League of Legends jungle mains rejoiced when their role was given significant buffs to overall experience gain and neutral monster experience level scaling in Patch 10.3. Now, Riot Games is making additional changes in a bid to increase jungler satisfaction early in the game.
The first change Riot will be making is reducing gank power. This might seem contradictory, but lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter said that the goal is to let junglers keep more of their power to themselves, “instead of donating it to their laners through ganks.”
With this, Riot is adding a new early game homeguard that activates when you respawn after death. The developers are also slightly increasing the XP gained for solo kills, which is a good buff for champions who like to invade the opposition’s jungle. As a tradeoff, there will be a small reduction in shared experience for kills by multiple champions.
Another way that Riot will be giving more power to junglers is through simple farming. Since successful ganks will give less experience, junglers will be more incentivized to farm their jungle. Luckily, jungle farm will be giving more XP as well.
These changes shouldn’t push the needle too far forward or back for the state of jungling in Patch 10.4. The jungle position has constantly been a point of contention for many players since it’s arguably the most impactful role in all of League.
Riot will conduct further tests to see if it has to dial back some of these adjustments or if it has successfully pushed junglers into a good spot once more.
