the wild card, you're an extra, but when you gank a lane and the other laner is more skilled than my laner:

He will out-level you and your laner, will respond better to my gank than my laner, he will have better items than me (the jungler) and possibly due to a previous 1v1 better items than my laner too.

  • *Yeah sure, but what if you're **even more *skilled than their laner

What im saying is that that is irrelevant, because I will always have poorer items and lower level and even if I do everything right, I still need my laner's help to kill him. My laner whom might not even follow up at all or just poorly but in all cases is weaker (items and level) than the other laner.

It boils down to this:

If you're a good Jungler (ganks) you will change nothing. If you're a bad Jungler (ganks) you will make it worse. If you're a good Jungler (farming) you will change nothing. If you're a good Jungler (farming) you will make it worse.

In 3/4 you will get blame in 0/4 will you get credit.

So that's all complaints and I havent been the first to vocalise this.

Feel free to post your comments and ideas, but here's my proposal to the jungle:

Make Jungle Harder

er... say WHAT now?

Yes, Make Jungle nigh impossible unless you're a jungler with smite and Jungle items, give a jungler a meaningfull place in a team by being the only one to not only secure but also kill any jungle monster at** any** point of the game.

From level 7-8 any laner can kill the Red and blue buffs and at lvl 3-4 any laner can solo a small camp and even duo one at lvl 1. A jungler is needed to secure dragon/baron with smite, but not necessarily to fight and kill it and only because there might be another jungler with smite.

  • Eliminate poaching
  • Make the Jungler a unique player on the field, rather than a roaming support with smite
  • Make fighting Jungle creeps actually dangerous and scary for a non-jungler.
  • Basically do what you were already trying with the Jungle, but actually push through on it, go all the way.

Baron or even just Bristleback (red buff) should be something weird, scary and monstrous for the ADC from the big city, but a seasoned Jungler with his special weapons and experience can make quick work of that beast.

  • increase Jungle monster's strength and scaling drastically but equally increase the strength of Machete and it's upgrades.
  • Increase the (unique) impact of monster buffs to give junglers a temporary and conditional (defeating and smiting a Jungle monster) edge vs a laner to compensate for the lower level, lack of combat stats from items and vulnerability during monster combat.
  • Jungle items grant specific stats/actives required to fight and kill Baron and Dragon, changing Baron/dragon fights from "everyone kill baron and Jungler dont screw this up" to "Protect the Jungler so we can fight and kill the Monster".
  • Grant Jungle items an Aura or Smite a strong weakening effect so a laner can assist and even kill a Jungle creep with the help of a Jungler to share in the spoils (Buddy system).

Notice the usage of Monster vs Creep, Defeating vs farming, Buddy System vs Poaching.

Tell me what you think and id rather have this about what you think is wrong with the jungle/jungle role and how you think Riot should fix this, than just QQ.

31 Comments

RookPusher2/6/2015, 2:59:57 PM3 votes

{quoted}

Tell me what you think and id rather have this about what you think is wrong with the jungle/jungle role and how you think Riot should fix this, than just QQ.

The biggest problem with Jungling isn't the jungle, but the laners. The majority of laners I see basically think that the Jungler is a get-out-of-jail-free card. For example "I tried for kills and got murdered 3 times - come fix it now!"

Meanwhile, if I do everything right for a gank:

  1. Smite birds
  2. Get in position
  3. Ward the brush I'm in
  4. Ping the player
  5. Have already announced via ping or chat that I was heading to that lane
  6. The popping Ghost to root them early

I still get people backing off and saying "I had no mana, you should have known. Good junglers know!"

That's the problem. If good junglers should know your mana bar, then good laners know when to ping a jungler off from the kill, they don't let junglers go in on something they won't get backup on. They do what it takes to benefit the team, not whats good for them.

My names RookPusher, I main Maokai, and I'm not going to watch your bars.

LongFur Fox2/6/2015, 4:07:43 PM3 votes

Interesting idea that said I still believe that the jungler is currently the largest deciding factor in the game. Sure bot lane can feed vayne 4 kills before you are level 3 but you can just as well assist in a kill in each lane, putting the game on lockdown before 6 minutes.

Of course you could argue that the jungler should be even more of a deciding factor considering the junlger also has to take the most decisions and just might be the hardest role to play (at least if we disregard mechanics). That said I actually believe that the junger has become easier now. Not in the sense that more champions can jungle or that the jungle takes away more hp but in the sense that it is far easier to recognize a good jungler from a bad one. Before it was gank, gank, gank and everyone could copy that. Now a good junlger can balance farming with ganking and optimize his route so much that a bad jungler will end up far behind him in terms of levels. On that note it is not long ago I saw nightblue3 outfarming gold players (who were in lane vs him in the jungle) in his bronze to challenger run and he is normally only 1 or 2 levels behind his laners in challenger.

WooBeeWoo2/6/2015, 5:09:38 PM2 votes

I find as a jungle main I have two ways to really influence in this season (compared to s3 and 4 were I felt I had more control). First, if their laners are bad and don't ward I can get either me or my laners fed on ganks (this usually lasts until silver 2 when people start realizing wards make a difference). Second, if I am playing the right champ (J4, Vi, or Lee in that order) I can usually take a teamfight or my bot lane thats behind and use my ult well to get them some kills and with enough smart play on my part get my carries back in it with shutdowns. If the other team is smart or good enough to stop those two things... I CANT DO SHIT. I have no gold because I play ganking style and so I haven't been farming very much so I have no damage no tankiness. I can't split push because I will die if caught out by anyone, I get work hard to secure drags because honestly it does almost nothing to help you come from behind its usually there for convience to whoever gets it. if we drag fight and get drag but lose 2-3 kills that is putting us insanely behind. Baron is a god dam monster so if you are behind your only hope is steal. Like if my lanes didnt win and by win I mean dominate.... then I just have to hope the other team fucks up.

Essentially, wards and decent positioning make the jungle fucking pointless.

In S4 thats why they changed it to be able to carry. This promoted different styles of jungling (not saying it was super balanced but farming vs ganking). I personally liked that. I think changes need to be made so you can just keep up with lanes in exp and gold by farming. You deserve as much as a laner to get AHEAD with even one kill. If I get a kill and go back to farming I should be ahead not ok, or on pace.

Only Play Darius2/6/2015, 4:15:40 PM2 votes

I'm a jg main too, granted I got into league mid-season 4 so maybe my opinion doesn't count.

The smite upgrades and increased gold from monsters means that junglers have a much better late-game than before. Now they can actually smite enemy champions, and if their lanes are pushed they can harvest a massive amount of gold from their jungle. Also, a team without a jungler is going to have a very difficult time contesting the dragon, which is now much more important.

Unfortunately this means that early game naturally must be harder for it to be balanced, but I personally think that the problem is that some junglers suffer much less early(JarvanIV Vi LeeSin ) than others. Instead of nerfing the strong junglers, I would like to see Riot buff some of the less popular junglers so they can stand up to the dominant ones today. Riot's buffs to the jungling capabilities of Elise Shyvana Nidalee are a step in the right direction, I would like to see more of this.

As for the item situation, I think that Riot, actually, somehow, got it perfectly balanced ON RELEASE. When the preseason patch rolled out, I found myself spreading my time equally with each of the machetes. item 3706 item 3713 item 3711 item 3715 all had their strengths and I felt each one was worth the space it took in my item slot. Then they rebalanced the machetes and now the only one worth taking is item 3706, maybe item 3715 if their team has stealth but even that's a stretch because a pink ward or scanner trinket would probably be more useful in the long run.

Social Justice 12/6/2015, 2:31:03 PM2 votes

This thread sucks considering jungling is like, twice as important as it was S4.

A gank's still successful if you make them B or use flash btw. If the enemy midlaner is able to get out of a 1v2 no problem, you either waited until they had 3 kills or your positioning stunk.

hgjkdlsaf jeldvb2/6/2015, 10:07:57 PM1 votes

I think the main issue boils down to this:

Riot made it harder to clear, which makes it harder to gank. You can no longer sustain mana in jungle with the current jungle items without blue, and a lot of champions need to use mana to farm, or at least want to because their clear speed is otherwise shit. If you use mana to farm, there's a good chance you don't have it (or health) to gank. You usually want a full bar, but now 2/3 bar is normal for many junglers. Ganking is the only way to have comparable gold to laners, which immediately screws the carry type junglers. Because of the mana and health sustain issues, as well as the longer camp respawns, many farming junglers are much less able to compete.

In fact, the only junglers that are doing well are those with strong ganks and sustain. The list of 50%+ win rate junglers is only 12 champions long, and is in order from highest to lowest: Nidalee Fiddle Shaco J4 Nunu Vi Sion Panth Sejuani Wukong Warwick Udyr

Aside from wukong, every champion on this list can either a) regain exceptional amounts of health, or b) mitigate damage through blocks, boxes, shields, or defense steroids. Most of these can gank easily pre 6, and have extremely strong post 6 ganks. Additionally, many of them either have fairly high aoe or single target damage.

It's not that jungler is useless, but that it's now a lot harder to impact the game positively because most junglers have to choose between clearing camps or ganking, and trying to do both is extremely risky. Ultimately, you have to take those risks to stay on par with your laners, but it's very easy to have them backfire.

Nahui2/6/2015, 3:39:17 PM1 votes

The issue with requiring a jungler to kill baron or dragon is that you make the game extremely dangerous late game. People will now start playing "Kill the carrier" that being the enemy jungler. It removes those awesome jinx rockets or Jayce cannon steals that always makes taking these objectives slightly dangerous. The way I interpreted your post is that dragon and baron can only die to smite, correct me if I'm wrong. If that is the case, it would be unhealthy since catching the jungler out will instantly mean a free objective. It would also remove the need to time smite. It also defeats the purpose of Warding it really. You don't need to know if the enemy is doing dragon, you just need to know where the jungler is. It's those secret steals that make warding so important.

SmokingPuffin2/6/2015, 4:22:12 PM1 votes

Jungler is still the most impactful role in the game. It's just less absurdly dominant than in season 4.

I don't think it is desirable to "fix" poaching. There are many interesting cases for it. For example, the winning top laner becoming dominant enough to take gromp or krugs is a powerful advantage that forces the opposing team to draw players up. I also enjoy the buddy system jungle strategies in pro play.

Colgate Gator2/6/2015, 5:24:10 PM1 votes

I honestly have no idea how your thread has upvotes, since it feels a lot like the generic "Jungle circlejerk."

If Jungle was so irrelevant, many people would have changed to double top again and proceed to dominate.

The jungle exists for a reason, not only to help you win a lane you're losing, it provides map control and constant pressure on the enemy, forcing them to keep spending money on wards or face the consequences. Whenever you make a successful gank, you put your lane ally ahead, giving them the chance to snowball.

Your statement is wrong, more specifically, this one:

If you're a good Jungler (ganks) you will change nothing. If you're a bad Jungler (ganks) you will make it worse. If you're a good Jungler (farming) you will change nothing. If you're a good Jungler (farming) you will make it worse.

Your ganks change the tide of a lane, and the other 3 points contradict your whole statement, if Jungle was so irrelevant, it wouldn't matter wether you're a bad jungler or you're just farming.

So yeah, I respect your opinion but I don't agree with it.

ModKnightsKemplar2/6/2015, 8:50:41 PM1 votes

I agree with you. I don't know if your specific changes will do the right thing, but I think the same about supports. Basically, I think supports don't have a unique enough place in the game right now. You are basically saying the same about junglers (kind of).

Riot doesn't want to decide what lane a champion should play in. To me, this is one the tenants that makes game balance so hard for them. If they just decided to be okay deciding where a champ could go, and balance the champ and the game around that, balancing would be easier. I'm not saying that's wrong, perhaps the game would be less interesting then, but it's definitely true in my mind. The diversity they are trying to keep in champs makes balancing a nightmare.

This ties into what you're saying because it ties into junglers having this unique strength relative to other champs. I think it's a great idea and I hope Riot will try to implement some of those ideas soon. It's what the game needs. Even if they just increased Monster health a crap-ton and made jungle items do a crap ton of true damage to monsters, that would help. Easy solution (imo).