Thoughts on the preseason jungle changes.

I finally took some time to sit down with the jungle changes on PBE and form some thoughts on it and I honestly feel like this is a step back for the game. Here's why.

Early clears are really rough now. REALLY ROUGH. Many of the old viable junglers actually struggle here and without a leash you have a high potential of dying in the jungle. Making the jungle harder isn't going to push out established junglers because established junglers have sustain, fast clears, and survivability. All its doing is making the fringe "kind of viable" junglers not playable anymore, or atleast much less effective.

The new smite items were a novel concept but it also pigeon holes you into playing a predictable strategy. The new smites do not promote adaptation and versatility. Invading / counter jungling / farming IMO should all be reactive things that you do when the situation demands it, but now you have to commit to a strategy which may not work if the enemy reacts to the style of jungling you picked. IE if the enemies see you with the poachers knife, they're more likely to ward their own jungle and come attack you when you invade. This hurts the viability of that strategy a lot IMO.

On top of that, the new jungle is so brutal I feel like most of the non-super junglers are going to be forced into getting the reduced cooldown aoe heal your health and mana smite just to stay alive and continue to clear. Since all jungle items effectively work like spirit of the ancient golem now, that's just not enough sustain for a lot of junglers to keep up IMO. I feel like the old method of jungle sustain with spirit stone was much more effective and scaled better later into the game because you sustain was relative to your damage. These new items are also terrible for mana sustain so some of the heftier mana cost junglers are going to be going oom much more than they did in S4.

So with all that in mind, the jungle STILL favors lee sin. He doesn't have to worry about gimped mana sustain or health sustain because he has built in life steal, fast clears, and a shield. He can opt to use one of the other smites and be even more effective at fighting other players, while many will be forced to take the jungle only smite to keep up in clears and sustain.

Lastly, the harder jungle camps don't favor tankier champions at all. Most tankier champions have worse clear speed and thus have to sit there and tank the mobs longer. They're harder to kill now and they do more damage, so tanky champions are getting beat up MORE and they're clearing them slower because the jungle mobs have more stats.

Long story short, the jungle just isn't as fun as it was in S4 and I don't see it promoting diversity. The smite modifiers are a gimmick and aren't really going to make the jungle more interesting. You can't force people to play a certain way by making them choose X playstyle because then people are just going to pick the safest, most adaptable strategy instead of going for something more extreme and committing to a certain strategy.

I personally don't even want to continue jungling in S5 if a lot isn't changed.