What laners don't understand about the Jungle changes

BlackXIV·11/26/2019, 8:50:36 PM·13 votes·7,912 views

I'll avoid getting into the argument of whether or not the xp nerf was warranted or how powerful the jungle role generally is because it's not an argument that can be made among people with such different game experience.

What I wish to do is clarify that the jungle meta will not reduce the number of ganks nor the potential game snowball that is outside of the laners' hands.

What Riot led you to believe, and you bought it because you don't actually play jungle, is that powerfarming is rewarded, except it isn't. The only way to take advantage of the theoretical buff to powerfarming is avoiding objectives and map pressure entirely and such strategy not only leaves your team 4v5 if the opposing jungler doesn't do the same but is a certain way to put your team behind in objectives.

The meta that comes out of it is made entirely of early focused junglers who can either shut down the enemy jungler or create lane priority by ganking before the first Dragon spawn. The inevitable consequence is a strong tendency towards early snowball situations with invades and repeat ganks everywhere.

4 Comments

Sire Hippington11/27/2019, 3:07:18 AM6 votes

Well, for most people with a brain(so sadly not many), that was the expected outcome.

Dragon controll more important when ever, toplane potentially more jungler dependent to shut down sanguin splitpush and also respawning herald, so map presence and controll is needed even more than befor.

No comeback xp means falling behind vs a strong invadeing jungler is basically game over. Weaker early junglers can't really play the game without massive backup from their lanes. It also means you can't contest objectives which at higher level is basically gg, cause dragonsoul is so damn overpowered meaning dragoncontroll=win.

On top of all of that, the raw reward for powerfarming isn't that huge while the first clear xp is the same but with now more pathing variance, so earlygame ganks are better than ever!

So what this means is that you either have a fastclearing earlygame powerhouse like udyr that farms away while shutting the opposing jungler whilst easily soloing drake early on, or you have a strong early ganker that can snowball into powerfull skirmishes like jarvan or lee. it also means Toplane mostly can hope/dread some early ganks and then it all shifts bot for dragon reasons, and whoever got the more succesfull early ganks can then procced to steamroll toplane as it then becomes a 1v1 island. Though ultimatly, what happens top doesn't matter at all, it's all about the 4vs4 on the botside...

Ragnaveil11/26/2019, 9:01:57 PM3 votes

Nah, I pretty much figured this was gonna happen.