League of Legends: 8 Radical Ways to Rebalance the Jungle

3. Rework Red Buff

Kind of going off the previous point about how double buffs are so powerful, another explanation would be to rework the Red Buff so that it isn’t quite as powerful early game. Right now, the Red Buff gives a DoT true damage burn and a slow, along with out-of-combat healing. That is too much power for one buff, especially early game.

Compare this to the Blue Buff, which grants 10 ability haste and restores a percentage of mana/energy. While that is useful, it’s nowhere near as powerful as the Red Buff.

In my opinion, Red Buff needs to lose the true damage burn. Junglers already get a DoT with the Red Smite and the slow is useful enough to help junglers who want to gank. This would bring it more in line with the power level of Blue Buff.

The return of camp buffs would make the jungle more satisfying for League of Legends.

4. Bring Back the Buffs for All Camps

Back in Season 4, widely considered to be one of the best seasons in terms of jungle power and balance, smiting jungle monsters gave the jungler a buff. Smiting the Ancient Krugs would stun minions and monsters on auto-attacks, smiting Gromp would cause your targets to get poisoned, and smiting the Wolves would summon a ghost who would patrol that area of the jungle.

Those smite bonuses gave junglers a sense of purpose for using their smites, and also created interesting pathing options. For instance, smiting the Raptors to get an Oracles-type effect was considered optimal for those junglers trying to gank. A great way to make the jungle rebalanced would be to bring back these jungle buffs but modernize them and give them some buff that would apply for ganking (a stun, invisibility, Oracles effect) and one that helped farm (true damage to large monsters, a stun, slowing their attack speed).

5. Give Laners a Trinket to Block Paths

Okay, this is another wacky idea, but hear me out. Riot could add another trinket to the slot that would create a sort of barrier, capable of blocking certain paths into their lane. This would be a measure to dissuade junglers from ganking early, or punish junglers who make inefficient pathing decisions.

These walls would be visible when first placed, like a stealth ward, but would prevent players from walking through the pathway where it was placed. Like Yorick’s cage, players would be able to easily break the wall with just a few auto attacks, or be avoided with dashes or blinks. But these would stop ganks in their tracks and give laners a chance to escape. The downside would be that the wall wouldn’t grant vision until the enemy champion attacked it or bumped into it, so it would grant less vision overall.