Volibear patch - My take on the new jungle.

I'm making this post a little sooner than I probably would have liked. I'm not ready to throw my hat into the 'change it back' ring yet, but servers are down, so I'll give you what I've got.

-Champions with high movespeed in the jungle are amazing now. Most of my experimenting was done as Shyvana. She's a very fast champion to begin with, taking her W, MS quints, and both MS masteries, she's able to clear incredibly quick. In fact, most of the time, I was able to keep on par with the mid/top lanes in EXP. I was actually beating them in raw CS, but I'm unsure how that converts to gold at this point. The enemy jungle was Xin Zhao, and he got destroyed. I had doubled his CS at ten minutes, ganked more than he did, and maintained a two level advantage.

-Exp mastery is once again incredible. Without running exp/movespeed, the current jungle is a little lacking. It was required before (to get your level 2 at golems) but when the mastery changes came about, the exp to golems was buffed to give you 2 without the mastery. Once again, running exp/movespeed kept me on par with mid lane.

-It was a common strategy to hit 2 from golems, then gank. In the new jungle, even more interesting, is that red will give you 2. And not only will it give you 2, but it's easier to kill. Red -> 2 -> gank is really strong, and surprising.

-The main complaint that I'm seeing is that the risk/reward is too risky. I look at it differently. Previously, you had to gank when your jungle is cleared, because there was nothing else to do. Now, whenever you're close to a lane, you have to ask yourself "can I gank once I clear this?" if yes, you do. If not, you have to decide which camp to do next. The decision should be based on which lane would be the easier kill. "If I go to golems from wraiths, I may be able to gank bot, they're pretty pushed, but top lane is in trouble, maybe I'll head to wolves and gank or cover for him." Those types of interactions are much better than the Jungle's dead -> time to gank ways of the old jungle.

Of course, I'm not sure about the numbers. I feel they're pretty close, but maybe over buffing the jungle is the best way to help others see it this way. Once they're used to the playstyle, they can always adjust it down as to not be overpowered.

-Breaku, NA sever, 1600 elo.

Posted in: jungle changes, jungle opinion, league of legends