
Blaming the jungler in solo queue games has always been a meme with some truth to it and now former professional jungler and streamer Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera is speaking up about it.
In a recent tweet, IWillDominate shared his opinion about the current state of the jungle role and how players are often punished verbally in the game for not playing perfectly. In the tweet, IWillDominate shares his frustrations about how junglers usually have to play perfectly to avoid the flame, while supports can “run it the fuck down” and not receive any negative response for it. Â
Jungle = Play literally perfectly, make every correct pathing decision relative to your team and their champions in order to get flamed by someone every game with less game knowledge
Support = You can literally run it the fuck down and no one cares, it is expected.
— Christian Rivera (@IWDominateLoL) April 25, 2021
As an avid streamer and former professional jungler, IWillDominate has had his fair share of solo queue games in the position. When playing as the jungler, the job is to get lanes ahead and try to build an advantage for the team while keeping track and shutting down the opposing jungler. These objectives often put the jungler in the spotlight, triggering teammates to blame the jungler when things don’t go right.Â
Meanwhile, IWillDominate states that the complete opposite happens for the support role. According to IWillDominate, the support can have a bad game without anyone caring because it’s expected that a support dies a lot. This is most likely due to the fact that supports are often seen as a meat shield for a team and is the least valuable member in terms of damage.Â
As IWillDominate’s tweet started to go viral, other well-known names within the community gave their two cents. The first one to share an opinion was the content creator and reporter Duncan “Thorin” Shield, who drew a parallel to the competitive side of the game. Thorin pointed out how a player like G2 Esports jungler Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski has received a lot of flame during splits even while the team won and that a support player like Fnatic Zdravets “Hylissang” Galabov has seemingly experienced the opposite in splits he lost.Â
Kinda says it all that Jankos gets flamed during splits he wins and Hylissang gets praised during splits he loses.
— Thorin (@Thorin) April 25, 2021
For former professional top laner Mike “Wickd” Petersen, the reason for junglers getting blamed is a bit different. According to the Dane, junglers are currently seeing a lot of blame because the role is the most impactful. From Wickd’s perspective, the problem wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t because the jungle role is overpowered.Â
If the culture including flaming the jungler will ever change is hard to say, but the discussion has definitely been brought up over the past hours.
All I understood from this tweet is that Junglers are suffering due to them being overpowered.
If jungle wasn’t overpowered, and their impact wasn’t one of the two highest you wouldn’t have this problem.
Therefore Jungle and Support should be nerfed.
— Wickd (@Wickdlol) April 25, 2021
After playing as a professional for around five years, IWillDominate chose to retire in 2016 after acting as a substitute for Team Liquid Academy. During his career, IWillDominate played for big organizations such as Dignitas, Curse, and Team Liquid.
After retiring, IWillDominate started his current career as a full-time content creator through streams and YouTube videos. Today, IWillDominate streams under Cloud9 and is one of the biggest LCS co-streamers out there.Â
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