The jungle got a huge update this 2023 preseason in League of Legends. Some fans have complained about them and some feel the role is too easy now. The Riot dev team has now chimed in explaining their reasons behind these huge changes to the role.
Each preseason Riot makes some huge changes, whether it's reworking the item system, adding in new dragons or even some more changes to the League of Legends map. This is where we finally get some variance in the game that's stayed mostly the same throughout the last 14-years.
Now, going into LoL Season 13 some huge changes have hit the rift once more. This preseason 2023 the jungle was once again updated and some fans haven't liked the changes. Riot have released a dev post explaining why some of these changes are impacting the jungle and why they felt they were necessary.
LoL Preseason 2023: Multiple Reasons Behind Changes in Jungle
Riot Updating Jungle Pathing
League game designer Ezra “Phlox” Lynn went into detail in a dev blog about the changes made, and one of the biggest aspects was jungle pathing. He explained that there weren't many options for players to path through the jungle and with these changes they wanted to add more variety to the jungle path.
One of the things they did which will have a huge impact on jungle pathing and the flow of the game is the scuttle crab timer. If a team ever lost the scuttle crab, then their early game was heavily impacted, but by moving the scuttle timer to 3:30 from 3:15 there is more variance to play around.
Similarly he explained that sustain and healing has been an issue, especially with the huge heal the Gromp gave a jungler in the early game, while 'painful' camps like Krugs were often ignored for better path options.
Another problematic camp was Gromp and its chonky built-in heal. While satisfying, there were two major issues here: Gromp was “solving” pathing due to its ability to heal you up at the end of a clear and it was providing too much sustain
Enemy Jungle HP Increase To Solve Counter Jungling
Another aspect that seems to have had an adverse effect on League of Legends is counter jungling. This isn't something that has been very healthy in the state of jungling. While it is an important part of jungling, the way it's been utilized hasn't worked well. Therefore, measures were implemented to make counter jungling more of a high risk, high reward part of the game.
You still can invade, but it's more important that you either have knowledge of the enemy’s location or you’re just willing to take that risk. But this tradeoff means the rewards are more impactful than they were before Preseason—with the addition of companions your Smite’s upgrade is reliant on the number of camps you clear, not how many times you Smite.
Early game couner jungling has been especially bad for some players. If you get your entire jungle taken away and fall behind it's a pain to try and get back into the game. Unlike with laners where someone can help out when you fall behind, in the jungle you're always on your own, hence why these updates were implemented by Riot.
Clear Optimization Another Issue Tackled by Riot
Clear Optimization is another thing that Riot looked into and while it is great to reward those players who have honed the craft of jungling, it is also detrimental to those who are autofilled and make those experiences awful and causes players to dodge or leave games when they see they're playing in the jungle.
Therefore, Riot has adjusted some of the camps and the ranges. It's also harder to take two camps at once now with the changes Riot added. While they have overshot those changes a little, they keep their eyes out on the adjustments from this preseason to fix any outliers and mistakes.
Riot will continue to look at all the updates to try and improve the experience in the jungle for new players, old players, as well as the pro players who are all playing solo queue and spending hours on this game. Of course, I would love some changes like randomizing camp spawn, meaning camps don't always spawn in the same area... but that's just my opinion.