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So, jungle items...

JustMyBassCannon··5 votes·1,568 views

There's a TL;DR after the break.

Ever since jungling has been considered a consistent role that needs specialized itemization--basically, after Madred's Razors and Wriggle's Lantern went through their peaks and troughs--there has been a consistent problem with the role and its items.

It starts with the fact that jungle camps don't bring in the same income as minion waves. Yes, this is partly because of nerfs to jungle gold gain and respawn timers, but even back when it was a less prominent role, junglers didn't tend to keep up in gold gain with their laning teammates. That doesn't remain a problem all game, as junglers are expected to eventually stop farming camps and start roaming with the team, pushing lanes, and all those other team-related things that bring gold income. But, for early-game, junglers are usually set back in gold gain. And if the gold gain of jungle camps is buffed to be on par with laning, then it gives laners a huge incentive to sweep camps or steal buffs early-game.

To offset this, jungle items are strong for their costs. I mean, just look at the upgrades; after your chosen smite, you're paying 1400 gold for whichever upgrade you take. item 3709 is the least initially efficient, a base 71% efficiency before the passive, requiring you have at least 600 bonus health from other sources before it's naturally 100%. By that point, you have (900 * 1.25) = 1125 bonus HP. EDIT: Oh, and it also turns off the Sunfire aura if you aren't in combat, something people have always wanted. item 3708 is over 125% cost-efficient standing alone. item 3707 is over 133% cost-efficient standing alone. item 3710 is 150% cost-efficient, treating the on-hit magic damage as 20 gold per point, without stacks. After stacks, it's almost 193% efficient.

However, this creates a problem. These massively-efficient items exist for the junglers' benefit, because they don't earn gold very quickly early-game. But these items end up being used in the lane, making the power offset of these items far more obvious.

Health stackers took Cinderhulk. AS-scaling champs picked up Devourer. Sheen-proc AP champs were using Runeglaive. I have absolutely no doubts that the new design for Warrior (seen previously on the PBE, but not currently there) would be seen in the lane as well.

This happened with past iterations of jungle items, as well. So we end up with this same cycle of "Jungle's a weak role," > "New jungle buffs," > "Jungle buffs are being abused by non-junglers," > "Jungle buffs reverted or invalidated by nerfs," > rinse, dry, repeat.

Remember when the old Devourer had a monster kill requirement?

The old iteration of Devourer, called Feral Flare required you to get a certain number of large monster kills or champion kills/assists. Each one granted a stack, as long as you had Hunter's Machete, and once you hit 25-30, Wriggle's Lantern would become Feral Flare.

Why can't we put a similar limiter on all the jungle items, but specifically only counting large monster kills?

Wouldn't it make it harder for laners to abuse jungle items if they had to either cripple their own jungler or counter-jungle in order to build stacks? And if they took Smite, but didn't bother with a Hunter's Machete option until a point late enough in the game that they could just free-roam and farm all the camps in a few minutes, they've probably already won the game--with Smite taking up one of their precious summoner spells--because the other team isn't stopping them from roaming the whole map.

It also actually gives people a reason to consider counter-jungling as a strategy, to delay the enemy jungler's build.

Thoughts? Alternate ideas? Discussion is welcome, criticism is wonderful.

17 Comments

HaIlMonitor1 votes

I am really curious how jungle items are considered cost effective? I mean warrior gives 15 more ad for combat stacks but cost 913 more gold. I mean does the other 30ish % come just from the smite buff or what?

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

Cost efficiency is based on how much gold you spend on the item.

Yes, the first 850 gold is spent on Machete, and then one of the Smite upgrades. Those are not factored into the math, as neither of those upgrades provide any of the stats given by the different enchantments.

Hunter's Machete gives combat regen and bonus DPS against monsters, as well as increased gold gain for killing large monsters. Most junglers clear 4-6 camps before buying their specific smite upgrade, which is about 60-90 gold of the cost refunded by the item itself. So you're spending about 310-340 gold initially for the combat regen and damage against monsters (which makes a significant early-game difference, I don't know of many junglers that can go without it).

Stalker's Blade, Skirmisher's Sabre, Poacher's Knife and Ranger's Trailblazer each cost 450 gold, and the upgrade does two things: it upgrades the Machete bonus damage, regen and gold gain, and it grants a variant bonus to Smite. Each one, except Poacher's Knife, is considered regularly useful and usable. Stalker is a solid chasing tool, Skirmisher has high dueling strength, and Ranger makes clearing camps (and stacked minion waves) extremely easy. Thanks to the increase in gold gain--specifically doubling to 30 against large monsters--the smite upgrades can even pay in full for the cost of Machete if you keep grabbing camps through the game.

The enchantments' gold values are factored on their price of 1400 gold, because that's the gold spent specifically on the stats gained from them.

In the case of the Warrior upgrade, you are spending 1400 gold on 40 AD (worth 1440 gold, 36 gold per point), 10% CDR (317 gold, 31.7 gold per point), and 10 Armor Pen (120 gold, 12 gold per point). It's 1400 gold for stats worth 1877 gold, which is a tiny bit over 134% efficient.

In case you were wondering, Brutalizer itself is 900 + 317 + 120 = 1337 gold in stats, or 100% efficient.

Cheeseyoger1 votes

I've never liked the idea of certain items ONLY being available to certain roles; when the smite requirement on jungle items showed up, I was honestly pretty put off, and I'm glad that laners decided to try taking smite to get around it. Don't get me wrong, in no way do I want junglers to suffer because we laners feel left out. I'm all for the bonus gold junglers get from clearing jungle camps and other quality of life buffs junglers get while doing their jungle thang. But I think limiting who is allowed to buy certain items limits the flexibility league really thrives on.

Personally, I think one of the greatest things about league is that you can do just about anything you want to do. Will it all work? Hell no, there's five people making it their sole objective to defeat whatever you try to do. But you can try. Sometimes you'll even find something really effective. Jungling itself is a testament to this I feel like. At some point, someone pretty much said, "You know, if I can tank these suckers without minions taking the hits for me, I can really screw with some people in the other lanes coming out of the fog of war." It's not always easy, and it doesn't always work; some champions flop as junglers, some players flop as junglers, heck--some strategies don't even work that well (ever hear of double jungling?), but it works enough, and the potential is great enough that people stick with it and keep trying new ways to make it even better.

TLDR; The point of all this is, I think the answer lies in making jungling itself more beneficial, not in making things only junglers get to access to. For example, what if we added a buff to machete based items that did something along the lines of: for every 10 seconds you haven't killed an enemy minion, killing large monsters grants 5 extra gold (with some sort of upper cap so junglers don't get 500 gold per large mob just by not taxing lanes on ganks)

And can we take smite off of jungling items? Smiteless jungling was hard, but some people could do it and it just opened up more windows for game diversity.

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

If you really think that limiting who can buy what, are you upset that melees can't use Runaan's Hurricane, or that ranged champs can't use Ravenous Hydra? Sure, they can buy them, but the effects won't work on them because of the Ranged/Melee limiters.

How about the fact that only Viktor gets Hex Core, the only item in the game to grant +180 AP (recent PBE change)?

If not, why not?

Limiting who can buy a specific item is a balancing mechanism. It's not the most popular, for the community and for Riot, but it's sometimes necessary. In the case of jungler items, it's needed because the moment that jungler items are efficient and effective enough to make junglers a strong role in the team fight phase, champions in the lane start taking jungle items to abuse the efficiency with their higher gold gain. As I said, it has happened in the past, and it continues to happen.

And if we make jungling itself more beneficial, it just returns us to the older problems. Specifically, counter-jungling being able to cripple someone by stealing a single camp or buff at the right time, and laners being able to gain a significant early-game boost if they sweep a single camp or buff on their way to the lane.

Cheeseyoger1 votes

I like having my options open, basically. I see what you're saying about hydra and runaan's, but to me it doesn't feel the same. Mainly because you can still buy the item. I don't ask that every item be viable for everyone, just that it be an option.

I would never buy deathcap on zed, he'd get nothing from it; similarly, i'd never buy runaans on malphite--there's just no gain from it. But the fact that i could buy it, i think is really valuable. Sometimes things are on the fence, they could go one way or the other. Ezreal could go ad, or he could go ap; malphite could go tank, or he could go ap burst; and sometimes league updates small features on champions that completely change what's viable for them (imagine if old gangplank couldn't crit or apply on hit effects with his Q, so much would have changed in his play).

Basically, I don't mind items having different effects for melee, range, smite casts, dealing physical damage, dealing magic damage, what have you. I really care most about whether or not an item can be chosen despite how less effective it would be in a certain use. I want to be able to decide for myself if it's good enough for the situation i'm looking at. Sometimes the plan you're running needs a QSS, even though they have only physical damage threats. You just have to decide when you get there.

As for the team fight efficiency of jungle items, I think it would make more sense to have jungle items be more jungle efficient. Make it so having one makes clearing easier, give brief movement speed buffs for completely finishing a jungle camp, give bonus gold for not having farmed lane minions, give them utility features that help with ganking/counterganking. Make it so the items are valuable to junglers, not just more valuable in general.

And if you're concerned this leaves them unable to participate in team fights, consider ruby sight stone. Other than some pretty sweet health, it has no stats. At all. Just ward charges. But those wards are so incredibly instrumental in setting up and defending against big plays that it's more than worth it, every game.

I think there's room in league to make jungle items better for jungling without making them overpowered in league of legends overall.

Please pardon any poorly written sections, I'm a bit too tired for peak communication abilities.

Am i being overly protective of my abilities to change up plans in game/run less common strategies? Should purchases be decided by how useful they are for your role instead of accessibility restrictions? What are your thoughts?

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

{quoted}

I like having my options open, basically. I see what you're saying about hydra and runaan's, but to me it doesn't feel the same. Mainly because you can still buy the item. I don't ask that every item be viable for everyone, just that it be an option.

I would never buy deathcap on zed, he'd get nothing from it; similarly, i'd never buy runaans on malphite--there's just no gain from it. But the fact that i could buy it, i think is really valuable. Sometimes things are on the fence, they could go one way or the other. Ezreal could go ad, or he could go ap; malphite could go tank, or he could go ap burst; and sometimes league updates small features on champions that completely change what's viable for them (imagine if old gangplank couldn't crit or apply on hit effects with his Q, so much would have changed in his play).

Basically, I don't mind items having different effects for melee, range, smite casts, dealing physical damage, dealing magic damage, what have you. I really care most about whether or not an item can be chosen despite how less effective it would be in a certain use. I want to be able to decide for myself if it's good enough for the situation i'm looking at. Sometimes the plan you're running needs a QSS, even though they have only physical damage threats. You just have to decide when you get there.

It's the freedom to build that concerns you, basically.

As for the team fight efficiency of jungle items, I think it would make more sense to have jungle items be more jungle efficient. Make it so having one makes clearing easier, give brief movement speed buffs for completely finishing a jungle camp, give bonus gold for not having farmed lane minions, give them utility features that help with ganking/counterganking. Make it so the items are valuable to junglers, not just more valuable in general.

Except the item needs to be worth using late-game.

If the jungler items aren't useful in team fights--the focus of the game--then you're forcing them to choose between jungling using non-jungler items, pushing through a slightly weaker early-game, so they don't waste gold on a set of items that don't have late-game value, or using the jungler items, then selling them late-game, which ends up costing them more gold as well.

And if you're concerned this leaves them unable to participate in team fights, consider ruby sight stone. Other than some pretty sweet health, it has no stats. At all. Just ward charges. But those wards are so incredibly instrumental in setting up and defending against big plays that it's more than worth it, every game.

  1. Sightstone is effective specifically for supports and health-scaling junglers, because supports don't actually need much in stats to function at full capacity, and health-based junglers can use that bit of health as an excuse to go Sightstone+Sweeper instead Totem+whatever (more vision at the cost of pure stats).

  2. People have been asking for Sightstone upgrades more effective--and more diverse--than the Ruby Sightstone for a while, now. Not many players intentionally upgrades to Ruby Sightstone before full build, because it's not really worth the gold for 1 more ward charge per recall and a little bit more HP. Sightstone itself is definitely worthwhile, but Ruby Sightstone is less so.

I think there's room in league to make jungle items better for jungling without making them overpowered in league of legends overall.

Please pardon any poorly written sections, I'm a bit too tired for peak communication abilities.

Am i being overly protective of my abilities to change up plans in game/run less common strategies? Should purchases be decided by how useful they are for your role instead of accessibility restrictions? What are your thoughts?

The problem is based in the fact that junglers have lower gold gain, particularly early-game, compared to other roles. This is why jungle items are relatively cheap. If you have an item that only benefits a jungler in the jungle--in other words, not granting any late-game benefit in team-fights--then it's a catch-22 of "gimp myself early-game or gimp myself late-game." On the other side of the problem, if jungler items are easy to access outside of the jungle as well as useful late-game, it gives laners an incentive to pick them up and abuse them.

Shortly, the problem isn't that the items aren't good enough for jungling. Rather, that they're stuck in a limbo of either not being good enough for late-game, or they're good enough to be abused by non-junglers.

Now, specifically on the subject of restricting Machete, while I understand Riot did that for the sake of the Smite upgrades, I really don't see why they couldn't have just left Hunter's Machete as a solo piece, and just let the Smite upgrades not take an item slot. I mean, they've already got one champion (Gangplank) with a spell that's upgrade-able, but doesn't take item slots to do it. They've proven they could do it.

Instead, have the limiter for the item upgrades specifically be large monster kills. Sure, anyone can take Hunter's Machete, but you have to take down 5 large monsters to get the jungling-beneficial upgrade, and another 10 to get the late-game upgrade. That way, they actually need to focus a little on jungling to benefit from its upgrades. It also makes it more restrictive for laners to take, because they can't afford to cripple their own jungler early-game or constantly counter-jungle for the sake of the item upgrade.

And it helps if Dragon doesn't count as 5 stacks, as well. >.>

In any case, you were quite clear on your explanations, and I respect your perspective. However, sometimes an accessibility restriction might be the only rational way to keep an item from being abused by the wrong champions. It can be as direct as literally restricting an effect (just imagine if Ravenous Hydra wasn't melee only), or it could be indirect, like making the item inefficient for them (Sheen would be super-useful on Riven, but she doesn't use AP or Mana at all, so you never see her build Sheen, Iceborn or Trinity).

Cheeseyoger1 votes

I definitely see what you're saying about late game fall off. It's essentially the same problem some people had a while back on viktor where his unique item felt like it was holding you back from a true six item end game. I never played him enough to know if it really was a handicap, but I can see how jungle items easily could be.

Now, what do you think of this idea: Junglers tend to be pretty mobile right? They spend much of the early game running laps across the map and back ganking and clearing, and late game everyone building damage tends to be strong enough to quickly clear a few camps. So what if the jungle item had a couple late game items it built into that either help with pushing a lane or establishing dominance near neutral objectives (mainly dragon and baron).

Here's roughly what i'm imagining. The upgrades have a unique passive whereby killing large monsters grants a charge that can be spent differently depending on which upgrade you go for.

Pushing upgrade -- Unique Active: Release an allied wraith that pushes down the nearest lane. No cooldown (Max 8 active wraiths at once)

Objective control upgrade -- Unique Active: Release an allied guardian at target location. Guardians are immobile, and in standby mode, they simply grant vision of the area. When an allied champion is near a guardian, it becomes active, ranged attacking the target of the closest allied champion.

This would give junglers a unique build influence over two of the most important activities for closing out games without giving up free stats to opportunistic lane shoppers.

JustMyBassCannon2 votes

Yeah, the first iteration of Viktor's passive is a good example. The way it scaled, none of the upgrades were cost-efficient, and it was generally only useful to take the W or E upgrade, since you couldn't upgrade all of them.

Minion spawning upgrades seem interesting, if a bit of a strange direction to take. The main problem there is the disproportionate strengths and weaknesses. Being able to spawn an army of wraiths while pushing a lane is a lot of power, but if the push is stopped by enemy champions, you've wasted a large number of charges. Being able to spawn a personal turret minion or mini-Vilemaw or however you perceive this guardian mob would be useful, and you'd almost never run out of charges, but they need someone to be near them in order to be used as more than a glorified ward (and I'm assuming they don't move).

And that's without accounting for how strong they are. Balancing the minions themselves in addition to the jungle items would be adding a lot more complexity to the formula. It could work, eventually, but it would take a lot of fine-tuning.

JustMyBassCannon1 votes

Any thoughts? Anything?

Cheeseyoger1 votes

Yeah, it would take a lot of tweaking and balancing. I think it would be fun to see, though

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