If aggressive early junglers are being looked at, can we also get changes to counter early invades?

Yenn··22 votes·11,683 views

This is kind of a huge problem at higher MMR, and the main reason why the number of viable jungle champions is so small.

The vast majority of jungle duels boil down to either the first champion that gets vision winning, or one champion flat out winning no matter what, with skill having very little or no impact over the outcome.

In the match ups where you flat out cannot duel the enemy jungle, you often end up severely behind with no way to catch up, as you can't maintain full vision control of your entrances early and the enemy jungle constantly pressures your side. With the amount of mobility in the game, many junglers can easily escape a failed invade, which puts any team mates responding to defend you behind, as they lose lane CS.

Alternatively, your team mates can be prevented from defending you due to their lane being pushed in or any other number of things, forcing you to completely give up that side of the map. Once you've given it up, you're stuck in a position where you don't really have anything to do; if you gank and get counter-ganked, you're behind and will likely lose, and there are no camps for you to farm.

This makes playing jungle extremely frustrating, especially because you can't just play safely and catch up. Once you're behind, you're usually going to stay behind, with very limited opportunity to get back into the game.

10 Comments

Nevrankroaton6 votes

I don't really agree with this and I want to explain why.

Draft should matter and if someone has pressure early (either by the match-up, because of his champion or because he made better work of it early) and enable his jungler to be able to make aggressive play, they should be allowed to. It is what a team game is supposed to be, if my teammate back me up, if we coordinate ourselves, why should we be punished?

When I play a weak jungler early, I place my wards and play my jungle pattern differently. I concede crabs to be allowed to do a full clear or I put a ward to see if I get early invade so I counter by doing the ennemy opponent jungle. And if my jungler is slow on its clear and the ennemy mid has a big pressure and work to make me enable to get the ennemy jungle... Well they worked for that, I picked my champion taking into account it would happen.

It isn't fair that the jungle could play safely, it mean that you can't punish someone who is weak early but has a strong lvl 6 for example, it would reward slow play and not allow team coordination to matter.

And if I play an aggressive jungler but with a loosing MU in term of dual early, I try to not dual and just work on ganking. If your laner loose pressure, it mean they get pushed in general and so that they can freeze/force the opponent to be mispositionned/sensible to gank.

I don't know, of course there is time I am frustrated and feel powerless but it is how some match-up and team coordination go. I am not gonna complain about the supports being able to roam because "If they have the lane pressure or good ganking tool, it is too much strength to gank mid along with the jungler".

Lets people be rewarded for being proactive gosh.

And didn't people complain about catching-up exp in the jungle saying you could not punish people when dominating them or that jungler could fails gank and still be up in lvl because of their camp?

Also, at high MMR, people work around that and if the jungler see his laner don't have pressure, he learn to change his road/concede stuff.

Yenn3 votes

Playing jungle at high and low MMR is two completely different games.

In higher games, you can be forced to concede virtually your entire jungle in a bad matchup, and then the enemy jungle is level 6 while you're just barely hitting level 5 and down hundreds of gold, and you have no way to catch up.

BobaFlautist1 votes

Yeah if you ever watch a high level jungler (e.g. iwilldominate) there are games where they get an early kill or advantage on the opposing jungler and then just shut them completely out of the game for the next 10-15 minutes.

Yenn1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah if you ever watch a high level jungler (e.g. iwilldominate) there are games where they get an early kill or advantage on the opposing jungler and then just shut them completely out of the game for the next 10-15 minutes.

It's even worse when this happens when you're technically even, but you're 0-0-3 while the enemy jungle is 3-0-0, or the enemy jungle was able to soak a lot of lane EXP.

The Bad Touch1 votes

{quoted}

I don't really agree with this and I want to explain why.

Draft should matter and if someone has pressure early (either by the match-up, because of his champion or because he made better work of it early) and enable his jungler to be able to make aggressive play, they should be allowed to. It is what a team game is supposed to be, if my teammate back me up, if we coordinate ourselves, why should we be punished?

When I play a weak jungler early, I place my wards and play my jungle pattern differently. I concede crabs to be allowed to do a full clear or I put a ward to see if I get early invade so I counter by doing the ennemy opponent jungle. And if my jungler is slow on its clear and the ennemy mid has a big pressure and work to make me enable to get the ennemy jungle... Well they worked for that, I picked my champion taking into account it would happen.

It isn't fair that the jungle could play safely, it mean that you can't punish someone who is weak early but has a strong lvl 6 for example, it would reward slow play and not allow team coordination to matter.

And if I play an aggressive jungler but with a loosing MU in term of dual early, I try to not dual and just work on ganking. If your laner loose pressure, it mean they get pushed in general and so that they can freeze/force the opponent to be mispositionned/sensible to gank.

I don't know, of course there is time I am frustrated and feel powerless but it is how some match-up and team coordination go. I am not gonna complain about the supports being able to roam because "If they have the lane pressure or good ganking tool, it is too much strength to gank mid along with the jungler".

Lets people be rewarded for being proactive gosh.

And didn't people complain about catching-up exp in the jungle saying you could not punish people when dominating them or that jungler could fails gank and still be up in lvl because of their camp?

Also, at high MMR, people work around that and if the jungler see his laner don't have pressure, he learn to change his road/concede stuff.

Most people don't want to spam the same damn 4 jungles every game.

Nevrankroaton1 votes

Then it is a problems of the champions not being competitive enough.

It isn't even about dualing. It is about mobility, it is about sustain,it is about clear speed, it is about what kind of things do you bring at X min and X level.

Not early invade being a thing.

deadlychuck2 votes

I mean they literally wanted it this way.

I believe this was the excuse that they gave for the ward changes.

Done251 votes

I think a big problem is that with the sheer speed that camps can be taken it's nearly impossible to punish aggressive counter jingling. Especially if they're a Tiamat jungler.

Yenn1 votes

This is now a massive problem that imo needs to be fixed asap.

You are completely and utterly fucked if you get counter-jungled in 9.2; it was already insanely hard to catch back up, but it's now near impossible, and the overall jungle meta has shifted from aggressively ganking lanes to aggressively invading the enemy jungle, which as I mentioned in my original post, has very binary outcome with skill being a minimal factor.

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