Tuesday, November 06, 2012

League of Legends: Treeline Jungle

I've been paying attention to jungling on the revamped 3v3 League of Legends map and have some thoughts. I want to crunch some numbers to back them up or maybe even refute them.

The basic conclusion I've come to is the jungle isn't valuable enough to justify a dedicated jungler. Someone who spends all of their time on just their part of the jungle seems to end up underleveled and undergeared. They can't afford to keep up in items with someone in a lane and end up falling behind. This doesn't mean you shouldn't jungle, of course, but that you need something else going for you. Maybe you want to be a champion that doesn't need as many items to get good. Maybe you want to take both sides of the jungle. Maybe you want to gank aggressively. But if you just content yourself with jungling you're actually hurting your team.

But how do I back that up with numbers? Well, I figure I should look at how long it takes to kill each of the three camps. How much they're worth. And how much damage you take from each of them. How useful is smite? And should you even bother fighting double golems?

Big Wolf - 600 hp, 9 ac, 28 AD, .7AS, 40G, 144xp
Little Wolf - 400 hp, 6 ac, 16 AD, .7AS, 10G, 12xp
50s respawn timer

Big Wraith - 450 hp, 15 ac, 28 AD, .6AS, 35G, 120xp
Little Wraith - 300 hp, 8 ac, 12 AD, .6AS, 8G, 48xp
50s respawn timer

Big Golem - 950 hp, 12 ac, 60 AD, .6AS, 50G, 150xp
Little Golem - 550 hp, 12 ac, 30 AD, .6AS, 20G, 42xp
50s respawn timer

Melee minion - 22G, 59xp
Caster minion - 16G, 29xp
Siege minion - 27G, 92xp?


Experience scales as time goes by. For now I'm just going to assume it's a constant rate and therefore comparing jungle to lane in terms of ratios will make sense.

Lane minion damage and health stats don't matter. They'll all die every 30 seconds pretty much no matter what. You get 3 melee and 3 casters every 30 seconds and 1 siege every 90 seconds. So over 90 seconds a lane generates 884 experience. Over 50 seconds the jungle will generate 576 experience, which is actually a little better than a lane. So if you can clear the jungle as fast as it respawns you're good to go. I think this is unlikely? How about effective health per camp?

Wolves - 600*(1.09)+2*400*(1.06) = 1502
Wraiths - 450*(1.15)+2*300*(1.08) = 1166
Golems - 950*(1.12)+550*(1.12) = 1680

Experience per camp?

Wolves - 168
Wraiths - 216
Golems - 192

Outgoing damage per camp with all monsters alive?

Wolves - 28*.7+2*16*.7 = 42, but it can crit? Maybe 15%? So 48.
Wraiths - 28*.6+2*12*.6 = 31
Golems - 60*.6+30*.6 = 54

So wraiths do the least damage, have the least health, and are worth the most experience. Golems actually seem reasonable on paper compared to wolves. They have three negative strikes against them, though. Their damage is concentrated in one spot so they stay at max damage longer whereas wolves damage decreases over time as you kill bits off. There are also three targets at wolves, instead of two, so AE abilities do more damage to them. And some of the defensive masteries reduce damage by a flat numbers. Shaving 4 damage off of every attack is a lot better on wolves than on golems since it's 3 targets instead of 2.

I donno. Is 54 damage per second too much? I guess if you start at 500 health with 20 armor you're in big trouble. You're dead in 11 seconds. And the big golem has 1064 EH so if you're swinging for like 55 every .8 seconds it'll take you 24 seconds to kill it. So it'll kill you way before you'll kill him. Even with smite, for half it's health, you're still going to lose. You have an ability which probably swings it in your favour but it seems pretty sketchy. I feel like skipping them just makes sense, especially for someone with good AE abilities which make them a lot worse than wolves. I'd rather steal the enemy wolves I think than take my own golems. I'd rather try to gank. Either a lane will be pushed close to you, so you can gank them, or all lanes will be pushed out, so you can invade their jungle.

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