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Red Buff VS Blue Buff and The Fighter Jungle Meta

Zerenza··3 votes·2,232 views

Crest of Cinder's

PASSIVE: Basic attacks against non-turret apply a debuff that Slow icon slows the target by 10 / 15 / 25% (halved to 5 / 7.5 / 12.5% for Ranged role ranged champions) for 3 seconds and deals 12 − 114 (based on level) bonus true damage over 2 seconds, with the first tick of damage occurring on-hit and subsequent ticks occurring each second. Applying Crest of Cinders while a target is already affected by it refreshes the burn duration, but does not deal the on-hit damage part.

Crest of Insight

If you have mana, restores 5 flat mana and 1% of maximum mana per second, and if you have energy, instead restores 5 flat energy and 1% of maximum energy per second. If slain, this buff transfers to the killer. 10% CDR

Uhm, idk about you guys but this seems a bit...unfair? Like, i know that if i'm NOT playing a Fighter jungler and i end up against one, they're 100% gonna invade me after getting red buff and if i get Auto'd one time it's nearly impossible to get away from them. I'm sure i'm not the only one either, but why is Red Buff so overloaded? True Damage, Slow, Passive Healing while out of combat. Meanwhile all Blue Buff does is give 10% CDR and some Mana Regen, why? Like, i get that mana regen is nice and all but i shouldn't have to die just because my opponent is a Fighter who has red buff and can just run at me.

I feel like people have been overlooking the crucial fact that for nearly every fighter jungle, red buff is either one of two things against a non-fighter jungler. A kill or a flash, and in many cases, flash won't save you because they can just flash too, and in both cases you push that jungler out of their jungle and take 2-3 camps while your at it while being completely healthy afterwards.

Why is Red Buff so much stronger than Blue Buff? Why can't blue buff give Mage and Ability Focused jungler's(or tanks) the same benefits that Fighter and AD heavy jungler's get from Red Buff? I don't want it too slow or anything, i just want it to do a little bit more to help bridge the gap between classes in the jungle. Scuttle changes have made it really difficult for a lot of classes to succeed well in the jungle, just as all of us jungler's thought most of the jungler's in the game got pushed out in favor of Fighter's and since then the majority of champions in the jungle are champions with great 1v1's and invades. Until something is done to bridge the gap i'm pretty sure all we'll see in the jungle is Xin Zhao, Udyr and Jax along with the handful of jungler's that are capable of playing around them. It's been over a year now and the meta for the jungle has stayed almost exclusively Fighter's, i'm kind of sick of it tbh.

TLDR: The scuttle changes over a year ago caused the jungle meta to be comprised of nearly exclussively fighter's, that coupled with the fact that Blue Buff is not nearly as strong on the champions it's supposed to be strong on as Red Buff is on Fighter's means that there's a huge bridge between Tanks, Mages and Non-Auto Attack focused champions in the jungle and nothing has been done in an attempt to mitigate this. The same champions have been meta for nearly a year in the jungle and even with nerfs and jungle EXP those champions just 1v1 better while other's can't do it at all.

13 Comments

ValyrianBlade2 votes

They used to give bonus percent ap from blue. However this wouldn't help your point (worthless on first clear) and it was OP when given to mid laners (if one got it and the other didn't, mid was basically over).

I don't think it's a huge deal that red is stronger, at least early. Mana Regen and CDR are still important for many. You get 2 scuttles so you can play around your opponent and take the one opposite them (you just need to be aware of where they are). You can vertical jungle if they're invading you. Your team can collapse if they're invading you. You can gank the opposite side of the map if they're invading you. You can start red if you're worried they'll invade your red and feel you need it. Or you can clear your whole bot side + scuttle and recall to buy so you have an item advantage (and maybe level) if they went to your red side and waited hoping to ambush you.

Jungling is a lot about predicting what your opponent will do.

I'm as tired of the fighter dominance as the best guy (albeit moreso in top), but it's not like they can't be beat.

Zerenza1 votes

Team can collapse if their paying attention. Vertical jungling only works well if you have lane priority and you know for a fact that the enemy jungler is already doing the same to you, there are ways to try and spot it out but in general it's still very risky because if you run into that fighter while trying to vertical jungle, you lose anyway. When it comes to getting a scuttle you can only do that if your sure the enemy jungler won't, if you start blue with a botlane leash and decide to take scuttle the enemy jungler could easily show up and kill you. If you chose not to and decide to take the top one, well the enemy jungler will show up and kill you.

This is the problem i have with it, there's so many different things that they can do that you can't do anything about. They can be beaten, yes and yes i myself have done it as well(I like to ward Pixel brush at 1:10 to circumvent invades so i know if i'm being invaded or not.) but the sheer number of things they can do VS the number of things you can do to stop them and the crucial fact that any of those things they do won't really punish them is what makes me dislike it, like it feels like if mess up predicting their pathing and end up running into them i either die or have to give up EXP and Gold but if i just don't run into them they simply play normally.

There are plenty of ways to bridge the gap between jungle champions but i felt blue buff was the best thing to point at because in comparison blue buff is much weaker and not everyone can use Red Buff like fighter's and AD champions can.

Stained Spear1 votes

What if they removed rylais and made it blue buffs passive instead of the cdr.

Zerenza1 votes

Possible, though, removing Rylai's isn't necessary and at Max Level, the Red Buff slow is actually still higher. (rylai's is 20% slow.)

A slow on Blue Buff would be nice, to a point but it doesn't need to be the same buff as red buff just for mana, it can be slightly different.

Serika Zero1 votes

As someone that is playing eve. I don't think it's that important to have red buff. I do enjoy the exp and gold from it tho.

And in higher elo, people are starting to move towards tank to deal with the jungle changes anyway. sure, there's two strong fighter junglers in xin and Jax, but that's about it.

And as far as ap goes, there's not a lot of ap junglers. Eve, Elise, gragas, maybe sylas. Oh right and khartus, which is only a jungle because dark harvest exist and it's current for.

Zerenza1 votes

As another person that is playing Eve, i find it very annoying that in order to prevent myself from dying from an Invade by a fighter(Which does happen) i have to either skip the EXP and Gold, Flash and hope to get away, hope that my teamates are more reactive than their's or die. That's what i call a lack of counterplay, sure it doesn't happen every game, but the vast majority of my jungle games are spent against champions that have better 1v1's than me and tend to invade me quite often as well.

It's not that there isn't any counterplay at all, as another commentator has said, there is some but it's the fact that regardless of what the enemy does if they are a fighter it's a lot harder to punish them for this because they have such a powerful 1v1 against non-fighter's. To add to this the reason i think it's kind of unfair is because they seem to have a Guaranteed way to put you behind, get red buff, invade and reap the benefits of that champions just not being able to fight you. Sure, if your a good jungler you can still avoid this by pathing but in general they can do the same thing, and again, at any moment if you come in contact with Udyr, Jax, Lee Sin or Xin Zhao as Evelynn(for example) your very unlikely to win against them, so the risk involved in trying to play around them is a lot higher than the actual reward itself, which is why there's a gap between those champions and champions that have weaker 1v1's in the jungle.

Serika Zero1 votes

What pathing you usually take and what runes? I honestly don't remember when was the last time I encountered what you are describing. But I also don't go out of my way to contest enemy junglers pre 6.

Zerenza1 votes

Ward top side pixel brush at 1:10 Start bot-side because it's faster, take raptor's or wolves then move towards scuttle crab and attempt to take it as fast as i can. If i saw the scuttle was missing from my ward at 2:00 minutes, or that the enemy jungler showed top side in any way, i move into their jungle.

If i didn't see them top side, then i take the scuttle as fast as i can, hope the enemy jungler doesn't find me and run topside to either Raptor's or Blue Buff then to the second scuttle.

There are three times that i find the enemy jungler, when i take the first scuttle, when i'm trying to do my raptor's and when i'm trying to take the second scuttle. Sometimes they don't fight me, but sometimes they do, i most often get invaded when i start Bot-Side red which is where i go Red,Raptor's, Scuttle and straight to my blue, i'v found i get invaded nearly 60% of the time and have learned to be extremely cautious of my own blue buff because of it. It doesn't happen as often when i start Bot-Side Blue.

Again, i understand pathing is important, i understand that reading the enemy jungle pathing is important, all i'm saying is that it's too easy for them to force you into a bad spot because every action they can take doesn't have a consequence. If they invade me and i'm not there, they don't get a kill but they still end up with the same farm, if they invade me or meet me at scuttle and i get away, they still forced me to back so they can take a camp and be up in farm. If they invade me and i die then they get a kill, all three of my camps and can still gank with pretty high health. If they chose not to invade me at all and farm normally the only thing their missing out on is the opportunity to put me behind, because as i'v explained, there's a lot more benefits to fighting a non-fighter jungler than there are drawbacks if you don't kill them because of it.

Serika Zero1 votes

that's for telling me your pathing. I'll tell you mine now.

First off, I highly prefer a certain rune on Eve especially. And that's "ghost poro". Which works great with Electrocute, sudden impact, and the movement speed from the red rune tree. The first thing I do when the game starts is go to my top side and put the ghost poro in a brush. On blue, in the brush right besides the blue buff, and on red either in the brush right near red or the one behind it.

In case the enemy doesn't invade right away my top side, The ghost poro gives me coverage that my buff is safe. And even if I don't pay attention to the minimap 24/7, if I look on the minimap when I'm about to go top side and I notice its gone, obviously, the enemy has been there. I do pay attention at it tho before the camps start, to make sure it doesn't just dissapear from a random walk in at like 1 minute.

Next, if I'm blue side. I go Red, pick E, go golems, smite big golem after a bit of time (I wait to take some damage to heal it with smite). Then I go raptors. And now finally I go to check for scuttle. At this point there's 2 scenarios:

  1. someone took it
  2. nobody took it. If someone took it, I simply back out and move towards the other scuttle. Then blue, wolves, frog and then look to gank top or mid or recall. If nobody took it, I take the crab and then I got 3 choices:
  3. invade enemy bot side for vision and to check if their buff is still up (mainly doing this if I don't know where they started)
  4. gank bot
  5. gank mid And after this, move to my top side. (and check scuttle first).

If at any point, my ghost poro catches enemies and I notice it, I move in to invade the enemy jungle and take their stuff. Which makes it really great for counter jungling.

Also in the case above, if the enemy still has blue up I still have my ward from the start. I can ward (behind the camp) and take their buff, or just ward around there and see when the enemy jungler goes for blue and gromp. Allowing me to track them and then either counter gank them or safely gank the other side of the map.

As for when I'm starting red side. Then yes, I'm going blue into frog into scuttle into wolves into raptors into red into golems. I got way less variety for this side and need improvement. Then again, I do somethings just do blue, frog, scuttle and invade their red for vision and knowing what camps they did, and even taking their raptors every now and then.

Still, I rarely had issues in the early game as Eve as far as me getting attacked (i've seen lanes feeding and being unable to do anything afterwards but not me hard losing early game unless i went for greedy invades with no vision or knowledge of enemy jungler. You should have an easier time if you figure out where the enemy jungler is and how to play around their pathing, invading for vision really helps :)

Zerenza1 votes

Okay, now i want you to take into consideration how complicated this got for the sole purpose of avoiding a Fighter running at you.

This post was not because i needed help but to prove how easy it is for them versus how hard it is to avoid them, and the crucial fact that if you don't you give up a huge amount.

I appreciate the attempt at help, don't get me wrong, but that's not why i posted this.

Serika Zero1 votes

One small thing. I'm not doing this to avoid "a fighter to run into me".

I'm doing this to maximize the amount of EXP, Gold and Action time that I have to make my impact on the map. And try to push the enemy jungler behind, while at the same time trying to defend my own position to not end up behind.

I'm mostly comfortable doing this on Eve because at least blue side, I know her good pathing really well. But, this is something what all junglers should do during the loading screen.

Set-up a game plan to help them reach their goals. Actually, a similar thing happens when you plan in lane too. Unless you go on auto pilot.

1v1 face to face, ofc Eve in the early game will lose to Lee or Xin as an example. But, since you can "manipulate" the scenarios in which you face each other, you will be able to win a 1v1 even against a fighter, bruiser or anything else in the early game if you engage on them after they use their cooldowns.

Ie: you can go on Lee after he misses his Q, and you get a full charm. Or Xin already having used his knowck-up, so easy to engage on him after that. And he will often use that doing camps or, well, SCUTTLE, which we usually fight over :) Likewise, Eve will usually use her charm and everything on crab too.

And if you know that the enemy will be doing xxxx (ie: scuttle) at exactly what time, you can be there, and then engage in a favorable situation

Zerenza1 votes

...Like, i know the match up at this point it really does feel like your just trying to make it seem like i don't know the match ups or the jungle.

I already know all of this, your completely ignoring every point i made and just belittling me.

Serika Zero1 votes

your point was: I'm doing all this to avoid fighters with red buffs.

my point was: I'm doing all this regardless who the enemy champion is or what buffs they have.

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