Jungle main here.
Anyone remember Feral Flare meta? It was when hyperfarming junglers would disappear into the jungle for 20 minutes to afk farm, then walk out 2 levels ahead of solo-laners and with the most gold in the game. The worst was that these Feral Flare junglers were mostly strong duelists, so your jungle became their 2nd jungle to powerfarm some more.
It kind of feels like that again lol.
Erockandroll1 votesConsidering that we have neither Feral Flare nor Devourer, I really can't figure out what would promote such a playstyle.
The only thing I can think of is the fact that Red and Blue are not single target camps. Making them ideal for champs who deal single target damage. (Yet I can't imagine that's enough though)
RogueWill1 votesActually problems are camps themselves, a few camps provides either too much XP (I'm looking at you krugs) or much more gold (raptors), making them mandatory to clear, but not everyone can clear raptors and still be healthy as well as not everyone can clear the krugs fast enough (or healthy enough on champions like warwick which can't clear effectively any of the 2 camps) which forces additional backs (which looks like afk farming). Junglers are ok with that since camps take longer to respwan so they can run out of stuff to kill pretty fast.
Kilanost1 votesThis is why shyvanna is the new queen of the jungle. Clear times for me are up 30+ seconds on first clear and for many champs ganking without backing first isn't an option so that delays the next gank by another minute. No one wants to risk not taking camps because they're more valuable now for XP and gold and aren't as available due to slower respawn.
So it's not that people are afk farm as much as it is that people are prioritizing securing their farm over everything else early on (the exact opposite of what riot wanted to accomplish ironically).
For the most part I feel like waiting for the enemy jg to show and counter jungling him is way more efficient and reliable than running around trying to gank and taking whatever camps you accidentally find.
RogueWill1 votesFor the most part I agree. I usually invade right after a gank simply because I expect to get invaded (I play tanks so it happens fairly often). Before I would always find the 2 camps ready to be taken (or at least one) since the respawn times were shorter. Now is pretty hard to find the camps available which is rather sad, specially since I can't clear krugs until I have cinderhulk (since it takes the time that 2 camps would take to clear it)
Vi has been doing great due to the indirect buffs. She can clear single target (thanks to her W) and AoE (thanks to her E) so she ahs more XP and gold, plus her shields means that she losses very little HP which allows her to invade on par with shyvanna while having way more ganking potential than her. Lee has similar indirect buffs that in conjunction with his direct buff makes him really hard to play against (since there is very little you can do to outplay him).
I never understood why riot suddenly wanted camps to do more damage than they used to do. I mean is teh only role that actively take considerable damage from their gold income, if it is so laners don't steal every camp just make it that you take reduced damage from camps if you have the jungle item which is already restricted to having smite, people woudl get out of the jungle more if they were close to a decent amount of HP after they got their gold.
DunkinNoobs1 votesShyvana was always the oddity among Feral Flare and Sated Devourer junglers in that she also has a strong early game. She may not have strong ganks, but Shyvana's early game is among the strongest of all junglers.
Kirius Dark1 votesKinda the opposite. Cant really just AFK farm jungle with how slow it respawns now
Kaioko1 votesMaybe my views are slanted (and I'm by no means a jungler so take my opinion with a grain of salt) but I find that there are more level 2 (or 3 with that Krug/Red combo) than ever before except maybe during season 3 when Riot saw it as an issue.
