Some Jungle feedback from a Gold V scrub.

Disclaimer: Yes, I am bad at this game. Yes, I can't put the skill to my words like a Diamond can. Still, I wanted to talk about the jungle.

#Background

I play a lot of jungle. It's one of my favorite roles. I mostly play tank/tank-bruiser junglers but I've been trying to branch out into assassin junglers as well. I even enjoy really weird, niche, or unexpected things like Yorick or Taric jungle. With that out of the way, I want to talk about the jungle in general. Not just "Omg jungle sux plz send back to S3" but point out the good and the bad. With that being said, there's a lot more bad than good ATM.

#The Good

• Splitting up the starting items was a good idea.

An AP and an AD variant is great. It gives me a tool if I wanna switch it up or I'm playing a jungler that's very mana intensive. They also fuse together so I never feel like I'm picking an option that will stifle my choices. I appreciate this quite a bit.

• Ward changes mean ganking is a lot more impactful and easier.

Less wards overall mean I can attack and have a generally easier time punishing a lane if they go out of bounds. In Season 4/5 the ward changes made the rift littered with these things, making sweeper and the raptor buff almost required. Now these wards only get pushed a lot when it comes to the mid-late game, which means I can actually gank a bit more without having to ask where all the wards are in the area.

• NO MORE STEALING MAH MOBS

The XP changes made the jungle more rewarding for the jungler. That is all.

• are great ideas.

Sustain tools? For me? Refillable potions that don't suck? They come back when I kill jungle mobs!? Yes PLEASE.

#The Bad

This is gonna take a while so bear with me.

• >

By a long shot. Machete completely blows Talisman out of the water. It offers no sustain except for your mana pool in a punishing environment. This really screws with junglers who clear in AoE burst like...every tank jungler. My proposal would be to add some possible spellvamp component or have the regen extend to both mana and hp in the jungle. As it is now, Talisman just doesn't help the junglers it was designed to help.

• need to be better for sustain-lacking junglers.

Great concept, terrible execution. 100 HP twice is piddly in the jungle, as some mobs will do over 100 damage in 2-3 autos. The upgrade is even worse because you gain more charges but lose 40 HP per charge. >4< charges are required, provided you spend the 350 to upgrade it. It's insane how little regen it actually provides. In that regard, I'd recommend making the refillable potion gain a charge on large monsters as well. Sure, laners could abuse it but for junglers who actually NEED the sustain it'll go a long way to making life easier. Oh, and make it cost a little less. Which leads to my next point...

• Gold gains are awful for junglers.

Routinely I'll end the game with gold on-par with a support. The gold in the jungle is awful and forces you to pick characters who can accomplish a lot with a few items (Cough cough Elise) or have just great kits that don't work great with items. (Kindred) This isn't help with all the jungler items getting knocked up a tier in price. I don't care if ambient gold went up, do SOMETHING. The best recommendation I could make is maybe attach a "Gain 10% extra gold from jungle mobs" on the jungler items so that it's worth it. Maybe just a flat gold gain like cull? I'm not sure.

• does nothing to smite.

Chilling is for ganking. Skirmishers is for tanking/dueling Trackers is for...more wards?

Maybe we can roll Trailblazer into this item too? Make this the utility smite? Maybe smiting a large monster gives you an extra ward?

• Rift Herald is too beefy.

When you guys told me he hits hard, I expected to have a tough slugfest I couldn't solo. I didn't expect a monster who would throw me around like the god damn Hulk. Tanking this thing is impossible for most characters and the eye is a slow burn. I have ended up killing this several times because I couldn't keep tanking it. Maybe make it so the rift herald does less damage to the person who smites it? Right now it's harder to fight than Baron or Dragon. Which is insane.

• Keystone Masteries are terrible for junglers.

Only two keystones affect junglers during the jungle phase: Bond of Stone (Which is getting nerfed next patch) and Strength of Ages (Which is pretty damn meh regardless). Warlords, which is getting nerfed, only worked for a select few junglers. Why is it that ALL these effects are for laners only? Would it be so bad to make some of these work on large jungle monsters? Hell, Thunderlord's Decree would make a lot of jungler lives easier if we could use it on some mobs. Please, right now I feel forced to go into the resolve tree to jungle.

• Cooldown reduction to Summoner spells don't do anything to smite.

Lucidity doesn't make the charge time faster and the mastery for summoner spells doesn't either. Plz fex.

• Items don't favor junglers. Period.

The enchantments are an expensive option for little gain. The tank items being nerfed make tank junglers suffer. AP items are worse now for the few AP junglers. ADC itemization for assassin junglers just don't do much. Everything's more expensive and it makes it difficult to itemize without breaking my bank.

#Conclusion/Summary

I like jungling. I enjoy being a roaming force in my own little world who can make or break a lane just by showing my face. These recent changes, while some are good, have not helped the jungle and have only propelled the top tier group of Elise/Gragas/Reksai/Kindred higher while pushing the lower tiers lower. Much of this can be fixed with just making early clears better. Above all, I beg that you look into keystone masteries. If some of these could work on only large jungle monsters, I'd feel like I could have some choice in my options without having to hold onto a mastery for when teamfights roll around. Thank you.

#TL;DR

New jungle does some cool things but a lot of it makes the jungle suck. Goldarino plz no downvoteachino ty.