League of Legends Shares New Jungle Changes After Players' Feedback

New jungle changes that affect the Rift Scuttler and other neutral monsters have been revealed [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends Rift Scuttler
(Photo: Riot Games)

New jungle changes that affect the Rift Scuttler and other neutral monsters have been revealed after League of Legends players gave feedback on the initial version.

Several days ago, Riot Games said that some PBE changes were coming that removed one of the Rift Scuttlers from the game and rebalanced the timid monster's stats. Not long after those changes were announced, players voiced some issues with the changes which prompted a Rioter to say that they'd be working on a new iteration of the jungle adjustments.

"Thanks everyone for your feedback last week," the new post on the League of Legends boards began. "We have a new iteration on our jungle changes for 8.10, and we've reevaluated some of our goals and tactics and we are testing some new changes as a result."

The previous goals of reducing early lane pressure from junglers and reducing mana restraints for some jungle champions still remain, but Riot says that it's putting less emphasis on forcing junglers to interact with each other early and consider alternate jungle routes. One of the biggest changes in the new version is that there will be two Rift Scuttlers at the start of the game, but once both are killed, only one will spawn at a time for the remainder of the match.

Complete with context based concerning the previous versions of the changes that can be seen here, Riot shared a new list of Rift Scuttler and jungle changes being tested on the PBE.

  • Rift Scuttler spawn logic :: Randomly determined location at all points >>> Now at game start, there are crabs on both sides of the river. When both are killed, only one will respawn, in a randomly determined location
    • Context: We want to lower the pressure that RNG has on the early game decision making of the jungler and their laners. We like the dynamic the randomness and scarcity creates as the game progresses, but forcing it so early turned out to be too dramatic.
  • Rift Scuttler experience :: 170 >>> 115-230 (scales from levels 1-9)
    • Context: This makes the early Rift Scuttler not as pivotal in terms of early fights and there is no more forced incentive to take it as it won't grant a quicker path to level 3 than other routes. As the game progresses, Scuttler importance will climb such that it's still a point of conflict.
  • Rift Scuttler gold :: 100 >>> 70-140 (scales as above)
    • Context: Same as previous section. Pushing the reward into later in the game.
  • Camp Respawn timers :: 2:30 >>> 2:15
    • Context: Very tentatively testing lower respawn timers. Your camps having downtime is great for encouraging PvP through ganks, but we can also see a world where camps being available more leads to wider decision making, not fewer. Our hypothesis is this will bring back some gains encouraging more counter-jungling as a response to ganks, and thus higher cost and probably less ganks early on. Moreover, efficient pathing becomes a more important skill test. As mentioned, these are tentative because the changes have downsides: this encourages a heavier PvE playstyle and makes the fastest junglers have an easy and noninteractive path to a lead. Gold value of camps is also down 10% so economy is not flat-out increased, though further tuning will be required here.

The changes are still tentative on the PBE and may be changed before being released.

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