Obvious problems with the new jungle
I play hecarim as my main. I got to plat 4 this season only playing him in jungle. I now feel that the jungle is overly difficult and less profitable, yet is a role of pinnacle importance.
The difficulty of jungle is just silly when the reward for jungling is so minimal. Having to back at or before your second buff is silly (to me it might be better to grab buffs and double lane). The length of jungle respawn timers makes it very hard to come back after your team falls behind. Because, you can't farm to catch back up with other laners or their jungler who has successfuly gotten an assist or even a kill. Now, since your laners are behind they are usually getting zoned or pressured. This leads to enemy junglers with more free time. He will usually begin to invade and get vision control (if hes any good). This leads to you further falling behind or are forced to gank, being it successful or not you have to do it. If it is unsuccessful your chance of coming back is nearly out of reach. This is why, many games recently are not lost by 30-28, but more like 25-5.
Another point I've seen is that dragon is too important. The buff is ALWAYS a bonus to your team, what i mean by this is that when dragon was just worth gold it was still up to the player to make a choice of what to buy with that gold, be that choice good or bad. Meaning that dragon has lead to the game being less about individual decisions, or individual skill. Therefore, I feel that league has been dumbed down even further with this stacking permanent buff from dragon.
The jungle nevertheless favors only self-sustaining junglers like WW. Other junglers fall too far behind in the beginning to have any significant impact in the game unless their desperation ganks are successful. like I said if these ganks are not successful there are not many options to catch back up due to the jungle being so strong, pressure from their jungler (since hes been successful early on), long jungle timers, no conservation, etc. This game favors the team with junglers that can be successful early either by an early gank or early self sustain to get them ahead in levels and gold.
I hope that there are some changes made, such as conservation reinstated, the difficulty of jungle reduced or timers reduced. The buff from dragon is most certainly going to be changed, it is obviously too strong. Anyway, the last few days have been very frustrating and I will probably retire from this game if things aren't changed.