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Riot can you go more in depth on why the simplicity of the Season 4 jungle didn't work for the game?

blueberrypancake··5 votes·486 views

Note: I'm actually not salty about CHANGE and stuff, I'm just interested on how Riot thinks of the jungle and how the change from season 4s to 5 and now 6 was caused by (I'm not even a jungle main)

I just want to know what problems the season 4 jungle had design wise (not necessarily statistically as you could always change those numbers in retrospect)

Was there something you felt about the simplicity of the jungle (or i should say difficulty) just not fitting with the rest of the game and what you wanted to do with league in the future?

Did you just wanna change the monsters to not be as general like the Wight and Wraiths?

I understand that this game needs to constantly change so the game doesn't become so stale and you Riot have always been keen on changing the jungle every year. Are you just trying to find the most engaging way to play the jungle and using the entire season to test it, or the most balanced way, or both? What are you currently focusing on more?

What is the purpose of adding new monsters every year? Is it to focus on team oriented play?

Did you like the prevailing strategy duo jungling? Was drastically changing the jungle of season 4 to 5 in difficulty caused by this?

(Side Question: Is your focus to create a more duo jungle focus or still allow solo jungling to be capable?)

5 Comments

Teridax684 votes

The jungle in Season 4 was so easy that junglers could just hard-gank lanes after or during their first clear, which they did, which is why early game gankers like Lee Sin, Jarvan IV and Evelynn absolutely dominated jungle play and almost completely crowded out any other picks. This also heavily warped the game in pretty much every other respect, heavily favoring early-game champions because weak early picks would get destroyed, and forcing jungle items to be either so OP that they'd get abused by laners (which still happens now, but can be much more easily controlled), or so terrible that early game junglers would be favored even more heavily, due to them relying less on long-term item scaling to be effective. When Riot tried to help out farm-oriented junglers with Feral Flare, the item was a failure because the jungle couldn't allow junglers to commit to farming without ending up being far too safe (the expectation for junglers to specifically hard-gank early on also prevented farm junglers from becoming truly viable). By contrast, the current system of monsters, buffs and itemization allows junglers to be useful without needing to gank 24/7, and lets different types of junglers coexist without any subtype being fundamentally OP by design, though some playstyles may need improving (there's still no real support for invader junglers or dedicated counterjunglers).

Simple Moon1 votes

Well put.

Earl Eulrich1 votes

guess who´s still dominating jungle...it´s still not tanks/farm-junglers.

Teridax682 votes

Sure, tanky junglers aren't the most popular right now, and neither are most farm-oriented junglers (Master Yi's the third most popular jungler, though), but that comes down to current balance, and not fundamental design. Right now, the selection of jungle items and paths means specific subclasses can be easily adjusted via targeted tweaks to jungle buffs or items (e.g. Cinderhulk, the Krug buff, etc.), whereas in previous jungle setups it was impossible to do so without spilling over into other subclasses, or engineering really unhealthy strategies (e.g. Feral Flare encouraging junglers to disappear off the face of the map for twenty minutes before emerging with far too much raw power). Tank junglers have been powerful in the current jungle model, as have farm junglers, and both were healthy even when they were too strong, which is something that never truly happened previously.

Earl Eulrich1 votes

or on why tf-jungle and other ranged champs that traded clearspeed for relativly high sustain via kiting have been a problem?

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