Devourer Question

Linna Excel·Aug 24, 2015·2 votes·499 views

I'm not going to go into the discussion about how devourer should be nerfed. There's something else that I'm curious about. Why is it that we still have a jungle item that requires you to farm to its fullest potential? I get it that we've done this route before and how we used to have an infinite scaling version of the item. Still, why have a jungle item that scales with farm at all, why do we have to have an item that tells you to keep on farming? I mean why not make it scale with AD or levels? Maybe make it good for farming in its base form and doesn't scale at all.

As I see it, part of the reason for power farming is to maximize your gold potential for getting a late game build and then maybe being able to split push if your team needs to.

3 Comments

Lord DusteonAug 24, 20151 votes

Because any other way of "unlocking" it is even more annoying. By levels? Might as well not even buy it until you are at the level it 'unlocks', as it is otherwise useless compared to any other item. AD? Besides making no sense for the item (why does the on hit effect enhancer require you to buy a lot of AD to work) it has the exact same problem levels would have (why buy it unless it will instantly unlock?). Overall the farming route seems the best; it provides clear ways to reach it faster (dragon + scuttle, successful ganks, good farming) and for the enemy to delay it (steal dragon/take it themself, counterjungling, counter ganking or warding so nobody dies in ganks).

D rokAug 24, 20151 votes

I agree with your sentiment, in that I don't think it's required at all. There are enough benefits to being able to hard-farm your jungle, take dragons, scuttle, add map pressure, etc. etc. There is really no reason to further reward that style of play with such a huge boost in dps.

If there are problems with the power level of that kind of play, then it should be with the champions themselves, not with the lack of a farming item. I think deciding to hard farm though, should be a decision the jungler makes based on their priorities as a jungler, and less about the massive powerspike they get for doing it.

Zok72Aug 25, 20151 votes

The idea of the item is to allow champions with auto attack synergy and late game scaling to build carry-type builds out of the jungle thereby allowing for strategies built around this idea. Hard farming the jungle until mid-late game is fine and has rewards, but if you have to build warrior to do it you don't actually have a viable late game build. But that is somewhat ancillary to your question, why does jungle farm matter instead of AD or levels etc.? The idea is to make devourer hard to use on laners (who can't stack it). If the item scaled on something everyone had access to ADC's or scaling top laners would be able to buy it, which would significantly impact its power level. Furthermore, because jungle farm is the only resource junglers get more of than laners it would be BETTER on laners and would have to be balanced around laners having it, which would make it worse and effectively non-viable on junglers.

TLDR: jungle items need to scale on jungling/have enough of their cost in jungle power only or else laners will buy them and they will be too weak to use for junglers (see cinderhulk/runeglaive from earlier this season)