Poacher's Knife. Can we make it better?
I've been getting the poacher's knife lately because I desperately want it to not be useless. I wanted to figure out what riot knows that I don't know that's kept this item from being buffed.
The problem: The time it takes me to purchase it and invade to start denying the enemy means that there's a good chance they've cleared their jg. So now it's a guessing and waiting game. But I have to farm SOMETHING but returning to my jg to smite a camp means wasted time and I might as well have purchased a regular smite. To make sure to get use from it I drop wards to know the camp is still there and their jg is not. 75g for a real ward because games played tells me trinket will not last long enough to do the job. This invested time and money takes away from my ability to help lanes because this was a direct assault on the enemy jg... 75g for the early ward and time to run across the map means I definitely need to clear 3 of his camps to get the cash to be denying the enemy and not myself. To keep it short.. the risks are very high for what often feels like not nearly enough reward. Also, as others have mentioned, the speed boost is virtually useless when I still need to farm the little guys - it's already worn out by the times I'm leaving.
Also I'd like to add that the risk of not purchasing blue, red, or purple smite is simply not having the smite you didn't purchase. You'll still maintain the strength of red smite no matter what happens. Same for blue and purple. The gray smite, however, it the only smite based on risk reward.
Creative over-the-top options: 1.) Give it some kind of bootleg tremor sense (only to idle camp monsters) that will drop little fog pings once you get in the river so you can see from afar if an enemy camp is up. Give it the feel of actually hunting and tracking what's going on. It still costs your time but it won't WASTE so much time. 2.) Maybe instead give it an effect that increases the duration of your trinket ward to 3 min. Still sacrificing to set up the POTENTIAL steal/invade but again not making it fully wasteful 3.) Maybe instead give it a perma-moves peed bonus on your side of the jg so you have to kind of chance to make it to the other side of the map before everything is gone. 4.) Maybe instead give it a stacking effect that caps off for consecutive enemy camps (big monsters) stolen within a few minutes. So if you really manage to get in there and do work you get paid for the job. Risky because they'll know you're in there and they'll know you're looking for the loot and they'll come to get you. Maybe add some kind of bounty if you don't base before you secure that bonus gold then either they get it or you lose it. risk reward. 5.) Maybe if you were to actually get the devour enchant it give you 1 extra stack for stealing enemy large monster 6.) Maybe it gives also more hp/mana on killing an enemy large monster on top of the speed boost you'll end up not using. 7.) Oh maybe instead it drop a small speed shrine that will last only a short amount of time when you kill enemy large monsters. So you could hang out and kill the smalls and still make away with your boost. It would drop in the center of the camp and not have a great radius but enough for you to wiggle and kill and what-not. 8.) Or MAYBE it drops an enhance shrine that gives attack speed + move speed but reveals you to the enemy for 1 second.
I dunno. Maybe one of you has the gem that riot will implement to stop this item from being a bait to me. I get it and when I end up farming my own jg... I feel really really silly. Even if I manages to get a few camps. +60g over 15 minutes doesn't feel worth giving up one of the other smites. MAYBE the purple smite but definitely not the blue or red smite. I know the gold amount SAYS that it's giving more... but the fact is that it only gives 20. I could have cleared my own Gromp or Krugs or Razorbacks or Wolves for the guaranteed standard amount of gold. The larger number is just fluff =[. I kinda prefer the bonus gold only tooltip or maybe both. But the inflated tooltip doesn't tell me what I want to know - which is how this item was effective?
