In recent years, Riot Games has been striving to make the Jungle role more “attractive” to League of Legends (LoL) players. The reason is that the number of Jungle players in ranked mode has become too low, leading to a decline in the quality of matches, and they want to improve this issue.
One of Riot’s solutions to this problem is to buff or add jungle clearing abilities to certain champions in lane positions. According to Riot’s explanation, this approach will encourage players who enjoy those buffed champions to transition to the Jungle role, somewhat addressing the issue.
Recently, in patch 12.20, Riot will continue to buff Blitzcrank in the Jungle role as he has a relatively high pick rate. However, many experts believe that this approach by Riot is causing extremely negative effects on the Jungle role and the way players engage with LoL.
“Why does Riot keep trying to buff laners and push them into the Jungle role? Stop it, Riot, don’t ruin the Jungle role in LoL any further. This approach does not make the Jungle role more appealing at all.
Do you know why? When a champion is buffed like that, it becomes unbalanced for 1 or 2 patches. Players who like that champion will try Jungle and play terribly because they don’t know how to handle situations. And then when Riot nerfs that champion, those players will never return to the Jungle role again,” – Expert Caedrel from the LEC tournament bluntly shared.
On Riot’s side, they are also trying different methods to encourage more players to familiarize themselves with the Jungle role by adding support tools in LoL for the Pre-Season 2023. However, the community feels this is still too little as they want Riot to design a specific guide for this role so that players can truly learn about the Jungle role.
Conclusion
Essentially, Riot’s method of buffing certain champions in the Jungle to attract players only addresses the “surface” of the problem and is having negative impacts on LoL. What Riot Games needs to do is make this role genuinely enjoyable to play, rather than turning it into a heavy burden like in recent seasons.