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It wasn't noted in the PBE notes, but the scuttle now spawns at 3:15 instead of 2:00. Obviously this will massively change pathing since most junglers incorporate a pre-3:15 scuttle into their pathing. Also, jungle exp was not buffed in any way to compensate so it's pretty just a straight nerf and you need to do 4 camps to get to level 3 (3 camps with krugs) and the meta and pathing is completely shifted again.

Here is Jatt's comments on this, because it is very difficult to scroll down 2 inches:

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/besx4j/scuttle_spawns_at_315_on_pbe_throwing_the_meta_on/el8ksuu

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over 5 years ago - /u/Jatt - Direct link

Originally posted by abokkai

Thank you now I don't have to leave my lane at Level 2 as a mid laner

YO, So i'm working on this change. Couple things I want to point out:

  • The goal of this change is to reduce the frustration that's caused by the super early dependency that junglers have on laners for scuttle crab help (this gets worse the higher elo you go.) But it's often creating forced conflict when most players are lvl 2, or even lvl 1.

  • This is likely putting some pretty harsh pressures on the meta. It's putting an extremely strong emphasis on how powerful a jungle kit is at lvl 2, and it's putting huge value on lvl 1/lvl 2 lane priority for solo lanes.

  • Additionally, it's often making it optimal for a jungler to attempt lvl 2 ganks -- since even a failed gank creates lane priority for scuttle control. This makes lvl 2 ganks far less risky.

  • It's not meant to be a nerf to jungle XP, and in most cases isn't. There's PLENTY of camps to farm at the start of the game, and almost no champs can farm all 6 jungle camps before scuttle crab spawns. Also, Crab spawns are based on the average lvl of the game, so the Crabs that spawn at 3:15 will usually be lvl 3, and therefore worth more XP than the crabs that normally spawn at 2:00. FWIW I've been higher lvl in almost all of my games that I've played with delayed scuttle spawns, since the time I spend pathing towards Crab is diminished and i'm getting more XP by efficiently farming my base jungle camps.

  • Both junglers should be lvl 3 by 3:15, and hopefully be more equipped to make an informed decision around scuttle crab (Where is the other jungler? Should I full-clear and shop? and hope to grab the scuttle that the other jungler didn't take?). The decision tree that junglers have is the hardest thing to validate with limited internal testing, but early tests have been fairly promising (that it's not super formulaic)

Anyways, this is a tentative change, I've tried 1 scuttle only at 5:00, two scuttles at 3:30, and most recently two scuttles at 3:15. Looking for a sweetspot where junglers and laners aren't forced into early lvl 1/2 conflict on the regular, but also maintain some of the interesting gameplay that comes from an early contestable camp in the river.

Wanted to jump in and give that additional context!