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"We are looking to increase strategic diversity with this new jungle" (Another Bronze Jungle rant)

Rhody·12/10/2014, 5:51:25 PM·2 votes·630 views

"So we are going to limit the jungle only to bruisers with sustain."

I was a huge fan of using unconventional Jungles

Karthus, Lissandra, Leona, Twitch...

Now I dont understand why I cant jungle with champs I want to jungle as. I was able to before. Each of these champs (except Leona) opened up a different play style for my laners.

As Lissandra I was able to secure kills with her insane lock down and CC, and all I needed was for the tribushes to be pinked. Other than being a lockdown/CC style Ganker, I was also an AP Carry and Initiator in team fights. Seriously. She can hide her E-Claw inside the terrain and cliffs. Making her psuedo-stealth jungler. You cant see her coming unless both tribushes are warded

When Suddenly LIssandra.

Playing Lissandra in the Jungle forced the enemy team to ward differently as well. How is this not strategic diversity? I dont know about professional play or higher up play, but rarely do i ever see the enemy support journey over into our jungle just to ward the Tribush.

2 Comments

TehNACHO12/10/2014, 6:28:04 PM3 votes

I think you are misunderstanding "Jungle diversity". Granted, not your fault, Riot has made this as hard to understand as possible.

From the few red posts I've tracked down about this subject, "Jungle Diversity" does NOT mean "Everybody can Jungle!". This was Season 4's strengths, and also its biggest f-ckup. Especially in the competitive scene, have you noticed it was the exact same type of Jungler every game? The problem with that system was that everybody was able to Jungle in the same way. To rephrase, Jungling had one, maybe two, dominant strategies (at least in higher level play).

What "Jungle Diversity" actually means, apparently, is to promote a certain class of champions, lets call these "Junglers", and build as many different facets for these "Junglers" to Jungle effectively with. What this means is that not all champions can Jungle. However, this also means that all champions who can Jungle now all have the capability to Jungle effectively, even competing for top tier spots, at least within their strategies.

tl;dr, "Jungle Diversity" is about strategy, not about champions. Technically speaking, less champions can jungle, but it opens up the opportunity for more Junglers who jungle well.

Tsunday12/10/2014, 6:05:51 PM2 votes

Aka 'Bronze' Jungle rant. I'm not a jungle main, I'm actually a pretty sucky jungler, but I do know for a fact you don't have to be a bruiser to jungle. I hate to pull up LCS plays but if you haven't seen TSM vs UoL's 1st game in the IEM, UoL pulls out a TF jungle. You might want to watch it. Not because TF jungle is going to be the next big thing, or because you should copy what the LCS players do, but because the shoutcasters actually talk a bit about how it is possible to use a ranged jungler to your advantage, when camps reset, A good start for ranged junglers. They also talked a little bit about it when UoL had a Kayle jungle in their second game against Lyon gaming.

Ranged junglers are still plausible, they can avoid camp aggro a lot better than melee junglers. Lissandra isn't going to have the same innate sustain in the jungle but she was already full of AoE damage for clear, having an enchantment with CDR and a fair amount of AP boosts her damage, Trailblazer is still going to help with AoE jungle damage.

It's not that Riot is saying that nothing but bruiser junglers with sustain work (although to be fair Lissandra is a rather bruiserish mage compared to most other mages), it's that you have to learn how to play the jungle differently. Krugs and Gromp are very good for people who have trouble clearing the jungle ATM.