Diamond Level Jungle here and thoughts on plants

So the nice thing about the current smite rewards is being able to choose which ones you get, and being able to steal them away from an enemy, so even if they do get the, lets say wolf camp, you could smite it early and just secure the spirit warding that jungle area, or you could smite it in an invade and instead of having to stick around for the camp you just remove the buff it would normally give. It gave it up time and down time. It gave it trade offs do you save smite for the gank or do you save it for the camp? What will benefit you more. It is all about trade offs and that isn't a bad thing. It gave something to junglers that was unique to the role and while it could be denied by the enemy (or by a troll ally) that denial was all the benefit, they didnt get the vision, they didnt get the health, it was a great back and forth.

Now with plants I am a bit worried, but before I make my decision I want to see it in the pre-season. I want to see how it feels and how they effect games. My true worry is that if this fails, and it makes jungling horrendous/ or just unappealing in its rewards as compared to now, that we will have to wait an entire year for them to take this away. I just hope riot promises this is a test run and if it fails in the preseason they will throw it out.

As for the effects of the plants that I have seen, these are my current thoughts and are subject to change...

https://youtu.be/LVL-zcE5G0I Lets start off with the absolute worst idea. This is stupid, it is a horrendous idea and I have no idea how this will seem to work in game that will make ranged people fair. Champions like udyr, volibear, garen with no dash gap closer will have just another thing that castrates their ability to stick on their opponents. The moment you see your enemy moving for the bulb you suddenly cant chase them because you know they will absolutely blow you away from them. Mix that in with the fact they suddenly get emboldened and can turn on you because they are safe, now we have the issue with perma-slows like cass who, with champions like volibear and udyr who need to be all in or all out, are now forced into a situation that they just cant win in. No riot this is a bad idea. I can just tell by looking at it, and your description. Can it help champs with no free cast dashes or jumps? Yes it can, but in more cases then not it just hurts melee champions more then it should help anyone else. It especially hurts melee champions who dont have dashes, because guess what, this is the same deal as flash. It helps those without an instant displacement, but helps those with instant displacements even more. Sorry I seem vehement on this plant but it just is terrible design.

TL:DR this will just hurt dashless melee champions more then it helps dashless adc, and helps those who have displacement abilities even more

https://youtu.be/mYsw0qINN2c Decent idea, makes playing tanks more of a likable idea, better heal without having to fight red buff. Decent, but I hate the idea laners can use this. However I can see the whole, "lets play around it so when my lane opponent is low they might go for it so we can set up a gank" sort of mentality. I guess itll be a questionable plant, I am waiting to see how it feels to play with this. This one gives me the idea that these plants should only be accessible by characters with smite only sort of like how bards chimes are only for him but everyone else can see them. But I guess we should wait and see how it will turn out.

TL:DR We should wait and see if smiting red, or this feels better.

https://youtu.be/3TEKWvJjkng I feel like this will change nothing for the dragon/baron pits. There will be no surprise bulb, because people already ward around those areas. It just punishes those junglers who can take an early dragon solo. Which by itself is a bit of a danger because 1. It is usually pretty slow and puts you rather far behind your opponent jungler, 2. If the enemy jungler uses this, then as we see in the video, it is an easy kill. Else it is a typical team fighting around the baron/dragon. All in all a bad idea, and wont change much, it only hurts junglers who can solo dragon early. As for other points that the bulbs can appear it just hurts junglers in general. In higher elo junglers struggle to maintain their jungle against certain invading supports like blitz and bard, this can absolutely hurt the jungler and help these supports if they find a bulb near one of the starting camps or buffs. Your team should be warding in the enemy jungle or your own jungle. There shouldn't be rewards for not doing that, and on top of that, it puts less contest-ability on certain spells like ashe hawkshot. If you really want this in the game, it should not be able to spawn before 9 mins in the game. Giving junglers a bit of breathing room before their jungle safety is stolen from them.

In turn scuttle crab is a great comparison to this, it is a constant buff, that has no RNG to it. Everyone knows where it will be, where the buff will spawn and what areas it cuts off. Claiming it gives you a short but un-removable vision ward that the enemy knows is there. Yet it can still be played around by champions who can dash ect... TL:DR Scuttle crab good, vision plant bad.

Ending thoughts: In my own belief this in no way should be viewed as a necessary requirement of change, and riot should treat this as purely experimental and be absolutely willing to throw this out if it doesn't work. They have shown 3 levels of design with these plants so far, horrendous, decent, and border between broken and useless. As for the player base we need to be open minded, riot has said they will look in to changing the plants and what effects they will have.