Throughout patch notes history, the jungle has been changed in ways that have pushed PvE prowess to the highest levels of importance, where the priority is to farm fast to get ahead of the experience curve. This is even more pronounced in higher levels of play, where the champion pool has narrowed down to those with competitive clearing capabilities, making the jungle a solved system and a scary place when you fall behind.
To address this, we’re relaxing camp timers to allow for more leniency on pathing through the jungle. We’re also reinstituting an improved version of the comeback experience which only kicks in when a jungler is significantly behind the game— now, if that’s the case, it shouldn't feel impossible to win. The intent isn’t so that a strategy is born out of the comeback mechanism, but instead to limit the number of games that feel truly out of hand due to a struggling jungler with no path to recover.
Jungle Timers and Camp Gold
Even the fastest clearing junglers have little to no downtime between finishing one camp from the next. Our original intent for this aggressive respawn timing was that there’s always an opportunity cost to taking any other action on the map, and this pacing reduced jungler presence in lanes at the very early game. The problem it brings in hand is twofold: Junglers never feel like they’ve finished farming, almost like the game was telling them they were failing at optimizing their clears, and windows to set up exciting ganks were far few in between. As a result, we’re partially walking back camp timer respawns from last year’s preseason. In addition, we’re also matching camp indicators to how players intuitively play around them so that you aren’t constantly stressed about being everywhere at once.
CAMP RESPAWN TIMER : [2 minutes] ⇒ 2 minutes 15 seconds
CAMP RESPAWN GLOWING INDICATOR : [15 seconds before camp spawns] ⇒ 10 seconds before camp spawns
Comeback Experience
Setting a jungler behind is usually a concerted team effort of countering ganks, blocking off access to buffs, and controlling vision—not just the enemy jungler clearing faster or counter-jungling. This combined with the unforgiving pathing optimization due to aggressive 2:00 respawn timers leads to cases where junglers who fall behind, stay behind, and it’s far less likely they have the ability to stabilize in comparison to other roles.
In lane, losing a turret means you’re farming closer to the safety of your base and enemies have to extend into your half of the map to fight you. But the jungle works counter to that, since a turret going down makes its neighboring section of the jungle drastically less safe for the rest of the game, since you have to extend past your inner turrets to farm it.
All this being said, we don’t expect most players to run into this comeback experience, except in the most dire of circumstances. And ultimately, although this catchup boost is a helping hand, it won’t make struggling junglers as strong as they would have been, had they never fallen behind.
THE COMEBACK KID When a jungler is at least two levels below the average level of all players in the game, they get increased XP from large and epic monsters. These camps will grant 50 XP more per level below the average level of all players in the game.
Smite
A jungler’s nothing without his Summoner Spell, so we’re slapping on some quality of life buffs to Smite. No longer do you have to check your Smite tooltip or buff bar when approaching an epic monster, and now you should be more equipped to secure objectives.
SMITE DAMAGE TO MONSTERS : [390-1000 (based on levels)] ⇒ 450 at base, 900 after Smite quest completion
UNSEALED SPELLBOOK SWAP SMITE DAMAGE Smite damage now increases after swapping summoner spells twice
SCUTTLE ON BACK Smite now breaks Rift Scuttle's shield before applying damage
Survivability
Putting Omnivamp on jungle items in preseason improved clarity by eliminating a wordy jungle-specific regen mechanic. But it also skewed towards benefiting champions who could clear fast (i.e. take less damage) and use the bonus as a health battery as the game went on. We’re pulling power out of Omnivamp while increasing the flat restore you get from Smite, and reducing jungle camp damage across the board, especially small AoE camps. This way, junglers are less punished when they aren’t able to instantly clear them.
OMNIVAMP ON JUNGLE ITEMS : [10%] ⇒ 8%
SMITE HEAL FROM MAX HEALTH : [10%] ⇒ 15%
Jungle Monster Camp Changes
And to top it all off, we adjusted specific jungle camps based on our overarching goals: 1. Reduce incoming damage from jungle camps to offset the reduced healing from omnivamp, 2. change jungle monsters' health to offset the higher Smite damage, and 3. change gold values to offset income lost by spawn timers.
Jungle Camp Attack Damage:
BLUE SENTINEL : [82-303 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 78-234 (levels 1-18)
RED BRAMBLEBACK : [82-303 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 78-234 (levels 1-18)
GROMP : [80-253 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 78-234 (levels 1-18)
MURKWOLF : [42-156 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 35-105 (levels 1-18)
SMALLER MURKWOLVES : [16-59 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 10-30 (levels 1-18)
CRIMSON RAPTOR : [20-74 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 20-60 (levels 1-18)
RAPTORS : [13-49 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 10-30 (levels 1-18)
BIG KRUG : [80-303 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 78-234 (levels 1-18)
MEDIUM KRUG : [25-93 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 20-60 (levels 1-18)
MINI KRUGS : [17-63 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 13-39 (levels 1-18)
Jungle Camp Health:
BLUE SENTINEL : [1800-3150 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 1850-3238 (levels 1-18)
RED BRAMBLEBACK : [1800-3150 (levels 1-18)] ⇒ 1850-3238 (levels 1-18)
RIFT SCUTTLER : [1000-2066 (levels 1-17)] ⇒ 1050-2170 (levels 1-17)
Jungle Camp Gold:
MINI KRUG : [12g] ⇒ 13g
MURKWOLF : [55g] ⇒ 65g
GROMP : [85g] ⇒ 90g
CRIMSON RAPTOR : [35g] ⇒ 45g