Assessment of the new jungle.
As a long-time jungler I just wanted to give my assessment of the new jungle; while I'm sure I'll have a lot to write, I'll try to keep it simple and concise.
-Camps are far too strong and/or machete sustain is far too weak, as has been mentioned by plenty of people. Unless you've got some internal sustain, clearing more than 3-4 camps before having to recall is pushing it heavily in the first run, especially without much of a leash. Even after backing and buying an upgrade, maintaining a decent amount of health without innate sustain is still out of question unless you waste hundreds of gold on health pots repeatedly.
-Smite cooldown is awful now. And no, Smite is not a point of decision-making now. Unless you're a jungler with innate sustain, you're pidgeonholed into taking the AoE smite to maintain reasonable health, which means using smite on a champion isn't an option. And with the wolf, wraith (i'm not gonna bother figuring out what they're called now), and Blue smite bonuses being borderline worthless, all the 'decision' that's left with smite is whether to use it on golems, wight, or Red... and considering it's generally not hard to time the clearing of those camps out far enough apart that you get Smite cd'd, there's no real decision to be made when using smite on them.
-The pacing of the jungle respawns feels about right. The longer respawn, and the fact that even relative slow clearers can clear the 4 small camps and circle back around before they respawn, feels like a good way to make sure fast clearers don't just get a massive farm and xp advantage; they can still go off and gank more easily, or make counterjungling efforts, but they can't just stay in their own jungle all day to get a lead.
-However, despite the pacing of respawns feeling right, the gold and experience absolutely do not feel acceptable in the least. In my couple of live games and multitude of test runs, regardless of what I did my gold and experience both fell heavily behind what would be considered reasonable. Whether I busted my ass just clearing constantly or worked ganks into the mix, my gold always fell short of everyone but the support by a substantial margin, and even the support only wound up with a couple hundred less. When it comes to experience, it's much the same story; the solo lanes get significantly behind, while the duo laners are only a fraction of a level behind me.
-The machete still feels terrible. It's still just a tax that junglers are forced to pay just to be able to farm their 'lane' early that builds into items with horrible PvP slot and cost efficiency later on, only unlike last season they now can also allow the summoner spell junglers are forced to take have an actual PvP use (keyword: "can"... in most cases it really can't, because surviving the jungle as a sustainless champ without picking the AoE smite is incredibly questionable at best). The only one of the Enchantments that makes having to buy Machete feel worthwhile is Devourer, and that's largely because it's been given far, far more gold value (to those that use it best, pure auto-attackers) than any of the others, as the on-hit damage has been severely undercosted, just like it was on Flare.
-I'm not sure about Dragon right now. I don't much care for the change in concept, as making up for the enemy team getting Dragon previously could be balanced out more reasonably... even if the enemy team got a Dragon, you could score a couple kills to balance it out. Now, the bonuses cannot simply be evened out by gold, they can only be matched by getting your own Dragon kill, which is restricted heavily by time. It makes the first Dragon kill far far more important than it used to be. It should be important, but the level of importance this change brings I believe to be too severe.
-The crab is pretty cool. I like the concept of extra river control, and unlike the horrible blue/purple disparity that comes with the Wolf smite sentry, both crabs' vision control is fairly equally relevant to both teams at all times.
-The jungle just plain feels unrewarding right now. It's felt pretty unrewarding for a long time now, being that it's provided the lowest income besides the support role for a long time while also forcing the jungler to pay items just to farm it, but now that it's more difficult, more expensive (need to buy so many more health pots), riskier, and doesn't even allow most junglers to gank anywhere near as often, all while the rewards have actually gone down slightly compared to last season... it feels awful. I'm busting my ass harder than every laner, getting punished more for small mistakes than laners (laners might get punished hard for big mistakes, but they don't get hurt nearly as badly from small mistakes as a jungler now), and I'm not even getting anywhere near the power of the solos/ADc for my efforts. I'm putting in far more effort towards the game than a laner for less in-game gain. It feels like an exercise in masochism.
So, all that being said, what do I suggest for changes?
-For starters, remove the slow from Red altogether. This isn't really tied to any of the points above, but it's something that already should have happened. It's sickening that the slow still exists, especially for ranged champs. It shouldn't even exist for melees, as it just waters down the intended downsides of champions weak cc.
-Get rid of Machete as a regular item, period. Stop forcing junglers to pay a tax just to start farming the jungle, stop forcing them to give up valuable inventory space for items with no special PvP ability, and stop forcing junglers to stall on getting the items they really want to buy. Since you've already tied the purchase of a machete to Smite, take it a step further and simply make machete's effects into a passive effect attached to Smite that gets stronger with character level just like other summoner spells, and let junglers build whatever the hell they want to start. It's bad enough that junglers are effectively being 'taxed' into taking smite just to farm their version of a 'lane', don't make them pay a gold cost just to farm it as well. Get rid of the enchantments altogether and get rid of the second tier of Machete altogether. If you really like the idea of modifying Smite with additional functions, introduce the ability to upgrade Smite in the shop after a certain amount of monster kills (making it hard for laners to simply take smite and get a PvP use out of it).
-Going along with the above statement, pump up the sustain offered by that 'machete' passive that would be on Smite. Having monsters deal as much damage as they do is fine, it keeps champs without Smite from casually striding in and farming the jungle. However, the amount of damage they deal to legit junglers is ridiculous right now... while I agree champs with innate sustain should have a mild survivability advantage in the jungle, champs without it should still feel capable of clearing without the ridiculous level of risk involved right now. Also, just plain increase the mana regen, by a substantial amount. Mana should not be an issue in clearing the jungle, period. It's all well and good to have mana-gating be significant in laning, but in the jungle, when you're forced to burn mana just to farm in the slightest? Mana-gating just creates a ridiculous disparity between mana-using and manaless junglers and the disadvantage of having to worry about mana isn't balanced out by much of any benefit as a jungler.
-Pump up gold and experience a bit. If machete were to be removed as a gold expense (and the sustain granted by the passive effect now on Smite were increased, reducing expenses on health pots), part of the lack of PvP-usable farm suffered by junglers would be mitigated, which would cause junglers to feel a little richer, but it still wouldn't quite be enough to justify the effort involved nor would it be enough to make the jungler's farm approach that of a solo or ADc. If Machete's effects were to get combined into smite and Machete removed as an item, gold and experience still need to be raised a bit. If Machete's gonna stay as it is, gold needs to be increased even further.
-The camps smite buffs could use a redo. The wolf one needs to be more useful... guarding that one area is far too weak of a benefit, especially when the value of that area is different based on whether you're blue team or purple. The Blue one should just outright be health restoration, the same as Red; restoring a mass of mana shouldn't be an issue in the jungle in the first place (see above about the disparity between mana-using and manaless junglers and how it shouldn't exist), and if for some reason a jungler actually is in some need of mana they can just get Blue buff.
