Downvote me, but Lee is a good example of what an earlygame jungler should be
It's easy to see why earlygame jungers are difficult to balance across levels of play. In low elo they can rampage around the map murdering everything because nobody wards, in the LCS not so much. If you give an early jungler enough power to rampage around at the LCS level even though pros know how to deal with ganks, they'll be broken beyond belief in low elo.
So where does Lee fit into this? He's an earlygame jungler that does well in the LCS but fails in low elo. Sure, you could just go "muh skillcap" but let's look at the reasons this happens:
- His power is tied into mobility and playmaking. His numbers are good too (personally I think he should be squishier earlygame) but that doesn't change the fact that if all you want to do is roll your face on the keyboard, pretty much every other champ does that better. People go "omg so many dashes he can just wardhop if he misses a Q" but his true power comes from pulling off plays that involve dashing all over the place, straining his mobility to the limit.
- He needs to do well early, because he falls off. You went 3/3/0 in the first 20 minutes? Probably gonna lose, even though you think you did well. LCS players can work around this, but to carry soloq you need to have some sort of impact lategame, be it landing hooks or assassinating carries.
- He can ult people to safety. That sounds like a joke, but I see it happen all the time. It's a good mechanic because it punishes mistakes, making him even weaker in soloq.
This is how you balance earlygame junglers across levels of play. Lee is pretty much the only one who works like this, since J4/Vi/Reksai don't get much weaker when you hand them to a low elo player (Reksai should in theory because it's fair to demand players to master her tunnel strategies... except those strategies are worthless 90% of the time. I wish Riot had made her a dedicated antijungler instead of another J4, but that's getting off topic). We need more champs like this, not in the sense of "a kit that has absolutely everything" or "immunity to nerfs", but more of how he works on a macro level.