One of the most polarizing strategies in the history of League of Legends has made a strong comeback thanks to this preseason’s jungle changes.
The controversial gameplay tactic of funneling, in which League players expend all of their resources into one player with strange, support-oriented picks across the map, has made a strong comeback in this year’s preseason. This strategy has previously been tackled heavily by Riot due to its difficult counterplay, having been either nerfed or changed completely at multiple points over the past few years.
Once more, the popular funneling strategy appears to center around the powerful combination of Taric and Master Yi, working together to give the latter a snowball lead within just a few minutes. Thanks to the addition of jungle pets, both of these champions can bring Smite and melt through camps in the early game, resulting in the opposing jungler having little to no camps to farm.
In a recent Reddit post discussing the ongoing issue, Riot Ray Yonggi admitted that funneling was not an area that the team delved into too deeply when preparing for the preseason, but that the team has the “levers” needed to ensure that the strategy can be addressed.
“No, we didn’t test funnel extensively,” Riot Ray Yonggi wrote in a response to the Reddit post. “Rather than spend time inefficiently anticipating, testing, and mitigating these strategies pre-ship, we instead observe preseason and make adjustments at 5% the cost.”
Riot Ray Yonggi hinted that a possible solution to this evolving strategy could be to prevent players who did not purchase a jungle item from feeding their jungle pets cookies, which would ultimately prevent them from evolving their Smite.
This year’s preseason introduced a variety of new features to League, many of which were centered around the jungle—including both the role and the general area. Many of these were added to make the jungle role more accessible since players often disregard picking it due to its high barrier of entry. It is likely that more changes to the preseason features will be made prior to the official start of the 2023 season next year.
