Jungle Changes [My Thoughts and Discussion]
Sorry for not placing this in the title, but this is based on the PBE pre-season 5 changes!
[I will probably mess this tl;dr up and you should read the post below]
tl;dr : baron buff remain same, respawns the same, dragon needs play test time, smite remain same otherwise game become complex, jungle camp first spawn times change is whatever, lower cooldown smite, smite should be objective control and simple- complexity that adds on to smite should not be in the game even if the ideas seem interesting, large monster buffs should be on the large monsters themselves [mid lane can kill razorbeaks, get the buff, and roam adding more gameplay depth], new jungle item replace madreds only and can be enchanted to 4 options, spirit stone items and ancient golem remain in game, spectral wraith gets less ap but procs true damage burn on magic damage similar to elder lizard, in combination with jungle changes new jungle item and keep the spirit line and ancient golem in the game will create the biggest jungle diversity that any season ever had.
I am going to get some whatever things out of the way first: ~ Jungle Spawn Times being moved is whatever [Respawn times should remain at 5 minutes and 50 seconds respectively and should not be increased] ~ Jungle Difficulty granting more gold and exp is whatever, this might make jungling more of a real role rather than second support ~ Dragon Changes, no immediate thoughts, needs to be play tested on Live Servers before final decisions here should be made- might add unnecessary complexity to the game in comparison to only granting gold and exp ~ Roaming River Crap is whatever, could be interesting and add a nice flare to the game
Now to the changes that more concern me: **~ The Smite ideas **and changes seem interesting BUT make the game too complex and ruins Smite identity which is jungle secure, dragon securing, and baron securing. Smite should remain at 40 seconds and should not be increased. Smite should be a summoner spell always up so that each team fears the jungler [Smite holder] when taking objectives and not about book keeping of someone's abilities / summoner spells; the game should be player vs player, and in the case of objective involved player vs environment vs player; the game should not ever be about player vs game. League of Legends was originally suppose to be a free to play game for everyone can play, allow its performance to be low so all toasters globally can play, and simple enough for anyone can get into while still being the most complex game on a mastery level; the Smite changes to complicate things destroy League's simple to get into identity [I am not talking about League veterans who can get used to the changes given a month or two or three, I am talking about the casual players and new players who want to get into League of Legends].
~ About adding buffs to Large Monsters is great and I really want this change, but they need to be added to the large monsters themselves with no Smite stipulation required, again Smite should be for jungle secure first and foremost and leave it simply at that.
~ Baron Buff, Riot please, every pre-season you talk about a B-buff change and never follow through and should not follow through especially with the changes I read. This again adds too much complexity to the game, Baron Buff is so much simpler by granting bonus stats, the whole Minion buffing aura makes the game weird and creates unneeded complexity. Super Minion aura is fine and makes sense. [Inhibitor Respawns should remain at the lower changed respawn time of 4 minutes so that teams are not pinned in their base 24/7].
~ Jungle Items, the spirit stone line [including Ancient Golem] add a lot of jungler diversity, now I do like the new item [and machete change] but get rid of the other options for the smite stuff, it is weird and again adds complexity {I really like this word for some reason} to the game that does not need to be there. Adding the 4 enchantments to this line would be really cool, however, make this new item replace the madreds line and you have even more jungle items increasing the jungle diversity further alongside the spirit stone items and ancient golem. Now Spectral Wraith could use a small change to make it more diverse against the AP enchantment of the new jungle item, so my idea here is lower the AP to 60 from 50-80 [so the current passive is removed] and add a new passive to the item that grants a bonus true damage burn whenever the user deals magic damage making Spectral Wraith the Ability Power and magic damage version of Elder Lizard which is Attack Damage and physical damage; because Elder Lizard uses Attack Damage instead of Ability Power the two items will remain with 30% and 20% increased damage to Monsters respectively, the clear time should be the same since Attack Damage helps basic attacks deal more damage.
P.S. Gold for Kills/Assists should be at 50% value for the first 2:30 and increase to 100% and be at 100% by 4:00 minute mark; this prevents games being won from levels 1-3 cheese which is not healthy for the game.
~ Stacona
EDIT: I thought of an idea for dragon to expand on Riot's idea that is on PBE while keeping dragon simplified: The idea here is that dragon will grant +5 health and mana regen per 5 seconds and +5 attack damage and ability power permanently for each player every dragon stack that your team obtains. This will in turn keep dragon relevant through-out the entirety of the game, and incentive to keep getting more and more dragons and try to keep control over the area even with Baron up, since Baron may be worth 8 Dragon stacks it is only temporary [there is the large amount of global gold and exp baron grants as well], but Baron has a better understanding of its value point in comparison to Dragon especially if you have a bunch of dragon stacks and baron buff together. The most interesting thought about this idea is that the difference between one team is going to dragon let's all rush to baron to get the better trade, but now it is "oh snap, the other team is about to get another dragon stack, let's go stop them" or the other team can rush baron for that huge power spike for a short time, but once baron runs out the team with the higher number of dragon stacks has the advantage again. This will create vision control around Dragon and Baron important through-out the game and not only have vision control around Baron because it is the only thing that matters [to get deeper turrets and the nexus]. A majour flaw I did discover in the PBE dragon is that the first dragon reward is useless and will not give incentive for teams to defend a really early dragon so to keep standard lanes unless a team feels like the enemy top laner is a huge threat and denying him will be worth it plus to grant an easy lane for a weaker duo lane, if the first dragon stack is really powerful early on it may lead to 2nd and 3rd dragon, but if you defend a dragon and take a post 10-minute dragon then either team can take the second dragon to either grow a lead or neutralize the first dragon. Another flaw is that each dragon gave something different and by the 6th dragon, the 6th dragon was completely useless, so this would end up making dragons useless late game and not worth anyone's time and will complicate the game because each dragon stack give something different. Whereas if every dragon stack does the same thing and stack infinitely then it is simple enough to know each dragon has the same stats and know what each dragon does, but it allows for each consecutive dragon the same team takes to increase the value of the dragon stacks more and more without actually changing what the dragon stacks give because it means you have this much more power than the other team despite items being equal.