Nautilus is expected to be the next League of Legends champion to be moved into the jungle in Season 11, with Riot Games announcing plans to boost the support’s clear speed in League Patch 11.11 to bring him into the position.
Nautilus, who has just recently celebrated his ninth LoL birthday, is on the brink of making his glorious return to the jungle, more than five years after Riot pushed him into a playmaking tank position in the bot lane in Season 7.
The Titan of the Depths used to have a good jungle clear pace and was a great roamer due to his Dredge Line and Depth Charge.
However, in order to shift help away from its “healer” status and into a more engage-heavy position, Nautilus received a series of skill changes that caused him to vanish from the jungle meta. Riot seemed content to keep the Bilgewater titan bot lane open forever until recently.
Now, it appears that a role reversal is in the works.
Riot intends to ship buffs for Nautilus’ clear speed, allowing him to follow the lead of new-faced jungle acolytes such as Darius, Morgana, and others this season.
The LoL development team is focusing on the Titan of the Depth’s damage-dealing Riptide abilities to handle this swap. While the majority of his kit — including his Q, R, and passive — is focused on crowd management, his E deals AOE harm.
In patch 11.11, the Bilgewater tank can now do twice the damage to camps; that is, Riot is expanding his E ability to read, “This ability does 200 percent damage to jungle monsters.”
At worst, this buff can increase his clear speed to about 3:20.
With the recent updates, Nautilus will now compete with other top-tier junglers such as Elise, Lee Sin, and Kha’Zix, both of whom have risen quickly to the top in Season 11 now that Hecarim and Udyr have been demoted to the “S-tier.” The titan, like Elise and Lee Sin, has an outstanding gank potential, especially in the first 6 level of the game.
Be warned: there is no certainty that these buffs will remain in their current state. In reality, Riot developer RayYonggi has already stated that they will “likely be tuned down” before release.
According to Lolalytics, Nautilus already has a 51.22 percent win rate when playing as help as of release. The Titan of the Depths appears in 10.24 percent of games and is prohibited in 8.97 percent of them.
Riot has also revealed some updates come in League of Legends patch 11.11, including Senna’s “tank” build being cut in half, and the “sad” Rammus rework receiving a significant boost to help boost his flailing numbers.
In a funny twist for Ryze mains, the Rune Mage is also in line for another rework. Riot expects to announce these updates in the coming updates.