Points of Interest with the New Preseason

So I just played my first game on the new SR yesterday, and it was also my first game with the preseason, and I would like to share some thoughts.

I am a lower level player (only level 18 since I don't play very often) and have been maining jungle since i unlocked smite at level 3.It was hard at first then at the very beginning of preseason 2014, but now at level 18 with much more experience and skill, as well as a wider champion pool and better runes and masteries, this new jungle is far to hard. It is not impossible, but when playing an olaf who is built around being able to sustain through damage (and should be a strong jungler right now), and getting kicked in the backside by every single camp after clearing once, I can't help but say this is tuned too difficult for balanced play. The opposing team had a Warwick, who fared slightly better than me, but both of us were still brutally handicapped and had virtually 0 presence until level 12, at which point the 40 minute game was already almost over. Throughout the match, I was at least 4 levels behind everyone except the opposing jungler. I had no gold income, and could hardly gank anything since the new handicap on jungle experience meant I couldn't try to farm up and get back into the game (and any jungler worth his salt knows you can't gank when you are 4 levels behind). The new way the experience handicap for farming jungle works in correlation with how much stronger the camps get each level means that you will fall behind, and STAY behind, even if you cover lanes, even if you pull off a miracle gank, no matter what.

Riot said that they wanted to reduce early gank power, you succeeded there. Then they said, "we can't let you farm jungle either" and basically created a paradox where early ganks are much more difficult to pull off, but you cannot utilize that fact by farming jungle either. All the junglers that should be excelling are getting kneecapped way too hard at lower level play. The jungle gives less experience and scales faster and harder than the jungler. Dragon and Baron require far too much team coordination now (team coordination is an admirable, but utterly utopian and unreliable goal), which makes it virtually impossible for a solo player like myself to succeed as the jungler, since my team will almost never really listen.

Don't just tell me "quit jungling until your a higher level" either, because that doesn't solve the real problems. Sustain jungles should have a clear advantage over non sustain jungles, but the handicaps in place right now remove their one real strength, which is strong and safe clears.

The jungle items are plenty strong and useful, but they don't give gold anymore, and that hurts all junglers more than you realize. We don't care if they are uber stat or slot efficient, if all they do is make it so you don't die in the jungle, than they are incredibly un-strategic and unsatisfying items to build. There is absolutely no reason to ever build a jungle item over a BotRK for example. It provides better sustain, it deals %hp damage, and it is useful in combat at any step along its recipe. the new jungle gives so much less gold than the old jungle because of the lack of gold generation items for junglers. I am fine with the model of having the jungle just straight up give more gold at the cost of being very difficult, but right now, all it has is the very difficult portion of that model. the new smites are very cool and interesting to use, but the cool down nerf is just bad. With the jungle being as hard as it is, trying to weaken the only tool that is exclusive to a jungler is just poor planning. The new upgraded smites do offer strategic diversity, but right now, both of the smites that can be cast on enemy champions are very underpowered and have very little effect. The smite with the Rangers Trailblazer is proportionally far stronger than any other options because it gets both reduced cool down (which all the smites should have back) and AOE true damage against the camps.

The new jungle isn't a complete mess however (please excuse the rantyness of the previous paragraphs). It succeeds at limiting the number of champs who should have power in the jungle and when they have it (just a little too much atm). The new jungle items could use better tuning but are generally headed in the right direction. The smite damage indicator and the hp counters for Buff and Epic monsters is very useful. The scuttle crab is a great idea, but when it takes you over 30 seconds to kill it if you don't have smite, then it loses a lot of the sneaky strategy portion of its concept. The enchantments for the jungle items are really good at allowing you to build any jungle item you need as the game progresses.

TL;DR: The new jungle is a bit too punishing for low level players. It doesn't improve diversity between sustain and gank junglers since it is brutally punishing for everyone. The jungle items offer strategic diversity, but the enchantments are not worth buying over another item. The jungle doesn't give enough gold or experience, which make catching up from an early death near impossible. The jungle scales harder than the Jungler. The damage indicator for smite and the hp bars for buff monsters are good. The different smites need tuning badly. The new camp is cool, but too slow to kill to be worth the time. Dragon requires too much teamwork to kill (beyond reasonable amounts of coordination from anything but a pre-made team. It is possible, but that much harder to ever get anyone to help with it) meaning strategies like sneaking a solo drag with a high sustain champ are useless.

@Riot, I appreciate the direction that most of these changes are heading, and like you said, they will require a lot of tuning.