The past two pre-season changes have brought major alterations to the jungle game. Being able to buff your smite, new camps, bonuses for smiting different camps, and new monsters like Gromp, the Raptors, Rift Herald, and the Elemental Drakes. The jungle game has arguably been getting more complex, due to the increasing numbers of factors that need to be considered for every camp clear. With the new addition of the preseason changes, Riot has seemed to revert to the traditional jungle from Season 4 and earlier, by making the jungle camps back to their simpler state and eliminating some of the choices that had to be made by junglers. In the weeks since the pre-season has been released, the Jungle has been one of the areas within the game where the edits made are the most visible. Let’s break down all the pre-season changes and how you should adapt (or revert) to some new patterns when you decide to take up your smite and head into the jungle.

Fauna

Each camp as of Season 6 had individual buffs and bonuses to give out when they were cleared. This mechanic has been done away with and now smiting the monsters just does what it used to do, deal massive amounts of scaling true damage. While this might come across as a big bold title in the nerf column, Riot has provided a sweet countermeasure. Smite now heals you for 100 + 10% of your maximum health when used against monsters. This means that the vision or damage bonuses that you could get from smite have evaporated, but now the sustain it will provide makes clearing phenomenally easier.

Okay so now that we know about smite, what about the monsters themselves? Well let’s start simple. Wolf camp will see no changes, barring the ones discussed above. Gromp has no poison anymore, but will enrage sooner after being provoked, meaning you might want to wait that extra second to have your spell come off cooldown before you engage him. On the red side of the jungle, the overall output is the same, but clearing is more about attrition than it is damage. Two more raptors have been added making it now one large raptor and five smaller ones. However, the large raptor has been nerfed significantly, losing half its health and two-thirds of its damage. The smaller raptors have had a slight health increase, so focusing the little raptors first might still be the way to go. AoE tends to be your friend here, as the relatively small health pools make one elastic slingshot or riptide much more effective. The Krug camp has arguably the largest and strangest change out of any of the camps. The beginning is the same, one ancient Krug and one regular Krug. However, when you kill the ancient, it spawns in two normal Krugs. When a normal Krug is killed, it then spawns in two mini-Krugs, whose health bars are almost unbelievably fragile. The point of the new Krug camp is to provide junglers who want more gold and don’t need the lane pressure early, an outlet to still stay relevant in the macro game.

The Red and Blue buff monsters still remain in their respective locations, and with their respective buffs unaltered. There have been some noticeable changes to the camps, and how they interact with the jungler. First off, there are no more small monsters within the camp. The stats of the Blue Sentinel and the Red Brambleback are increased to compensate for the lost damage and health. Another key change is that both buffs now possess a negative stat. Blue Sentinel has negative magic resist, and Red Brambleback has negative armor, making ability power and attack damage, respectively, more powerful. This is beneficial more towards damage junglers, as your early damage will prove more effective, especially if you have high power runes and masteries.

The entirety of the jungle monster lineup is also experiencing spawning changes as well. To give slow clearing junglers a chance to full clear and gank, the respawn timers on camps has been increased across the board. This means that instead of leaving monsters open for stealing while you go gank, the monsters should stay down for enough time to go and deal with that pesky opponent laner, before you recede back into the trees. Also, monster scaling has been altered to benefit those junglers who are behind. As of now the monster’s statistics scale with the average level of all the champions in the game. This allows a jungler who is ahead of the curve to clear monsters much faster than one who is on par with the rest of the team. The average level of the game does still dictate the statistics of the monsters, but now the scaling is much more stepped. If the average level is between 1 and 3, the camps remain the same difficulty. Then levels 4-6, 7-9, and 10 and above level average means the camps scale linearly like the do at this point.

The final changes to monsters come to two of the biggest and baddest of them all. Rift Herald now spawns at ten minutes rather than the usual six, and does reduced damage. This is to make it easier to clear upon it spawning, doing less damage at 10 minutes allowing top or mid to roam up and get a better grasp on mid lane. Elder Dragon now is easier to conquer for both teams, because it has static difficulty and does not become more difficult due to the number of elemental drakes a team has. The buff it gives ‘Aspect of the Dragon’, now only lasts 120 seconds as opposed to 150, giving a team 30 seconds less to make use of their advantage. Elder Dragon now is overall easier to take, but the effects last for less time, so two nerfs to the large dragon should make it less of a priority to Baron, but an easier steal due to its lowered stats.

Flora

With the preseason updates, the jungle now has a whole new set of changes, including the abundance of living and functional flora that can be utilized to increase awareness, provide sustain and even allow junglers to clear terrain. Each plant spawns in differently, and has a variety of functions specific to where they are located.

The Blast Cone is possibly the most impactful of the plants in terms of pure micro play, clearing camps and controlling objectives. When a champion detonates the Blast Cone, they are knocked away from the fruit a set amount of distance. All champions within the radius are also knocked back that same amount of distance, and depending on where they were positioned at the time of detonation, this means that they could be knocked over walls. The Blast Cones spawn in two waves, with the inner ones (behind blue buff walls, behind Dragon and Baron pits), spawning in at 1:15, and the rest spawning in at 2:15. The inner Cones respawn every 5-7 minutes, while the outer Cones take 5.5-6.5 minutes to regrow themselves.

The plant has arguably three main purposes. The first, to try and get around the jungle quicker, by jumping the wall into the Krug pit or even just walking from one camp to the next. The second function would be to escape or chase down opponents. If you are fleeing an enemy and detonate the fruit whilst you are on one side and your opponent is on the other, you will knock them back a large amount of distance, and depending on the specific location, you would force them to use flash or a high cooldown spell to climb over terrain to catch you. If you are chasing an opponent down and end up on one side of the fruit with them, detonating it will launch both of you away from others in the same direction, possibly allowing you to pick up a solo kill and make a getaway. The third function comes into play when objectives like Dragon or Baron are being taken. The Blast Cone can allow champions to get into the pits for an objective steal, and save flash or key spells for an escape, rather than force a steal to be a suicide mission.



From left to right: Scryer's Bloom, Blast Cone, Honeyfruit. Picture courtesy of: surrenderat20.net)

The Honeyfruit is rather straight forward. When it is killed, it drops five pieces of fruit on the ground. Each fruit heals for a small percentage of max health making them useful for sustain. They are not very useful for combat, as they slow you by a large percentage. The Honeyfruit all spawn in the river, and begin to spawn closer to the epic monster pits. As the game progresses the fruits slowly spawn closer to the lanes. However, the Honeyfruit cannot be used to aid early clears as it does not appear on the map until 5:00 in the game. The usage is very static, as it heals for the same amount and slows for the same amount constantly, and the only difference is where along the riverbed it spawns.

The Scryer’s Bloom is a miracle to those who don’t want to spend their precious gold on vision. The Scryer’s Bloom, upon destruction, provides a large cone of vision in the direction the attacker was facing. It reveals all champions, units and wards for the next 12 seconds, with the exception of champions who are only revealed for 3. They spawn by the entrances to the river, with 2 points of spawn in each quadrant of the jungle. However, there can only be one spawned and alive in a quadrant at one time. They take 5-6.5 minutes to respawn, and show up on the map at 3 minutes. There is an indicator when a champion is within range of where the vision will go, so it is easy to aim and pick the region that you want to investigate. They prove great at checking if the enemy team is lining up to clear large or epic monster camps, or see where a stray enemy is located in your jungle.

I hope you guys enjoyed this breakdown of the new changes! If you have any questions or want to talk shop, catch up with me on twitter @buns_and_roses, and I will see you on the Rift!

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