I hesitate to write this post, because it’s entirely possible that I’m overanalyzing the situation, but the changes around the new jungle are so bizarre to me that I just can’t help it. The latest in this new saga is that Zileas, Riot’s Design Director, is digging around the official forums for feedback on the latest round of tweaks. Zileas comes and goes on the forums, so it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but he hasn’t been largely involved in the feedback on this project, so why now?

For one, the playerbase is clearly upset. There have been forum threads since the jungle changes were announced crying foul. What’s more interesting to me is that Riot seems to care so much. There have been issues in the past that upset the community – what makes the jungle changes different? I can only think that Riot is seeing some sort of statistical or high profile pushback on the jungle changes that merits Zileas’ personal oversight. I know some of the streamers have been unhappy, but just how many is hard to say.

I only mention the statistical angle because Riot seems interested in quieting people down as quickly as possible, and there has to be some backing to that. We’ve seen unpopular changes in the past that lingered for a long, long time. Why is this one so different?

I give Riot credit for being willing to change one of the longest standing conventions in the LoL style of play, but I wish the company was standing behind it. The change needs time to permeate. Sure, we’ll get a few million hours of playtesting done in a week, which provides a decent chunk of data, but it takes much longer than that for playstyle changes to trickle down through the playerbase.

The proposed jungle adjustments have finally made it through testing and are now live. Here’s a peek:

Increased total base Health in the jungle a bit, focusing on the larger monsters. This is to help accommodate single-target focused junglers.

Increased base Damage in the jungle a bit. This is to add some additional counter-jungling danger, as well as making sustain-based junglers, such as Warwick or Fiddlesticks, fill their specific niche again.

Increased Experience rewards of the jungle, both base and scaling. Simply put, this should make sure the jungler stays somewhere between the solo and duo lanes in most cases, as opposed to closer to the duo lane.

Reduced the Health scaling on the small golem camp. This is to adjust the difficulty/reward ratio on these monsters as the game goes on.

Moved around Gold and Experience rewards so that the Blue Wraith, the Giant Wolf, and the Medium Golem give a higher percentage of the reward for defeating their camp. This is a specific change to increase the viability of counter-jungling. Stealing big monsters will be more impactful.

Monsters now will start to accumulate more reward if they remain idle on the map for a certain amount of time. While we like there to be tradeoffs between ganking and farming, this should somewhat reduce the penalty of failed ganks and reward successful ganks more. Additionally, counter-junglers can steal these monsters and reset their “bank” of additional rewards.

More thoughts after the weekend when I have a little more time to play.

The jungle hotfix slated for earlier in the week has been pushed back until tomorrow. Morello’s given us a look at the changes. Here’s a quick preview:

We’re working with a “banking” system that has the big mobs in jungle camps build XP and gold rewards over time after being there for a bit (currently, one minute). This caps out after a certain amount of time as well, and while farming heavily is greater than waiting for the bank to build, the bank lessens the need to constantly farm to keep up.

Why this system?

* It rewards ganks and is a bit less punishing on gank attempts that don’t result in kills for the jungler. After a gank attempt, the jungler can clear the jungle which has scaled a little bit while they were ganking.

* Smart counter-junglers can watch enemy gank patterns, then kill the big monster to steal the bank that’s built and reset it. This adds additional value to counter-jungling in the new jungle on the efficiency side. This will encourage more jungler conflict as well as add tons of opportunities for great counter-junglers to pull ahead.

* It allows junglers to farm and catch up a little better if they fall behind early (Of course, enemies can continue to disrupt this and push the advantage as needed), but the option is there, which creates new strategic options for coming back.

Check back tomorrow for more thoughts.

Over the holiday weekend I did my best to stay as far out of the loop as possible. I wasn’t checking my usual gaming sites, I wasn’t reading any of the forums, and obviously I wasn’t doing any gaming. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came back to discover the jungle changes.

I’m not going to do much analysis here. I haven’t been able to spend enough time in the jungle to really assess the changes. For now, it seems like the damage nerf makes jungling possible for a wider range of characters but the XP nerf makes it less viable for those characters. As I get more time in the jungle I’m sure I’ll have more to say. For now, let’s go over the changes.

Smaller jungle camps now respawn more quickly, offer reduced XP and gold rewards (though these now scale with duration of the game), and drop a health sigil from the largest mob. Buff camps are easier to kill and offer extra XP but with reduced gold rewards. The changes are designed to help a wider variety of champions and builds get into the jungle. These changes should also make jungling more viable at lower summoner levels. When I used to play on my smurf account a bit, it was nearly impossible to jungle because of the lack of runes.

Even with the changes, jungling odd champions feels extremely slow. I played a jungle Teemo earlier today and fell way behind the bottom lane. It was partially caused by his reduced speed, but I think the reduced XP from smaller camps really hurt me.

Like I said, I’ll have more impressions in the near future. For now, let me know what you think. Is the new jungle better or worse than the old version? Any strange new build you’ve seen play successfully?

I know it’s only Friday, but I took some friends up on a last minute camping trip so I’ll be gone until Monday. I didn’t want to leave you high and dry on the Champ of the Week, though, and I certainly played enough games with Nunu this week to throw together a conclusive wrapup.

My conclusions are essentially the same as they were a few days ago. Nunu is an absolute blast if you can stomach not being the guy with your name in lights. Not all the time, anyway. While most characters with Nunu’s brand of team buffing and enemy debuffing don’t have what it takes to blow up a target, Nunu’s ult offers him the chance to be the star here and there and that makes him feel even better.

There is one important facet of Nunu’s gameplay that I haven’t talked about and that I rarely cover on the blog: peeling. Peeling is getting in the way of enemies who are trying to get to your team’s carry, just as you are trying to get at the enemy carry. Teams need to be able to do this or else the carry gets burned down and suddenly you’ve come up short on damage. Since Ice Blast has a 60 percent slow at max rank, Nunu is great at peeling. He also has the added benefit of a movement speed buff to throw on the carry, hopefully offering enough of a gap for escape. Nunu can also plant himself between the enemy team and the carry, waiting to use his ult until the enemy overcommits.

In short, Nunu has all of the tools you could want from an allied jungler, so long as your team has enough damage in the lanes. Between your team buffs, your debuffs for your opponents, some very solid damage output and the extra dragon/Baron control offered by consume, Nunu can be the cornerstone of any competitive team.