League of Legends: eight ways that Riot could fix the jungle

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4. Change rubberband XP

The concept of rubberband XP was introduced way back in Season 4, a time when the jungle was massively different. At that time, camps granted more experience and spawned more quickly. The camps also leveled up in concert with the average level of the players in the game (as opposed to the current iteration where camps have experience “bands”).

These XP bands mean that jungle monsters’ level climbs slower than the average player level. This, in turn, means that players will naturally gain more XP by ganking and soaking minion waves than farming their camps since on each respawn they won’t be as high level as the players.

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One way to fix this would be to just get rid of the XP bands and just make the jungle monster level coincide with the average level in the game. Another might be to make the jungle monsters level along with their jungler, meaning a higher level jungler’s camps would be higher level, encouraging counter-jungling to catch-up for junglers who are behind. But I think the simplest explanation is the best:

5. Make camps respawn faster

With all the XP nerfs that have come to the jungle, how much rubberband XP has warped the jungle, and how Scuttle Crabs have forced the game into an early-gank meta, there’s just no room for heavy-farm junglers unless they’re massively over-buffed. One thing Riot could do to help those herbivore junglers without changing anything else is lower the camp respawn timers.

Now, the camps don’t have to respawn as quickly as they did back in Season 6, but I think a healthy compromise would have them respawn between 1:30 and 2:00 after dying. Another idea I had (which might complicate things further but bear with me) is to make the camp respawn timers dynamic, based on their level.

For instance, make lower-level camps spawn more slowly than higher-level camps since at lower levels junglers will naturally take more time to clear their camps and the XP gains will be relatively less than the later camps. Again, even at the fastest respawn I wouldn’t make them respawn at the rate they did a few seasons ago, but they’d be far quicker than they are now. This could also serve as a way to eliminate rubberband XP, because if the camps are respawning quicker the higher level the game is the more opportunity there would be to farm back into the game as a jungler.

6. Make enemy camps early give less XP

Vertical jungling has been one of the more unhealthy outcomes of the early Scuttle Crab meta, because it unfairly puts pressure on one side of the map. One possible way to discourage this would be to make enemy camps give less XP early on (first or second spawn of camps or under a certain level threshold).

This would keep counter-jungling as a viable strategy, but make it so that early game vertical jungling isn’t as beneficial as farming your own jungle. In addition, it would encourage more players to fight over and defend their own jungle from invades early.

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