My thoughts of 5v5 map elements

After almost 2 years of playing 5v5, I’ve come to the conclusion that map elements are very unbalanced. Lots of things in my mind right now, but I’m talking about the most basic stuffs, so I might forget something important. I’ll divide my post into two subjects: Jungle and Lane. This is a very, very, very long post, so I suggest you spend from 15 to 20 minutes or more reading this.

  1. ⁠Jungle

The jungle in Vainglory is something weird for most players to learn. On one side, we have the Weapon Treant in the middle of the area, which makes it secured, and the Goldoak that gives the jungle 220 gold right away. On the other side, there are a Crystal Treant which always has a chance of being invaded/stolen because it’s right next to the river, and nothing else but 2 bears worth like 40 gold each.

For this reason, Jungler usually farms the half with the WP Buff first (obviously since it is safer and richer) and ignore the other half (CP buff often goes to the mid laner, bears are ignored as they don’t really worth much and the jungler hands them to the mid laner, too) so that they can stay at the bot lane more to harass enemy’s top laner. This is the most popular way of playing and somewhat frustrating to top laner a.

Additionally, junglers are usually at a disadvantage in gold and experience compare to most of their teammates. The most viable ways to be ahead are camping in lanes to share gold and exp with the laner, or constantly invading enemy jungles. All of these reach the conclusion that farming in the jungle is not as efficient and rich as that in the lane.

That’s why I’m wondering if SEMC is going to have some rework on the jungle for the next few patches? This way, Junglers will always farm the full potential of it, less become the secondary Support for bot laner and make top laners less miserable? Any thoughts at all if you get to do balancing jobs?

  1. Lane

Interestingly, every lane has a funny way to work. As a mid laner, you have one additional minion so farming helps the laner become richer than anyone else (when talking about good players), and if you are free, you just go and take the CP buff because it is so near (literally a few steps away). As a bot laner, you get helps from the Jungler to farm more quickly and then has more time to rotate to take Barrier Treant, go to mid and still have enough to get back to lane.

In the meantime, the top lane becomes the most vulnerable place. You have to 1v2 most of the time, which explains why top laners are expected to be tanks or they’ll be considered trolls. You usually become dependent to the Support to delay turrets being destroyed so quickly, makes it unable for you to rotate at all unless your outer turret is down. More to that, top laners always experience lack of vision to the river since the wall and bushes block your sight (compare to the bot laner always with a clear vision to the river while farming).

In conclusion, mid and bot laner are so free that they can do more than just laning (jungle farming, rotating), whereas top laners have to suffer all the worst conditions possible and become very much inactive to the match before late game. My question is clear: Do we need changes to lane elements, especially top lane, so that every lane feels equally and the same? Some changes such as redesigning things around top lane, giving some buffs to the top turret for the first few minutes, or adding more farming resources?

Any suggestive and constructive comments about this whole is highly appreciated as I’ll know if you guys feel the same or have other ideas.

P.S. This post is originated from my own comment on Reddit when they created AMA a few days ago. It never reached, though.

Oh, and ignore this :small_red_triangle_down: I just feel like pinning this image on :framed_picture: :joy: