'League of Legends' Jungle Changes Planned for Next Update

Riot Games has been looking into League of Legends’ jungle during the preseason and is planning [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Riot Games has been looking into League of Legends' jungle during the preseason and is planning to change several camps and jungle-related items in the next update.

Looking ahead to Patch 9.2, League of Legends design director Riot Meddler laid out the current plans for the next update and how it'll affect the jungle and those who play in it. While different aspects of the jungle are changing, the result will be an overall nerf with many values including damage and experience being decreased after the patch's release.

The list of changes below show what Riot Games' current thinking is regarding the next update, though there's always the chance these values could change before release.

Camp scaling

  • General Camps : Experience scales to 150% >>> Experience scales to 125%
  • Buff Camps : Experience scales to 157% >>> Experience scales to 125%
  • Scuttle Crab : Gold and Experience Scales to Double base value >>> Scales to 180% of base value

Chilling Smite

  • Damage : 28-164 (20 + 8 Level) >>> 20-156 (12 + 8 Level)

Challenging Smite

  • Damage Per Tick :: 20-54 >>> 19-42
  • Damage Total :: 60-162 >>> 57-125
  • DoT Duration :: 3 seconds >>> 2 seconds
  • No longer grants vision for the mark duration

Explaining Riot Games' reasoning behind the changes, Riot Meddler said the influence the jungler has on games is too strong at most skill levels. Junglers will still be able to exert pressure in the early game while doing less damage, and the Rioter pointed to the repeated gold and experience buffs for junglers in the past as a set of changes where Riot Games might've pushed too much power into junglers' hands.

"First off, we believe that jungling's influence, in most MMR bands, is too high. Given how much control junglers have over the early game in particular we don't believe they should bringing quite as much damage as they currently are, nor that they should on average be keeping pace, or as close as they are, to solo laners in XP," Riot Meddler said. "Looking back a number of years junglers tended to be around, or slightly above, a team's marksman XP wise. We've increased the gold and XP available to junglers pretty meaningfully over time and, while we certainly don't think they should be as far below solos as they used to be we do believe we've pushed a bit too far."

Riot Games' full reasoning for the planned changes can be seen here, and the jungle changes can be expected in the next update assuming Riot Games' plans aren't altered.

0comments
Start the Conversation

of