League of Legends Season 3 is here

The patch hit the NA server yesterday. The UI changes are a bit jarring but not bad once you get used to them. Ditto the shop which will feel completely alien at first but after a couple games will feel more normal. The big headline changes are in the jungle where the spawns are much more single target focused. I didn't want to try one in a live game yet but I played a little trial game this morning with Fiddlesticks and it's MUCHHHHH easier.

Smite on big spawn, autoattack small creature till dead, drain on big creature (kills it if smite was used), autoattack other small creatures. Rinse Repeat.

I need to play with it a little bit more but, I think, the ideal jungler will be one of three types

Hybrid: Building Utility tree so they can start with Crystalline Flask + Hunter's Machete and put points in the dual lifesteal/spellvamp talent as well.

1 Good AoE (possibly with long C/D) + Good Single target: While the new jungle deemphasizes AoE, you still benefit from an AoE spell of some kind. The BEST AoE is something like Fiddlesticks which will bounce and nearly annihilate the small golem (i.e. scales up and DOWN for smaller spawns). But any kind of AoE will be okay. The AoE HEAVY champions (Amumu, for example) may be too mana-inefficient when the small spawns drop quickly (effectively reducing them to single target damage) but I haven't experimented. These guys might not even need Hunter's Machete and can instead build Crystalline Flask and an early Doran's or something (I ALMOST felt like this with Fiddle).

Good sustain and solid single target: Someone like Warwick probably can just go AD and play ginsu knife in the jungle (I need to try this but it seems good in theory).

On a separate note, I'm at level 15 now with a hair under 9k xp. that puts me at about 60% of the way to 20 and a little less than a quarter of the way to 30. That's nice. At roughly 3 weeks into the game "seriously", I consider that a pretty good pace given the time constraints on my play time. I feel like I'm also gaining xp faster with more wins than losses now when playing SR.