Hey guys Lasty back again, sorry for this post coming a day late. My computer was in the shop. I'm experiencing some FPS drops in team fights so I had a Solid State Drive installed blah blah...Anyway this week we are going to look at the upcoming jungle changes and how this will effect the current meta. I'm going to keep this post fairly short because last weeks post was a HUGE wall of text.

For those that haven't seen the changes yet I'll just sum it up. All the camps will now spawn at 1:55. The Blue/Red buffs now give 275 XP up from 220.

So what does this mean for the current Jungle Meta and why the change?

Lets first focus on why they implemented this change. Basically at high levels of play Blue side was getting a huge advantage because their bot lane could do the golems. This wasn't a huge issue in low elo because players didn't know to start golems, or if they did, they didn't know how to capitalize on the advantage. At high elo you literally have to lane swap on purple side or stop bot lane from getting golems. It's that big of a deal. So I welcome the change as a much needed balance fix for the game.

How will the change effect the meta/game? The game will be effected in several ways. First and probably most obviously junglers will now start either their Red or Blue buff. They should probably start whichever buff their bot lane side is on so they get the biggest leash possible. They should then skip wraith/wolves and go straight to their next buff and complete that using smite. The reason for this is your smite will be up faster and it won't give your opponent a window to counter-jungle you. By finishing BOTH buffs you should be level 3. You may have to throw in a small camp but I'm not sure, I haven't done the math. Once you have double buffs + level 3 you should go look for a gank.

The biggest change though will be the importance placed on EARLY counter-jungling. Champions that excel at this such as Nunu and Lee Sin will see a marked rise in popularity. Basically teams w/ low dmg or support style junglers will have to ward the buff that the jungler isn't starting. Losing an early buff equates to a 550 XP swing in favor of the enemy jungler. You lose 275 and he gains 275. That is REALLY difficult to come back from. Your team in essence will have to use defensive wards to 'protect your buffs' during the very early stages of the game. The jungle just became this giant chess match where taking an early buff away could = an early win. Getting early vision on one of your buffs could give your lanes the time to come down and secure FB on the enemy jungler if he tries to counter-jungle you. Starting an enemy buff by invading is also going to see a resurgence in popularity. If the enemy team is on purple side odds are the jungler will start blue. Warding YOUR red and then starting his could give your team the early game advantage to snowball the game out of control.

Basically if you take one thing from this post, early wards/buying fast/gaurding the jungle entrances early just became even more important. I hope you guys find this helpful. Let me know in the comments. Also Jungle Nunu is about to be OP broken.

-Lasty