Remove JG and Doran's items. Improve Masteries!
The first paragraph covers the issues I have with the new JG items. The second paragraph covers a possible solution. Feel free to comment on both or either.
Is it just me, or do the new jungle items make junglers feel more like a union of farmers? I was watching the tournament for the new NA LCS spots last week, and the commentator even mentioned that whatever class you choose as a jungler (tank, mage, etc.) you basically end up being a discount champion at that role, rather than fulfilling it completely. The problem is that JG is the only role that has the requirement of buying a farm specific item to become viable (+20 gold per large monster death, anyone?), so they end up dumping a large amount of early gold to become farmers while the privileged laners get to start working on cool items like Tri force right off the bat. The new items push all junglers into this pattern where junglers must farm in the jungle to maximize the gold earned from the machete bonus. It also doesn't matter if you are a tank or an auto-attacker you still do the same damage over time, and get the same health/mana regen over time. I'm thinking there must be other ways to improve the viability of role specific champions in the JG without segregating them from laners by having them to purchase farm/susutain items to become viable.
What if, instead, we just... improve the masteries! Imagine if all of the stats we are currently giving to the overpriced hunter's machete and Doran's items were put into a masteries section. As it stands, the masteries all feel extremely insignificant (ie. basic attacks to monsters deal 2 damage). Imagine if the masteries had the same stats as the machete (deal 30 damage to monsters over 2 seconds, +10 gold on large monster kill, etc). It would allow players to specialize for either laning or jungle, kind of like you'd imagine from the word "mastery" they should do. Different masteries would also allow you to specialize even further as a farmer/ganker/tank/fighter/etc. by the stats they offer. I feel like this would be a healthy rework for all three: masteries, starting items, and specifically the jungle. It would also put junglers on even footing with laners, as they'd be allowed to start purchasing the cool items right off the bat without first dumping gold into farm and jungle sustain. Anyway, this is just a brief thought and I'm not going to go into great detail about every mastery that could be made. If you think about it for a moment I'm sure a few come to mind, and if you want to share them here go right ahead.
