Riot Games wants to stop junglers camping bot lane

Nicholas James Published 05/03/2023

Riot Games has weighed in on the current state of the meta game, saying it wants to make it less profitable for junglers camping bot lane.

Season 13 has begun with a distinct focus on the bottom lane on Summoner’s Rift. With AD carries becoming so strong that they’re being played as supports, and recent buffs to Critical Strike itemization, bot lane is a volatile place to be. Junglers have taken notice of that and have been doing all but setting up tents and cooking marshmallows to get their duo lane ahead.

Riot Games isn’t happy with this, and has said it doesn’t want junglers camping bottom lane to be the default state of the game in a recent balance developer blog.

Riot Games pushes junglers away from bot lane

Riot Games has said it wants to decrease the reliability of a 3v3 breaking out on the bottom of the map within the first ten minutes of play. With so much reliant on advantages in Summoner’s Rift’s duo lane, many junglers have been defaulting to playing around trying to catapult their AD carry and support ahead of the enemy team.

This means that both junglers are drawn to the same lane, resulting in bloody 3v3s that swing the early game. Junglers feel like menacing and inevitable predators, rather than a wild card element.

https://twitter.com/LoLUKN/status/1629451145000386560?s=20

Since Junglers are the ones determining when these 2v3s or 3v3s happen, they have the most influence. With so much hinging on the bottom of the map, top laners end up with even less consistent impact on the early game. This may make bot lane more important, but that’s not always a positive experience for the players who call it home, say Riot Games designers.

“ADCs and supports also gain significant amounts of agency—while they don’t control when and where big fights break out, their decisions around setting up for and assisting ganks, pushing (or not), vision, and so on are highly impactful to the outcome.

And when the fight actually breaks out, their execution in that first big fight has a disproportionately large impact on the game’s outcome. With that said, Support and ADC players want to have agency over who wins the game, but few want that agency to be primarily expressed through surviving high impact jungle ganks.”

Riot Games has already begun to publish changes to fix this, but more will be approaching in subsequent patches to make sure balance is restored.

Nicholas James

About Nicholas James

Nicholas James is a gaming writer with a passion for all things geekdom, as well as live theater. Nicholas is best known for covering League of Legends and other top MOBA titles, but his expertise covers numerous games across multiple genres. When not watching the LCS or playing the latest new release, Nicholas can be found doing some tabletop gaming and painting his favorite miniatures. Nicholas has also published with Hotspawn, TheGamer, Dexerto, Esports.gg and other industry outlets.

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