I agree, Jungling hasn't really been fun from me since 4.20, and this patch doesn't really feel like a step in the right direction.
The plants don't feel great. Scryer feels OP. Health plant in river seems like a fair trade off - health for speed, but the jump plant feels more like a gimmick or a "for the lulz" click than a great gameplay mechanic (and I've seen people make plays with it - both from skill [they knew the plant was there and it was part of a planned escape] and from sheer dumb luck, like a lucky spawn that I knew they had never scouted). Also, I'm a fucking Gardener now instead of a Jungler. Yippy. I don't really want a living Jungle. I want to burn it down for $.
Normal games have been fun, but I've got two accounts, one fell to S4 and was stuck there for a month or so. That experience made me quit jungling. I watch pro streams where Platinum+ players go 10 minutes without a first blood. The S4 experience is botlane giving up a double kill to the enemy ADC and Top dies, teleports back to lane and dies again before I can even hit L3. Now Top is down by two levels, bot is down by 1 level and yet all 3 lanes are continuing to hard push without a ward leaving me to try to guess where I can counter a gank or an All-in.
In response to this situation I was given plants to tend. A digital Zen Garden for my tilt.
The increased spawn times on monsters in jungle since 4.20 leaves me with less things to actively engage with - and it gets worse when my laners decide to take camps themselves. Oh, and now my midlaner thinks he should get Chickens and Blue every time they're up from about the 6:45 mark on.
I remember Meteos commenting at Worlds that the meta had shifted to Power farming the Jungle on a bruiser-engager champ until you were strong enough to force action, and how he was hesitant to go for early plays due to how behind you would get if your play failed and you got counter-jungled. I've been in games where I've been counter-jungled and put a level behind the enemy jungler permanently and lost every 1v1 or skirmish due to level discrepancy.
Jungling feels like there are few comeback mechanics and it feels like I'm entirely reliant on lanes to set me up to play through them, and if they don't know how to do that things get out of hand in a hurry. The new Krugs and Chickens I feel will only encourage more heavy farming of jungle and less interaction with lanes and are ripe for abuse.
In regards to OP's Wolf Smite, I liked my defensive wolf smite, hated enemies defensive wolf smite. I've peaced out so many dive or invade opportunities because of a WarCraft 3 Wisp running at me. So if giving up my wolf helps drive more action I'll take it.
If they take away smite buffs yet keep smite HP restore I wish they'd also add lesser % missing mana restore to the smite effect as well. Mana junglers still have to make a terrible trade-off between good clear and having mana for ganks that manaless Junglers like Lee Sin and Rek'sai don't have to make.
I think taking away the two sentinels from buffs is a horrible idea. Now giving up a buff to laner sees you lose more XP. The reasoning was trash too, as in "We felt there was enough 3 spawn camps. So we ditched Sentinels." Well, now the only 3 spawn jungle camp is wolf. The Sentinels were there to keep Junglers from getting screwed out of XP when they were charitable to lanes. They give smite a generic effect while turning every camp into a special little snowflake of an event.
's early clear is even worse now without Gromp buff- I had to recall after two camps because Blue nearly killed me. :(
