Here is a bit of news for all you who enjoy killing off those gold filled pinatas we call neutral creeps; Morello and Statikk have both taken to the forums to discuss some upcoming changes to the jungle!
The discussion about this all started with Morello's reply to a summoner's comments about the Jungle being too "safe" and the lack of being able to out farm an enemy jungler to gain some sort of advantage.
"Yes, we agree wholeheartedly with this problem.He continued on to comment that these changes will POSITIVELY impact single target junglers, such as Warwick, saying:Jungle changes will happen."
"Jungle changes will have a big impact on single-target junglers especially."'
"We've actually been working on changes for the jungle in anticipation for Season 3 and though I can't really give all the details here because we are still iterating, I'd like to give you guys some insights into what's going on.If you've been around a while, you may notice this sounds like the opposite of what we saw from last year's jungle changes. Here is Statikk's reponse to a Summoner commenting that this is just Riot reverting the last set of jungle changes:
There are a multitude of issues we're tackling and they are very much intertwined. The current dominant jungle strategy (GP10 Support / Tanks) is fairly stagnant and the overall current jungle playstyle in many cases severely limits potential strategy and choices in other lanes/roles as well.
One large problem is that efficient farming of the jungle has very little pay off compared to constantly applying lane pressure by camping / ganking. Overall junglers severely lack in gold unless they successfully gank and snowball the game from the get-go and/or opt for a GP10 strategy.
The approach we're currently taking is to significantly increase the rewards of jungle camps over time (junglers already have a huge impact on the early game). To go along with this though, we are buffing jungle camps back up to actually be more threatening while simultaneously offering new / improved item paths that allow players to specialize in the jungle. Overall we want junglers to be rewarded for building combat stats rather than always being forced to build gold generation items.
This is not the only thing we're changing in the jungle for next season, but these types of things are definitely on our radar."
"In some ways, yes, though not completely.He stretched that sentiment a little further with his last post, saying:
We aren't going all the way back to the extreme of the old jungle where you would just get crushed unless you were Warwick, but we do feel there is a happy medium between Season 1 and Season 2 that we can strike.
The biggest difference here though is that we will be offering itemization that will help champions who need that extra boost in the jungle. Champions who are already super strong in the jungle may opt to not build these items, but it's pretty interesting to see what new junglers may become viable with these new items."
"Well a lot of the directional changes we're making for Season 3 are to make sure there are niches for the various jungle types.
For example, the nerfing of the jungle camps' damage really left no room for "safe" junglers such as Warwick since sustain was no longer a thing. Everyone can just clear with Boots + Health Pots and apply pressure to lanes.
When we do these changes for Season 3, there may be some junglers who are simply too strong in too many categories and we'll have to address that in the context of the new jungle. Overall though, we're looking to make sure there's a reason to bring X jungler over Y jungler depending on the situation."
So. what do you guys think about what we know so far? Remember that these changes are still a ways out and seem to be tied in closely to the item overhaul, so it might be a little early to completely shoot it down or not.
