Getting to know your League of Legends champion is an essential part of mastering Riot Games’ iconic MOBA, but it turns out those who thought they knew how the jungle worked may be in for some surprises in Season 23.
In a now-removed post on League of Legends Garena, Riot proposed a series of major jungle changes. These changes include replacing the current jungle item set, adding a jungle-pathing aid, and, perhaps most importantly, adding pets that would help with your clear.
Playing jungle at a mid to low ELO can be rough. You’re expected to do pretty much everything, whilst taking the blame for anything that goes wrong. Ganking, placing vision, clearing efficiently, and securing epic monsters; any new player would be well within their rights to avoid the position as much as possible.
With this in mind, Riot is looking into the possibility of making some quality of life improvements to, what certainly can be, the most influential role on any League of Legends team. The post goes into some depth about the disparity between high and low ELO play within this role, and how it can be improved.
Adding a jungle clear aid is one option for the development team – making the early game easier overall would expand the roster of viable champions, and their idea of adding a pet to help clear camps with you would further lower the bar for entry with this role and hopefully improve the overall quality of matches.
“If jungle clear optimization is no longer a major barrier-to-entry for jungle viability, way more champions can be played there. The meta is less set in stone, the jungle itself isn’t telling you that you’re bad at the game just because you picked Warwick and wanted to take raptors. Skill should be rewarded across the roster of champs, not only on the select few that can effectively clear the current jungle.”
None of these plans are currently set in stone – the intended patch for any of these jungle changes would come with the 2023 preseason update, so there’s a lot of time for Riot to get this one right. I personally enjoy jungle but I sometimes struggle when not playing someone that’s currently in the meta, so increasing my options at the champion selection screen is music to my ears.
To keep up to date on what’s happening right now, check out the League of Legends 12.15 patch notes, and if you’re looking to get really spicy, why not find out how much you’ve spent in League of Legends?