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

7. Bring back smite bonuses but to make pathing more impactful

One reason that junglers look so fondly back at previous iterations of the jungle is how diverse the possible paths were beyond simply min/maxing XP and gold gains. One major reason for this was the smite bonuses that camps gave.

For those who don’t know, back in Seasons 4-6 smiting camps gave junglers an extra bonus like a lingering “spirit” that kept your jungle warded, bonus DoT damage, an Oracle’s effect to clear wards, or stuns on your attacks to minions. Not only did it enable more champions to enter the jungle meta, it also made pathing and how you used spawn more dynamic. If you were going to full clear on an attack-speed champion, you’d smite Krugs, but if you were going to early gank you might smite Raptors for the Oracle’s effect.

That dynamic pathing has been largely gone in recent seasons of the jungle, replaced by sequencing camps to gain the most XP while ganking or farming crab while camps are down. So, I would suggest we bring back those camp bonuses with a few twists.

I think the Raptor (Oracle’s effect) and Wolf (spirit that grants vision) were good and should return, but the two side camps Gromp and Krugs didn’t give good buffs. Those buffs were meant to help junglers clear, which made them only useful for the first one or two clears. Especially now, with Unsealed Spellbook being in the game, I think those would have to be reworked to be useful. Here are a few suggestions:

• The next camp you kill after smiting grants bonus XP
• Smiting grants a temporary speed boost towards champions
• Smiting grants bonus damage on your next basic attack
• Smiting grants a CC effect (stun/slow) on your next basic attack
• After smiting, select any plant location to instantly spawn that plant

8. Bring back the old smite upgrades but balance them

One major aspect of the jungle that the Skillcapped video neglected to mention is the repeated nerfs to smite upgrades like Stalker’s Blade; Skirmisher’s Sabre; and the removed Ranger’s Trailblazer, Tracker’s Knife, and Poacher’s Knife. These items not only made smite a more powerful ability, but they also opened up the jungle to a lot of different champions and playstyles.

In the seasons since, the roster of smite upgrades has been reduced to just two: red and blue smite. The only reason these two have survived is that, well, quite frankly the other smite upgrades were rarely used. If we could develop some other upgrades it would allow there to be more ways for junglers to accomplish their jobs beyond just gank and duel. Here are the smite upgrades we could add to red and blue smite.

Green smite returns (grants ward on activation, but only grants one ward at a time and only refills if you kill a ward even if you base)

White smite returns (grants bonus XP for all enemy jungle camps taken OR alternatively, grants bonus XP if you smite the jungle camp)

Gold smite added (smited camps grant bonus gold)

Which of these suggestions do you think could fix the jungle? What else could Riot do to fix the jungle? Let us know in the comments!