Riot, I think you've been quite successful in achieving strategic diversity, except for the jungle

DEmperor95·Feb 15, 2015·6 votes·783 views

Your goal of achieving strategic diversity has been quite successful I would say. Currently there are many viable picks and strategies seen in the LCS, more than any other season. But, only in 4 roles.

The jungle is still a very static role with the same power picks being picked over and over again, overshadowing other picks. Changing jungle items to allow for strategic choices in the jungle did not work in making the jungle a good place for champions other than the ones with heavy damage, CC, utility, tankiness, and mobility at the same time. I expected that to happen honestly.

Riot, you have a long road ahead for allowing diversity to become a trait for jungle picks, with equal power level and tradeoffs between all junglers. The first step in my opinion is to reduce the power of current dominant picks.

8 Comments

RazorTSFeb 15, 20152 votes

you simply cant do that and there is no need to do that, every champion has his own playstyle why you want to play every jungler like leeVIj4 some spike early like them some mid game and others truly shine late, some must gank like crazy others need only lvl up and farm from jungle and be viable all the way to late game, if people still get surprised if those dominant picks gank them at lvl 3 get a kill then move to mid get a kill there, then repeat with less effort needed until they finally decide to get a ward and play safer, they shouldn't play rankeds or pretend they know about this game

every champion in lol can jungle now with red buff heal and heals on smite, and like i said every jungler has place in game and time to shine, dont try to play every champ same way or with same expectations from them

ProfDrDeathFeb 15, 20151 votes

The problem for jungle diversity currently is quite likely the same as in the S4 jungle:

It ultimately lies in the strength of the AD jungle item.

Warrior Enchant is currently the one to give the second most bang for your buck, after Magus. And, for the purpose of clearing the jungle, the stats given by the Warrior enchantment are way more useful than those given by Magus - few champions have a way to translate AP into vastly increased clear speeds (I can only think of Nidalee, Karthus, Fiddle, Cho and maybe Gragas right now...). AD and ArPen, on the other hand, vastly increase clear speeds, by increasing the damage of both autos (main damage source in the early jungle) and abilities. And the 10 ArPen negates the small amounts of Armor the monsters possess (between 4 and 20)

My first orders of business, if I wanted to achieve jungle diversity, would be:

Nerf Warrior and/or buff Juggernaut. For example, by reducing Warrior's AD to 40 and making ArPen in general only affect champions, champion pets and epic monsters.

KingsgraveFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The problem for jungle diversity currently is quite likely the same as in the S4 jungle:

It ultimately lies in the strength of the AD jungle item.

Warrior Enchant is currently the one to give the second most bang for your buck, after Magus. And, for the purpose of clearing the jungle, the stats given by the Warrior enchantment are way more useful than those given by Magus - few champions have a way to translate AP into vastly increased clear speeds (I can only think of Nidalee, Karthus, Fiddle, Cho and maybe Gragas right now...). AD and ArPen, on the other hand, vastly increase clear speeds, by increasing the damage of both autos (main damage source in the early jungle) and abilities. And the 10 ArPen negates the small amounts of Armor the monsters possess (between 4 and 20)

My first orders of business, if I wanted to achieve jungle diversity, would be:

Nerf Warrior and/or buff Juggernaut. For example, by reducing Warrior's AD to 40 and making ArPen in general only affect champions, champion pets and epic monsters.

Or they could do the following instead:

Remove all Armor on Jungle Monsters and give them effective HP equal to this Armor Loss so that Armor Pen has no factor in clearing speed
Remove the Armor Pen on Warrior and give it either more AD or more CDR to compensate
Lower AD ratios and base damages of the following champ's Qs:
Juggernaut gains the 25% increased Bonus Health that Golem had in S4
Machete passive Regeneration increased heavily

ProfDrDeathFeb 15, 20152 votes

Problem with 1.: Doing this would nerf junglers relying on magic damage to a certain degree, as jungle monsters have no defense against magic damage already (their MR values are 0 or lower). Meaning, the AP junglers and tanks that are already struggling right now.

Problem with 4.: While I'd really appreciate the reintroduction of the increase in bonus health, I am not sure if a jungler-only item is the right place for that. Top lane and even support have tanks who'd really appreciate such an item, too.

Problem with 5.: Sustain is supposed to be a limiting factor in this new jungle. Only problem is, the five top jungler at the moment get to ignore this - or, rather, get to not pay the appropriate price:

Lee Sin has his W shield and active sustain stats.
Jarvan has his Golden Aegis shield, and bonus Armor. Although he can still take quite a beating in the jungle from my experience. Especially early, when he can't afford to put a point in it yet.
Vi has he shield as a passive, which circumvents Jarvan's problem.
Nidalee. Whoever thought making Nidalee able to be a jungler was a good idea needs a serious viewpoint readjustment.
Rek'Sai. "How can we make a manaless, non-resource-constrained champion with 7 abilities more annoying?" "Well, we need a drop-off mechanic for her fury, anyway, so why not have it convert itself into sustain. What could possibly go wrong?"

KingsgraveFeb 15, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Problem with 1.: Doing this would nerf junglers relying on magic damage to a certain degree, as jungle monsters have no defense against magic damage already (their MR values are 0 or lower). Meaning, the AP junglers and tanks that are already struggling right now.

Problem with 4.: While I'd really appreciate the reintroduction of the increase in bonus health, I am not sure if a jungler-only item is the right place for that. Top lane and even support have tanks who'd really appreciate such an item, too.

Problem with 5.: Sustain is supposed to be a limiting factor in this new jungle. Only problem is, the five top jungler at the moment get to ignore this - or, rather, get to not pay the appropriate price:

Lee Sin has his W shield and active sustain stats.

Jarvan has his Golden Aegis shield, and bonus Armor. Although he can still take quite a beating in the jungle from my experience. Especially early, when he can't afford to put a point in it yet.

Vi has he shield as a passive, which circumvents Jarvan's problem.

Nidalee. Whoever thought making Nidalee able to be a jungler was a good idea needs a serious viewpoint readjustment.

Rek'Sai. "How can we make a manaless, non-resource-constrained champion with 7 abilities more annoying?" "Well, we need a drop-off mechanic for her fury, anyway, so why not have it convert itself into sustain. What could possibly go wrong?"

Potentially make it so Jungle monsters take increased damage from Magic damage to compensate? Potentially just increase the base damages of all AP junglers that do struggle?

Jungler only items need to be crazy efficient because of how little gold they tend to get. That effect on a non jungle item would be meta defining, thus broken as fuck.

Sustain from Machete scales with time, so they should focus on that aspect of it. Potentially just making it so the more damage you take the higher the sustain but not so high that it invalidates how tough the jungle is supposed to be. Just enough that tankier junglers can survive long enough to clear 4 camps instead of 2 camps on their first go.

Yandere CarryFeb 15, 20151 votes

There is a big issue I think a lot of people fail to realize in the game. Junglers have different power spikes. In competitive you see a lot of junglers with high early pressure that tend to fall off later. Why is that?

A decent analogy would be if we took Renekton. The idea of what Renekton is. He is a dominant earlygame force that falls off as the game progresses. Why would you want a Renekton mid top and adc with a hypercarry jungle... When you can have a "Renekton" as your jungler and have him roaming the map, picking up the earlygame slack for your better scaling champs.

DEmperor95Feb 15, 20151 votes

I get your point. In practice however, please tell me when does Jarvan or Vi fall off. I am sure as hell they don't, they're even 2 of the best snowballers in the game, while still having insane early game pressure and damage. The tradeoff is not there in reality for those 2 champions. Don't forget how much mobility and CC they offer too.

Yandere CarryFeb 15, 20151 votes

Vi is actually not very good in 5 on 5 teamfights. She is strong in small skirmishes.

Jarvan actually falls off late. Do I think he should maybe fall off a little harder than he does? Yea... but that's just how it is. Some champs are gonna be stronger by comparison.