New strategies and mechanics are coming to help jungle fans

Mar 11, 2015 12:17 GMT  ·  By

League of Legends Lead Designer Ryan "Morello" Scott admits that he and his team have messed up the jungle role in the latest patch 5.4 for the hugely popular game, as they've effectively forced players who favor this role to stick to a very limited number of champions if they want to be efficient and help their team.

League of Legends offers a variety of roles to players in its specific multiplayer online battle arena genre, but a key function is played by the champion who sticks to the jungle, killing AI-controlled beasts and rotating throughout the three main lanes to help set up kills against enemies.

One of the recent strategies employed by developer Riot Games in recent years was to reduce the impact a jungle champion can make in the early game. As such, many different nerfs have been made to specific characters and mechanics.

Patch 5.4 took things to new extremes, effectively forcing players to stick to a handful of champions if they wanted to at least have some form of success and help their teammates.

The new nerfs haven't encouraged diversity

Riot Games' Ryan Scott admits that the new measure didn't fit into the promised strategic diversity it wants for League of Legends and admits that, while the main goal to reduce jungle impact is good, he and his team have failed in offering new avenues for players to excel at.

"I'm still glad we went this direction in the jungle, but it just shows we have a lot more room to fix things. Our goal was to limit jungle early-game impact deciding lanes, which is not a popular view. But that's a good decision and I still believe in that. The problem is, we didn't return anything to the jungler," he tells GameSpot.

As such, he pledges to deliver more options to jungle players that provide depth and fresh ways to succeed. Unfortunately, he can't say when that might happen, so who knows what the following patches for League of Legends will bring to the popular game.

League of Legends artwork (5 Images)

Nidalee plays jungle in LoL
Elise is powerful in LoLLee Sin will get changes in LoL
+2more