Thoughts on Jungle diversity and Vision Control (and why the S5 changes won't work)
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Ganking used to be rare. Rather, the focus was on sneaking Dragon. Wards were still important, but few were needed: a ward for Dragon and 2-3 more to eye the opposing team. This was the style leading into Jatt's Trundle at IPL3. Players and teams improved, skill begets tactics, and ganking, with additions to the character roster, became common. TheOddOne's Maokai at MLG, and Diamondprox's Lee Sin at IEM Kiev/ Hanover were just the start. As the scene developed, League began revolving around vision. Before long, every Jungler would buy an Oracle's Elixir at minute 4.
This is League's infinite regress. In order to control vision, your team must ward before mine so as to hide where your wards are, and to spot where I place mine. Which leads to warding earlier and earlier, and, accordingly, clearing earlier and earlier. This isn't just an aggressive strategy for teams like Samsung White. Consider CLGEU, or, more recently, Samsung Blue. These teams placed wards to create space to farm, and time to counter-gank. They cleared wards to deter ganks, and slow games down. Whoever controls vision, controls the game.
If you don't know where my wards are and you don't have wards yourself, you're options are to limited to guesswork. Even with wards, if you don't know where mine are, you could, without realizing it, face-check into a counter-gank: SSW vs SHRC
Because a well-timed gank (or counter-gank) can give a game-winning payoff, League is a contest to setup for and defend against such tactics. And their preparation is vision control. What if Samsung White didn't spot Pantheon? What if Royal Club spotted Orianna or Rengar lurking near bottom? They wouldn't have skyfalled into a trap, or, perhaps, Lulu or Ryze would've teleported with Pantheon.
The tools required to contest vision and pressure lanes, despite vision, enforces the Jungler's champion pool. To bring diversity: (1) reduce ganking's payoff, and (2) equalize vision.
When a single kill can reverse a counter lane, only strategies that attempt to gank (or counter-gank) are viable.^1 Tempering this playstyle will give Junglers room to play other strategies (eg. farming) and other characters that aren't as dominant early-on (eg. Amumu). Ganks may not seem as integral because pros have found workarounds. For instance, Top hedges by picking either item-independent characters -- Dr. Mundo, Shyvana, Renekton, Shen, Maokai, Rumble, Zac, etc -- characters that can fall behind and still impact the game; or, characters with a strong late-game like Jax or Ryze, so an early deficit isn't much of a problem. It is, however, enough of a problem that the Jungler is relegated to babysitting lanes. To relax lane dominance (without propagating issues elsewhere) one could ease bounty gold/xp and pay tower gold over time.
The S4 vision rework didn't change the fundamentals. Once a team grabs four Sweeping Lenses, a couple Vision Wards, and a bunch of Stealth wards, the same problems arise: Problem Matrices. The leader jumps up the gradient to Unlimited Wards / Unlimited Clear; and, their opposition slides down to Limited Wards / Unlimited Clear. As in, they have wards to drop, but the leader has unlimited resources to sweep them.
The best teams can keep the item disparity close, but not vision. When I place a ward, you (the leader) either saw where I placed it or where I walked to place it. This allows you to avoid my vision or sweep it. Meaning, my vision is either not that useful or nonexistent. And that I must constantly place wards just to keep some vision, else I risk face-checking in the near future. And, of course, clearing your wards is worthless as you have stacks sitting in your inventory.^2
As long as vision is backed by gold, the leading team will have an abundance and the trailing team will have little. No price is balanced because the more vision a team has, the better even more vision is. To see this, imagine the upper-left quadrant of the map. There are roughly four paths to Nashor. The first ward covers one of those paths. A second, covers a third of the remaining paths. A third, one-half. And a fourth completes the coverage. All extra wards would be redundant, except, some wards are inevitably swept, so backups ensure vision is never lost.
Once again, though, teams have found a workaround: Pantheon and Rammus. Royal Club conceded they wouldn't win the vision game, so they opted for Junglers that ignore it. This is an extreme example; however, looking at every Jungler^3 -- Lee Sin, Jarvan IV, Elise, Evelynn, Rengar, etc -- it's clear, bypassing wards is essential. When a game is close, both teams are on the verge of perfect vision; so, to gain the lead, one must pressure despite the other team's vision. And once a team has the lead, a comeback is only possible by a surprise play -- even though the leader has near-perfect vision.^4 Curbing early vision would allow champions like Amumu and Olaf to play alongside the old guard.
One change is necessary: Vision control's primary currency is switched from gold to time.
And two suggestions: (1) No Sightstone charges or any other vision control equivalent. Consider what a rotation is: a team moves from one objective to another while sweeping and dropping wards. The counter-play is leapfrogging wards, inching wards closer and closer to Nashor or wherever. It's slow, expensive, and not that effective. Rotations shouldn't be that strong nor that easy. Capturing a quadrant should take longer than walking from one objective to another. Allowing both teams to have temporary, partial control equalizes vision enough so either team can outplay the other.
The other suggestion is an anti-snowball mechanic: (2) Wards and sweepers share the cooldown. In order to press an advantage, one needs to clear wards. In order to clear wards, one gives up vision. And, as the game goes on, this becomes less true.
For a detailed concept: Click Here
^1 This is a consequence of Riot's loose homogenization of their champions' power curves, which works well for League as it highlight a player's mechanics. It does, however, cause a small advantage to be a big deal.
^2 The description is how the vision system feels rather than actuality, still, it's close to reality. When the leading team clears every ward around an objective, then drops 7 wards, what can the other team do?
^3 Kha'Zix is an exception, but he's probably overpowered, and he's not Udyr-bad at bypassing wards.
^4 Taking a late-game composition is one exception. And there are other possibilities not involving the Jungler; however, the Jungler starts as the primary pressure role, which currently means the Jungler has to apply pressure despite their opposition's wards. Thus a Jungler should have a strong, surprising initiation.
