Let's Talk About the Jungle

Over the past season, we've seen an overarching problem in Jungle diversity within the competitive scene of League of Legends. That problem? There is none. Diversity has been super small and has been a concern all season, even gaining Dev notoriety for how much of a problem this is. But even now, as the season is drawing to the close, we still only see about 3 or 4 Junglers in competitive. Why is this?

First, let's define the different styles of Junglers that are available in League of Legends.

1. Heavy Aggression Early Game Junglers: These junglers are going to be those who buy an Elder Lizard of Spectral Wraith early and use their early game strengths to snowball lanes into a victory.

2. Passive Late Game Junglers: These junglers are going to farm the jungle, gank when it's opportune, but mostly just try to get items to be a force in the mid-late game.

3. Heavy CC Tank Junglers: These junglers are going to provide a lot of crowd control to team fights, while also providing various other forms of utility, while being tanky.

Now, what we see in LCS the majority of the time are Heavy Aggression Early Game Junglers. These are Champs like Lee Sin, Elise, Evelynn, and Kha'Zix. These have all been strong picks throughout the season, due to their ability to snowball lanes while still bring a strength into the late game, while that may not necessarily be their damage. Lately, we've also see a Heavy CC Tank Jungler come into play, Nunu. Nunu is picked because he brings a lot of crowd control through his Ult and Snowball, a damage increase to a teammate, objective securing ability with Consume+Smite, and decent damage late if he hits his Ult on people. He is also extremely popular because of the meta of protecting the late game hyper carry.

This means that, for the most part, there are two different groups (if we leave out Nunu's recent surge) that are rarely seen in competitive League of Legends: Passive Late Game Junglers and Heavy CC Tank Junglers. Why are these not strong picks?

1. Passive Late Game Junglers: In all fairness to this group, they actually did get a small, two week surge in popularity with the addition of Feral Flare to the game, but immediately fell out of popularity with the nerf to the item. In all fairness, the item did need a nerf. It didn't take long to stack and it gave amazing stats for someone that just AFK farmed for thirty minutes. This category of Junglers includes Champs like Master Yi, Udyr, Xin Zhao, Jax, Tryndamere, and other auto-attack reliant Junglers.

2. Heavy CC Tank Junglers: This is a group of Junglers that see extremely little action. One of the major reasons you see them so little is because people want to snowball their teammates into being late game monsters. Where do these Junglers fit in? They don't bring much early game gank potential because of their lack of damage. Late game, they weren't able to snowball their lanes so they don't have anyone particularly way ahead, while they also don't bring anything damage-wise to a team fight to make up for a non-snowballed team. Nunu escapes the death penalty that everyone else in this group has received because of his ability to protect a late game hyper carry in a team fight and his amazing objective securing ability with Consume+Smite. The Champions in the category are Nautilus, Zac, Maokai, etc.

Riot has made two attempts to help both of these groups of Junglers throughout the season and both have failed. They began by fixing Wriggle's Lantern and providing an upgrade that made it a great choice of item for Passive Late Game Junglers. Feral Flare brought a ton of diversity possibilities to the Jungle. The big issue with this item was the ability for a player to AFK farm for 20 minutes and come out a monster. Because of how prominent this strategy became, Riot nerfed the item, going as far as to call it "a mistake."

They decided to next take a shot at fixing Heavy CC Tank Junglers. To address their problem, they remade the Ancient Golem line, introducing Quill Coat. This was an item that would provide better Jungle clear and sustain for the Heavy CC Tank Junglers. This item TECHNICALLY didn't fail. It achieved the goal that Riot wanted to do, providing sustain and clear for these Junglers. The problem is that this wasn't the major problem for them seeing little competitive play. The problem is their lack of early game damage. They don't bring anything to the team early when the lanes want it in this meta. While your Heavy CC Tank Jungler is farming the Jungle freely, Kha'Zix has snowballed every single lane.

With all of this said, there's an overarching problem with the Jungle right now.

Riot has no clear direction on what they want the Jungle to be

Riot has stated that they want the Jungle to be diverse, but their actions speak the complete opposite of this. When they created Feral Flare, it opened the Jungle to a wide variety of different Champions. The key to this was that it did NOT make any of the Elder Lizard Champions unviable. The addition of Feral Flare opened up the Jungle to two of our three groups. The nerfing of it reduced our Jungle back down to one group. Feral Flare also opened up a whole new strategy to the Jungle. If you chose to go Feral Flare, you put your lanes in jeopardy. The Heavy Aggression Early Game Junglers were still snowballing their lanes while you AFK farmed. When you finally did come out of the Jungle, it could be too late for your strength to even matter. This required making decisions on what you wanted to do.

Riot really didn't want AFK farming for 20 minutes to be a strategy though, since you couldn't really do much to stop them, because counter-jungling doesn't exist anymore. So they added more stacks to transform and gain less strength for every giant monster. This didn't help at all, so they finally nerfed it to useless, going as far as calling it "a mistake." There were plenty of options of what could have been done to fix Feral Flare without making it a joke, even giving more stacks for helping get kills in lanes. This would have provided a way out of the Jungle for these Passive Late Game Junglers to participate. They would still get stronger, but they wouldn't be AFK for 20 minutes. But instead, they went with the opposite and took our Group 2 out of the Jungle again.

With Anicent Golem's changes, they hoped that these Heavy CC Tank Junglers would see more play. The problem with it was that it didn't address the problems that these Heavy CC Junglers have. Riot brings up Nautilus as an example of a Heavy CC Tank Jungler that they want to see played more. But his issue isn't Jungle clear. He does no damage ever in the game and his mana costs are ridiculous. Even when mana isn't an issue, he does no damage. So while you may be able to get a good gank on a lane, you require your laner to do all the damage to get the kill on the opponent instead of actually providing some damage yourself. Let's take Nautilus vs Lee Sin. Nautilus ganks and lands his full combo. Your laner has to do all the damage to get the kill. Lee Sin ganks and lands his full combo. Lee does half the damage as the laner does half and secures the kill. One of these gives the opponent no chance to flash away. The other makes your laner go through two cycles of their abilities.

So there have been two chances to make all three groups viable in the current meta. Feral Flare was nerfed to take Group 2 out of the Jungle and Ancient Golem's direction was misguided, when didn't let Group 3 come into the Jungle.

With Season 5, Riot has stated that they want to change the Jungle up and allow the Heavy CC Tank Junglers be stronger. I'm afraid that they're misguided again. It's not that they don't provide CC. It's that they don't provide the damage early that would make up for their lack of damage late. But my biggest issue is if this Jungle change is successful, what have they gained? Ok, so Nautilus is now meta and is the most popular Jungler in League. Zac is back and is throwing himself into every team fight. Where are we? We have one group, Heavy CC Tank Junglers, that are viable and two groups that are not.

It won't solve the problem of the Jungle. Just shift it to another group. And this time next year, Riot will state that they're going to be doing changes to make Heavy Aggression Early Game Junglers more viable during Preseason 6.

I make this post because the Jungle is completely messed up. There's no clear direction on what Riot wants the Jungle to be. There's one group of viable Junglers while the other two groups get thrown to the side, while we only hear that they want those two groups to see more play. Feral Flare is introduced, nerfed to unviability. Ancient Golem changed, changed the wrong way.

So here are a few questions I wonder about for the Jungle:

1. What is wrong with there being more strategies in the Jungle other than early game aggression? Why is AFK farming not a viable option when wards and counter-jungling exist?

2. How does Riot plan on making sure more than one group of Champions is viable in the Jungle?

3. Who decides what is "unfun" or "toxic" to the Jungle?

4. What is there to gain by creating a Heavy CC Tank Jungler meta?

5. Does Riot believe it's possible for all three groups to be strong in the right situations?

Jungling is a lot of fun, but I've had to basically give it up because all of my favorite Junglers aren't that strong anymore. And this is not because of their abilities, but because of their items being weak. I don't understand how one Jungle item can be seen as "creating a lack of diversity and counterplay" while a different Jungle item has completely voided out every other Jungle group (Elder Lizard).

TL;DR: The Jungle has the inherit problem of no vision from Riot. No one knows what they want with it and they completely void out all but one group of Junglers while stating that they want all to be viable. Changing the Jungle will only shift the group, not the diversity.

If you read all of this, thanks.