It looks like our favorite crab on Summoner’s Rift is going through a pretty significant change in the League of Legends Public Beta Environment. Although it wasn’t mentioned in the PBE patch notes, the Scuttle Crab’s spawn timer has been changed from two minutes into a game to three minutes and 15 seconds.
Joshua “Jatt” Leesman, former LCS caster, took to Reddit to explain some of the changes to the crab. “The goal of this change is to reduce the frustration that’s caused by the super early dependency that junglers have on laners for Scuttle Crab help,” Jatt said, “It’s often creating forced conflict when most players are level two or even level one.”
Right now, early jungle clears have been dictated by the crab as many players like grabbing one early to provide vision and pressure for that side of the map. Junglers with weak early game kits, however, will have a hard time securing Scuttle Crab, which means that the jungler will need help from his laners. This not only forces the laner to forgo his own in-lane experience, but this might also push them into unwanted level one or two engagements.
Jatt explained how in its changed state, the Rift Scuttler spawn time gives junglers more flexibility with what they can do pre-three minutes. At three minutes, both junglers and laners will be around level three or four, which means that they’ll need to decide whether to full-clear and go shop or if they should try to take the Scuttle Crab before backing.
Ultimately, Jatt says that he’s still trying to find a sweet spot that doesn’t force players into really early fights, but still encourages the gameplay that comes up from an important early camp like the Rift Scuttler.
