Catch-up experience has been a heated topic in League of Legends since it was implemented, but changes are coming for the controversial feature amid other jungle tweaks during the preseason.
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The catch-up mechanic allows for junglers to have a fighting chance at regaining their footing if counterjungling and an otherwise rough early game put them in a whole, but it’s been criticized in the past as an unnecessary feature that caters to those who are losing. Riot Sotere explained in a post that they understand the qualms with catch-up experience and are looking into a solution.
“Players that establish early game leads should not feel cheated out of their advantage by mostly invisible systems that are difficult to intuit,” the Rioter said. “At the same time, these mechanics serve the important role of making it so games don’t seem over at the outset, and often drive a lot of action.”
Aside from the catch-up experience, other parts of the jungle such as Poacher’s Dirk and how CS is recorded will also be changed with some of these ideas not sitting well with players.
Catch-up Experience
The first big change that’s coming for junglers is that catch-up experience will no longer be granted on ever monster slain. Instead, it’ll only be gained by killing Large or Epic monsters.
“The amount per large monster kill is up, but the overall generated catch-up experience is going to be down substantially,” a post from Riot Sotere explained. “Equally as important, there’s a clear path for an opponent to keep their enemy down further: don’t give them access to large monsters.”
Additionally, junglers will soon be able to start with the Wolves camp and gain a full level in the PBE cycle of Patch 7.22. Sotere explained that the Razorbeaks won’t be quite as meaningful thanks to the catch-up experience changes, so this should open up more jungle routes. The Poacher’s Dirk will also have no cooldown when stealing enemies’ camps, so counterjunglers can now opt for the item and focus on doing what they do best.
Outside of the jungle, the catch-up experience that’s gained when you’re a lower level than your team is also being rolled back. The idea ended up working more as a snowball mechanic than a useful tool since it’s been implemented in Patch 7.4.
Tracking Enemy Junglers
While the other changes to catch-up experience seem pretty reasonable and fall in line with the majority of players’ requests, another change that’s being made to the creep score earned by killing jungle monsters isn’t being received so well.
The final change that was detailed for the jungle said that every jungle camp would be worth the same value for your creep score, a change that’s supposed to make it easier to compare your CS score to the enemy jungler’s.
“One consistent issue in judging the impact of a jungler v. jungler match-up is that creep score can mean vastly different things,” Sotere explained. “This is especially true if one champion specializes in single target camps while the other is an AoE monster. Now each camp in its entirety will grant 4 creep score, which generally matches the camps’ value and should provide for easier comparison of a jungler to their direct opponent.”
The downside to this is that it’ll soon be much harder to track the enemy jungler. If every camp grants four CS, their CS score won’t tell you as much when you see them emerge from the fog. This potential change has already been met with opposition with many jungle mains bringing up how vital tracking the enemy jungler is, something that won’t be as easy if these changes go through.
