The "new jungle" is in need of tweaks
Problems:
- Early invades knock a jungler completely out of the game. Playing a lot of jungle today I sadly had to experience that occasionally even platinum and diamond players completely refuse to guard your jungle early on. Yes, this more of an teamplay issue - but loosing a camp is dead setence.
- Camp respawn time. The increase is extremely painful. Once a tower is lost many players of your own team will start to take your jungle camps, even if you beg them not to. Due to the loing respawn time this just completely throws you off and will snowball from a single lost lane to a completely lost jungle.
- Junglers who once get ahead are able to completely dominate the enemy jungle and junglers who try to gank, but fail ( be it their fault or not) fall incredibly behind. Loose a little bit too much health upon a gank and the jungle creeps will simply wreck you. The new jungle does not promote teamplay or helping your lanes.
- Smite. The "choice" between 4 smites feels like an illusion, taking a smite for duelling will make you loose a lot of valuable buffs and SIGNIFICANTLY reduces your clearspeed. While the duelling bonuses seem great on paper they're not secure enough to justify using them. We're living the mobility meta where everybody and his dog has dashes, your smite bonus runs out before you can deliever three hits. Not to mention that using a smite on a champion basically is an invitation for the enemy team to do an objective. In my eyes the Smite cooldown should be equalized. It's not a "meaningful choice" to smite an enemy since usually the opportunity cost to do so is much too high.
Things I do like:
- I really like the introduction of Smite rewards for camps, it really adds tactical depth to jungling (I'm ignoring the ability to smite champions here)
- The crab is a great addition and really feels like an impactful objective for roaming, ganking, drake and baron.
- The idea behind smiting champions, even though I dislike how it currently works out.
Summary: I believe the attempt of making the jungle "more difficult" went way overboard. It incredibly favors sustain jungler and punishes any other kind. Falling behind is a death sentence, especially if one of your lanes falls behind aswell. Smiting champions is a nice idea, but usually not worth the opportunity cost. Smite cooldown should be equalised or at least reduced for the "worse three" and the camp respawn time should be SLIGHTLY reduced.
