Current State of the Jungle
The changes this preseason have hit us all pretty hard. A lot of people have been clinging to old meta and others flock to changes. However the one big change I feel is a bit overlooked is the new jungle. So let's talk about it a bit, shall we?
The jungle items were totally changes. All of them prices up in total: devourers is now 2450, warriors, and cinderhulk are now 2650, and runeglaive is 2675. Junle items are now split in 2. You have the machete, which gives lifesteal and 20 bonus on-hit damage, and now a talisman, that gives 150% mana regen in the jungle and 20 hp steal over time. These are both 350 and combine into the jungle part you'll be using. Trailblazer was removed for tracker, which lets you put wards down, and runeglaive was altered to give an altered stats and different spellblade effects. Now, runeglaive does the proc at 100% ad ratio plus 30% ap, and deals it in an aoe against neutral monsters as well as recovering mana when done against monsters. Its basically the replacement for Trailblazer. Additionally, warriors now only gives ad and cdr, reducing it's usefulness compared to all the others and the new items.
But how have the creeps changed? They're now a bit weaker overall, but grant less gold and less exp. The thing is, the jungle items were given new effects that increase your exp gain, not gold gain, and give you less immediate survivability in the jungle early game. The camos' gold was increased, but it's less than it was including the gold gain from jungle items. However, the exp gain from jungle items means you get more exp per kill, it's just harder to farm.
New mastsries don't alleviate all of this, either. There are boosts that slightly reduce incoming damage, but not by much. The mastsries focus on effects that boost hits against champions, so unless you're going tank, jungle is going to hurt a lot.
What does this mean for balance? Well, to start: warriors is useless. Runeglaive gives the sheen burst and mana recovery as well as mana, damage, and the same car boost, devours gives on hit damage, attack speed, and on-air extra procs, and cinderhulk gives hp based on your max hp. Warriors only gives 65 ad and 10% cdr. Its not bad, but it's a poor jumpstart compared to the other items and really not worthwhile unless you don't scale off ad, need aa damage, or need the sustain. Its just not worth it given the new ad items. It needs a secondary effect of some sort.
Additionally, while many mages can jungle now, runeglaive doesn't give their damage much kickstart and the sheen boost doesn't improve their damage. Its helpful, but still like far top much of an uphill battle.
Low sustain junglers like Evelynn and Nocturne have even more difficulty in the jungle due to these new items. As such, they are far slower to catch up and assist their team in ganking. In reality, they have to start ganking earlier, which is hard for them given the lack of sustain or abilities at that time. The current jungle requires players to be more active, rewarding heavy bankers and invaders more exp and gold than those trying to balance farming and ganking. In many cases junglers now tank super early and after getting 3 Or 4 tanks they start to farm for a level and back to ganking.
On the other hand, champs like Yi, Kayle, Warwick, and Udyr still all have the sustain to stay in jungle and farm their devours before leaving jungle and murdering everyone. This update didn't fix the afk farming problem for the champs that made it a problem. It just made it harder for everyone else to stay in the jungle.
In my opinion, the jungle rewards super aggressive behavior far more than it should. Junglers that needed the early farm like Evelynn, Malphite, Sion, and Diana are much harder off and need to cooperate with their team in order to set up ganks FOR THEM to get the kickstand they need. It should be the jungles setting up the kills and snowballing the lanes, not the lanes setting up ganks just so the jungler can get the income and exp they need to stay relevant.
What do you all think of the changes to jungle?
