Season 3 Jungle Camp & Income Changes

Season 3 Jungle Changes has, obviously, adjusted the camps. Although there are no physical changes such as removing, adding, or moving camps (personaly, I feel like switching wraith camp and golem camp would be a good idea in the S2 jungle), the proposed changes on PBE are still relevant and not without implications.



Here are the changes as of Morello’s post on November 15, 2012 (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2801597)

General Jungle

• Leashing has been changed
• Jungle monsters now attack the closest hostile target rather than chasing their original target until reaching their range limit
• Whenever jungle monsters switch targets it counts as a “leash” - the maximum amount of leashes after which jungle monsters will reset has been increased
• Jungle monsters now deal bonus damage to summoned minions
• Initial difficulty of all jungle camps has been increased
• Overall camp Health has been increased
• Camp difficulty and rewards have been re-distributed more into the large monster in each camp
• The largest monsters at each camp are generally more resilient but also hold most of the rewards
• Scaling difficulty and rewards of the primary jungle camps has been significantly increased
• Health and Attack Damage growth per minute significantly increased
• Gold and Experience growth per minute significantly increased
• Overall rewards have been re-distributed between the 3 primary jungle camps (Wolves, Wraiths, Golems) to better match their difficulty and convenience
• Wraiths are the fastest-respawning, most convenient camp and have the lowest rewards
• Golems and Wolves are more difficult and are worth more

Banking

• The “Banking” system that caused jungle monsters that have stayed alive for a long duration to have slightly increased rewards has been removed

Wolves

• Critical Strike damage bonus reduced to better normalize damage output
• Movement Speed slightly reduced

Wraiths

• Reduced their vulnerability from enemies that engage them from outside of the camp
• Camp has been repositioned
• Big Wraith’s Attack Range has been reduced

Golems

• Movement Speed and Attack Range increased to reduce vulnerability from kiting
• Magic Resist reduced to negative values

All camps now aggro similar to Baron, such that they will attack whatever is closest to them. This removes leashing from the current first clear. Some junglers will have difficulty clearing as they required hard leashes (Riven); however, this can be mitigated by laners simply giving a lot of damage to the camps. Furthermore, when counter jungling and being counter jungled creeps will also aggro onto the jungler who is pursuing. Although the change is minor, I can see it effecting low elo solo queue where people now have an even bigger reason to not leash. Picking a good solo queue jungler (Udyr) is now more important to low elo players.

The banking system has been removed. Camps used to bank gold the longer they remained uncleared; allowing junglers to camp lanes without losing much secured income; furthermore, it allowed lanes to pick up camps that junglers weren’t doing every so often with great reward. This is another subtle way to keep junglers in the jungle, and stop laner’s from taking jungle creeps.

It was mentioned on the patch notes that gold and experience scales over time. Certain testing has made it clear that gold in the jungle is worth more due to scaling after 11 minutes. It becomes more important to clear a jungle thoroughly after 11 minutes in these new changes.

Here are the important specific number changes to starting camps as of November 17, 2012. Images provided by user specified in link, as found on reddit. (http://imgur.com/a/a6hlI)

Red Buff

• Small Lizard HP 253 to 375
• Buff Lizard HP 1372 to 1522

Blue Buff

• Small Lizard HP 253 to 375
• Buff Golem HP 1372 to 1522

Golem Camp

• Big Golem HP 950 to 1000
• Small Golem HP 450 to 500
• Global Golem MR 0 to -10

Wolf Camp

• Big Wolf HP 550 to 900
• Big Wolf AD 24 to 35
• Small Wolf HP 300 to 360
• Small Wolf AD 14 to 8

Wraith Camp

• Big Wraith HP 400 to 750
• Small Wraith HP 275 to 250

Camps are now much stronger. Moreover, golems and wolves are worth a lot more than wraiths in terms of gold and experience. Junglers in Season 2 used to only clear wolves and wraiths, donating golems to top or bot lane, which allowed them to be centered on the map to react to counter ganks and jungle invades faster; however, in Season 3 changes there is much more incentive for junglers to do golems. This makes junglers more out of position and less fast to respond to ganks with their own counter ganks. Junglers who do golems in Season 3 will come out of the jungle much more farmed and higher leveled. Although how the meta of jungle clearing will change to has not been determined yet; it’s obvious that many junglers will be doing golems as part of their initial clear.

tl;dr - Point Form
- Low elo solo queuers need to choose strong junglers who are flexible and resilient to minimize mistakes
- Clearing the jungle, especially golem camp, is more important to junglers especially after the 11 minute mark
- Junglers will be slower and less effective to gank and counter-gank  

Chaipod