Jungle Changes are still a Mistake

No matter how much of a clown fiesta many games have devolved into, it's absolutely evident that the jungle changes are still a mistake.

• Champion Diversity is down.

With the addition of the crab becoming a hotly contested objective so early into the game, suddenly a small number of champions have had their viability sharpened. These champions are the high dueling type that can clear with relative ease. They are high in damage, or have extreme sustain/stat stealing to make up for it.

The A-tier junglers are counters to these junglers ( for trundle), have an insane kit that is strong by nature () or can at least survive. The S-tier junglers counter all the other non A-tier junglers. This essentially boxes off a small collection of champions that put the player in a solid position to win (provided, of course, that the other player knows what they're doing).

As a result, there's no point in playing a CC tank if your teammates want to pick carries. Well, it's also worth noting that everyone is picking a carry, it just so happens that some of them are also very tanky. Zac, Sejuani, J4, Amumu have all been left behind, as they have all been sufficiently nerfed out and dominant strategy of taking crabs to gain half-levels in the early game and then pressing that advantage in 2v2s or in invades has clearly shut down any strategy to get around it or wait it out. Additionally, the S-tier junglers also happen to scale better than most of the other junglers in the pool because defensive items simply cannot stand up to offensive items later, and most/all of the S-tiers are auto attackers, making them scale better by nature.

• Strategic Diversity is down.

The crab is where a portion of both junglers' experience has gone, making it an extremely important neutral objective. It spawns right in the beginning of the game, so it's typically a 1v1 match up between junglers, although mids at higher levels of play understand that having priority so the jungler can have the crab puts both himself and the jungler far ahead of their counterparts. Someone used the following example a little while ago, and I agree. They used the matchup example of Xin Zhao and Amumu.

If Amumu survives against Xin and doesn't die in his own jungle, he "wins" the jungle matchup. He will receive the items he needs in order to function properly and at a game changing level later in the game.

If Xin kills Amumu in his jungle, Xin controls the tempo of the game. He can press neutral objectives and has freedom to not only his jungle, but Amumu's entire jungle too. He can simply leave his resources up and just take from the opposing jungler the whole game, further putting Amumu behind.

Effectively, Amumu's entire strategy and approach to the game has been taken away. He simply does not have the luxury of buying wards, looking for safe ganks, and avoiding engagements with Xin Zhao. If he doesn't get the crab early, he's useless. Additionally, support from other laners is inconsequential and almost doesn't matter to me in circumstances like this, because PICKING A CHAMPION MID LANE FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF CONTESTING A LEVEL 1 OBJECTIVE IS STUPID. With the level of complexity and importance that strategy has played in this game in the past, it's a bit of a slight to people that try to forge their own playstyle. It's a way of speeding up games that makes players that like to actually think about comps, matchups, and game periods (early, mid, late) far less useful.

With a game that has just over 140 champions, you really don't have the liberty to just decide to make one time of the game far more valuable than the rest if you want a decent game experience for people that like playing champions of all kinds. You alienate the people that actually like playing tanky disruptors or people that like late game carries completely because you've essentially narrowed the desired strategy to such a small scope. Jungle was supposed to be the wild card, but its own strategic climate has been diminished. Games, as a result, are short and quickly decided. The current meta junglers not only have every tool to get ahead, they have every tool to stay ahead and not look back. The changes to the map with the scuttle crab have only furthered the propensity of meta, dueling junglers to get ahead. Essentially, they can always take something away from the other jungler if they have a lead, because the risk they shoulder in exchange for denying a huge resource (the crab) to the enemy jungler is zero. The enemy jungler only has to get to the 60-50 yard line to kick a safe field goal, instead of having to get to the 30-40 yard line to get a safe field goal. They almost cannot overextend to further their lead if they restrict them self to the crabs on either side. The amount of work that off meta junglers need to do in order to establish a lead that allows their champion function to dominate is simply too much.

What causes this to happen? Why are we right where we are?

A couple reasons:

• The crab is highly valuable. I've already gone into detail on why this counts as a safe snowballing tactic.
• Camp uptime is low. This forces some junglers to come out of the woodworks making unexpected pathing really difficult if you want to farm optimally. Essentially, low camp up time means that because there's only one way to "farm well," there's a limited number of paths you can take. Naturally, champions that are good at these paths are the best. Camps are mini objectives rather than a form of CS. Furthermore, junglers that are behind have no recourse into the game because they can't stay close in experience.
• Conqueror/Press the Attack is really strong on a lot of junglers and it has really strong impact at all stages of the game. Duelists that bring this keystone almost always ensure they win an all in early for a crab.
• Fleet Footwork allows champs like Graves to always have a health lead on every jungler.

A couple potential solutions:

• Remove the crab as having high priority. If Riot wanted to relieve early gank pressure, the answer was to delay champions getting to level 3 by a camp, to give lanes time to settle out by more.
• Remove blast cone at the blue side top bush. Every red side top laner gets ganked really easily regardless of whether they have a ward or not because of that thing alone.
• Allow tools to keep tank junglers' health higher, such as grasp of the undying working on jungle creeps (modified effect, maybe not a 5 max HP on neutral monster hit, maybe only the heal). This would allow tank junglers to even the health advantage that fleet footwork gives to ranged champions.
• Remove some of the nerfs that made many of the tank junglers crap (champion specific changes, maybe not a cinderhulk buff)
• Higher camp up time, lower experience, gold, and difficulty on all champs. This allows champs that are behind to have at least one option to retreat to. It doesn't/shouldn't be a solid strategy to stay in the game, but it should be doable to bump along and at least stay close. Something to slow the snowballing. We should make the jungle as accessible as possible to as many champions in the game, and then nerf abuse cases (funnelling, extreme farming, not enough farming, etc.) afterwards.