Abusing the Jungle Changes is the New Meta

When Riot Games decided to rework the jungle role with the preseason 2023 changes, their main goal was to lower the skill floor of the role, while keeping its skill ceiling high.

Unfortunately, as we know now, that did not happen. Instead, they've lowered both, and the jungle role, while easier to learn now, has lost a lot of its depth. Some techniques still have a way to be implemented, though. And others, which were never intended to see the light of day, are invented.

Can You Still Do Double Jungle Camps?

The answer to this question is that yes, you can still do double camps in the jungle. However, only in a very specific situation, and nowhere near to the level you could in the past.

The only double camps that can be done now are the red buff and krugs, at the same time. This is done by exploiting your jungle pet, and the damage it has. By standing in the bush near the red buff, and attacking the red buff, your jungle pet will be attacking the krugs at the same time, without drawing their aggro.

This is because, for some reason or another, likely the League of Legends spaghetti code, the jungle pet can do damage to camps, without drawing their aggro, or even registering at all with the jungle camps that they are getting attacked.

Due to this, until you attack the krugs yourself, their aggro won't be set off, nor will the damage heal up in the meantime, when you've taken the red buff, and are moving toward the krugs. Instead, you'll find that the krugs are all at half health from your taking of the red buff, and taking them is far quicker this way.

In this instance, the jungle changes Riot Games implemented, where the krugs are already spawned, even the small ones, work to your advantage.

Unfortunately, these are the only camps that you can do at the same time, as the creator of this strategy pointed out on Reddit. In his tests, the same strategy does not work with blue buff and wolves, not to mention the blue buff and the gromp, which was the most famous double camp of all.

Can You Double Jungle in Preseason 2023?

We've seen a variety of ways to play League of Legends alongside your junglers, with Master Yi and Taric funnel meta or the Yuumi and anyone funnel meta. However, this time we have something similar, and yet opposite.

The new way of abusing the jungle changes is to have two junglers on one team. And this is how the strategy works. It all revolves around the "treats", which stack with the jungle item, and give a bonus of 50 gold when killing a jungle monster.

However, these treats also continue to stack even without the jungle item in your inventory, for example, if you've only bought the jungle item, and then sold it immediately.

The strategy works as follows:

1. Mid-laner starts the game wth the Smite Summoner Spell
2. On the first back, they buy the jungle item, get one "treat" stack and then sell it
3. Once they have more than 10 stacks, they once again buy the jungle item
4. Do one jungle clear to spend all treat stacks, except for one
5. Sell jungle item, until more stacks are ready
6. Rinse and repeat

This strategy works best with scaling mid-lane champions, such as Viktor. Though, you'll have to have a premade jungler that won't use the bait ping once you start taking their jungle camps.

Are Preseason Jungle Changes Good?

While taste cannot be discussed, the majority of the fan base, and jungle mains especially, agree that the changes to the jungle implemented during the preseason, are dumbing down the role immensely.

• Pathing indication
• Double jungle camps removed
• Counter jungling made impossible

The changes don't stop there, but the jungle role has lost a lot of its depth, and the options for carrying from the jungle are now restricted to ganking laners. If you have no lanes good enough to gank, other strategies, such as denying resources, or perma farming to scale up are now non-existent.