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Devourer: Feral Flare 2.0

Thiend·11/25/2014, 8:48:00 PM·1 votes·1,121 views

When I saw the new jungle items, I was pleased - VERY pleased. The mildly useless AP jungling item was being replaced by something far better, Quill Coat, one of my favorite items, was innate in all jungling items, and most of all: Feral Flare was gone. Feral Flare did one of two things, and frequently both, it either resulted in a worthless jungler who farmed all game, or it resulted in one winning because that same exact game took ten minutes too long and now the jungler's Feral Flare lets them solo the entire team. Unexciting for allies, infuriating for enemies.

Then I saw that it was being replaced by an item which, instead, functioned rather similarly to the former Rageblade, and I was happy with it because it wasn't farming-based. That is, I was happy right up until I saw the Devourer upgrade... which is exactly the same except it starts out with the infuriating damage. Every jungler I have seen using it has spent the overwhelming majority of the game being completely unhelpful to their allies, exactly like Feral Flare, and exactly like Feral Flare a select few junglers with it can come in during the last ten minutes and automatically win with it.

"What is your point?" you ask, and I answer: we were told Feral Flare was being removed because the way it worked was annoying for everyone except the owner. You just added an item that works in literally the exact same way. Remove it. Alter it to be the item you told us about months ago. I don't really care, so long as this current reiteration stops being the same item you told us was unbalanced any way you slice it.

5 Comments

EndlessSorcerer11/25/2014, 8:56:46 PM2 votes

There were 3 main issues with Feral Flare that Devourer doesn't have.

  1. The number of camps required to transform Wriggle's Lantern into Feral Flare meant that many champions had to powerfarm early to get the transformation at a reasonable time, meaning they wouldn't be ganking lanes.
  2. The on-hit healing scaled with your stacks, so some champions could powerfarm a Feral Flare to 40 stacks and have 50 healing on-hit
  3. The damage tripled against monster camps and minions, so Feral Flare junglers could clear Dragon and Baron very quickly

Devourer has fixed most of these issues: it doesn't need to transform, it doesn't have any healing, it doesn't deal extra damage to monster camps, and it gives 2 stacks for champion kills and assists which incentives junglers to gank and teamfight more than Feral Flare did. These changes, combined with the increase difficulty of the jungle, camp spawn times, and experience changes to jungle monsters, have greatly improved the item.

Cale01711/25/2014, 9:51:06 PM1 votes

Feral Flare wasn't a bad item, people just didn't know how to properly use it, and Devourer is much the same. Sure, a jungler who lacks foresight can sit in the relative safety of their jungle and farm it up to the point that Devourer is dealing 100+ true damage on hit if they want to, but then the team is failing as a result. In addition, it doesn't have that bonus to damage constantly, only when attacking someone who you've Smited, and only for 6 seconds. Meaning you have a very short window with which to deal out as much damage as possible, which is exactly what a jungler who would be using Devourer should be doing.

It isn't a constant effect, it's a strategic tool.

Don't blame the items for people misusing them. I'm a jungle main and I've never once farmed my Feral Flare to the exclusion of helping my lanes because helping my lanes DOES farm for my Flare. If a jungler is building Flare and they can't understand that, it's THEIR fault. Not the item's.