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Why the jungle should be more like Season 2, and how to get there

mi ramfan··32 votes·3,413 views

IMO, the Season 2 jungle was the healthiest jungle we've had in my time playing League (I wasn't here for Season 1).

http://i.imgur.com/D3O3eXT.gif

Here's a few reasons why I think the jungle should move back in the Season 2 direction in Season 5 and beyond.

  1. The pool of both viable junglers and "lol i can clear sort of" junglers was the largest it's ever been. Throughout the season, many champions saw jungle time, and all three jungle types (control, farm, gank) had at least one champion viable at the same time. You had Jarvan, Lee Sin, and Alistar pulling off ganks as early as level 2, with Maokai and Amumu available if level 2 ganking wasn't your thing. You had Shyvana, Mundo, and Skarner as your control junglers. You had Nocturne available as a farm jungler (which I admit isn't great, but it's not like farm junglers have ever been that popular). Most importantly, they all had their purpose, because...

  2. The rock-paper-scissors dynamic between control, farm, and gank junglers was the best balanced it had ever been. For an example of this, let's consider three popular junglers from S2, Shyvana, Alistar, and Nocturne. Alistar's defining feature in Season 2 was his powerful early ganks levels 1 through 6. His early gank potential could easily snowball his lanes, allowing his team to gain a massive advantage early game while Nocturne rapidly farmed his jungle to 6. Shyvana's lightning-fast clear time allowed her to easily enter Alistar's jungle and steal his camps, crippling him if Shyvana's team warded and denied gank opportunities. However, the high risk of dying to a carry jungle like Nocturne made invading him a risky endeavor that had to be undertaken carefully with wards and backup fully available, and Shyvana's great counterganking potential was wasted against a jungler who farmed 90% of the time and engaged from 2000 units away. Finally, Nocturne's great scaling enabled him to outscale Shyvana late game, but he had to be careful not to let Alistar snowball the enemy team out of control. Obviously, this leads to the next point...

  3. The jungle was cerebral. Jungling in Season 2 was hard to learn and hard to play. The constant juggling of defending your uncleared camps against invasion, making sure to pay attention to all your lanes, and having Smite whenever an objective was up was not for the faint of heart, and took a lot of time to master. It required much more thought to play even the easy junglers in Season 2 then it does nowadays. All of the "easy" methods of jungling were much more punishable in Season 2 then they are today. Enemy Lee Sin camping the living shit out of top lane? Once the laner wards, Lee will return to his jungle to find that he has no camps to farm and he just wasted 3 minutes of his life. Is that Mundo doing a cookie cutter, predictable route? He's gonna have a bad time when Skarner jumps him at his Blue and gets a free kill. Cookie cutter routes and ganks didn't work in Season 2 against an intelligent jungler.

  4. Junglers didn't need special items with no combat stats to jungle. Today, every jungle starts Machete+4 health pots, meaning that the junglers who are viable are the ones who do the best with those starting items. In Season 2, there were many starts. You had cloth+5 health pots, boots+3 and later 4 health pots, Regen pendant+1 health pot. This was a big part of the variety of junglers in Season 2-the multiple item starts allowed for innovation and the rise and fall of junglers without buffs and nerfs. People figured out a new trick and suddenly Alistar became a jungle pick. He didn't get buffed. Someone said, "hey, what would happen if I didn't really farm my jungle and just spam ganked?"

I loved season 2's jungle. But I'm not just going to write a big letter to Season 2. I prefer solutions.

Here are my ideas for returning the jungle to a state closer to that of Season 2, while retaining all the positive changes Riot has made since then.

  • Get rid of the Hunter's Machete, but keep the higher-tier jungle items. The Season 3 jungle necessitated Hunter's Machete because it was so difficult compared to the Season 2 jungle. If camp difficulty was reverted to the S2 standard, Hunter's Machete would no longer be necessary to get through a first clear. I still feel like the higher-tier jungle items are worth keeping; since Hunter's Machete wouldn't be necessary or in existence, buying the higher tier jungle items (which lack in stats but grant more gold and sustain in the jungle) will become another decision point instead of "I'm stuck with this Machete, might as well build it into something".

  • Add a passive effect to the Sweeper trinket that makes it play a sound effect (say, a ding) when you walk within vision range of an enemy ward. This will make counterjungling safer because you'll be immediately alerted when you have tripped a ward and backup has been summoned. It will also make the basic Sweeper less hit or miss-right now you're going to waste the sweeper at least half the time you use it even if you know all the common ward locations. An alert sound effect will make it much easier to figure out the location of a ward and clear it. Abuse of this effect is also very punishable-walking in and out of range of the enemy ward in order to narrow down its location will waste a ton of time, leave you open to counterjungling/a pick, and give laners time to back out.

  • Increase the experience and gold given by the Golem and Wight camps. These camps are overly difficult for most junglers to do, yet still give the same amount or less experience then the Wraith and Wolf camps. By increasing the experience and gold given by these camps, you'll make it more worth it for junglers to clear them, and give farming junglers a proportionate reward for taking down these camps (which will help pure farming junglers like Yi keep up in level with mid and top lane). Also, you'll create another viable target for counterjungling.

  • CONSIDER (this one isn't necessarily needed but might produce a good dynamic) switching the positions of the Ancient Golem and the Wolves. Switching the position of Blue and Wolves will make blue buff riskier to counterjungle. Right now, for example, Blue Buff is closer to the river then Wolves are, making it much safer to invade then Wolves and Wight (both of which are much less valuable camps!) Moving blue buff deeper into the jungle will make the counterjungling rewards more proportional to the risk taken, and it will be a big help to blue dependent junglers like Amumu and Maokai after all of the pro-invasion changes above. What worries me about this change is that it would also make it more difficult to leash a jungler; leashing Blue at the wolf position with the current jungle spawn times will easily cost all but the longest range mid and bot laners some CS and experience that a non-leashing mid laner will get.

Well, that was a long post. Don't know if anybody will read it all. Here's a TL;DR for those of you who were looking for a quick in and out:

TL;DR

  • Season 2 had the most cerebral jungle, and the most simultaneously viable junglers.
  • We can go back to a Season 2 style jungle without abandoning all the positive changes made since then.
  • With camps at Season 2 difficulty, Hunter's Machete would no longer be needed. The high tier jungle items are worth keeping around to offer a strategic choice
  • Adding a passive "you walked into a ward's vision" alert on the Sweeper trinket will help counterjunglers and gankers alike in the S4 ward-heavy meta.
  • Increasing the value of camps both helps keep farming junglers viable (an essential counterbalance to control junglers) and makes control junglers better able to punish camping junglers.
  • It might be a good idea to switch the position of wolves and blue buff

38 Comments

67chrome10 votes

The pool of both viable junglers and "lol i can clear sort of" junglers was the largest it's ever been.

Viable champions are pretty subjective, but if anything that's tended to expand the longer LoL's been around. Also, meta picks tend to stick to 3, because 3s a solid number and people like saying stuff like the holy trinity of junglers.

The viable jungers now are mostly different junglers than before, it's not like the junglers now were awesome picks in season 2. If Kha'Zix was even around, he'd be garbage in 2 due to the lack of AD itemization and the lack of income available in the jungle.

The income available in the season 2 jungle was actually so bad you couldn't really put an assassin in the jungle. You had to be able to build full tank with most junglers then due to defense just naturally being cheaper than offense for early/mid game. You either ran a mega-clear tank like Mundo and squeaked out enough defense to matter, or you went a sudo-support tank like Maokai that just offered a ridiculous amount of CC and utility to matter with low income.

Only way assassin junglers really worked (without building full tank on them) was if you pulled off a lot more successful ganks than the CC junglers. And CC tanks like Maokai specifically designed to initiate team fights and lock down priority targets were pretty friggin good at ganking.

  1. **Junglers didn't need special items with no combat stats to jungle.

Yeah, but there core build was usually Philo Stone + Heart of Gold + Mobi Boots. Not exactly a lot of combat stats.

Increase the experience and gold given by the Golem and Wight camps.

I'm pretty sure the opposite really needs to be done. The amount of gold available in the jungle is what's pushing all the season 2 junglers out - they bring solid ganks and presence but they just lack the clear speeds to keep up with the power fast clear junglers can gain.

The fastest road to make the season 2 junglers solid picks again would be to allow them to not hemorrhage resources by attempting a gank-heavy playstyle. Cause the jungle to give even more resources, and you allow the assassins in their currently to scale damage even harder.

Mjolnir8028 votes

To add on to this, in S2, once the laning phase ended and the jungler had philo+HoG he gave up the jungle to his laners so they could get the extra gold and xp. S2 gank heavy junglers were insanely starved of unless they got kills in the jungle, a lot of assists in the lanes, or could farm both sides of the jungle hard. This led to people complaining that they wanted to be able to jungle and not be behind all the time. They wanted to be more than a support tank late game (with a few exceptions).

What did Riot do to remedy this? They made the jungle monsters stronger and added the machete so only the jungler would take those camps early. They also made them worth more money and xp.

mi ramfan1 votes

Which is why any money that's given out needs to be either spread evenly throughout the game or focused early game.

Mjolnir8021 votes

That is a great concept in theory, but whatever happens, the players will adapt to make their chances of winning the best. Example, supports are given more gold, the suddenly utility mages such as Zyra, Annie, and Morg become supports because they have strong base damages and good utility. Was that the Riots intent? No. They were trying to help Soraka, Taric, Alistar, etc to be able to afford more items throughout the game.

Give more gold to the junglers, and suddenly ADCs will be farming the jungle so they can get the biggest items faster than anyone else so can do the most damage possible. This is an exageration, but it is a possibility.

redniwediS10 votes

I'm not a fan of the trinket passive idea, but the rest I can get behind.

Jinxed Amulet1 votes

Yeah, I already don't like that Riot gives everyone a free ward (trinkets) - but adding in the auto-detection from buying a sweeper is too much. Everything else, especially the idea to move ancient golem and wolves would be cool. That'd be a nice addition with the SR Update that's coming soon.

Rew7113 votes

Why not instead of a passive we give it something of actual worth. Lower cool down? +100 width? Gains a larger bonus (say another +150 width) when upgraded? If it locates an enemy, it sends an orb above one of them for an additional 3-5 seconds? Right now, it can be of use but in truth it doesn't do much. The other two have more reason. The only time I take the blue trinket is when I support, because it is more useful that way. But does the enemy team really need to know I'm using it?

mi ramfan2 votes

I agree that blue trinket needs to be buffed. I was talking about putting the passive on red trinket.

mi ramfan1 votes

I wasn't advocating auto-detection at all. That would be really broken.

I'm suggesting a unique passive on the Sweeper item that looks like this:

Unique Passive-Wardhum:Upon entering the vision radius of an enemy ward, a sound effect will play.

That doesn't tell you where the ward IS; it tells you that there's a ward NEARBY. It's a small but important distinction.

Rahonavis8 votes

I wasn't advocating auto-detection at all. That would be really broken.

I'm suggesting a unique passive on the Sweeper item that looks like this:

Unique Passive-Wardhum:Upon entering the vision radius of an enemy ward, a sound effect will play.

That doesn't tell you where the ward IS; it tells you that there's a ward NEARBY. It's a small but important distinction.

Except that's super easy to use to tell exactly where the ward is.. and if it still has the active ability hearing the sound and using it above yourself will reveal the ward.

I also take issue with a statement from your OP

you're going to waste the sweeper at least half the time you use it

That's not a waste - learning there's no ward there is valuable information.

mi ramfan1 votes

I wouldn't say it's easy to use it to find the location of a ward accurately enough for you to clear it with the sweeper. The best way would probably be to walk in and out of what you think the ward's range is from different angles to triangulate its position. But that sort of thing takes time, and remember-you already revealed yourself on the ward before you even began.

Would you prefer having a "this effect occurs only once every X seconds" or "the sound plays 1 second after you have entered a ward's range" tacked on to make it more difficult to use to hunt wards?

30579583_DEL5 votes

It's just not a good idea. I think it's ironic that you criticize modern jungling as being easy, but then fail to consider the challenges the insane accessibility we all have to earlygame wards brings. Vision is in the best state it's been in, imo. Why change that to make it easier to counterjungle, which isn't one of the main problems afflicting the current state of jungling?

mi ramfan2 votes

Adding a passive effect to red trinket is not upending the state of vision.

Counterjungling is important to help balance out the ganking junglers. If counterjungling does not have sufficient rewards to justify the risk being taken, then there's no way to punish enemy junglers who camp lanes or are too predictable with their paths.

If you want a case study of what happens when counterjungling is shitty, look at this season. Lee Sin, Kha'Zix, and Vi have dominated the jungle all season long. They can feel free to camp lanes all they want, because it's far too risky to attempt to counterjungle them for the meager reward you get from it. Meanwhile, outside of the Feral Flare Master Race patch there have been no farming junglers, because the game is already lost to Lee/Kha/Vi gank spam before they even get out of the jungle.

This season's jungle is what happens when the ganking jungles can't be punished. Less farm-dependent gankers like Maokai and Amumu could appear if counterjungling was easier, because they have less to lose from losing gold then Vi, Lee, and Kha'zix do.

I contend that the jungle is at its healthiest when the largest number of champions are viable as junglers at the same time. I haven't seen any evidence yet that Season 4 beats Season 2 in that regard.

Sunfield1 votes

Actualy the junglers you mentioned had both strongest clears and ganks, alongside with Elise. Thats why they worked.

Hotarukin1 votes

I like the idea of Wardhum. I think it -really- needs to have an internal cooldown though, so you can't precisely pinpoint the location of a ward just by triangulating. This also adds incentive to use substandard ward placement against a team that is using sweepers, which will mean that if they walk to X and it pings, they'll sweep Y... when you placed the ward at Z, which creates a sort of bait and switch counterplay.

Onegarion3 votes

I recently posted a comment on a page about FF in general and thought it would qualify as another option here.

What if there were other options to changing those in general?

What if we changed the masteries around a bit to maybe give a few more points, but add some new spots geared toward just junglers. Bc >lets be honest very few players (at least the top tier players I've seen) don't go with the few jungler only masteries. They are weak and don't >really provide much benefit with the new machete. If there were some mid lvl jungler only masteries I think you can open up the field and let >junglers have a middle of the road for both Offense, defense, and even throw in a support side.

SO to expand on that. Lets keep the masteries we have, but have them build into a third lvl mastery. So in the offensive tree you could deal >extra % damage to a jungle only minion. Adding to those that want to power farm or just pick up extra wave clear. Obviously you would have >to debate on how much of a % damage increase and if players would actually get it, but it is a start.

The defensive tree would get a a stronger version of the machete passives (maybe) or maybe an increase in HP/5 after killing a large minion >camp. So not only would you have the small health gain from killing it, but increased for tankier junglers to give them extra health to combat >aggressive junglers.

Support tree would have a conservation style boost that gives extra gold. So each minion is worth a flat amount increase. This would work >so that small minions are worth a certain amount and Large camps are worth a certain amount more. Just for argument purposes each >small minion is worth 2 extra gold and each large camp is worth 10. If you were to clear the entire jungle once including buffs you would get >an extra 60 extra gold from large minions and 20 extra gold from small minions. so each clear would essentially give you a ward worth in >gold.

These are all just other ideas that could be looked into besides item changes. They would all essentially push to the power farm kind of play, but provide extra clear for those that want to power farm, extra health for tanky junglers, and extra gold for those that want it for whatever purpose.

Just some food for thought.

ProfDrDeath1 votes

Interesting.

A thing to note, though: These should be Tier 4 masteries. Meaning, you can't unlock more than one of them if you don't pass up on the keystone mastery of your primary tree.

Onegarion1 votes

I'm thinking they should be in the range of 12 points in each one. Since in each case if you want to go 15/15 in any 2 categories you are missing out on the best lvl of masteries. You won't be seeing a Sej with 15/15 or a kha won't go for the utility that high up or the utility. Now this would have to be something tested and see if it really does give some benefit and makes it bad to go for one of the others. I just think that since right now most of the masteries are set up so it becomes inefficient to go 15/15 in any 2 that it really wouldn't change for this. I could be really wrong and we could see people going for 2 and succeeding which then means you have look at it again, but I think as a square one kind of place that requiring 12 points in the mastery tree and following the jungle specific masteries is already a pretty big deterance for people to not get 2.

But let me know what you think of my reasoning.

ProfDrDeath1 votes

That is what I meant by Tier 4 masteries. To unlock Tier 4, you need to spent 12 points into the tree.

Warlord and Archmage, for example, are T4 masteries.

Barcium2 votes

The most problematic thing about your Trinket idea is that it would have huge repercussions in competitive play, and would make solo queue a nightmare.

As long a you ward like you are supposed to, the stagnation of the jungle will continue due to the lack of viability of certain picks created by the safer vision game.

Teddie1 votes

I think the only thing I liked about Season 2 Jungle was getting the two golems as soon as game started as an ADC and Support on the blue side. lmao

mi ramfan2 votes

Wasn't it Season 3 that had the level 1 golems, not season 2?

What do you think of the changes I suggested?

Teddie1 votes

I'm all about changing things up! It re-establishes the good players from the ones who need some more game-play oriented work. Switching blue and wolves would be great, but remember we still have the new update coming out probably next season. That has new monsters~

Willahelm Fulber1 votes

Season 2 had it, but season 3 did too. It was a trick people used in the world championship for season 2 so people picked up for S3.

Doumz1 votes

About S2 jungle: I can agree S2 was better for junglers. But, let's be honest, they were pretty much deciding the early game flow and that's not really fair. I personally preferred end of S3.

About jungle items : I always hated the "need" to build jungle items, but I would still keep machete. The only "upgraded" jungle items I would keep is wriggle/FF because of it being niche, other type of junglers could just sell their machete late game if they want.

About gold in the jungle: I totally agree for jungle camps values, the wight camp is a noob trap. Riot said they were giving more gold to farming junglers, they didn't, they only increased global gold. The only time your jungle would be giving more gold than before is mid/late game, but laners will be "taxing" your camps at that point which result in less gold for you.

etc.: Change to trinket/buff location could probably afford a complete post about it.

Rekn4Life1 votes

Listen the only REAL reason jungling back in earlier seasons was because of GP5 items... REMEBER THOSE, too overpowered, cause first person to claim all 3 gp5 items it was game...

Startyger1 votes
  • It might be a good idea to switch the position of wolves and blue buff

This is by far the best idea by OP, backed up by a convincing argument.

The Yetii Rider1 votes

Alright, how to take your ideas and expand upon them...hmm...

Okay, make Smite different somehow. That way, ganking junglers would get a nice use of Ignite/Exhaust/Teleport, while farming junglers would be rewarded for keeping their farm up (the control junglers would always take Smite for obvious reasons)

Have it be something like this: 40 Second Cooldown Deal x true damage to a monster based on level. If you slay a monster with Smite, you deal 20% increased damage to monsters for 5 seconds. If you slay a large or epic monster with Smite, you also gain a 40% movement speed buff that decays over 2 seconds.

There, make farming times faster, give counter junglers more of an out while making invades more rewarding when you actually manage to steal, and finally have Smite be a legitimately powerful spell to compete with Ignite. Maybe increase the cooldown if it gets out of control, to like 60 seconds or something.

PurpleKingCrazy1 votes

One or two changes don't sound bad (apparently most people had voted that obviously). I think they need to move a bit head with the Hunter's machete and probably change the general item, but not get rid of it. Sure I like the clearing speed with the old one,, but that is not to say Riot should change it back. Wight camp can stay, as it provides some variety with experience boost and skill havoc, and farming style.

But then one more suitable change is necessary: I probably don't like the quill coat but only on a few champions. This change may be the most random change out of tanky junglers that not only didn't solve their problems with invaders, but made their sustaim worse than before. But then again, it's not always likely that some junglers may contend to trying to sustain with the quill coat hp and mana regen, but to try and get as much help as possible to win alongside their team. The sustain on the passive is not really working on some junglers, but I do like the 25% bonus health and the armor on it. But then again, some of the stuff with tanky junglers probably needs a form of change.

Wullf1 votes

Though I selected 1. answer. I am not sure that I want jungle to be much difficult.

For the sake of weekend junglers like myself.

Some point I'd like to comment:

  • In early season you cloud not pick everyone to jungle, now you can literary pick everyone. And I do not think it best soluution.
  • Cerebral jungle is nice, but as I said weekend junglers are then doomed to fail (if forced into jungle against someone more experienced)
  • Item diversity is somthing I miss. The Heart of gold, phylosopher stone and lucky pick builds on tanky jungler with more passive playstyle like maokai, was greally great fun. So I would not mind getting rid of machette.
  • Warning sound on sweeper sound interesting but, I am not quite sure about that. Though I would not rely on sound there are players who play with music or without sound.
  • Switching positions of blue and wovles is great idea. As blue is more desirable and has bigger impact on game I think it would be fair to make it more difficult for enemy team to acces it.

EDIT: in last point I wrote about switching blue and red instead of blue and wolves. Fixed.

Sunfield1 votes

Well I dont know... s2 jungle wasnt that fun. I used to just spam Shyvana back then. There where like 3-4 top tier picks and all the rest was just semi viable. Jungle pool was really limited and gold income was even more meh, so you had to pick someone who was strong even without items, that could go just with frozen mallet. And there where no carry junglers.

I dont know about skill either. Counterjungling in s2 was Shyvana or Udyr exclusive, none other could survive farming both jungles. Sure, if we where to recreate this situation but with bigger champion pool it would be fine. But it would require heavy reworks to many junglers so they could just get on Shyvanas and Udyrs levels.

I dont like increasing gold on specific camps either. Farming junglers nowadays have a really easy time keeping up with lanes, maybe even outleveling them. Doing this would make some camps more important and afk farming even more efficient. Not a good idea after FF incident. And just a reminder, jungle in s2 was way more supportish than it is now.

Dont like the trinket change, have no opinion on wolves and golem swap

mi ramfan1 votes

Well I dont know... s2 jungle wasnt that fun. I used to just spam Shyvana back then. There where like 3-4 top tier picks and all the rest was just semi viable. Jungle pool was really limited and gold income was even more meh, so you had to pick someone who was strong even without items, that could go just with frozen mallet. And there where no carry junglers.

I'd argue that Nocturne is a carry jungler, and he was definitely a thing Season 2. So was Jax.

I dont know about skill either. Counterjungling in s2 was Shyvana or Udyr exclusive, none other could survive farming both jungles. Sure, if we where to recreate this situation but with bigger champion pool it would be fine. But it would require heavy reworks to many junglers so they could just get on Shyvanas and Udyrs levels.

But that's exactly the point. Even if it was mostly Shyvana, Udyr, and sometimes Mundo or Maokai doing it, counterjungling was an important counterbalance to early gank spam. It added a lot of extra risk to ganking so that the decision to gank a lot early game had to be made with consideration to the fact that there was a chance you were going to lose all of your farm in the process. In the current jungle, you never ask "should I gank", you ask "how many consecutive times should I gank".

I dont like increasing gold on specific camps either. Farming junglers nowadays have a really easy time keeping up with lanes, maybe even outleveling them. Doing this would make some camps more important and afk farming even more efficient. Not a good idea after FF incident. And just a reminder, jungle in s2 was way more supportish than it is now.

Jungle in S2 was supportish because of the existence of cheap stackable GP10 items. Nowadays, all of the gold per 10s except Avarice Blade are pretty much support locked. In today's jungle, GP10 stacking wouldn't be an issue because there are no GP10s to stack. We'd see Spirit items on junglers who wanted to pick up more gold.

Dont like the trinket change, have no opinion on wolves and golem swap

Fine.

Sunfield1 votes
  1. I dont remember that much of Nocturne and even less of Jax, but that might be my memory not serving

2, If counterjungling is tied to only 2 junglers that are permabanned anyway its not a healthy design. 3. When items like Spirit line exists, every single jungler picks them. Because its werf. They where made to be werf even if you gank. If you made it so they are no longer werf to everyone you would have to destroy at least one of the spirit lines, which is definetely not werf. Nowadays if you want more gold you pick specific champs and get flare.

ploki1221 votes

We don't seem to be having the same memories of S2... I used to think that it was the best meta-wise, but that's only because A) I wasn't as good and B) pros weren't as good.

The first point is pretty self-explanatory, but ask any new players what their favorite ADC is and you'll receive a ton of really funny answers (like Leona, Teemo, Poppy, Garen... stuff like that). Sure, once you hit level 30 or even Gold, you won't be as foolish, but you still don't quite grasp the exact state of the game unless you're playing against the top 50-100 players (or 10-20 teams) of any given servers.

For the second one, it's a lot easier to explain. Tricks like level 1 double golems and Annie supports were discovered by most of us as the season ended, so it's really hard to say that we had a true grasp on what was optimal.

Even when you group those 2 things together, there are a lot of things that looks a lot different. If you look at S2 Worlds, sure, 13 champions got picked in the jungle, but only 9 of them resulted in win(s). If you look further, only 5 of those with wins have been played more than twice (out of 31 games). For the playoffs, Mundo, Skarner and Maokai reign supreme with 5 wins in 5, 7 and 11 games respectively. What this tells us is that these champions that were better than most at early ganking and basically performing on no gold/xp are the champions that were truly viable. Although, it's worth mentionning that Mundo had most of his games in the finals and Shen is not far from 5 games with an 0-4 records. Heck, even if you look at group stages, things aren't much different. top 2 picks are Maokai(4-0) and Shen (3-3). Shyvanna and Udyr both looked like good ideas but ended up as flops, again (0-5 and 0-5 for group and brackets combined). I really feel like we had an impression of liberty but in fact were simply too terrible to pickup on Maokai/Mundo/Skarner/Shen's power.

Also, the same can be said of items. S2 felt like you had the choice of what to begin with, but as far as I can remember, no winning team started with anything but boots 5 in to HoG and Philo followed by mobis. Then, you get Shurelia and Randuin, and if you're winning the game and thus getting dragons/barons, you get the Locket. You were all about team-wide utility and being a (starved) front liner while the carries were carrying.

So, onto the suggestions :

  1. Remove Machete
    I really feel like Machete is what used to keep Maokai/Skarner/Shen/Mundo down ever so slightly. The fact that they slightly buffed the monsters and gave a jungle-only item to junglers means that you have to either take a really great jungler (WW/Fidd/Xin/etc.) or gank with no combat stats. By adding machete to the equation, the basically nerfed junglers' early ganking power, and I really like that they did (because let's be honest, double buff is already huge, no need to have a 50-25 MS buff on top of that).

  2. Trinket Passive
    This one feels simply out of the blue. If you're gonna give an exact pinpointing tool, either reduce the sweep radius by like 75% or remove it altogether. You say that sweeper is really hit or miss, but considering that it's a pretty hefty gold swing when you sweep a regular ward, it not being hit or miss would simply make people never buy regular wards.

  3. Make Golems and Wights valuable
    Amen. Golems being really far out of the way of a regular clear (without buffs being spawned) and Wight being basically a raid boss really makes the 2 camps lackluster. I would love it if they were either weaker or slightly more rewarding (and preferably the first so it's not simply a bigger poachable resource).

  4. Swap Blue and Wolves
    The discussion is running in the other thread. I was a fan of the idea until I read a bit through that thread :P. Basically, Red isn't any safer than blue when you think about it. Not only is there baron/dragon to hop to, but you can leash it all the way behind the wall. If anything, I would ask to make Red more dangerous to counter-jungle rather than blue.

Pryotra1 votes

The jungle was cerebral. Jungling in Season 2 was hard to learn and hard to play. The constant juggling of defending your uncleared camps against invasion, making sure to pay attention to all your lanes, and having Smite whenever an objective was up was not for the faint of heart, and took a lot of time to master.

lol, no. Easiest jungle by far. S1, on the other hand, needed skill, investment, and luck to get through.

You must not have played back then.

Junglers didn't need special items with no combat stats to jungle. Today, every jungle starts Machete+4 health pots, meaning that the junglers who are viable are the ones who do the best with those starting items.

Nope again. There are many junglers that can start dorans, beleive it or not. Also, quite a few can start elixers, though it is riskier.

Get rid of the Hunter's Machete, but keep the higher-tier jungle items.

Interesting, but your motivations are bad. This jungle was based more on S1, with this item as the solution to the problem of tiny champ pool. S1 jungle was far healthier, as S2 spawned garbage such as Jungle Karthus (press R to gank!).

That said, I would like Hunter's machete to not automagically increase clear times by X%. The reason that most junglers do pick up this item is that it makes clears soo quick. I would prefer something that created an aura to weaken jungle monster attacks by X% instead. This would lessen the burden on some of the harder jungles, but not push the already quick clearers to the front of the line. It also mimicks S1 in another way, in that almost every jungler started Cloth +5, as it allowed the best survivability.

Add a passive effect to the Sweeper trinket that makes it play a sound effect (say, a ding) when you walk within vision range of an enemy ward.

No. Not only would this be abused by pros, this would make ganking and CJ'ing braindead. I'm not for an easier jungle.

Also, you shouldn't need it. With the ward limitations for s4, they can't ward everything. There are definitely ways to gank lanes with just about every ward setup.

Increase the experience and gold given by the Golem and Wight camps.

I'm actually for this, so long as the difficulty and respawn timer is ramped up a little as well. This would make them like minibosses, under the dragon, but still a good boon to get. They wouldn't be a handout to anyone, but if you put your mind to it they would be worth going out of the way to grab.

mi ramfan1 votes

lol, no. Easiest jungle by far. S1, on the other hand, needed skill, investment, and luck to get through.

Could you expand on this a little bit? "Skill, investment, and luck" is a nice soundbite, but it says absolutely nothing about your thought process. I mean, I could always assume that skill=knowing the 3 champions that can clear without getting rekd, investment=buying the runes and masteries needed to survive the jungle, and luck=whether you have the latency+framerate to smite properly, but I would rather hear what you actually think.

You must not have played back then.

I played back then. We have a very different view of events; the only difference is that I explained and justified mine and so far in this post you haven't.

Nope again. There are many junglers that can start dorans, beleive it or not. Also, quite a few can start elixers, though it is riskier.

Which junglers are capable of starting with Dorans? And how often do they start with that over machete?

Interesting, but your motivations are bad. This jungle was based more on S1, with this item as the solution to the problem of tiny champ pool. S1 jungle was far healthier, as S2 spawned garbage such as Jungle Karthus (press R to gank!).

Why are my motivations bad? You seemed to have passed over my actual motivations in favor of more information that has nothing at all to do with the actual justification I gave for that change: increasing the variety of jungle item starts.

Also: what is wrong about jungle Karthus (other then him not being a great jungle pick)? His ult does the same thing and is used the same way no matter what lane he's in.

That said, I would like Hunter's machete to not automagically increase clear times by X%. The reason that most junglers do pick up this item is that it makes clears soo quick. I would prefer something that created an aura to weaken jungle monster attacks by X% instead. This would lessen the burden on some of the harder jungles, but not push the already quick clearers to the front of the line. It also mimicks S1 in another way, in that almost every jungler started Cloth +5, as it allowed the best survivability.

Weakening jungle attacks doesn't actually help the slower clearing junglers sustain-wise, because the difference in damage taken is balanced out by the fast jungler being there for less time and getting hit by less attacks in the first place.

No. Not only would this be abused by pros, this would make ganking and CJ'ing braindead. I'm not for an easier jungle.

"It would be abused by pros" doesn't say much-pros abuse everything to the fullest potential they're aware of. That's how they became pros in the first place.

It also doesn't make counterjungling easier, necessarily-in order to destroy the ward you may have to triangulate, which wastes time. It gives counterplay to junglers going through warded areas other then "check everything with my skillshot first.

Also, you shouldn't need it. With the ward limitations for s4, they can't ward everything. There are definitely ways to gank lanes with just about every ward setup.

You don't need it for ganking so much as you need it for counterjungling.

Increase the experience and gold given by the Golem and Wight camps.

I'm actually for this, so long as the difficulty and respawn timer is ramped up a little as well. This would make them like minibosses, under the dragon, but still a good boon to get. They wouldn't be a handout to anyone, but if you put your mind to it they would be worth going out of the way to grab.

I'm glad we actually agree on something. The more difficult we make them, the more reward they have to give in order to be worth touching, though.

Pryotra1 votes

Could you expand on this a little bit?

Well, skill, as even if you used WW, the top teir jungler at the time, with all the runes and the right items, the clear itself could #rekt you. I mean clear in the most literal sense too, as it was clear -> then decide if you had enough HP left to gank or if you had to B first. If you were inattentive for a moment midcamp, it could eat you.

Investment, as you needed to actually invest the runes, and time practicing your smite and clear pattern so that you could reliably jungle. While I get that the IP investment needed to go, the time practicing it should have stayed in some form. Now, no one needs to practice jungling with X champion, unless they are trying something REALLY off the wall. I feel it should be practiced akin to last hitting.

Luck, so as to not get crit too hard by wolves, dodge enough attacks (that was a stat back then), crit enough yourself, didn't get CJ'd (rare, but it ended you if they succeeded.), didn't take too much aggro while kiting between attacks, etc. Alot of little things that could go wrong, and took skill to handle when they did.

I played back then.

I meant in S1 jungle. I'm not saying it was the best, but it certainly was better than the abomination of S2 jungle.

Jungling should take skill, and be a conscious choice, not "LOL, wave is pushed, time to farm in safety" for laners.

Which junglers are capable of starting with Dorans? And how often do they start with that over machete?

Well, off the top of my head, Heimer with Doran's ring with the right runes, as well as Trundle and udyr with Doran's blade. I haven't tried it, but I am willing to bet Yi and Trynd could use the blade as well, and Cho'gath might be able to with the ring. And those are just the ones I know of.

As far as how often, it really depends more on the match-up, but honestly if they are against a faster clearer than they are, they usually go Machette unless they want to focus on early ganks, in which case they could go Doran's. It's why I don't like Machette, as it just really increases clear time therefore must be chosen for efficiency, and isn't an "I'm a weak jungler that needs a leg up item".

Weakening jungle attacks doesn't actually help the slower clearing junglers sustain-wise, because the difference in damage taken is balanced out by the fast jungler being there for less time and getting hit by less attacks in the first place.

True, but by doing this over flat % speed increase, you offer more variety to the jungle without pigeonholing jungle builds. Plus, you don't have top and bot reserving golems/wolves, mid reserving wraiths, and having to hope you get to your buffs before your laners do.

This boils the item down to a "I need some help to jungle" sort of item, instead of a "I now clear X% faster" item. Laners can still decide to attack mobs, but they will be hit back pretty hard.

Why are my motivations bad?

You want the jungle to be easier. However, you forget the problems that caused.

Without requiring an item or rune setup, anyone can just farm the jungle until their lane returns to the middle/their side. No one pushes, and the whole game gets stale.

It also doesn't make counterjungling easier, necessarily-in order to destroy the ward you may have to triangulate, which wastes time.

In AC multiplayer, you learned to do just this on the fly with just the compass and line of sight, mechanics built into the game, against moving targets. I would be able to spot wards ABUSIVELY with this within 5 games. I am not pro. Plus, if it still has the active, I would auto clear wards without trying. Perma Jungle and Support trinket, possibly a mid and top lane trinket as well. Must pick on stealth champions.

The more difficult we make them, the more reward they have to give in order to be worth touching, though.

I was thinking something like a 100 gold early on, and they would spawn a little before dragon, but not the same time as the buffs, with respawn timers of 2:30. This way they could be like minibosses of the jungle, and a good objective point to CJ.

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