Riot's issue with the jungle
This might be a bit of a long read, sorry in advance.
We have seen that Riot has had problems with the jungle this season. It's not just a season 5 (S5) issue. We see the same group of strong junglers crowding out the diversity of the jungle for the past two seasons (even farther back if you wish to look). Riot has attempted to change this and open up the jungle through items. The same things they focused on in season 4 (S4). Now to look at the same mistake they have made two years in a row.
These are the two "tank" items/add-ons for the jungle. One (Spirit item) from S4 and the other (enchant) from S5.
Spirit of the Ancient Golem 200 hp, 20 armour, 10% cooldown UNIQUE: +25% bonus health UNIQUE - SAPPING BARBS: You gain 60 HP/5 and 45 MP/5 for 5 seconds whenever you take damage from a monster. Additionally, monsters who attack you bleed for 5% of their maximum health over 3 seconds (maximum 150 damage). Sapping Barbs cannot deal lethal damage. UNIQUE - CONSERVATION: You generate Conservation stacks every 1.5 seconds, up to 80. Killing a large monster will consume up to 40 stacks and grant 1 bonus gold per stack consumed. You may only be in possession of 1 Gold Income item.
Juggernaut Enchant 500 hp, 10% cooldown UNIQUE - TENACITY: The duration of crowd control that does not Suppression icon suppress you or render you Airborne icon airborne is reduced by 35%. UNIQUE - +30 Gold on Large Monster Kill UNIQUE - JUNGLER: Deals 45 magic damage to monsters on hit over 2 seconds and gain 10 Health Regen and 5 Mana Regen per second in combat with monsters.
Let's remove the uniques that are jungle based to look at combat stats. So we remove conservation as an example:
Spirit of the Ancient Golem 200 hp, 20 armour, 10% cooldown UNIQUE: +25% bonus health
Juggernaut Enchant 500 hp, 10% cooldown UNIQUE - TENACITY: The duration of crowd control that does not Suppression icon suppress you or render you Airborne icon airborne is reduced by 35%.
Now for the cut version of the AD heavy version.
Spirit of the Elder Lizard 30 ad, 10% cooldown UNIQUE - INCINERATE: Deals an additional 14 + (2 × level) bonus true damage over 3 seconds upon dealing physical damage.
Warrior Enchant 45 ad, 10% cooldown, 10 armour penetration
Over all the combat stats for both of the Enchants are a bit better than their S4 version or really close.
Now onto the problem. Over the course of S4 we saw both Elder Lizard and Ancient Golem get buffed and nerfed, with Riot trying to combat the issue of a small sub-set of junglers being strong. These junglers (Vi, Jarvan, Lee Sin, Rengar, Elise, ect...) saw ups and downs as the season went on. For the most part, this was due to each jungler seeing nerfs and buffs, not the item changes. As Riot nerfed Elder Lizard, the champions that used it (Vi, Jarvan, Rengar, ect...) switched over to Ancient Golem and stayed on top of the pile and vise versa. Lee Sin (as an example) ended up using whatever jungle item in S4 was the strongest. It didn't change his play style so much as just his starting item choice. This ended up being a clear failure in diversity in and of it's self. A move in the right direction? Maybe, but we won't know as long as the items change and the junglers stay the same.
What does this show us? That over a full year, Riot tried to help jungle diversity by changing the items. Small changes to the AD, or HP on the items didn't change WHO was in the jungle. (there are outliers yes, and Diamondprox always had something fun same with Azingy)
Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.
So until the junglers are looked at instead of items/summoner spells/jungle buffs, Riot will encounter the same problems they have had for more than 18 months.
TD;DR- The only way to open up jungle diversity is to change the junglers themselves, and not try to use a lever through items/spells.
