Gold funneling made its comeback when the League of Legends pre-season arrived this winter after Riot removed the Monster Hunter penalty from jungle items. The penalty would drop all gold earned by minions if you had the most farm on your team, as long as you had an unfinished jungle item.
This was a Band-Aid, for the most part, and Riot assumed its changes to turret rewards, like turret plating, would be enough to sway players away from funneling. Well, Riot was wrong, and people went right back to funneling, so in this week’s Patch 9.1, the Monster Hunter penalty is making its return. This time, however, it’s a lot less extreme.
Rather than reducing your minion gold income for having the most farm, it will now reduce income by 10 gold per minion as long as your total earned minion gold is greater than half your total earned monster gold. That may sound a little complicated, but essentially it’s just a bit gentler of a way to reduce your gold flow if you’ve farmed lanes more than the jungle.
At first glance, we’re fans of this change. It seems like the right sort of way to stop funneling, or at least slow it down, without being quite as heavy-handed as the first iteration of Monster Hunter. Unfortunately, as long as you watch how much you lane, you can actually still pull off funneling, but you’d have to be very careful. It’s certainly less possible after this change, but it’s not impossible completely.
The patch goes live tomorrow, so get your Master Yi, Mordekaiser, or whoever else in while you still can.
