Players think jungle buffs are coming to League of Legends as the role is considered unpopular and frustratingly weak. This sparked a debate among the community, as most players think they know why everyone hates picking jungle.
League of Legends developer Phreak supposedly said jungle is unpopular and set to receive buffs, according to a Reddit post on March 4. Whether that’s true or not, the post planted seeds for an extensive discussion. Most notably, players underlined a primary reason behind jungle’s unpopularity—junglers are always blamed for everything.
“The unpopularity of the jungle is not due to role being weak, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Jungle has too much influence, responsibility and control on the game that it’s overbearing for most players. […] Since your influence on the game is so high, other 4 [players] has high expectations from the jungler,” the OP wrote.
Many League players agreed, chiming in and adding a few examples of junglers being blamed way too much. “Any laner gets killed vs his own jungler when pushing: blames jungle,” one player wrote. “Meanwhile, their vision score is a 2, and they’re not even using the free wards riot gives them,” another added. “Laners blame jungle even when the jungle is getting kills in another lane.”
It’s tough to find valuable data that would actually prove jungle isn’t the most popular role, as third-party sites don’t provide it, and neither does Riot Games. But it goes without saying that junglers are truly the scapegoat in almost every lobby. Everyone who’s played League for a while will agree that if anything goes wrong, the jungler is the first person on your team to be blamed, regardless of the game state.
At the same time, the jungle is arguably the role with the highest potential in League. If you know your macro and successfully aid your teammates, your team can get ahead early and snowball the rest of the game. Obviously, that’s not a given, since mistakes and miscommunication are commonplace. But all in all, jungling is a powerful yet stressful role with high expectations and lots of responsibility. Junglers will always be punished for every wrongdoing in League games, so perhaps it’s time for a change.
