I hate the changes. Oh, how I hate them.
A simple -4% to all Jg camps experience would have been enough to make lanes happier because it would've been enough to force an extra camp to reach 3 at the same time as solo lanes.
But no. The experience jungle receive is the same as a Support at this point.
So, the jungle, now more than ever before, depend entirely on their team to not feed the opposing team multiple kills in the early game. Otherwise, the jungle are forced into the lanes even earlier to provide damage control rather than "farm up" to help lower the deficit between teams.
The changes did nothing to prevent early ganks. Red is all you need for an early gank. All the changes did was turn the jungle into an assassin support role.
Maybe that's why I see Pyke in the jungle all the freaking time! But that's another topic.
And people who still play jungle play like they want the game over as quickly as possible by appearing and reappearing in lanes repeatedly within the first ten to fifteen minutes of the game. And they keep up on farm by taxing their lanes so that they don't have to be bothered with taking monster aggro for minimal returns on experience.
As for jungle items themselves, people are hardly rushing them anymore. Instead, I see people finishing their Trinity Force or Titanic Hydra or Gunblade or BotRK before they so much as consider investing in Chilling or Challenging Smite. Why bother, right? 2x next to nothing experience in the jungle is still next to nothing. May as well work on something that can make an impact in enemy engagements since jungle tools are made less effective by the changes.
And routes for clears are just awful with all the focus shifted onto scuttle. It used to be something I'd kill after a few camps to heal off it so I could continue my farming.
But now my 1st clears are basically this.
Red then Blue then Scuttle near Blue then I walk through mid without even ganking unless the enemy is so far out of position for me to do it.
Why the detour through mid? Because, at that point, I can siphon some experience off enemy minion deaths that I reach 3 without needing to take out another camp.
I try to take the second scuttle if the enemy hasn't taken it already then I move onto the lesser camps. I go Krugs then Raptors then Wolves then Gromp. At which point I make my first back.
