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Jungle completely unbalanced?

ibleedsoysauce··2 votes·670 views

Hi guys! Just wanted some opinions here.

First off, I'm poop at this game. I float between like gold 5-2 (on a good day) and honestly I can get pretty toxic. I main adc i guess? but I've been playing a lot of jungle with the recent jungle changes.

As a toxic player I've spent a lot of time banned from ranked dicking around in normals, mainly to see how ridiculous the new jungle items can get (mainly devourer and runeglaive). I am mechanically okay at best which is probably what holds me back from climbing higher in addition to being toxic, however i will confidently state that my knowledge is at a high level and quite frankly jungling has made the climb to gold the last 2 seasons a breeze. Through some of my experiences I've come to the following completely subjective opinion(s)

RIOT, YOU NEED TO BALANCE OUT THE JUNGLE

Below are some of my other points, but heres my main one:

At all levels of play it seems like the game is an unhealthy state that COMPLETELY revolves around a teams ability to support the jungler to get dragons ans snowball a lead that can't be contested because it's so strong. It doesn't seem to matter how many towers/kills you get. If you can get your early dragons, you win. It feels like you either win hard, or lose hard. I can't remember the last time i saw a "close" game.

Champion Pool

Honestly, this is one thing I'll give you. Even with the recent changes (and deletion of magus), the jungles viable champion pool is pretty diverse.

With that said, theres only a few niche "roles" you fill as a jungler. Within those sub roles are only a handful of legitimately viable champions for each.

Jungle Items

Cinderhulk

Honestly, it's already enough that you get a generous chunk of health and a mini sunfire cape off of this. Why does it have to increase your max health by such a high percentage? It's a tank meta. I get it. But late game this makes SO many tank junglers completely unkillable without some insane teamwork.

Runeglaive

Are you kidding me? Im all for "strategic diversity" but REALLY? Why is this item so damn strong, and WHY did you buff it? First off, getting rid of magus completely closed out several ap junglers (rip fiddle)

secondly, you have something wrong when laners will take smite and build this item just for the sake of it's insane poke potential. (cough ezreal cough)

Runeglaive gives you WAY too much bang for your buck, people opinion on this is pretty straight forward.

Devourer: WARNING: I'm going pretty in depth here

I firmly believe there is absolutely no reason for sated devourer to exist in its current form. At all. like literally AT ALL. I have never thought anything is broken, but this item is fucking ridiculous. Devourer was fine the way it was, it was a niche item for niche champions that provided (slightly low) but very effective, fair stats.

I don't know if you purposely wanted to tune up AA champions like yi/jax/udyr to cut through the tank meta or what, but you've turned slightly annoying champions into downright oppressive. I speak on this not out of frustration, but from personal experience playing these champions. Do the math behind JUST on hit effects with a yi with sated devourer and his active E toggled, just do it. Don't forget to factor in the "quadruple strike" math. Then add in his total ad.

Or maybe phoenix stance udyr? because you know, procing hundreds of damage on hit and being able to 1v2 under turrets late game with 4 tank items and just sated devourer as damage is super balanced.

It's literally a joke, you can consistently farm up a sated devourer in 15-18 minutes when the champions using it can already solo dragon at level 4-5. The best users of sated devourer can basically turn every other AA into an extra 3-4. The damage output is insane. You CAN NOT 1v1 a champion with sated devourer (granted they understand how to duel).

Plus the addition of this item adds another dimension to this game that's also completely unnecessary. For instance why the hell do you get 2 stacks from rift scuddler? Admitedly this is a little gripey, but do you know how annoying it is to actually have to CONTEST rift scuddler as an objective PURELY out of the necessity for stacks? Unless they want that yi to run away with the game by farming sated in 15 minutes junglers have to actively deny camps of AA counterparts to offset sated stacks. This forces junglers into an extremely stressful and equally risky way of play. Which means more reliance on strangers in solo queue for vision/objective control or a safety net if you get into a sticky situation (which WILL happen). The latter is extremely frustrating for people that don't understand how to invade enemy camps, and the fact is thats most players.

FYI, search around the internet. Sated has softly enabled udyr to solo baron at level 14.

Objectives

Dragon

To this day i don't understand why you get PERMANENT stacking buffs off of this thing. A lot of people claim that early dragons aren't THAT good. And to them i say you've never had two of them by 15 minutes or whatever it is. Like why, just why? I don't understand the design decision behind this iteration of dragon.

It's basically saying "hey, strategic diversity is great and all but basically let's turn bot lane into a 4 man pit (at least at my elo) because this thing is so damn strong."

It's just as easy to kill as before, but because it's so much stronger bot lanes are essentially camped ALL of early game by mid/jungle/ AND tops with teleport just for dragon control. It promotes extremely stale, safe play (literal afk farming) unless a teammate decides to come along. I mean sure, there are still the people that are going to climb that can out play their lane opponent. But for the most part the out come of bot is no longer determined by ads/supports. It's determined by whose jungler succesfully times a gank for a dragon play first. It's kind of stupid. And usually that little swing is enough to carry the rest of the game, ESPECIALLY if it results in a tower.

This thing is too damn valuable.

Santa Nashor

AH, THE CLASSIC LOW ELO TRAP PIT FOR THROWS.

Basically here's how baron works, if you get it and your team decides to push with it (and understands HOW to use baron) you win. There's no question about it.

Unless you were already ahead, there is no way to contest a team with baron. Unless they dramatically fuck up, they will run away with the game. I understand that baron is "the boss", i understand that it's supposed to be game changing. It seems unhealthy however that the buff it provides to you and your insanely tanky purple shrouded little shits of doom is game breaking.

To wrap my little rant up, i just want to say something really needs to be done about the jungle. Jungle is probably now the most difficult role to play well, and the changes you've made over time have had a subtle impact that are just now starting to show. Riot always shouts "STRATEGIC DIVERSITY" but all these changes force us to play an unforgiving meta within very specific guidelines, this is ESPECIALLY true for new players. The changes to the camps/objectives/items has completely warped the state of things into a big jumbled, very undefined (and unbalanced mess).

RIP Butthole

waits for flame

4 Comments

Faith Breaker2 votes

You asked for a flame, but what you got was a zippo Holds up

ibleedsoysauce2 votes

Can i buy you a skin, I'm literally dying

Lugg1 votes

I agree with some of your post. The jungle is now the place of the haves and have nots. If your kit doesn't synergize well with Cinderhulk, Runeglaive, or Devourer, you are completely irrelevant right now. Cinderhulk should only give a +20% health gain. 25 is just too much. I agree with you on Runeglaive and Devourer. They are both are so bad you can't duel anyone with those items.

As for Dragon, I am all for the permanent stacking. It adds TONS of strategy to the game and helps keep the games from staling out for over an hour. Baron is fine as well. It allows team comps without good siege potential to actually win games. You can also defend against it if you have really good waveclear. So there is even more strategy for you.

Erockandroll1 votes

I'm going to try and pick at some of these arguments.

For starters, you claim that 3 of the 4 Jungle items are too strong. But I don't think that. Rather I think that 1 of the 4 Jungle items is too weak.

Cinder Hulk

Theirs good reason why cinderhulk has the late game scaling mechanic. For starters, even with the increased Clear speed, Bruiser Champs would have more damage paired with their engage, thus better early presence on the map. the %HP acts as a counter part to the early aggression, by shifting its power late game. Homogeniusness in item design should be discouraged.

Also, a tank being unkillable, except to the entire team. That just a tank being a tank. That's their Job.

RuneGlaive

I'll get back to this one once I know who the AP Junglers actually are. (and why I would want them)

Sated Devourer

I actually find nothing inherently wrong with Sated Devourer. It's Sated hit every other Attack is fine. It helped a lot of Auto Attacking Junglers who were in a bad spot, using a most unique and intriguing passive. Does it break certain champions? Yes. Is it Over tuned? Quite Likely. But the item itself, isn't broke. AND NO, Devourer, was not fine as it was.

Like Cinderhulk, it's a late game power house. But you cannot, compare it's stats solely on it's Sated form. Solely on it's late game potential. That's not the only metric for balancing anything.

but do you know how annoying it is to actually have to CONTEST rift scuddler as an objective PURELY out of the necessity for stacks?

PURELY?? Can you actually pretend that this is a team game? The whole point of changing up the stacking mechanic is to encourage Objective control. That includes Scutler. If your doing it only for the stacks. Your doing it wrong.

Which means more reliance on strangers in solo queue for vision/objective control or a safety net if you get into a sticky situation (which WILL happen).

apparently you can't. Yet you need to be team reliant to actually shut down anything before they get fed, and snowball to victory. No wonder everyone complains about anyone(or thing) that has any late game at all.

Like why, just why? I don't understand the design decision behind this iteration of dragon.

Pretty Simple actually. The old Dragon, had no presence late game. When people were near full build, Gold become a less important metric. The new Dragon now has a more interesting buff not tied to gold. (thus not favoring the gold gobbling champs) While making it actually important in the late game.

but basically let's turn bot lane into a 4 man pit

You must not watch the LCS much. Dragon has always been a mosh pit, even before the changes.

This thing is too damn valuable.

It's League of legends, not Team death match. If Dragon doesn't feel valuable, then riot wouldn't be doing their job. And even if you have to concede dragon, there's no reason why you can't take objectives across the map.

It seems unhealthy however that the buff it provides to you and your insanely tanky purple shrouded little shits of doom is game breaking.

A little more Justified. But the game has to end sooner or later. And if there's a big stale mate late game, you need something to break the stalemate. Baron is as good of a reason as any. Or to put it another way, Baron is Broken because it has to be.

Sorry, but just don't let YoloQ problems be your problems.

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