What do you think about the state of jungle?
What do you think about the state of jungle?
Greetings fellow summoners of the Fediverse. Imma try to contribute some content to the magazine regarding the upcoming jungle nerfs.
I've heard through that Riot is getting ready for a jungle nerf in the near future (phroxzon suppsedly posted some Xcrement on Musk's dumpster fire). What is the impression of jungle in your games and on which rank are you playing?
I'm in bronze and mained jungle the previous two seasons whereas I play sidelanes now (top atm but adc is fine as well). I get that jungle is very impactful by concept, but I feel like this doesn't transfer two low elo games directly. Here are my reasons:
- In general jungle is behind on exp and gold compared to solo lanes to offset the higher impact.
- So if you just afk farm, you will be behind solo lanes.
- You'll have to make some plays then. Making successful plays depends on your judgment of the map state and what happens next.
- Because you and everyone in the game is dumb and won't behave like they should if they'd understand the game, you can't rely on "proper decision making", even if you make the right call.
- This means it's very random if your calls will work or not.
So here's what I conclude: Your jungler will either play it safe and will be behind all game or he will try to get fed but he doesn't have the biggest agency about it if he's not a smurf that has a way better understanding of the game. So you'll just flip a coin and see if your jungler snowballs or the other.
If the upcoming jungle nerfs will target jungle economy again I'll suppose this will get worse. A better way to nerf jungle in regards to game health would be to reduce the skill ceiling in jungling; maybe it's a "Zeri problem" where better players are just too good for the role.
Don't ask me how to do this, though. Only thing I can contribute is that I've seen both sides of blaming jungle that I think the role is shit in low elo. I don't even jungle anymore but everytime our premade has a random jungler from the interwebs in our team I hear the poor guy playing just as bad as ourselves but of course he's the problem. If we win then of cooourse we carried like hell.
I love the whole macro aspect of jungling but I won't touch that toxic role anywhere soon. Toplane is so fun in comparison: You'll fight mano-a-mano and both of you are still reasonably fed after lane if someone didn't run it down completely. You'll get to play your first 15 mins in peace and then you'll join clown-fiesta and see how it goes lol.
Thanks for coming to my FedTalk
Phreak mentioned in one of the balance update videos that junglers were judged to have too much impact, while top had too little and the other roles were in a good spot. One of the metrics he mentioned was slowing down the first kill junglers are involved in. If I had to guess, this means slowing down early clears more. It could also mean a lot of nerfs to junglers early stats, but that would be a lot more work.
I don't main jungle, but if I get it off-role it doesn't feel bad lately. I would prefer less Vi but otherwise it feels like there is good variety overall. Afk farming metas have been really stale in the past, qnd there isn't much Karthus but you see other scalers like Kindred, Shyvana, Yi, and Lillia. Tanks like Amumu, Zac, and Sejuani are present. Bruisers are always good.
As you touched on, the worst part is always receiving excess toxicity from the community.
The only thing that infuriates me is being required to donate objectives if your jungler manages to die as they spawn. There is too much agency being tied to using a single summoner spell and deciding the game off that.
Feels terrible when the rest of the team plays well but all neutral objectives remain locked.
Well, I'd like to see the jungle buffed and nerfed from the aspect of what's good and bad, not from "who do we want to see at worlds this time". I'm looking at you kha'zix, dodging nerfs for 9 patches straight.
You gotta understand the whole game plays a lot different in different elos.
Most of the nerfs wont even be recognizeable in the lower brackets because there are so many things going wild that a few numbers dont rly matter.
I've been between silver and diamond at some point of time and trust me even diamond is so chaotic that mere number crunches wont do much to the gamestate of junglers.
I agree in general but I do think that you feel the lack of resources in the jungle even in low elo. Bruisers and tanks are popular jungle champ choices for example and it feels unfun when you're getting bullied by the toplaner just because he's one item and two levels ahead.
even diamond is so chaotic that mere number crunches wont do much to the gamestate of junglers
I think you're right here but what could the do about jungle then? I guess the desired outcome would be that high elo junglers aren't too influential but low elo junglers are still allowed to have fun.