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11589 Posts
Preface: Hopefully this is fine to post here.
In the latest TSM vs. CLG match-up in the LCS, we saw a development that has been coming for a long time, and is indicative of a big shift in the meta that I feel is making LoL less interesting in one important aspect: jungling.
In the early days of LoL, jungling was actually a legitimate place to farm. Farm-dependent champions like Olaf could actually be effective in mid-to-lategame out of the jungle. But beginning with the changes in Season 2, we've since seen a decline in the prevalence of farm-dependent junglers due to the fact that the amount of gold from the jungle, especially early on, has declined.
In Season 2, this decline in gold was offset to some degree by the ubiquity of gp5 items in Philo and HoG. One could still be effective in the midgame through 2 clear options: 1) Farm your gp5 and hope your team doesn't lose all of their lanes horribly, or 2) Gank early and often, and hope you get enough effective ganks off to snowball the game.
Perhaps the two junglers who had the most success in Season 2, and the two most indicative of each respective style, were Snoopeh of then CLG EU, and Diamondprox of then M5. Snoopeh played champions like Amumu that were hallmarks of this era, and often relegated himself to gp5 and a more supportive role. Diamond, on the other hand, is famous for his Lee Sin play, and in Season 2, Lee was king of the early-gankers.
This level of diversity, while not amazing, was still acceptable. It gave teams a certain amount of strategic leeway in making choices about how they wanted to use the jungle role. But with the changes Season 3 has brought, this has changed significantly. HoG was taken out of the game, and Philo was nerfed. Jungle camps were made more difficult and pulling was changed. Both styles of play were made less effective.
Now, jungling is effectively a second support role. The jungle core, which is near-universal, is one jungle-creep specific item (Usually Spirit of the Ancient Golem), and then support/tank items in Locket and Bulwark. Due to the general difficulty of clearing the jungle, and the pathetic rewards it gives, junglers rely on crutch items tailored specifically to them in order to be able to clear, and are relegated to building cost-effective team-tank items in order to be useful in the midgame. Diversity is largely non-existent, which pigeonholes the strategic options teams have into one clear-cut path.
Before I can talk about the choices CLG and TSM made in their game, I also have to consider the impact one other thing has had on the jungler; the 2v1.
The meta shift of having 2v1 lanes occur more often than not has been, overall, an important change that highlights the diversity of strategical options available to teams with regards to how they want to design their laning phase and what they want to accomplish immediately afterward. Often, the 2v1 is used to limit the farm of the opposing player and to push the tower early while giving freefarm to the carry of the aggressive team.
This is usually thought of as a change to the workings of the traditional bot and top lanes, but its impact on the jungler is also significant. The most common choice for any jungler in this situation has been to team up with his AD and support and dive the opposing laner, effectively creating a 3v1 situation similar to a trilane in DotA. They aim to kill the laner with the extra pressure and take early towers. It has been very prevalent and also very effective, with many games having both teams employ this strategy against each other.
What makes TSM vs CLG special is that neither team chose this option. Both teams sent their jungler to help the solo laner instead of diving the other, creating 2 sets of 2v2 lanes. Again, the jungler is taking a supportive role, just as he is in the 3v1 situation. Also similar is that in both choices, the jungler almost never clears his small camps. He gets both buffs quickly and then heads to a lane. This is indicative that the experience and gold from continually clearing the jungle is now less important strategically to teams than the presence of an extra champion in lane to better control creepwaves and hold towers.
What this means is that the jungle is now effectively just two buffs and a couple of levels early on. It no longer truly means map control as it used to, it means lane support. This isn't far removed from simply having a non-traditional jungle champion take smite simply for objective control while sitting in lane in either a 2-1-2 or 3-1-1 setup. While this initially seems more interesting, it actually kills the old diversity that used to exist in the jungle. Truly the days of the jungler being a defined role are seeing their end.
Questions for all of you:
Do you think this is the direction the jungle is headed in?
Do you like or dislike these changes?
What changes to the game could revert this trend or bring in more options for the jungle?
Your thoughts and discussion would be greatly appreciated.
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United States37500 Posts
While I'm going to have to ponder a bit more before I answer your questions, I have to commend you on a solid OP and on a topic that is great for discussion. Kudos yamato77. 
Hope to hear Slayer and Scip's input on this as well.
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Personally I dislike the 2v1 meta, not because it's bad, but because of how it forces the jungler to be a slightly more farmed support, and still be useful. Most of the time right now when I jungle, I'll be equal level with the adc, and maybe one or two levels above the support for midgame. And I have to do something with that level of farm and experience.
When behind, to be useful, you either have to save up for a big offensive item that will let you be useful without getting further behind(unlikely), or else build utility to buff teammates so they can carry you. In the case of junglers, who are going to be fighting often, that basically limits their options to 1 selfish item so they can clear the jungle(often not even a full item), and then building pure support items unless they get fed.
Common jungler picks right now
Nasus, elise, eve, j4, nunu, zac, lee.
Each one of these picks probably sees more play in competitive than every jungler not on this list combined. Apart from eve, every one on the list has been built pure tank almost every game where they didn't get multiple kills pre-10 minutes. Simply put there is not enough gold in the jungle to do anything else. Eve needs the damage because she tears people apart during lane phase, and also puts a pink ward tax onto every lane.
I think we've all seen what happens to J4 when he doesn't get as much experience/farm as he needs. Initiate into free kill.
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Seen this a lot lately. Lot of people will secure both buffs and do wolf or wraiths (depending on side) and move directly to the solo side lane before the enemy adc/support comes at the tower with their 2-3 waves of built up creeps. Interestingly enough, lot of the J4/lee (more often j4) players now opt for doran blade starts and will secure both buffs then back and get boots+pots and then run straight to the solo lane (sometimes even threatening dives on the support/ad).
The result is that the middle lane becomes more open and the player opting for aggression can usually push the weaker counterpart to tower and pressure him with poke and making him lose cs slowly (like that ori vs tf in clg vs tsm). Some of the more recent games I've seen have the team making swaps after first back (without ad/support taking the side tower) to go for a 3-4man gank on the other side lane and then do dragon after if they are successful (or get tower if on opposite side).
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this isnt a jungle problem its just a lane swapping problem. They can always buff jungle camp gold if jnuglers arent farmed enough.
lane swapping is the bane everything that is good and melee, both melees just get fucked and its just league of ranged champs (mid bot and support)
#conspiracy
buffing jungle camp golds tend to reward those who can clear faster which means building damage in the jungler would become more advantangeous if they wanted to make junglers less tank/utlity guys.
they shoud just buff small golem and wolves camp as well because they're harder for mids to instant farm with blue buff and also further from lanes so its a bigger trade off
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^^On the question of jungle Shen, you lose significant global/whatever presence if you're forced to take Smite over Teleport/Flash.
Based on what Riot has said/done though, they've tried to make jungling a more diverse role. They've increased the gold and health on big minions, which has helped some old single-target junglers who kind of disappeared since the beginning of season 3. Shyvana recently got buffed, so I hope to see her become a jungler again. Yi might also become a more popular jungler as well.
2v1 lanes suck. It hurts the pool of solo-lane champs a lot. Maybe if Riot introduced some sort of early-game item that could severely mitigate the amount of harass that a champ takes it would work.
Its really hard to find a power curve for a champion that works well in the jungle-- you need a certain amount of tankiness or sustain, decent base values, but those often result in a champ that can just be played top. Riot kind of solved this problem by introducing "jungle items", but they're just kind of OP, and everyone gets them anyways. Also since the design of many junglers fits that of tanky/bruiser top champions, perhaps the most important reason for choosing a jungler is team comp. You can't run two tops that *might* have good synergy, but you can run one top and one in the jungle. From there, its a question of farm allocation.
Honestly, I feel that the relative stagnation of the proscene jungling pool is due to many teams being unwilling to take risks in tournament play, and lacking the resources or incentive to really try new things out during practice times. The mindset between differnet regions seems pretty different to me-- Koreans and some others are willing to innovate because in Korea's case the teams are all really good and they need to try and find some edge over the others. In TPA's (RIP) case though, they were (sniff, past tense) so far ahead of their competition they could run all sorts of things. America just plays standard.
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After watching the korean scene a lot more recently (was just watching EU LCS + NA LCS with some GPL spread throughout), it seems that the supportive style jungler is less popular depending on teamcomp. In the OGN games, I see a LOT of ganks, I see the 3 minute gank top/bot and the junglers leave the small camps for the laners while sometimes helping the sidelanes. They make up for this loss in cs by having a skirmish teamcomp and by double splitpushing bot and top while having 3 members (the adc + support + mid/top) mid for pushing purposes; this allows the jungler to farm a bit more than what the NA scene allows, but of course, early game the junglers are poorly farmed.
I personally think we will start to see a meta change at somepoint towards strong counterjunglers rather than just strong gankers. A move into very safe play and heavy warding which lets the safe team capitalize on failed ganks while the safe team's jungler steals the opponents jungle until the opposing jungler is no more farmed than the support; that's just a speculation though and I could be wildly wrong on it.
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I played a game in which we have a jungle Twisted Fate. In that game, he didn't gank or anything. All he did was looking out to lanes and see which lane was falling behind and he came to support that lane. Eventually all our lanes got through the laning phrase with solid farm, and we started snowballing and won the game ez.
It's a rough idea, but it got me thinking. A jungler doesn't need gank to help out the team, if he only need to show up, zone the enemy, trade sustain with the other enemy, that still helps out your team a lot. With that in mind, you can suddenly see TF or Karma are good soft junglers. Sure that they don't have excellent creep clearing ability, and they can get countered by other junglers, but they are really good soft support. You can either spend your sustain to farm 60gold worth of wolf, or spend your sustain to burn the enemy 2 healthpot which is worth 70gold anyway.
Of course the idea depends heavily on the team comp. Right now the meta is that the junglers are usually the tankers, so it's hard to fit other ideas in .
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I don't think this is necessarily a real problem. Given 3 lanes of farm, "double support" is not an unrealistic situation. I think Dota is a good example in a game that is much more developed, and 2 support champs is pretty standard. Part of it is just a natural consequence of the threat of splitpushing; if you don't have a single person farmed enough to stop or slow down their pusher, it's pretty hard to consistently win a 3v4 or put enough pressure elsewhere to make the pusher stop.
More likely, though, is that this is a real problem that stifles interaction. I think there are two workable theories as to why this is happening. The first is that 2v1 lanes are more at fault for this than the jungle itself. 2v1 lanes discourage skirmishing and conflict in lane during the laning phase; the only skirmishing happens occasionally at buffs and at dragon. One of the best ways to set up ganks and get a jungler more farm through kills and assists was to engage the enemy lane or bait the enemy lane to engage. The 2v1 basically invalidates this method; the 1v2 laner is usually poked down and at his own tower, so he cannot effectively support a gank.
The second is that there needs to be more incentive for farm to be allocated more evenly. With lane phase ending so early, there is no reason why a jungler cannot go and push out a lane and take an equal share of farm allocation. This does occasionally happen when the top laner is a support champion and the jungler can use farm, but it is certainly not mainstream. Perhaps the way to fix this is to drastically reduce the final cost-effectiveness of item completion recipes, so that slots fill up quicker and there's a good incentive for everyone to reach a certain plateau of farm before big items get fully finished, because there just isn't the bang for your buck that you need from concentrating the farm.
EDIT: I also don't think teams have mastered resource allocation yet, and can see some signs of growth happening here which might help this issue.
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On July 14 2013 06:23 yamato77 wrote:
Do you think this is the direction the jungle is headed in?
Do you like or dislike these changes?
What changes to the game could revert this trend or bring in more options for the jungle?
Your thoughts and discussion would be greatly appreciated.
Of course this is the direction its headed. And I think they are a bit meh, not because this is an option, but because the Buff>Buff>Lane is 100% the strongest option for the organized jungler.
I'm mostly interested in how to change it. The obvious first solution is to make farming the jungle stronger. Riot keeps pretending that they want to do this by increasing EXP of buff camps, and allowing the jungle to scale up in gold value as the game goes on. The problem with the Riot solutions is that they dont understand that the first clear, and possibly the second clear, are the only clears that matter. That is because after that anyone can (and does) clear the jungle without smite. By the way, smite itself, and machete are now contributors to the long-term problem.
So basically, the question is, how to make the jungle worthwhile to farm, and how to make 2v1 less powerful. The first problem is fairly simple: First add some jungle camps, and second the gold value the camps give at the beginning of the game should be what they give at around 25 mins right now.
Now there are probably people thinking "but we don't want people to put a tyrndamere or jax in the jungle and have him come out at 20 mins super farmed with no risk". Well that is irrelevant in the current jungle. First, you have to waste 300 gold on machete, and second you waste a summoner on smite. These are huge detriments to strength. Lastly the punishment for you team from not ganking is more than enough to outweigh the advantage of farming. So, as long as smite is a required summoner for the jungle, even if the jungler is "equal strength" he will still be weaker. Therefore Jungle farm should be greater than lane farm, and certainly jungle EXP should put you ahead if you are farming.
Another thing is the jungle difficulty buff also if contributing to this issue: You can't farm the jungle early or you risk being low on HP, so not only do you get no money, you make it so your counterganks suck, your ganks suck, and you are vulnerable to being killed 1v1 in an invade.
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Really I think it's the 2v1 thats causing it, the solo lane pool drops and drops, and i dunno its quite boring to watch truthfully. Supposed to be some kind of tower changes in the next patch or something i think.
I always liked watching the old style where you could see the differences in peoples ways of playing jungle (oddone always playing supporty, saint carry etc) and now its just basically the same thing everytime and its kinda bleh to watch.
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Riot has been pretty consistent at ruining the jungle more and more with each change they've made. There have been occasional niceties, but by and large those were bandaid fixes on larger wounds they'd already opened -- the most recent of which is the spawn time changes.
I absolutely loathe having to dump money solely (and to the exclusion of anything else) at improving jungle clearing (i.e. making it a tolerable speed/efficiency) when you're already barely more funded than the support.
As much as it would torpedo balance in an era where the balance team is already struggling greatly under the weight of the development team, I really think they ought to redo how the jungle and epic monsters are laid out.
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2v1's are here to stay, imo. I believe this b/c despite w/e riot does(increase tower health/damage/armor), the laneswap is just too powerful a tool to use against a countered lane(whether it is countered by skill or @ champ select). There are just some lanes(like Karthus v Leblanc/Singed v Shen/Caitlyn v Graves) that should never happen, and the only thing you can do when they do happen is a lane swap. also, by creating an asymmetric dynamic in lane, you make the jungler's positioning predictable; he has 2 plays after his opening gambit: 3man fast push tower(3-1-1) or 2man tower hold(2-1-2). This basically removes the ganking phase from the game, and a lot of the unpredictability b/c you know where the jungler is @ all times. The jungler position is looking more and more like Dota's soft support, and I don't think riot can do anything to stop it.
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11589 Posts
On July 14 2013 06:27 NeoIllusions wrote:While I'm going to have to ponder a bit more before I answer your questions, I have to commend you on a solid OP and on a topic that is great for discussion. Kudos yamato77. Hope to hear Slayer and Scip's input on this as well.
Thank you! Really, I've been thinking about this for quite some time. I've seen snippets of this discussion before, but I hadn't seen a comprehensive thread on it. To me, it seems like the way in which LoL has changed the most since I began watching it in pre-S2, and I haven't been thrilled with the way its gone.
On July 14 2013 07:07 Amui wrote:
Personally I dislike the 2v1 meta, not because it's bad, but because of how it forces the jungler to be a slightly more farmed support, and still be useful. Most of the time right now when I jungle, I'll be equal level with the adc, and maybe one or two levels above the support for midgame. And I have to do something with that level of farm and experience.
When behind, to be useful, you either have to save up for a big offensive item that will let you be useful without getting further behind(unlikely), or else build utility to buff teammates so they can carry you. In the case of junglers, who are going to be fighting often, that basically limits their options to 1 selfish item so they can clear the jungle(often not even a full item), and then building pure support items unless they get fed.
Common jungler picks right now
Nasus, elise, eve, j4, nunu, zac, lee.
Each one of these picks probably sees more play in competitive than every jungler not on this list combined. Apart from eve, every one on the list has been built pure tank almost every game where they didn't get multiple kills pre-10 minutes. Simply put there is not enough gold in the jungle to do anything else. Eve needs the damage because she tears people apart during lane phase, and also puts a pink ward tax onto every lane.
I think we've all seen what happens to J4 when he doesn't get as much experience/farm as he needs. Initiate into free kill.
This is exactly how I feel as well when I play, and how it often plays out in pro-games that I have watched. Rarely have I seen a jungler build a selfish offensive item beyond perhaps a brutalizer.
On July 14 2013 09:44 FSKi wrote:
I don't get the TSM/CLG references, personally. Koreans have been doing this for weeks to prevent the early first tower from going down, and help the 2v1'd solo laner pick up some farm under turret. You'll also notice the team with the lower range ADC/support duo usually does send their jungler first, to help save that precious tower.
In terms of where the jungle is headed, although people are starting to learn new starts (ex: dorans junglers) and new ways to do things, the objective has always been really to help your team through lane phase as best as possible. The meta has changed, and this is now done a bit differently, but I wouldn't say the overall role of the jungler has changed.
I'm neutral on the changes. There will always be metagame fads. The 3 man dive in the 2v1 lane is one of these in the current meta, and may be replaced by what has been discussed above.
In terms of opening up more options for the jungler, I wouldn't say there aren't options. People will just experiment and find the best counters to the new developments, whether they be counter-jungling or pressuring another specific lane.
One thing I'd like to note that hasn't changed in a while though, are the majority of junglers being utility junglers. If we want more diversity in the types of junglers we see, in terms of utility vs damage, there would have to be some item changes or map changes to really change the way the current jungle dynamic works. If things stay in a similar spot to where they are now, I highly doubt we'll see the rise of carry junglers, such as the KhaZix jungle attempted in the NA LCS the other day. It was an odd role reversal where the top laner, Shen in this case, was building bulwark and the utility items, while the Kha, with less farm, was still going for damage. Made me think why not just jungle the Shen, who would have more overall utility from there.
I haven't watched any OGN games at all, so I can't comment on the prevalence of this in their games. It was the first time I had seen both teams do this exact thing in a western LoL match. Regardless, it actually reinforces my point that this is how top teams view the jungle position and its options.
It did used to be that the jungler would have a high farm priority and turn into a carry if the right pick was used. As I mentioned in the OP, Olaf used to be more prevalent as a jungle pick, and was able to farm the jungle with enough speed to actually be effective later on in the game as a damage dealer.
Perhaps this problem isn't just limited to the jungle, either, as Slayer points out:
On July 14 2013 10:00 Slayer91 wrote:
this isnt a jungle problem its just a lane swapping problem. They can always buff jungle camp gold if jnuglers arent farmed enough.
lane swapping is the bane everything that is good and melee, both melees just get fucked and its just league of ranged champs (mid bot and support)
#conspiracy
buffing jungle camp golds tend to reward those who can clear faster which means building damage in the jungler would become more advantangeous if they wanted to make junglers less tank/utlity guys.
they shoud just buff small golem and wolves camp as well because they're harder for mids to instant farm with blue buff and also further from lanes so its a bigger trade off
I tend to agree with this notion as well. When was the last time we've seen a traditional top-laner build a melee champion for damage? In Season 2, Jax and Irelia were common picks as damage-dealing melee cores. They have all but disappeared. Irelia was in the CLG vs TSM game, but she built full-tank and mainly peeled Dyrus' Renekton the whole game.
Perhaps the problem is, then, that damage-dealing melee champions are so gimped in LoL that they can't even farm well enough to be effective in the current meta. Aside from a few picks in mid lane (Kha, Lee), there's no safe place for melee champions to get enough farm to both be survivable and deal damage. What could be done to change this, and open up the possibilities?
On July 14 2013 12:40 upperbound wrote:
I don't think this is necessarily a real problem. Given 3 lanes of farm, "double support" is not an unrealistic situation. I think Dota is a good example in a game that is much more developed, and 2 support champs is pretty standard. Part of it is just a natural consequence of the threat of splitpushing; if you don't have a single person farmed enough to stop or slow down their pusher, it's pretty hard to consistently win a 3v4 or put enough pressure elsewhere to make the pusher stop.
More likely, though, is that this is a real problem that stifles interaction. I think there are two workable theories as to why this is happening. The first is that 2v1 lanes are more at fault for this than the jungle itself. 2v1 lanes discourage skirmishing and conflict in lane during the laning phase; the only skirmishing happens occasionally at buffs and at dragon. One of the best ways to set up ganks and get a jungler more farm through kills and assists was to engage the enemy lane or bait the enemy lane to engage. The 2v1 basically invalidates this method; the 1v2 laner is usually poked down and at his own tower, so he cannot effectively support a gank.
The second is that there needs to be more incentive for farm to be allocated more evenly. With lane phase ending so early, there is no reason why a jungler cannot go and push out a lane and take an equal share of farm allocation. This does occasionally happen when the top laner is a support champion and the jungler can use farm, but it is certainly not mainstream. Perhaps the way to fix this is to drastically reduce the final cost-effectiveness of item completion recipes, so that slots fill up quicker and there's a good incentive for everyone to reach a certain plateau of farm before big items get fully finished, because there just isn't the bang for your buck that you need from concentrating the farm.
EDIT: I also don't think teams have mastered resource allocation yet, and can see some signs of growth happening here which might help this issue.
I want to stray away from comparisons to DotA, even though they are quite obviously similar. What I will say is this: in DotA, carries (either 1, 2, or 3 position) can and will farm the jungle at different periods in the game. Clearing the jungle fast enough is a reliable source of gold, on par with laning, and also quite safe if your teams controls the mid and safelane tier 1 towers. This gives heros like Naix or Doom the ability to become effective despite their weak early laning. This diversity in the use of the jungle farm is something that the current meta in LoL simply does not allow for.
The rest of your points, especially the last one, are very strong. Again, I don't like drawing comparisons to DotA, but the slot vs. gold-efficiency of items is much more diverse than in LoL, leading to the types of plateaus of farm that you speak of.
On July 14 2013 14:27 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2013 06:23 yamato77 wrote:
Do you think this is the direction the jungle is headed in?
Do you like or dislike these changes?
What changes to the game could revert this trend or bring in more options for the jungle?
Your thoughts and discussion would be greatly appreciated. Of course this is the direction its headed. And I think they are a bit meh, not because this is an option, but because the Buff>Buff>Lane is 100% the strongest option for the organized jungler. I'm mostly interested in how to change it. The obvious first solution is to make farming the jungle stronger. Riot keeps pretending that they want to do this by increasing EXP of buff camps, and allowing the jungle to scale up in gold value as the game goes on. The problem with the Riot solutions is that they dont understand that the first clear, and possibly the second clear, are the only clears that matter. That is because after that anyone can (and does) clear the jungle without smite. By the way, smite itself, and machete are now contributors to the long-term problem. So basically, the question is, how to make the jungle worthwhile to farm, and how to make 2v1 less powerful. The first problem is fairly simple: First add some jungle camps, and second the gold value the camps give at the beginning of the game should be what they give at around 25 mins right now. Now there are probably people thinking "but we don't want people to put a tyrndamere or jax in the jungle and have him come out at 20 mins super farmed with no risk". Well that is irrelevant in the current jungle. First, you have to waste 300 gold on machete, and second you waste a summoner on smite. These are huge detriments to strength. Lastly the punishment for you team from not ganking is more than enough to outweigh the advantage of farming. So, as long as smite is a required summoner for the jungle, even if the jungler is "equal strength" he will still be weaker. Therefore Jungle farm should be greater than lane farm, and certainly jungle EXP should put you ahead if you are farming. Another thing is the jungle difficulty buff also if contributing to this issue: You can't farm the jungle early or you risk being low on HP, so not only do you get no money, you make it so your counterganks suck, your ganks suck, and you are vulnerable to being killed 1v1 in an invade.
Excellent reply. You certainly get straight to the point, and I completely agree with everything that you've said.
What you didn't discuss was how to nerf the 2v1, which I think is a more complex problem. Something would be have to done to inhibit their ability to take the tower early, either by giving it more health/armor, or changing the interval of creep spawns as to keep the wave from becoming too large before it reaches the tower. This would also have to be accompanied by a change in the value of minions, and would actually make each individual CS more important than it is now, something that I feel is a positive change.
On July 14 2013 14:46 arb wrote:
Really I think it's the 2v1 thats causing it, the solo lane pool drops and drops, and i dunno its quite boring to watch truthfully. Supposed to be some kind of tower changes in the next patch or something i think.
I always liked watching the old style where you could see the differences in peoples ways of playing jungle (oddone always playing supporty, saint carry etc) and now its just basically the same thing everytime and its kinda bleh to watch.
I feel the same way, that's why I made this topic!
On July 14 2013 16:06 Craton wrote:
Riot has been pretty consistent at ruining the jungle more and more with each change they've made. There have been occasional niceties, but by and large those were bandaid fixes on larger wounds they'd already opened -- the most recent of which is the spawn time changes.
I absolutely loathe having to dump money solely (and to the exclusion of anything else) at improving jungle clearing (i.e. making it a tolerable speed/efficiency) when you're already barely more funded than the support.
As much as it would torpedo balance in an era where the balance team is already struggling greatly under the weight of the development team, I really think they ought to redo how the jungle and epic monsters are laid out.
Like I said, this truly is the culmination of multiple changes to the jungle and the team's adaptations to those changes.
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Well, about the solo lane pool. The solution is to make more melee champs pre Nerf Olaf strength in the early game
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United States47024 Posts
On July 14 2013 12:40 upperbound wrote:
The second is that there needs to be more incentive for farm to be allocated more evenly. With lane phase ending so early, there is no reason why a jungler cannot go and push out a lane and take an equal share of farm allocation. This does occasionally happen when the top laner is a support champion and the jungler can use farm, but it is certainly not mainstream. Perhaps the way to fix this is to drastically reduce the final cost-effectiveness of item completion recipes, so that slots fill up quicker and there's a good incentive for everyone to reach a certain plateau of farm before big items get fully finished, because there just isn't the bang for your buck that you need from concentrating the farm.
This is the opposite of what needs to happen. Altering 6-item slot-efficiency only changes farm allocation at the point where you've hit 6 items. That is, you start giving the jungler farm when you cap out on slots at 35 minutes. It doesn't change what happened in those first 35 minutes with regard to farm allocation.
Instead what is needed is a supply of low-cost, cost-efficient, but slot-inefficient combat items. Items like Urn of Shadows or Medallion of Courage in DotA which, are hugely beneficial for a team to have, but are prohibitively slot-inefficient for a non-support hero to be buying. You incentivize farm allocation to supports and junglers by designing items that are specifically better for them to have due to the slot-limitation of champs who get more farm.
Pretty much every "support" item Riot designs is still 2k+ gold to buy, and is still slot-efficient for a non-support lategame (e.g. Locket, Bulwark). There is simply no downside for a non-supportive champ to be buying those items when they will get just as much use out of the stats, and will have the item sooner than a supportive champ.
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Korea (South)11232 Posts
Still think that losing an early tower is not essential bad. See the Blaze vs Frost Game where Blaze managed to apply pressure even after they lost the turret and Flame just froze the lane and farmed like a mad man
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11589 Posts
On July 14 2013 17:32 Chexx wrote:
Still think that losing an early tower is not essential bad. See the Blaze vs Frost Game where Blaze managed to apply pressure even after they lost the turret and Flame just froze the lane and farmed like a mad man
Is there a VOD of that game I could watch?
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Honestly, I think it's not entirely absurd for the jungler to be considered a second support. If you look at farm allocation from a 1-5 viewpoint, with 1 being the most farmed, and 5 being the ward bitch support, jungler being the second support makes sense. The AD carry and solo laners will take up positions 1~3, and the support will be 5th position, so the jungler will naturally sit at 4.
Even then, I do agree that jungle had more diversity in earlier seasons. When Udyr, Shyvana, and Mundo were at their peak, junglers were routinely the 3rd most farmed on the team; even sometimes outstripping the carries early enough in the game. There were several shifts that caused the jungler to become poorer.
1. The huge nerfs to aoe jungle clear: The jungle was never really a very rich place. Junglers were only ever able to keep up or outstrip solo laner's farm because they could farm so damn fast. With aoe jungle clear nerfed, farming the jungle is disincentivized and not nearly as effective.
2. 2v1 lanes are common at tourney play: This forces the jungler to play a very poor 4th position support because the team without jungle presence either in the 3v1 or a second 2v2 lane will be at a large enough disadvantage, since farming the jungle is not nearly as effective as it used to be.
Personally I think point 1 can't really be changed/addressed unless Riot wants to purposefully create a meta shift/jungle overhaul again, which I feel is bad for the game. Changes on such a large and artificial scale shouldn't be done often, if at all. Point 2 I think can be solved somewhat with itemization changes. There needs to be a way that the 1v2 laner can survive that lane without jungle support. IMO, buffing Doran's shield's unique passive and/or lowering its cost to allow for more pots is one way to go. Increases to turret armor can help, as well. Perhaps also a small (10~15%) increase to turret attack speed would be helpful, as well.
On July 14 2013 17:32 Chexx wrote:
Still think that losing an early tower is not essential bad. See the Blaze vs Frost Game where Blaze managed to apply pressure even after they lost the turret and Flame just froze the lane and farmed like a mad man
Monte calls this the "sixth man," which is a perfectly viable strategy against fast pushes. However, it's not the ideal solution. The problem with this counter-strat is that it requires a specific draft. Freezing the lane in preparation for a massive counter-push 5~10 minutes later is only beneficial if you have a farmer (like Ryze) who can become really explosive with that 5~10 minutes of free farm. On top of that, you also need to ensure that the rest of your team can handle the 4v5 while being down a global 750 gold without losing further objectives like dragon and/or other towers.
2v1 lanes aren't unbeatable, neither are early tower pushes. The problem is that it creates a metagame where not only does the jungler becomes a very poor 4th position support, the viable champion pool is diminished because you have to draft a jungler who is effective with minimal farm AND you have to draft a solo laner who doesn't get completely shut out by a 1v2.
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