Jungling is easily the most demanding role you’ll encounter in League of Legends since it entails having a deep knowledge of your champion’s mechanics as well as an understanding of fog of war, pathing, decision-making, tempo, invading, and other regular concepts like teamfighting, positioning, and warding. If you’re looking to be competitive and become the next big-hit jungler in your Elo, you need to understand and master all of these concepts.
For the upcoming season, Riot Games is ushering in tons of quality-of-life jungle changes that will make everyone’s life easier, largely because the Summoner’s Rift jungle is a rather hostile environment for any new jungler.
The 2023 preseason is introducing jungle pets that will replace starting jungle items and help you fight the empowered jungle monsters. If you never understood how far you can kite monsters, the preseason will be your chance to learn since we now have leashing range indicators.
Most importantly, you’ll have recommended jungle pathing adjusted for each champion you pick up. This will be updated each patch since jungle pathing is prone to changes and it especially depends on your power level in the current meta.
Let’s examine how the upcoming season 13 will look for junglers and what changes they need to absorb before the regular season starts in January 2023.
All jungle changes in League of Legends season 13
Jungle camp changes
The first obvious change the 2023 preseason is bringing is buffed jungle monsters. All jungle monsters will now have an increased health pool of at least 300. Since the jungle monsters will become more difficult to kill now, Riot is reducing their attack range. On top of all of this, Blue Sentinel, Gromp, Krugs, Murk Wolves, Raptors, and Red Brambleback will now deal on-hit damage that does a percent of the target’s current health.
Another big change is coming to the Rift Herald that will grant more experience to all targets within 600 yards when the neutral monster is killed. While this means we might witness the rise of early teamfighting, the first Herald charge damage is being reduced from 2,000 to 1,500.
Many junglers’ favorite monster, Rift Scuttler, will now spawn at 3:30 instead of the usual 3:15. In other words, junglers who have a unique pathing and struggle with their clear will now have more time to wrap up their full clear and make it on time to contest their favorite crab. Rift Scuttler, just like other jungle monsters, will have more health at level one. But, thankfully, it will no longer have a shield.
Camp mechanic changes
In what appears to be an effort to eradicate every trace of counter-jungling and invading, Riot is introducing two new mechanics that will help power-farming junglers in the early game. In the past, you have surely been a victim of Kayn invading your jungle and stealing all of your Raptors but one. So, you had to kill that lonely raptor and wait for the camp to respawn. Not only did this affect your clear speed but also your gank timings and, eventually, your map presence. But with the new Marked for Death mechanic, when a large monster dies, smaller monsters will be marked for death and will die after 10 consecutive seconds of not being in combat.
To punish greedy invading junglers even more, all junglers will now deal 20 percent more damage from non-true damage sources (spells) to monsters in their jungle. When invading, you won’t have the same buff, so you’ll spend significantly more time trying to steal monster camps.
Since Gromp will no longer heal you upon its death, all large monsters will now heal you and restore your mana when you take them down if you have your jungle companion with you. The healing and mana restoration will now take the form of a projectile that will be fired toward the champion that last hits the monster after a 0.3-second delay. In other words, Red Brambleback and Blue Sentinel will now be worth even more because they will grant you their regular buff and heal you and restore mana. So now, it will be imperative to help your jungler if they get invaded since they will be behind in tempo and experience if you disregard their pings.
Camp gold and experience changes
Laners love stealing jungle camps. To reduce the number of times laners steal your jungle camps, the devs are nerfing the gold and experience given to non-junglers. So, your laners will get 15 gold and experience less if they kill a large monster either in your or the enemy’s jungle. On the other hand, junglers will now only gain 75 percent experience from lane minions before their first pet evolution unless they are behind the average game level. In case the jungler is behind due to a disconnect, they will get catch-up experience. While you can still pick up CS if your laners die, your time will be better spent in the jungle since all large monsters will now give an additional 15 experience if you have a jungle companion.
With all these changes, Riot is looking to reduce junglers taxing laners for a gank and laners stealing jungle camps. With boundaries finally established, both junglers and laners will definitely be better off only farming their designated creeps. But you can still clear that minion wave if your laner dies so it doesn’t go to waste.
Recommended pathing
New junglers often struggle to learn the basics of jungling, including jungle pathing. Thus, Riot is adding first clear pathing recommendations. These recommendations will pop up on your mini-map and above camps themselves. The data regarding jungle pathing won’t come from a random source but rather an extensive Riot database that collects data from high-skilled junglers across the world. The recommendations will be based on win percentage and will be updated each patch. This will greatly help the players looking to pick up jungling in the upcoming season since they don’t have to learn their entire pathing by heart but rather can rely on the game itself to help them find their way in the jungle.
Objective planning
To avoid teams not being on the same page regarding an objective, with some laners desperately trying to steal the objective in question and others just observing the game-losing chaos, Riot has designed an objective voting system. Functioning essentially in the same manner as a surrender vote, objective voting allows your team to decide if you should contest an objective or simply give it up. Since the jungler is the main character in this scenario, their vote will be counted as two votes.
Leashing range updates and indicators
When you started your jungling adventures, you probably had monsters reset numerous times. Not only is this incredibly frustrating when it happens, but it also costs you gold, tempo, and experience. Now, the monsters will have a new mechanic: patience.
After a monster loses all of its patience, it will soft reset, meaning it will path back to its camp, regenerate six percent of its max health per second, and ignore attacks outside leash range. Although this is still, to an extent, annoying, it rewards junglers who took the time to learn leash indicators. If you attack a monster while being in its leash range, the monster will stop soft resetting. On the other hand, if a monster rests in place for at least 10 seconds, it will hard reset, gaining all its health back and ignoring all incoming attacks. Besides all of this, jungle camps got their leashing range lowered for at least 200, meaning it will be almost impossible to double clear camps and cheese the pathing mechanics. So, junglers will approximately have similar clear speeds and, therefore, will be ganking at roughly the same times.
Jungle companions
The final and probably the most adorable mechanic coming to League in season 13 is jungle companions. Replacing dull jungle items, junglers can now choose from three unique jungle companions: Mosstomper, Scorchclaw, or Gustwalker. The companions start the game in egg form and evolve over the course of the game by getting stacks from monster and champion takedowns.
Jungle companions will deal damage to neutral monsters, jungle monsters, and champions and will attack at a rate of one attack per second. When their proud owner stops attacking, their pets will attack the target two more times before stopping. The pets will also heal their owner every time they attack and regenerate their mana while in the jungle.
Evolving twice over the course of a single game, jungle companions will need treats to help them grow. They can get one treat after you take down a champion or a large monster. In the meantime, you will store one treat every 60 seconds before the companion gets its final evolution form and one bonus treat every 90 seconds after it evolves for the last time. On top of that, if you kill a large monster with bonus treats on the table, you’ll get two treats and 50 bonus gold. In simple terms, if you’re power-farming or snowballing from killing streaks across the entire Summoner’s Rift, you’ll get your evolutions more quickly than the opposing jungler. So, it would be best to opt for either power farming or a gank-heavy strategy beforehand.
Companion evolutions
As jungle companions evolve, they will receive the following bonuses at each evolution:
First evolution
- Smite damage will be increased to 900 true damage against monsters
- Smite is now castable on enemy champions, dealing 80 to 160 (based on level) true damage and slowing the target by 20 percent for two seconds
- The jungle item will remain in your inventory
- Companion will visually evolve
- Smite’s icon will upgrade
Final evolution
- Smite damage will be increased to 1,200 against monsters and will do 50 percent of its damage as AoE damage against nearby monsters
- Players will become empowered and receive buffs depending on their chosen companion
- The jungle item will be removed from your inventory
- Companion will visually evolve
- Smite’s icon will upgrade
All jungle companions
Mosstomper
- Mosstomper’s Courage: Gain a 75 to 330 (based on level) health shield after killing a monster camp or after 10 seconds out of combat. This shield will remain indefinitely. Players will gain 20 percent Tenacity and slow resist while the shield is present and for three seconds after it has been broken.
- Protection Buff: Take 30 percent reduced damage from monsters while at least two allies are within 1,300 units.
Scorchclaw
- Scorchclaw’s Slash: Scorchclaw will accumulate Ember stacks at a rate of three stacks per 0.5 seconds or 100 stacks upon killing a large monster. At 100 Ember stacks, your next instance of damage against an enemy champion will slow all enemies in a 250-unit radius by 30 percent (decaying over two seconds) and deal burn damage equal to five percent of the target’s maximum health in true damage over four seconds to the primary target.
- Protection Buff: Take 30 percent reduced damage from monsters while at least two allies are within 1,300 units
Gustwalker
- Gustwalker’s Gait: Gain 45 percent bonus move speed when entering a brush that decays over two seconds after leaving the brush. This is increased to 60 percent for two seconds after killing a large monster.
- Protection Buff: Take 30 percent reduced damage from monsters while at least two allies are within 1,300 units
Although it will definitely take some time to get used to all these changes, we can safely say that jungle is now a more friendly space for everyone, especially new players. The preseason has only started, but it has the potential to be a jungle-oriented season. Still, there’s a long way to go and Riot might change the meta entirely before we hit solo queue early next year. Until then, enjoy experimenting and limit-testing.
