Return of the Jungle?
Image by leshiy
It is very rare for Valve and Icefrog to revert previous changes, but the latest patch brought back the single minute respawn for neutral camps, albeit with some XP and gold gain reductions. For many it signaled the theoretical return of the jungling and flash-farming heroes, but does it actually work in practice?
The short answer is “no”. Looking at the stats from the StarLadder | i-League Invitational it is clear that professional teams are not interested in slowing down the game. On the contrary, the game has become faster, with similar focus on the laning stage.
Laning Skills
The laning stage got a new twist—denying your own creeps now gives you XP. Moreover, it also grants the opponent 70% of the XP, instead of the previous 50%. It means that laning now potentially gives a lot more experience, frequently making it superior to the nerfed jungle when it comes to early levels.
More importantly, contesting creeps from the enemy carry became a lot more important. A free-farming solo hero can completely snowball out of control with more than an extra creep worth of experience, provided he can deny his full wave. It makes pressuring the enemy more or less essential and ties down at least one support to the carry as well as making it more lucrative for offlaners to stay in lane.
Jungling offlaners in such environment should only be done when your hero is more reliant on gold than XP, or if staying in lane would result in feeding.
Pub Meta
Typical pub jungling heroes, such as Bloodseeker or Legion Commander are also very risky in the current meta. Creeps didn’t get easier to kill and their quantity rarely matters for these heroes, since they struggle clearing a single hard camp at level 1.
Getting consequent levels is a much slower process and increase in time of getting from level 1 to level 2 also increases amount of time you need to get from level 2 to level 3 etc., since your hero doesn’t get stronger and doesn’t gain access to abilities that could potentially help him farm.
It was already a high risk, medium reward kind of ordeal in any 3k+ games, since any team with at least some understanding of Dota could easily punish a solo jungling hero. When a player managed to get away with it, it allowed his team to ride the momentum of higher total earned gold and XP, but only if the jungling hero didn’t weaken the lanes too much, by simply being absent for the first 10 minutes.
Now, it is a high risk, low reward type of deal, where afk-jungling is simply not an option. You can rotate to jungle for a quick creep kill as Crystal Maiden, but after it you are expected to show up in the lane to actively contribute. You can jungle with Chen or Enchantress, but you are expected to start ganking before the 5th minute mark.
Well Played! Push now!
Interestingly, the return of the jungle also made pushing heroes more important. Taking objectives after successful fights was always a good idea, but now you have to do it faster, since there is always an option for the enemy heroes to farm up the neutral camps. This allows teams to consistently get resources even when they are behind, which wasn’t the case in the previous iterations of 7.xx.
Lost fights are adequately punishing, but there is room for recovery and if the enemy team takes too long to take down a tower, it might even allow you to break even after the dust has settled. Having at least one or two heroes who can consistently apply damage to the enemy structures is essential in the current meta. If previously you could get away with strong teamfight, low structure damage team, currently it is much less of an option.
Split-pushing is also slightly better, given how you can now perform the conventional farming loop through the lane and jungle every minute. You can chase after an elusive hero, wasting time, or you can apply enough pressure to the enemy base to force him to return and take the fight. In most cases the latter is preferable, but you need proper heroes for it, otherwise it simply won’t work.
Stacking and Roaming
The position 4 support has been slightly demoted in the patch as well, at least according to the stats from the only LAN-tournament currently going on. Teams have more or less evenly split between the previous style of high-impact ganking roamers and slightly more passive supports, who, while capable of ganking, spend a lot of time creating resource pods for their carries.
Currently it is hard to tell which style is more dominant. Stacking was prevalent throughout the history of Dota and only the changes of the last couple of years have made it slowly fade away. Right now they are a go-to strategy only for a handful of lineups and specific hero combinations, but mostly an afterthought for other teams.
Still, if you can incorporate stacking in your support rotations, do it. And if your support has stacked for you and your hero is capable of clearing it efficiently, it is the wisest choice to take those stacks and give the supports much needed farm and XP in the lane. Otherwise there's a definite risk of losing stacks and as a result resources to the enemy.
Closing Thoughts
7.06 has slightly sped up the game, but also made it more prone to explosive snowballs. Early and mid game dominance has yet again increased in importance, making for very entertaining games which feel almost completely fair.
Highground breaches got significantly easier, with the decreased amount of shrines and increased buyback cooldown. The stakes have been increased for the team on the offense, but the reward is easier to achieve. Losing the bet, however, leads to much bigger punishment, since the defending team now has access to more resources.
First.. suck it plebs
Shadowfiend is back!
THIRD!!! yeah, pretty good
4th? Haha
thx osfrog. now I can increase my stack camp number even faster 😁
Haha indeed
Jungle and offlane are dead.
It's a weird thing that happened in this patch, because in the long run you'll get way more farm, but the laning stage provides so much potential that a successful laning stage snowballs those early game heroes. Really all this patch does is make me think about what's going to happen next to balance these changes, and I think these three things are possible (even though they are wild ideas):
1. Nerf the deny mechanics. Right now the xp in a contested lane is guaranteed to be 100% efficient with the 30/70 split. To promote those late game situations I could definitely see them backing it off to 20/50. Brings back old deny xp for the enemy but backs off your benefits, meaning a freefarm lane doesn't snowball nearly as much.
2. Buff to Iron Talon or other jungling items. Enough said.
3. Extra levels. This is definitely out there because it would radically change the way you play heroes and which heroes would be strong in certain situations, but overall I think heroes that are strong in the late game or heroes with xp talents would become more valuable if the level cap was raised to 30. Again I understand how slim the chances of that happening are, but hey, we have a talent tree and shrines and a backpack. Add that to the 'tier 4' items we have been seeing like Moon Shard, Lotus Orb, Bot 2s, and Bloodthorns and it makes sense that the game shifts so that instead of those being items bought after the level cap, they become 'lvl 25-30' items.
One can dream, right?
P.S.
As much as I agree with this article, I also think, should we not see a mini patch before TI, that games will slow down again as we get closer to TI and teams will grab a late game safety carry to exploit the jungle while the rest of the team exploits the XP. It just makes sense to me that teams will want to cover more bases when the game provides more bases to cover.
Jungle is not dead, you just need to protect it by getting towers or defending your towers, so game will be faster in early levels and more farm oriented as it gets longer
@Brock Hall
Well said, I admire your knowledge of the game, seriously... I don't really agree with your first point though, I like the way it is right now...
As for my pubs, no matter what this post says, it isn't going to stop people picking jungle LC...
@Anomalina~
Appreciate the kind words! Let me back up my thoughts on the first point a little more:
I really do like how the mechanic punishes the decision to abandon a lane, but as it works right now you can't make that decision because you'll never recoup the losses in the jungle. At level 1 it takes just as long to clear a creep wave but you get less xp for it. It doesn't matter how many neutrals spawn, what matters is the time to clear a camp.
On top of this, the game has increased the punishments across the board, across the length of the game. To me that says 'rubber band mechanics'. There's so much opportunity to jump ahead from even a small skirmish that it makes the game feel explosive, the advantage not swaying but seesawing. This mechanic makes the game feel cheap when the rewards are so great, because a small victory shouldn't give huge rewards.
sand king likes this patch :)
totally nerfed the jungle....played troll 2 games in a row as a jungler and got my morbid mask like 2 minutes later than i usually would have...exp and gold are just not there in the jungle anymore
while previously you would have reached lv 6 ~ 6 minute mark, im noticing it takes like 8-9 minutes now and this is with all possible stacking...very serious nerf to junglers to the point that jungling is actually detrimental to your game
opposition will all of a sudden just blow thru you with more exp and gold...i think that it's just the last resort if youre having a horrible laning stage
sad because jungling was actually one of the best ways to get out of the trench....now it'll probably send you further down
I have just win a game with luna just using double camp at top radiant side. 26k networth. I used madness
On the other hand if you have a support like CM who can grab creeps and stay out of exp range of the carry, but be close enough to help....new jungle pretty great.
17h... nobody is 17th suckaz.
nice meme
I actually thought dual midlanes come back, after seeing the changes to mid. Winning mid is HUGE this patch. At the same time, early jungle isn't worth it, aside of stacking. So having a support help the carry and the other do some stacking, rune-control and general laning help around mid seems logical.
However logical or not, given how long solo mid has been a thing now, it'd take some time to have an effect. If the mid and exp changes don't get changed again, or even more amplified, I can totally see that coming though. But until then pub enemy nr.1 will be all those still trying to play an afk jungler.
@Kiru
I think junglers will taper off fairly quickly though. People are all excited that their precious 1 min respawn timer is back so without looking at the other changes they head full bore into the jungle. However I think they will find pretty quickly that they are losing match after match in the jungle and get discouraged.
Or blame the team for not denying enough. Which is probably true but not the point.
@Brock Hall
At low levels of play, losing games because you did something wrong does not cause people to change tactics. Games where I have a jungler on my team have pretty much always been below 50% winrate, yet it still happens. The fact it is worse now will make it less common but the people who do it already don't understand what good dota looks like. I am not bitter about this like a lot of people but it is a thing to keep in mind. Above 3k though most people will see how bad jungle is right now. It is a way to farm mid and late when you can clear a whole jungle in a minute, and it almost certainly was a buff to antimage and sven and other fast farming heroes, but it just made them more capable of snowballing after an early success. Teams will revolve around winning lanes and then determining how to capitalize on the advantage. I think that heroes like broodmother might actually have a place in the meta to come. Maybe that is just wishful thinking and my love of broodmother, but with increased lane exp from denies and the 25% exp talent she gets at level 10, I think she has a chance to make a splash. If she or a support correctly counter ward sentries in whatever lane she is in she can very easily just win that lane, which makes up for the extra resource spent securing it. Her advantage snowballs and she starts clearing enemy jungle by ten minutes. Suddenly you have a scary split pusher that forces the enemies hand. When the enemy has to deal with a giant broodmother early in the game, she can actually have impact. In the past she suffered because a giant broodmother was not scary enough against a good team, It was kind of like she was a bad alchemist that lost to alchemist. Now she might be able to find a spot with alchemist, naga siren, and terrorblade getting nerfed, while she just gets buffs with the experience mechanics.
@ffinnaggann
You kind of went off on a tangent that didn't really have anything to do with my reply to Kiru, but I'm not naively denying that some people love one hero and one hero only. I know that tons of people play only Invoker through hell or high water. Same goes for Legion players. However, I do believe that lower pubs will see at least a moderate degree of reduction in junglers.
As for the rest of your comments, I'd say even with the buffs Brood got in the 7.06b patch you're not going to see a whole lot of her in pro play, but I do agree that the jungle is important to mid and late game. Right now the pro scene is embracing the strong laning stage as a way to deathball, but I wouldn't put it past teams to incorporate a safety farmer in their lineup, like the old Na'Vi '4 fight 1 farm' strategy.
Game barely got faster. This patch is on average as lengthy as previous ones. And most of heroes face economic recession this days except flash farmers and powerful killers.
denying gives 70% xp to enemy hero? Welcome to LoL!
Next patch I think that Sven needs a significant nerf to his movement speed. He farms way to well right now and there needs to be some way to stop him. -movespeed would help the fact that the hero can kinda afk jungle for a bit and catch up on whatever he missed out on previously. This also makes his lanning stage much more difficult and exploitable making him an easier chase in the early game. This nerf would not kill the hero off though. His armor ability also gives a percent based movement speed bonus which is worse now that he hypothetically has less speed, but having any sort of + speed modifier on a slow hero is already a plus.
As a side note can we end the stupid stomp spell the new ancient has? In fact can we get rid of both of those spells? the fact that the creep has an anti stacking mechanism that inconsistently fucks you over is so annoying. The root is bad enough where it stops you so you can't complete your stack but the fact that that dumb ass stomp de-aggros the creep UGH!
In other news when's Dotabuff going to get a reply feature on their comment sections.
i think jungle is buffed , its mechanical cumback bro
i do it a lot of times
rape enemy in early stages , but my team dont want to invasion jungle , enemy can keep up with the tempo
and be rich easily when he afk jungling , xx minutes
in pro scene very different with pub or solo mmr under 6k
6k++ will invasion jungle 24/7 after they winning early game
under 6k , i bet , they will autism busy farming n do what they want
dota is about keep presure , if u winning early , dominating , keep pressure
make enemy stay under tow 3 , dont push the lane , coz it will give enemy farm , just farm at 2 jungle
radiant n dire jungle
thats what i learn , dota is about team work n momentum
u win early
u give the pressure
enemy can cumback very fast , with a lot of source in jungle
https://www.dotabuff.com/matches/3195538294
You got a jungle legion commander in your team? Well boo fucking hoo... Atleast he will get a 16 minute blink or a 20 minute shadow blade and go around the map duelling... This game I had a passively farming LC for THE ENTIRE GAME... And literally THE ENTIRE GAME... He didn't duel when he got blink, when he got blade mail, when he got BKB and took the jungle away from my safe lane solo morphling aginst a timbersaw who backdoored like an axe and I tanked creeps solo... What help did I get? A spirit breaker charging in at level 2 and dying repeatedly when I pinged him that timber has 20 armour stacks and to get back... Got called a noob and rage pinged... I muted him, ignored the LC, bought BOTs, fought around the map, had great game impact, baited the enemies' ultimates with LC's replicate and won the game... Tell me your excuse?
Chen is back . really
Jungle troll is for retards.
читали бы это типы на 3к.
но нет, они идут афк лес, руинят лейнинг и игру целиком
stfu. all creep stacking are now 0:55 each .
Sometimes I checked a Dotabuff article just to read quality comments in a quality discussion.
plz stop jungleing
dont start at jungle unless you are a roamer semi support like ench or SOMETIMES enigma NEVER lc axe unless you have STRONG offlaner like BB or Centaur
2k comments everywhere
че за ебаный бред 1к уебища? все игры стали минимум 50 минут спасибо ебучая жаба и жирный габен. и доминация в начале это 80% луз так как система камбеков сделана чтобы любые мрази играли даже самые конченые. сколько я не убиваю и не тащу я один раз да сфижу и вся их тима начинает запаковываться и мне пизда. нету соляры больше в доте. ебучее скучное рандомное сражение
В каждой катке должен быть лесник!
jungle suck, 70% will lose if got jungle hero early game, u will abandon your lane.
The StackingLord embraces the changes
flash farmer are the kings now, luna, alchemist, andymage, sf.. also, with that massive buff to midlane, heroes like OD or SF get out of control really fast..