Is jungler as a role overpowered?

Fighting Irish·Oct 18, 2016·1 votes·398 views

Let's first think about a team fight. It's hard to tell which team is going to win if it's a 5 vs 5 fight. You can still possibly win if it's 4 vs 5, but you can hardly when it's 3 vs 5. 5 over 5 is 1; 5 over 4 is 1.25; 4 over 3 is 1.33; 5 over 3 is 1.67. You can tell that the higher the ratio of your team size over the enemy team size the more likely you are going to win a fight. Let's not forget how much effort you need to kill two members of the enemy team to reach the ratio of 1.67! However, a very common early game gank can give the enemy team an incredibly high ratio of 2 (2 over 1). With a jungler simply walking by and landing some cheap damage, the enemy gets gold advantage way too easy. I understand the role of a jungler, but early game gank should not be so easy for the enemy jungler with or without your jungler around.

7 Comments

WoodakoodashoodaOct 18, 20161 votes

This was precisely Riot's thinking when they made the monsters too strong, believing early ganks were unhealthy. All they ended up doing was causing a colossal shift in the meta in which only a handful of champions could jungle effectively. The jungle was later balanced to correct the error.

Fighting IrishOct 18, 20161 votes

Thanks for replying. I posted this because I was ganked level 1, and just fell way behind...

CrazyBear1987Oct 18, 20161 votes

To me, in my opinion, a Jungler can make or break a game. They can help you win it or is the reason you lose it. They sacrifice XP for Gold and can become incredible powerful mid to late game. Depends on the jungler champion also cause some junglers are pathetic early, some are decent. just like an ADC they tip the scales, just dont know in which direction. (in my opinion of course, i am not a jungler main)

Fighting IrishOct 18, 20161 votes

Thanks for your point. The thing I am a bit uncomfortable with is that the jungler's instant sacrifice can make a lane snowballs and that is worth more than the original sacrifice.

AptestOct 18, 20161 votes

The jungler is THE high impact role in this game. because the lanes are more or less even in terms of power and the jungler is where the local concentration of power goes.

therefore at the earlier stages of the game the jungler mostly determines what goes on where and how.

AptestOct 18, 20161 votes

This balance is on the knife's edge.

If lane A is too safe (you can't kill me unless you outplay my escape and im never ever gonna use it in any situation where i do not 100% know you die), game on lane A becomes stale farm fest and both laners seek to go to lane B that is less safe and fight there.

If lane B is also too safe (hyper-mobile bruisers and unkillable tanks), game on both lanes A and B becomes too safe and both lane A and B seek to go to lane C and contest there.

If lane C now becomes too safe (hyper mobile ultra disruptive megatank protecting an even more slippery "out play me" champion) now gameplay is stale farm fest scale to late on all lanes.

For game to happen, vulnerabilities must exist in some lanes. And it's better for everyone that it's not only bot lane that is able to be killed.

Fighting IrishOct 18, 20161 votes

You are right. I was playing aatrox versus a teemo. I was definitely the vulnerability because the only way I can win my lane is to go all in for this teemo: (