Ranger's Trailblazer is at the necessary strength, the other smite upgrades need to catch up.

B3ER··30 votes·3,752 views

The new jungle opens up different kinds of junglers but takes opportunities away from almost all junglers compared to season 4. When you're having trouble with sustain, you can't gank as well as before, which requires you to either farm up a sustain item, or recall. This reduces the jungler/laner interaction that Riot wanted to enforce when they nerfed Feral Flare. Most junglers gank later now, are weaker to invades from laners and spend more gold on pots than they used to.

This is where Ranger's was helping them keep up a bit. Removing the CDR means reducing the uptime on sustain, therefore reducing opportunity of these junglers and essentially pushing them out of viability more than before.

On the other side of the board, we have Stalker's Blade which does 50 true damage at level 6. You have Poacher's whose bonuses have almost no uptime if the opposition reacts to you. Skirmisher is quite powerful compared to the other options and I have no complaints so far. (Never picked it before, though. I heard it's brutal on Xin)

The enchantments are cool; Warrior, Devourer and Juggernaut providing good stat efficiency. Magus is a bit meh, though. Morellonomicon is actually better than Magus, especially if you're Fiddles (No need for auto's).

Anyways, I suggest more damage on Stalker's, more CDR on Poacher's and an additional passive on Magus (e.g. 20% slow for 2 seconds on every 5th ability cast).

EDIT: I just noticed that they're nerfing the Krug buff from 5 hits to 6 hits. I don't know what else would prove that Riot just wanted an excuse to nerf junglers out of the game if not this season's jungle. I guess people were complaining about how OP the gift of heavy hands was. /sarcasm

Discuss.

13 Comments

EnvyDragon5 votes

I think the difficulty here is that if you make jungle items too attractive, laners will take smite so they can access them. We're already seeing this with top lane Smitewick.

That said, I 100% agree - Ranger's Trailblazer is the perfect example of an item that gives junglers unique strengths. It's an all-around "Jungle is my home" sort of item. Between fights, you go and smite a camp for the health/mana restore. The jungle functions differently from lanes, and it should be the job of jungle items to highlight this, not just to make the jungle survivable.

I'm not sure how to get this done in a way that leaves Ranger's with its unique strengths, but it's something to strive for - extra power that only junglers will really appreciate.

SIayton5 votes

I'm worried that the nerf to rangers is going to push a lot of champions out of the jungle. Currently its the only thing even remotely keeping the fringe guys in. If they're gonna increase the cooldown, they need to increase the sustain on it as well.

All in all I feel like the current jungle itemization is kind of a fail on their part and needs to be reworked. Atleast give us the option for spiritstone style sustain or something. Their reasoning for taking it out was that it favored fast clearers but, honestly, the jungle is ALWAYS going to favor fast clearers. Now it just favors fast clearers with sustain, so they've effectively narrowed down the list of viable junglers even moreso. All that had to do was simply make junglers not get so much goddamn gold like they did last season and things would have been fine, but they went overboard on it and now jungling has become pretty limited as far as viable champions. Strategic diversity my ass.

B3ER3 votes

If Riot wants to make the jungle harder, they have to make it more rewarding. As it stands, the gold gain is similar to season 3 but with less opportunities and more risk. This entire jungle is a nerf and there's no way around it.

SmokingPuffin4 votes

I was watching Nightblue's stream trying out the various jungler items.

He was significantly less effective as a ganker when he took the Stalker's than when he took the Ranger's. The small slow is just totally not worth the clear speed hit you take, and he was getting off about 50% more ganks when he took Ranger's because of the sustain and speed advantages.

It's clear we need some balance pass on Stalker's.

Kingsgrave2 votes

I was watching Nightblue's stream trying out the various jungler items.

He was significantly less effective as a ganker when he took the Stalker's than when he took the Ranger's. The small slow is just totally not worth the clear speed hit you take, and he was getting off about 50% more ganks when he took Ranger's because of the sustain and speed advantages.

It's clear we need some balance pass on Stalker's.

Honestly Trailblazer isn't supposed to be a gank item and Stalker is, but Riot doesn't understand that farming more = more ganking.

SmokingPuffin6 votes

Honestly Trailblazer isn't supposed to be a gank item and Stalker is, but Riot doesn't understand that farming more = more ganking.

I think Riot understands, it's just that the tuning of the various items is off.

hobomann23 votes

don't you know anything? riot doesnt know how to buff. only rework or nerf

Dominick Destine2 votes

I knew right away that Trailblazer would be nerfed.... I couldn't picture dropping it for any of the other three, which is a sure sign that the item is overpowered.

Messaiga2 votes

From what I've gathered, Stalker's is underwhelming (needs a buff to damage and possible utility), Trailblazer is pretty fair (don't remove the reduced CD), Nerf Skirmisher's (solution on PBE atm, not sure how well it has worked at the moment). And please please please leave krug stun buff alone, :l.

Talamare1 votes

Those Ranger's, Always blazing trails

ValyrianBlade1 votes

They're removing the smite CDR on Rangers? That's literally the only reason I ever wanted it. Guess skirmishers is the go-to now.

Smite's cooldown is way too long early. Doesn't mean much late. The whole concept of putting smite cdr on items you don't have for your first clear was just not bright... Make smites cooldown scale up as you level, and give some other bonus to poachers and Rangers since they'd then be outclassed by champion smites...

Chaotic Reks1 votes

If anyone got buffed in the jungle (imo) it would be Trundle. Starting at and smiting Gromp (even without a leash) he can clear the whole jungle without backing, using only 2 potions. Devourer seems to fit him really well and his ganks are a little bit better with skirmishers. I believe that Trundle is one of the top junglers now (fuck LeeSin's flashiness)

Nielarken1 votes

top lane Vayen with a item 3714 rito plz this is getting out of hand

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