League of Legends changes: Riot provides a closer look at jungle plants

Riot’s announcement of new jungle plants created quite a stir. In response, they released more details and previewed some of the plant classes.

Riot’s announcement of major jungle changes for Season 7 was met with consternation from League fans. The jungle has seen considerable change over the last couple seasons. Some fans are concerned the complexity is getting too much, that consistency will decline, and that the new plants feel like a gimmick.

Determined to press forward, Rioters seem intent on making the plants work:

To that end, Riot released more details on plants and previewed some of them.

What are plants?

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Riot’s goal is to make jungle interactions more interesting and give junglers more options. Plants will replace the smite bonuses, which were only added a couple years ago. It seems like they want players to save smite for fighting/major objectives rather than a farming technique.

Plants will be neutral objectives scattered around the map in a semi-random order. A bit similar to rift scuttle. They are telegraphed to players by appearing as seeds before spawning, and when alive, are activated by attacks. They are something that Riot believes will be interacted with every minute or so. That sounds a bit much, but Riot has also said that “this isn’t a system that’ll be constantly demanding your attention, or dictating your major choices, more one you’ll take advantage of occasionally.”

Many questions remain unanswered: will they appear on the minimap? If not, consistency will decrease. If so, it will crowd an already-crowded map. How many plants can appear at a time? Will players know the plant type before seeing it? Or will certain plants always spawn in similar locations? We’re looking forward to seeing plants on PBE to see how they really work.

A brief preview of plant types

Riot also teased a few plant types that gamers can expect to see:

Blast Cone

The blast cone blasts all champions back from the center upon activation. The blast can be used to go over walls, including those behind Dragon/Baron.

Honeyfruit

Honeyfruit provides some healing for jungle sustain. The example of using honeyfruit to survive a Karthus ult might be a bit extreme: a plant countering an ult? This could really throw a wrench into ganks if both players don’t know where the fruit is.

Scryer’s Bloom

Sends a hawkshot-like effect in a cone shape. In the example, the player uses it to illuminate the dragon pit.

Final impressions

We are keen to try out the new plants and reserve judgment until they are experienced in gameplay. They certainly do raise a lot of questions for consistency and balance. For example, will junglers without problems with hp/sustain be hurt by others using honeyfruit? Some of these plants may even allow new champions to be viable junglers (Zyra anybody?).

At the professional level, where jungle strats and pathing are already highly complex, plants could throw a debilitating level of complexity at overburdened junglers. It’s insane how much junglers have to keep track of at the highest level: cooldowns, jungle timers, opponent wards, lanes, objectives and so on. It will be interesting to see how Riot tunes plants to be effective in both normal and competitive play. Riot has indicated they’ll pull plants if they flop; here’s hoping they make the right balancing decisions.

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