Ivern’ed It: Why patches 8.4 and 8.5 are nerfs to Ivern and possible fixes.
The recent removal of tracker’s knife and vision items for nonsupports is an indirect nerf to Ivern and here is why.
My experience is that few people place wards like they should. On top of that many players don’t like playing support roles. When they get stuck playing support they attempt to become a second ADC and don’t bother buying support items. This means little to no vision for the entire team.
I’m a team player. I feel satisfaction when my team members do well in their lanes. If a lane is struggling then I want to come in, help them get kills and then leave them to do their thing. For this reason I love playing Ivern.
Ivern is a jungle support. His goal is to run around, taking as many camps as he can, and helping his teammates survive ganks or become empowered gankers. His toolkit is not meant to walk in by himself, burst down an enemy champion and walk out. He helps other players get kills.
As a support role, fighting enemy junglers one on one is a bad idea (in my opinion). To be an effective Ivern player you need to know where the enemy jungler is so that you can plan your jungle clear and support your lanes effectively.
Patch 8.4 removed items that store vision charges for nonsupport items (trackers knife, ruby sightstone). On top of that in patch 8.5 you are planning on reducing the amount of gold that nonsupport players can get from support items, meaning it will be impossible to finish the quest on support items and gain access to more wards. This means that unless you luckily get a team that wards like they should you will be playing a blinded support role in the jungle as Ivern.
As of this morning Lolking.net has Ivern listed as the LEAST POPULAR CHAMPION. Why make it worse?
There are a couple easy possible fixes. Give jungle items the ability to store wards, change Ivern’s grass move into a ward, or eliminate the penalty for support items when considering gold acquired from the jungle.
I hope this champion will be taken into account in future patches. It’d be a shame to see such a creative and fun champion go to waste.
