Boards›Gameplay

Fixing the Jungle for Season 9 and beyond

TheSingularity·2/27/2019, 1:15:04 AM·9 votes·5,145 views

So Riot's been trying to, kind of? Fix the jungle. But I and based on the boards, many others feel they're going about it the wrong way.

Their goal as of recent, is to give junglers less influence over a game. But at the same time for the sake of pro play, Riot has shafted jungle experience and added mechanics to encourage aggressive jungle patterns (fruits, scuttle, herald). A problem with this idea of reducing influence, is that by its very nature the jungle role will have an obscene level of influence over a game, that's literally the purpose of a jungler. To be able to appear anywhere and exert pressure. The second goal, has resulted in this hyper gank meta for 1 reason in particular, there is no better option. An unfortunate consequence of these changes, is the removal of slow clearing, vulnerable or power farming junglers from the meta. This encompases many tanks, melee hyper carries and mages. Which gives us this pretty small and in my opinion, boring jungle meta.

Now this little wall will be split in 2: The specifics of why we have this problem, and jungler influence and how to properly slow it down or reduce it.

So riot's method is to de-incentivise farming the jungle by making the jungle camps worth less. However this approach which began in patch 7.1, has had the opposite effect. Now somewhere along the way, it appears that the experience model changed. As while XP values are higher than they were at the start of season 5, where 2 buff camps would give level 3, it takes around 4 camps to achieve the same result. I was going to go into more depth here but a few monsters had undocumented changes (blue buff went from 100 XP to 210 XP with no record of it). This lower value in camps, along with the extended spawn time of non buff camps of 2:30 from 1:40, results in camps not feeling worth the trouble, the exception being Krugs and their obscene gold value. You can get more gold and just as much XP by constantly rotating through lanes with a camp here and there, making effective jungle pathing redundant. Assuming you are somewhat successful of course. From this we see the removal of one choice, power farming. However over time others have then been removed. A majority of junglers have lost early dragon priority as dragons are vastly stronger, but understandably so due to what they do now. However this means the few champions who can effectively solo them, those with great DPS and sustain/beef rule above all. And then the crushing of the vision game by jungle fruits and vision removal. At most junglers get 3 wards on them, whereas in the past they could have 5, and even further back as many as they pleased. Not only is the vision game extremely limited, but can be eradicated with a single vision fruit, or duskblade. This de-incentivises going in for deep wards, as chances are they are not going to last. So with these gone, what can junglers do? They gank, gank and gank some more. You do not stop people from ganking, by removing all other options.

A last minute thought was also the removal of smite buffs. Riot removed them as they thought they could "do better", however the jungle fruits were a detrimental addition in terms of gank meta (primarily vision fruit), added little to no depth (most grab them as they appear and their RNG prevents pre planning) and cost us very helpful jungle buffs that allowed slower junglers to be somewhat viable. For those unfamiliar: smiting gromp caused attacking monsters to take damage over time, raptor gave a temporary ward sweep aura when near enemy vision, wolf camp provided a vision familiar on blue side that would follow intruders and Krugs made you stun monsters every X attacks.

Now for the fun part Riot is going to hate this approach, but I'm thinking we partially revert the jungle with an addition:

  1. Blue and red buff health increase (larger increase early game to make second buff slower, less increase later), now grant enough combined XP to grant level 3 and buff duration extended 20 seconds to compensate (will take as long as fastest level 3 due to walking times). Give the red and blue buff their 2 minions back (nerfs kha zix and single target clearing junglers).
  2. Small camp respawn timers reverted to 1:40 (XP and gold lowered to compensate, however is slightly higher because.....). Wolf and raptor camp health increased. Krugs splitting animation sped up, health of intermediate krugs increased. Gromp grants a tad more XP
  3. Scuttle camp XP and gold reduced or removed (the vision is reward enough for a monster that can't fight back)
  4. Scryer's Bloom. Either removed, or changed and nerfed to reveal wards in a circular area around the fruit, longer respawn time, the second fruit on blue buff side jungle is removed. Reveals champions for 0.5-1 second instead of 3. Radius reduced to cover: Blue buff, circle river bush and wolf camp.
  5. Jungle buffs re-implemented. This adds a second reward for clearing. Do not underestimate how much better small rewards make jungling feel. As well as some control over your jungle or clear speed. But also adjusted: raptor reveal duration lowered (enough time for 1 ward)
  6. New Fruit, Dragon Fruit. The fruit you can eat spawns in the enemy jungle on red buff side, between raptors and red buff. Or blue buff side between wolf and blue buff. They will both spawn either close to dragon (Blue team red buff side, red team blue buff side) or far from dragon (blue team blue buff, red team red buff). This prevents a positional advantage and the fruits are placed in high traffic areas. Eating the fruit reveals you for 0.5 seconds. However. The fruit makes you deal more damage to dragons (if you AD/AP are over a specific threshold) or take less damage (if they are not) from dragons. The fruit spawns 30-60 seconds after a dragon spawns. Does not spawn for elder dragon. This makes it a high risk (as it tells them what you are doing) high reward fruit.

So what do these changes achieve!

  1. This reverts this logic "First, junglers pay too much of an opportunity cost when ganking, thanks to how quickly jungle monsters respawn. " patch 6.22. Therefore they sacrifice something to gank
  2. Junglers get level 3 slightly faster but most importantly, are slowed down so that if they want to keep up, they need to effectively and efficiently balance their jungle farming and ganking. Too much ganking? Fall behind in levels. Too much farming? Fall behind in gold and objectives.
  3. We give less control to god tier jungler by nerfing the vision fruit but also give them the potential of higher control due to the greater XP value of buff camps.
  4. We add some more depth to the jungle. Riot was concerned of the optimal way smite was used (generally raptor camp). Personally it depended on the jungler. Tank? Always gromp and raptor camp. Aggressive jungler? Raptor and enemy wolf.
  5. We give tools to weaker junglers through smite buffs and dragon fruits. Slower clearing junglers as well (fast clearing junglers clear fast regardless of jungle buffs)
  6. More OPTIONS! Now there's a reason not to gank. To go grab the sweet buff, a specific camp. Maybe grab dragon fruit. There's incentive to INVADE! To hinder their clear by stealing krugs/gromp. Hinder their vision by taking raptors, Hinder theirm everything by taking red/blue.

So what ya'll think? Am I completely out of my mind? Or could this possibly work? Would love to get a discussion going.

5 Comments

Frog goes moo2/27/2019, 6:03:33 AM1 votes

The only viable jungler now: Ivern

RekSai CoffeeCo2/27/2019, 7:20:18 AM1 votes

You forgot to incorporate a revert of the scuttle changes that killed jungle diversity.

Ethically Fatal9/8/2019, 6:49:53 AM1 votes

This is the best idea I've seen in a long time. The Jungle will now have more of a skillcap. And the dragon fruit creates that high risk, high reward objective that gives early game junglers something to do other than permacamp botside for the entire duration of the laning phase. In other words, bot and mid laners don't need to be oppressed 24/7. Also, reducing scuttlecrab importance while buffing the camps gives the jungle role back its original philosophy: If you get ahead, you get rewarded in the sense you can gank your laners. If you get behind, you need to not help your laners and farm to get back up. Right now, in this meta,if the jungler has even a slight lead above you, he almost automatically wins the game because of how the meta is right now. I'm not joking.

Something else I would like to add is the idea of a bounty on each individual enemy laner. Getting one kill or assist on them will give you 400 gold. However, it only applies once just like relentless hunter. And you need to buy a jungle item for this effect. This gives the jungler the incentive to spread out their pressure, meaning that perma camping a lane will no longer be viable.

Another thing I'd like to add is that shared experience from minions can only be given to 2 people and not 3. This makes up for the idea of giving more xp to the jungle camps. Campers heavily rely on taxing to get ahead. However, if only 2 people can get it, then its inefficient. Furthermore, the jungler can't camp topside or else they'll lose dragon.