SUGGESTION: Remove Smite Completely, Redo Balance For Jungle Mobs. & More.

The Jungle Book:

Right now in League of Legends, the entire meta is based around having a Jungler. Of all roles, Junglers have perhaps the #1 biggest impact in the game as they are the ones who secure vision around the map for their team, assist their team when laners are struggling, help snowball laners who are doing well, and help acquire objectives such as Baron and Dragon to give their team an advantage. There is a lot of weight on a single player's shoulders when it comes to jungling, perhaps even too much. The Jungle is single handedly the biggest imbalance in the game and it really needs to go back to the drawing board completely to be looked at again from the ground up.

There are many things about the Jungle that make the game unbalanced, for example:

• Not every champion can Jungle.
• Even if a champion can Jungle, he or she might not be able to clear as fast as another Jungler.
• Even if a champion can Jungle, he or she might have much less sustain than another Jungler.
• Some buffs in the current Jungle are too powerful when combined with certain champion kits.
• There isn't enough incentive early in games for Junglers to protect Top lane, creating unbalanced lanes.

By design the Jungle alone is the sole factor for the meta in League of Legends. Even the slightest change in the Jungle affects every lane and player in the game. Even if this is intentional, it's not a fair method of balancing and means there will always be certain champions that simply too strong and some that are terribly weak regardless of what is done to help balance them.

Thou Art Of The Jungle.. And Not Of The Jungle:

In order to get to the root of the problem first I believe Smite needs to be removed from the game.

"Wow, you are such a troll, you are crazy they can't remove Smite", you say?

Let me explain. By removing Smite you make early level Jungling nearly impossible. This is actually a really good start because now teams will be required to make a meaningful sacrifice if they want to have stronger control of the Jungle. In order to give a good enough leash for a Jungler to survive a longer leash would be necessary, if not even a "support" for helping with the first clear. This will balance out for teams going with double top laners as it will take the enemy jungler a longer period of time before he can scale into the game.

For laners, ALL camps will now become contested advantages as players will no longer need to feel as though they are "the junglers domain" for clearing. This opens up much more room for strategy and play making. Red and Blue buff now won't have any set "player" who will be required for having it. Players can then focus on strategy such as missing cs to give their AD, Support, or Middle lane(s) the Red Buff at level 1 to help with trades. Two player mid lanes, top lanes, bottom lanes.. all of them would become viable methods of playing. Basically the sky would become the limit and the Jungle would be open for any player(s) who felt like they could use it.

For champions like Nunu or Warwick, nothing is ever going to stop them from being able to solo in the Jungle. In cases like this where the champions sustain is really strong I really believe that they should be reworked to have more incentive for team play. Being a team game, there is no reason for a champion to be designed to be a "monster / creep killing" oriented machine. This is an unhealthy mechanic at the design level and I'm positive there are many other ways these abilities could be changed to allow for more teamwork and game play potential.

The Lonesome Creatures Of The Forest:

At this point I've explained why the Jungle is unbalanced and made some suggestions for improvement. The Jungle is going to become a pretty useless and boring place at this point however as there would be very little advantage for leaving lane for anything in there with the exceptions of the Red & Blue Sentinels, Dragon, Rift Herald, and the Baron. In order to remedy this I believe that the Jungle monsters should become slightly weaker early into the game and increase in stats more as they level up to make up for it. The effects granted now should instead be given to any champion who kills them (not when they are smited) and also once again work on champions. (i.e. The stun from the Krugs should proc on champions once again.)

Where Did My Blue Buff Go?:

Perhaps the biggest change I have to suggest would be something along the lines of a complete "flip" on one side of the Jungle. By this I mean so that both sides of the Jungle contain the same Jungle monsters. Two Blue Buffs on one side of the Map and Two Red Buffs on the other side of the map. Doing this would completely remove any disadvantage one laner would have against another and potentially provide the same for advantage for another player.

Thanks for reading my ideas, comment if you have anything to add. =) [slayer-jinx-wink]