The New Jungle Does Not Achieve Your Stated Goals (Please Reconsider)
The general changes to the jungle this season have been very poor. I say this after reading every word of the company's stated goals and intentions. I'm not saying the stated goals or intentions are poor - I'm simply saying that the actions taken with the new jungle have actually worked against many of the stated goals and intentions that have to do with the jungle specifically.
Point 1: The original idea was to increase jungle diversity, which I would be in favor of. However, these changes such as the new jungle + items have actually decreased diversity. Camps take longer to respawn and are harder to kill. This edges out less robust junglers and other champions that could potentially play jungle. The idea of diversity is actually the exact opposite of this.
Point 2: There are new paths of jungle items that aren't worth purchasing. Getting pigeon-holed into your jungle item path sends an announcement of what you're trying to do in a game. These paths are not flexible or dynamic enough to accommodate games where strategies need to shift in the middle of a game. The jungle item is not worth it financially for many junglers. It's too big of an investment too early that you don't actually see the gold benefits until around the 35-40 minute mark when the game is almost over and you are still working on your first or second non-jungle core item. None of the jungle items are strong enough to warrant them in a final build situation. When there's more than enough gold to buy anything you want, the jungle item usually always gets sold for something else. In the end, I don't see how item diversity creates jungle diversity - it merely allows you to play the same handful of junglers more ways. This abundance of options makes it easier to lose because for most champions - there's one way to win.
Point 3. The reason there is little jungle diversity is simply this one small fact - there's a lack of jungler diversity from the point of view of designing champions. How many AP ranged mage junglers are there? - There is one - Fiddlesticks. How many AD Tank/Fighter junglers are there? - like pretty much every other viable jungler out there. Now, I realize the bias in the fact that I only really play Fiddlesticks, however, there is a point here and it's fairly correct. I mean sure you could jungle Vieger, but I'm talking about actual designed to be jungler junglers. There is no diversity at all, really. Okay, Fiddlesticks aside, every jungler balances 1. Damage 2. Tankability 3. Mobility. The biggest problems with junglers being OP is that they are often by initial design doing all three of these things way too well. It needs to stop, you can't be building champs that kill anything they want, are impossible to kill, and can move across the map faster than everyone else. In different points in time, there were several junglers who were literally unstoppable at all three of these attributes. Personally, I find it irritating that as a Fiddlesticks main, there's no real jungler who's even remotely similar. So, if he gets banned or taken, I can't seriously play jungle at even a moderate level, so I'm forced to last minute trade with support or mid. In the end, what I'm saying is - I don't want another jungler that I can AD Tank / Fighter / Gap-close with. DO NOT WANT. Why would we need more of this? Why do you keep making them? It just needs to stop.
Point 4 Junglers in general are OP out of position precisely because the jungle itself is too difficult. Access to the jungle has been so severely limited that less and less junglers are capable of doing it. This is what's killing diversity. Jungle is already a very hard position. It does not need to be made harder. Really. Jungle really is just a 4th lane. It shouldn't be so hard just to clear and move on with a fundamental amount of resources. I find often in the new jungle, no matter who I'm playing, that clearing is not enough. If I were simply to clear and focus on 'my lane' I would be the last champ on my team to reach 6, or just barely ahead of bot lane. My incentive in ganking is actually sometimes to just show up to leach experience. I've actually seen several replays of high level masters doing exactly the same thing. Standing close to a lane, with no real chance to make a play, and standing in such a way as to not make it obvious that that's what they're indeed doing.
Point 5. How is double smite going to fix any of this? How is this the response? Essentially what has happened here with the new jungle is that it not only failed to increase diversity in the jungle, but it made the problem worse. This is the point where you realize that an idea has failed and you back away from that decision and try to fix it. This is not the point where you panic and just keep creating more inventions just to further change the game and distract people.
Seriously. Every nerd on here has raging opinions about how league should be. There's no need to comb through this and cherry pick the worst-sounding, least savory, most poorly articulated sentence - copy and paste it out of context and be like - wow, what a n00b, he totally doesn't understand league at all (essentially a staple form of league communication). In the end, just please consider this point of view.
