League of Legends developers have confirmed that the 2023 preseason will feature major changes to the jungle items.
The jungle has been a massive focus of LoL devs for the upcoming preseason, both in terms of accessibility and mastery.
From the addition of pets to new leashing rules to improved communication to allow junglers to better let their teammates know their pathing priorities, the jungle seems to be set for a massive overhaul.
But, the Riot devs also appear to have some changes up their sleeves with regards to updating the jungle items.
While jungle items weren’t mentioned in the developer video, in the developer post Riot developers acknowledged that “[t]he current items are functional, but they aren’t that exciting or (particularly in the case of red smite) understandable.”
As a result, the post says that one goal of the preseason changes is to “get them to express the difference between culling cool camps and farming boring minions.”
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The post mentions old jungle items like Spirit of the Elder Lizard and Wriggle’s Lantern as the types of impact that they want the items to express. This would seem to indicate that this will be an adjustment to jungle items on a scope not seen in quite a few seasons of League of Legends.
The developers were careful to acknowledge that they understood that those past jungle items had their own problems.
They will attempt to learn from them by shifting that unique identity to the new jungle pets.
However, although junglers may not be thrilled to have their role get a massive change once again, it certainly seems that League of Legends is taking the jungle back to a familiar form.