Why did they make some of these changes?
League of Legends Devs Explain Reasoning Behind Jungle Changes
The jungle has once again received some major changes in League of Legends season 2023. This isn't the first time Riot has focused on this specific role to make huge updates in the preseason. But never before have the changes been this polarizing.
The preseason is still underway and a lot of players have complained about the changes made to the jungle, some even feeling like the role is being dummed down. Now Riot Phlox (who is not Riot Phrox) has released a dev post explaining the balance teams intentions behind the jungle changes.
Three Aspects of Jungel Chanes in League of Legends Preseason
Riot Phlox explained that the team looked into three aspects of jungling that could be improved. These three aspects were then taken to be optimized this off-season. Counter-jungling, Optimizations and pathing are all issues some players had in the jungle and that Riot wanted to improve upon.
Counter-Jungling
One of the key aspects of jungling is counter-jungling, something which Riot has cut down on with their changes. These changes were implemented to stop players from invading their opponents early and taking their whole jungle, basically giving the opposition no way to come back in the game.
So to help prevent the early invades we made it take more time to clear the enemy’s jungle early. You still can invade, but it's more important that you either have knowledge of the enemy’s location or you’re just willing to take that risk.
So, with some changes to smite, it's also going to be more meaningful for junglers to take camps with smite upgrading depending on how many camps you take instead of how often you smite. So, those of you who take risks to invade will be rewarded accordingly as well.
Clear Optimization
Another important jungle mechanic Riot looked into fixing was Clear Optimization. This was probably one of the trickiest parts to try and fix, since clear optimization will reward those players who have honed the craft of jungling, while hurting those who were auto-filled and have never played in the role before.
We still want clear optimizations to exist. We think that they’re a healthy aspect of jungling skill expression, but we want that to be taken out of champion select and into the game by putting AoE and single-target junglers on a more even playing field [...]
To try and combat this Riot has made some adjustments to the leash ranges. This should also stop players from double camping, meaning taking two camps at once. Shaco mains are crying in a corner right now.
Pathing
The final thing Riot Phlox talked about in the dev blog was pathing. By changing a lot of camps around and making some more meaningful and others less they've tried to adjust pathing to give more variety and open up the jungle to a variance of pathing options that weren't there before.
Reducing the sustain in the jungle, especially the heal from Gromp, while also making Krugs less of a chore to take should enable more options for players when they want to try the jungle.
All Champions from The Void
One of the key updates was also the scuttle crab timer. We all remember C9 jungler Blaber flashing for the awful scuttle crab, right...? Well, now scuttle will spawn at 3:30 rather than 3:15, which means junglers with a fast clear will have time to base before taking scuttle, while slower junglers can go right from their jungle to the river.
Future of Jungle in League of Legends
Riot is going to be monitoring the jungle and continuing to work on these changes to optimize them ahead of the 2023 ranked season. These are huge changes that should benefit everyone, not just new players or the top 0.5% of players according to Riot Phlox.
What else will Riot change in the future? Personally, I would love to see random camp spawns someday, where you won't know which camp will spawn where. Bring forth the mayhem in League of Legends.