Mid season jungle changes

So we have had an adc thread now it is time for the jungle/assassin one.

Honestly, the jungle changes themselves are going to be interesting and I really need to get a feel first before I can judge some of them. I do know I do not like FG or GF being aggressive but that is mostly as you can't use it when being chased as a damage source (where your enemy risks aggroing the GF/FG if he uses an ability).

I am curious about your opinions on these changes. However, I am more curious about what your opinions are on the potential item changes builds will see or meta shift to certain types of assassins.

I honestly think ability assassins got hit the least hard by the pen changes. They even got slightly buffed vs tanks with heartseeker. The thing they got hit harder by is that I think the top jungle picks are going to be dominated by AA assassins.

While AA assassins got hit harder by the item changes they also gained Serrated Edge. combined with last patch Golden Blade buffs, this is an insane buff towards them. I expect the triple Katana (maybe even a quadruple katana) start to be back.

So what are you guys thought about how mid-season is going to influence the meta

I think the minion behavior changes are nice. Makes the jungle feel more alive. Fineokay said he felt like a lot of the buff holder abilities are "silly" but he stated he liked the idea of harpies being aggressive, and that you don't have to use an ability (as a melee god) to draw them to you from the edge of the leash range.

I can easily see all 4 katanas being used for some of the AA junglers, or 3 (taking out Golden) for those that don't need Golden. That's 37% MS with all 4, which is just super strong (and again, something I thought they were trying to tone down!). IMO, Serrated Edge and Hastened Katana should have 7% MS (or even just 5%), not 10%. The only one that should have a full 10% is Golden Blade, as it's a necessary starting item for some select junglers. All other katanas are not starting-type items, so should have lower MS.

Add The Executioner and any of Qin's Sais, Atalanta's Bow, Toxic Blade, Berserker's Shield, or a protection item, and they're set.

Assassins should be very powerful, while we probably see even less of the magical junglers just due to this power shift. The ability-based assassins probably don't see a huge power shift (though perhaps less use due to the boost for AA gods), and the stat shift for Heartseeker just helps them late-game for the most part.

Honestly, I didn't feel any strong differences while playing jg with the aggressive buffs, just took one or two attacks because I forgot about that but nothing else.

The debuffs on GF, Pyro make them a bit harder to kill them alone, needing a team (at least 1 more person) to do it. It also forces ward around before start because it may be easy to someone steal the objective now.

Basic Attackers junglers will become a pain in the ***, no offense but the Katana tree is very op right now and the new katana is basically must go in any basic attacker jungler. The General changes also favors physical abilities junglers that now will basically always have pen in their kits even without "Titans".

Junglers, the physical ones, should be very strong right now IMO.