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I think pretty much all of the jungle items need some adjustments as of right now

Abyssphere·3/30/2016, 6:28:09 PM·7 votes·481 views

Ever since season 6 the balance between the 4 different enchants has gone... kind of out of whack, and I would argue that most of them don't really feel like they're fulfilling their role anymore. I think change is needed, so I'm gonna talk about the different enchants individually to give my thoughts on where they are, why they are/aren't fulfilling their role, and what should or could be changed. Let's go, in alphabetical order as that's the most fun kind of order!

  • Cinderhulk: The tank enchant has been the subject of much discussion in recent weeks which is a lot of what motivated me to make this thread. We've all seen that the majority of tank junglers have decided to switch over to the AP enchant and the days of AD junglers occasionally going Cinderhulk for the better late game scaling are long gone - when's the last time a Lee Sin didn't build Warrior? Cinderhulk, in season 6, I think is not able to do what it needs to. Its clear is too weak (especially in comparison to Runic Echoes), its late game scaling isn't where it needs to be (Cinderhulk used to be THE late game enchant) and its early game isn't relevant enough to make up for that because... health isn't a big power spike at 10 minutes into the game. Tanks clearly want a fast clear right now (as they can get it if they swap enchants) but they're not getting that from Cinderhulk, and the bulk it offers isn't significant enough to make up for that anymore.

  • Devourer / Sated Devourer: This item has really taken off this season, with Rageblade breathing a new life into the item and bringing us right back to the release Sated/BOTRK disaster we had to get through. Overall Sated is a pretty disgusting symptom of the inherent problem with attack speed carries from the jungle - the skill burden on those playing against them is significantly higher than the skill burden on those playing them. That's... pretty understandably not fun for anyone involved except the Sated jungler. As regards what to do here, it's really difficult to suggest anything. I think it might be wise to just delete Devourer and try again with another attack speed jungle item with no stacking design and a much more moderate power budget as a result, but who knows. This is the most difficult enchant to look at by far because the concept it supports is arguably unhealthy inherently.

  • Runic Echoes: This is IMO the item in the weirdest spot. If we think back to the time before this was released (the last days of Runeglaive), pretty much every AP jungler was in a terrible spot (even Nidalee was trash in solo queue, though weirdly popular in competitive games). Runic Echoes came out, clearly overpowered, and brought AP junglers back into the spotlight. However, it only actually made two AP junglers overtuned - Elise and Nidalee. The item was good enough to be used on tanks and made the best AP junglers overpowered, so it got nerfed twice. With these nerfs, the tanks using it are... still using it, but AP junglers have pretty much collapsed. Only Nidalee continues to perform well. What does this mean? It means that Runic Echoes was a crutch for AP junglers when it was too strong and now that it's no longer too strong, AP junglers aren't able to perform. So... AP junglers need a jungle item that's clearly overtuned compared to the others but that item needs to not be good on other classes. Runeglaive when it was good managed this because it had most of its power loaded into its on-hit AP ratio, but because Runic's power is mostly in its base damage, it fails to discriminate adequately between AP and non-AP. Obvious solution: re-adjust the numbers to much more heavily favour AP stacking champions than Runic + tank champs.

  • Warrior: In a weird spot this season where despite being more popular on AD champions than it's been since the early days of season 5, it's also arguably doing less for its class than it has for a long time. While the AD on it is now pretty huge, the lack of CDR is a problem and the lack of a passive leaves it feeling both uninteresting and lackluster. Suggesting a passive on the item isn't too easy because the obvious suggestion is Tiamat which would exclude ranged AD, but there's no reason Riot couldn't make up something completely new. I don't think Warrior will feel satisfying on its class until it does something fun/unique, like the others.

This is what I would like to recommend for all of them:

  • Cinderhulk: One of two changes. Either significant buffs to the Immolate passive, notably early (it needs to at least be worth considering versus the Runic passive), or buffs to the % HP. I'd go from 15 > 20% bonus HP, but I think 25% would be a bit much.
  • Devourer / Sated Devourer: Needs reworking. If you're not gonna look at the health of on-hit damage as a whole, I'd just see how releasing an on-hit jungle item that just... has the stats it has would go. A bigger spike early that doesn't turn into 1v5ing seems like it'd be worth looking into, though I'm willing to believe that it wouldn't work out.
  • Runic Echoes: The passive numbers need retuning IMO, probably either just buff the AP ratio on it (10 > 15%) or doing that while nerfing the base. The difference in performance for the item between people who stack AP and people who don't just needs to be significantly more noticeable than it is right now.
  • Warrior: Could probably do with a Magus-esque deletion and replacement so it's more interesting. Alternatively, 5 AD.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

7 Comments

Erockandroll3/30/2016, 8:12:09 PM3 votes

Here are my thoughts.

Cinderhulk: For your two options, ask if Cinderhulk Junglers can keep up in clear speed with other Junglers. If not, buff the passive. (Simply put it, clear speed cannot be a pivot of balance, it needs to be standardized.) And if Clear speed isn't the issue, reinforce the HP passive on the item.

Devourer: Does of pretty good Job at targeting the audience it was meant for. (late game scaling AS Carrys) So I wouldn't deviate from that. (Also, Riot probably went though dozens of iterations for the AS item. If they though Sated was a problem, they would likely have tested a replacement by now.)

But here's the real problem with Sated. It was designed to scale well with champions that had natural on hit damage. But also scales well with items. (which makes combinding both, a nightmare.) What if Sated was changed so that only champion based on-hit was proced a second time.

Runic Echo: Riot mentioned that they have no problem with Tanky Junglers picking up Runic Echo and becoming AP Bruisers. (Though the difference between Runic Bruisers, and hypertanks just further shows how week Cinderhulk is)

Increasing the AP ratio might improve it for the mage class. But if Runic echos are continuing to be picked up out side of the mage bracket because of how strong it is. We might have reached our limit on how effectively we can tune the item, and would have to look at the champions themselves.

Warrior: My suggestion was to give it a Burn passive similar to the old Spirit of the Elder Lizard. They had put such a change on the PBE once, but it got removed, and I don't have any context as to why. Also, warrior does have CDR.

Jbels3/30/2016, 6:45:25 PM2 votes

Every time Riot tries to give the Attack Speed Junglers a niche item, it blows way the f**k up, and it destroys the game state for 2-3 patches on end.

Hethalean3/30/2016, 6:44:14 PM1 votes

The game is in a weird spot right now favoring tanky builds. From what you mentioned (Ruinic + Tank) champions to assassin champions building full or hybrid tank builds and seeing great success. Good? Bad? I am undecided.

BlancheVEVO3/30/2016, 7:38:17 PM1 votes

Good analysis! I especially think the Echos AP% buff (coupled with an appropriate change for Cinderhulk, perhaps adding some early CDR which most tanks will adore?) would be a great way to fix the whole AP vs. tanks issue going on right now. For Cinder, I definitely think it needs some love but the best way to go about that in my eyes wouldn't be a case of buffing the % HP scaling as no one wants even tankier brutes running around right now given the current meta we're going through - the best routes would be either buffing the immolate passive (which seems iffy because how great could that ever really be in ganking a lane when you're going to struggle to stay near to someone for more than 2 seconds?), or adding something like CDR to the completed item to give tanks some more early ganking power without making them more oppressive late-game and without covering up their "OMG DON'T INVADE ME LEE" weaknesses.

I'm mostly a tank player as far as jungling is concerned so Cinder is the item I'm most interested in, but I have some close friends who're very big AP jungler players and from what I've heard them say, most AP champs are just using Echoes as a crutch right now so it'd be nice to make this no longer the case. I find the movespeed on the item a tad iffy as it often feels like it's giving too much at once for me, so perhaps removing this aspect of the item (and changing the build path because it's just ugly let's be honest) and adding some AP scaling to the passive in compensation is what we need to stop it being the new tank jungler item whilst keeping it a great option for mage junglers? Again this is a bit tough to say as most AP junglers are obviously early-pressure junglers and the movespeed is a great boost to this style of gameplay, but perhaps they wouldn't have to focus quite so hard on this phase of the game (which would still be strong without the movespeed!) if they had a little more power to fall back on later? Those harder hitting Nid spears, ow...

Warrior is boring but I think the concept of the item is fine - it gives what the champions need to be effective and that's about it. It's not interesting at all and I would enjoy seeing something about this changed, but I would be weary of it becoming yet another issue as we've seen far too often how volatile the jungle enchants can end up being...

As for Devourer, I don't really find the item a problem in its concept, but the playstyle it reinforces isn't good for the game in most cases. Rather than changing the item's theme/stacking aspect, I'd rather either nerf the item early or nerf the early games of the champions who use it so that there's at least a proper window in which to shut these devourer junglers down before they go into "crazy 1v5" mode. Trying to out-duel a Shyvana, Warwick, Xin, Udyr, etc, early-game is just not going to work out in your favour in 90% of cases, so where's your power to try and halt their stacking? This obviously isn't such an issue in coordinated play as shutting down a jungler as a team of 5 is obviously a trivial task, but this isn't where these junglers are making a name for themselves and isn't where they're needing to be tackled. As long as it's a risk taking one of these junglers (in this case the risk is getting shut down hugely early) then I think the late-game scaling is both deserved and fun to use, but with how safe and strong all of these Sated junglers are early right now it just doesn't feel like there's any risk involved at all in picking them for non-coordinated play.

Micbran3/30/2016, 8:39:24 PM1 votes

You could try giving warrior the Tiamat passive. That might make it feel "special" while also giving it a use in the jungle.