Riot continues to push aside counter-jungling in League Patch 12.22

After skimming through the notes for Riot Games’ newest League of Legends update today, the community noticed that the developers have made another significant change that will make it extremely hard for experienced junglers to counter their opponent across Summoner’s Rift.

Patch 12.22 marks the beginning of League’s 2023 preseason and a whole plethora of changes are on the way. From new communication tools to the return of the Chemtech Dragon, the sweeping adjustments will take some getting used to by both new and experienced players alike.

Related: League of Legends Patch 12.22: Full notes and updates

One change, for example, that might upset some veteran junglers heading into the new year is a new mechanic applied to all jungle camps called marked for death. When the large monster of a multi-monster camp dies, all small monsters in the camp will be marked for death. This means that after 10 consecutive seconds of not being in combat, those monsters will instantly die with their gold rewards lost.

For some players, taking the large monster from an enemy champion’s camp was an effective way to counter-jungle since it prevented their opponent from getting a majority of the experience points from the camp, while still preventing the camp from leveling up and giving more XP later in the game. Though players can still steal the monster away, the camp will still level up, becoming much less of a hassle to anybody whose camp was stolen.

Additionally, junglers will now deal 20 percent more damage to monsters on their own side of the jungle. This bonus does not apply to any monsters on the opposing side, which means that counter-jungling will be less incentivized since players could be clearing their own jungle at a much more efficient rate.

If you’re trying to sneakily take an enemy camp, things might be more difficult on that front as well since Riot has lowered the effective leash range for all camps. As a result, players will need to commit a lot more to invade the enemy jungle, instead of pulling a camp into a position where they can easily escape after taking down the monster.

All of these changes, on top of the new systems in place, will seemingly make jungling much easier to introduce to players who have been scared to try out the role. But for experienced junglers, these changes might be troublesome to read about, especially after putting so much time into perfecting their styles of play.