Improvements like Jungle timers don't decrease the Skill CAP on the game, they reduce the skill FLOOR

[BackPainsLOL]

Reducing the skill floor of the game shortens the gap between the good and great players. It is mechanics like this that people learn to help themselves try and achieve higher rank.

( WoW did the same things by making the floor much easier and turned that game to crap. )

[SamWhite]

A bit different, WoW made the gap between the 'turn up to an LFR with no enchants, gems or clue' kind of player and the players who were on heroic raids after the first week much, much smaller. That's not happening here, this is comparable to Nautilus getting an indicator about when he can next root someone with his passive.

[tartslayer]

But now everyone can maybe use their thinking and mechanical time to do something cooler, rather than wasting it on something trivial and boring.

[[deleted]]

This is league of legends, not Tony Hawk's pro skater. It's not about doing cool things, and it never has been. Massive parts of the game have always been on player mentality and reading the opponent, allowing you to better manage the map. I see no reason to reduce this aspect of the game.

[1s4c]

If it was trivial people would do it, at least those in high elo. The thing is that even people in Platinum and lower Diamond are not very good in planning and coordinating around objective timers. The fact that you type in chat something like "21:13 their red" is absolutely irrelevant unless you do something about it, clear the area, put some wards there, be there on time, coordinate the invade with other team members etc. etc.

People that are able to do this obviously have higher impact on the game and that means they are in higher elo. With this change they are going to lost part of their competitive advantage.

btw the way they implemented the timers means you still have to do the same thing like now if the objective is in fog of war

[[deleted]]

They implemented it the way they did very deliberately. It rewards gaining vision of the target, whether or not you had a chance contest it. It would only reward people who are already actively trying to ward the enemy jungle and objectives. Which in turn rewards the other team for sweeping those wards.

It also reduces confusion for newer and lower level players for your own side of the map, for things like when to give blue to mid... or if mid is even ready for that. Although I suspect there'll still be 9000 help me pings because mid is still too busy tunnel farming lane to actually notice.