Update affecting communication, clear, PETS, and more!
Major Jungle Changes Coming for 2023
Are you one of those who have been avoiding the jungler role because of its complexity? Next year might be the year for you to finally try it out, as the League of Legends jungle will get significant changes in the 2023 Preseason.
League of Legends Garena recently came out with a statement noting that we could expect major changes to happen to the jungle role. The statement was later removed, but, lucky for us, Star Nemesis Bess was quick enough to take a couple of screenshots and post it on his Twitter before it disappeared. Let's look at some of the changes we can expect to see!
What Changes Will They Make?
The Garena post explained that many League of Legends players actively avoid the jungle role because of the amount of game knowledge required to feel like they are even contributing to the game. The new changes are, therefore, all changes that would affect the way newer players see the jungle and give everyone a chance to play the role, even with a lesser understanding of the game as a whole.
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First Clear Assistance
One of the things Riot is looking into is having a jungle pathing aid helping you with the first clear. This would be similar to the item recommendation we already have in the League of Legends shop.
Another aspect of the jungle clear is the camps' leashes. For newer jungle players, it can be hard to understand how to kill a monster in the most effective way possible. To make this more intuitive, they are looking into adjusting the camp's leash, like the monsters' resets and ranges.
More Viable Champions for the Jungle
Staying on the same topic of jungle clear, but moving on to higher skilled players: right now, there aren't a lot of champion options for higher ranks because only a few champions allow for an optimal clear of the jungle. So here, Riot is looking for choices that can make the jungle-clear optimization less crucial for junglers such that even more champions can be played in the role.
Jungle Pets?!
How to make anything more popular? Pets of course!
The items are supposed to be changed in the preseason jungle update, and the statement explains that the current jungler items are functional but not very exciting nor understandable. They go on hating on Doran's items, saying that junglers don't want to "farm with dinky Doran's items" (rude?) and that they want to strengthen the difference between farming minions and killing camps.
The way they want to differentiate the jungle from normal lanes is by introducing jungle pets. If you thought the pets were only there to cheer the jungler up by being adorable as hell, you are wrong. The pets will assist the jungler in clearing the jungle and killing epic monsters. They will start out pretty small and weak but eventually become much stronger and empower the jungle.
Changes to Junglers' Communication
The final change they want to introduce is to the jungler's communication. It isn't rare to have a situation where a jungler is ganking a lane, and the laners have no idea about the gank before the jungler is long gone.
Having more accessible tools for the jungler to communicate what they want to do can be a real game changer, and this is exactly what Riot is looking for in these changes. They want the jungle to have communication tools that tell the team when they should take objectives and find a way to declare jungle ganks more clearly than an "On My Way"-ping.
These communication tools could be similar to what we see on the Hullbreaker item, which points out when the team is too close to the champion bearing it.
Now, these changes aren't expected to happen before preseason 2023. So, you might have to hold on to your excitement about going on jungle adventures with your pet for just a bit longer.