How to Fix Counterjungling if Poacher's is Being Removed

Alright, so Meddler is planning to remove Poacher's Knife from the game entirely. So let's talk about how Control Jungling should be balanced in this event.

First, we need to establish the correct jungle triangle, as stated by Riot: Ganking junglers apply early game pressure. They attempt to snowball their lanes and force the enemy to play passive. They typically have high damage, high mobility, and some decent crowd control. They are the early game, high risk, high reward role.

Riot favors this role and with the release of Chilling Smite (a targeted slow, because gankers need more cc and damage) they have shifted the entire meta. Bot lane now favors supports who can chain CC and also have innate tankiness to survive early game pressure. At present, the large majority of people who 'main jungle' play ganking junglers.

Control junglers attempt to punish ganking junglers by taking camps while the jungler is ganking. Ideally, this role functions best when ganking is not a guaranteed kill (as it is currently with the existence of Chilling Smite and the incredible mobility creep of ganking junglers and laners). Control junglers attempt to keep the enemy jungler behind (in XP, not gold) so that the game descends into a 4v5. If done successfully, the control jungler gives up lane pressure in order to cripple the enemy jungler so heavily that they are useless in the mid game, which reduces the impact of snowballing laners (especially bot, since carries have terrible mid games). This should be the mid game, medium risk, medium reward role.

At present, Control Jungling is only viable due to the excessive amount of power that dragon stacking gives. Riot has reduced the XP of camps despite claiming that taking camps is the way to counter gankers, because they don't like farm junglers sitting in the jungle all day. So by nerfing the XP of camps to encourage farm junglers to gank, Control Jungling has become significantly less viable.

Farm junglers are the last role. You sit in your jungle, get a full item ahead of your opponent, and kill the entire team late. It is a late game, low risk, low reward role (because you aren't guaranteed to get that far ahead fast enough).

So, how does Poacher's Knife help here? Well, Poacher's has been a traditionally unfavored item even by what few players counterjungle this season, so let me tackle why it's a good item. First, though, I'll answer the critics.

"Poacher's Knife is a bad item because it advertises that you're going to counterjungle". If you are counterjungling before you buy Poacher's, or before the enemy team gets vision of you after you've bought Poacher's, then it doesn't matter. They already know you're counterjungling at that point. If you are ganking for some reason before you start counterjungling, then you deserve to be punished for it.

"Poacher's Knife gives no combat stats." Smite never has given combat stats until very recently, which is Riot's fault. Compared to Chilling Smite, yes, it might seem that Poacher's is undervalued, but if you camp your opponent so hard that he becomes useless, it's way more worth it than a few extra kills.

"If you're counterjungling you're looking to kill the enemy, so you should bring Challenging Smite" This one is a little trickier to answer. Yes, counterjungling does involve camping your opponent and attempting to kill them in their own jungle. Successfully doing this puts them WAY behind. The problem is that counterjungling is not ganking. There's lots of factors that would allow your opponent to simply get away from you. Attempting to kill your opponent in their jungle is a high risk, high reward situation, and if that's your thing then go for it but Poacher's will put them behind guaranteed.

Now, let's talk about why Poacher's Knife is actually good.

1. It gives you half a charge of Smite back when you Smite enemy monsters. This is amazing. This basically doubles your clear speed in your opponent's jungle, which is necessary because kills DO give XP. So if you are to counterjungle successfully, you need to take the WHOLE jungle. The WHOLE blue side or the WHOLE red side, and having Smite up much faster helps with that.

2. The speed boost is insane. If you Smite and kill an enemy jungle monster, you get a 175% speed boost that rapidly decays over 1 second (Jinx's passive, basically). This is fantasitc for stealing buffs from the enemy jungler directly. You hide in a bush, wait for them to start it, walk out and Smite and then BAM! You're gone, they are behind even more. It's not ideal, because they still get the buff timer, but it definitely frustrates your opponent to no end, and one of the biggest benefits of control jungling is dealing psychological damage to your opponent.

3. The bonus gold is necessary. Ugh. Chilling Smite again. Look, if Riot is going to buff ganking junglers to the point where they get at least one kill every 3/5 ganks, then counterjungling needs to give some bonus gold just to make sure the control jungler isn't falling behind in raw gold. It's already hard enough to keep an XP advantage.

So, if Riot removes Poacher's, then what needs to be done to make counterjungling viable?

Well, for starters, you need to buff XP given by monster camps. This will make control jungling more powerful, and also buff farming junglers. But guess what? This needs to be an equally balanced triangle for it to function, so suck it up. Ganking junglers get to snowball their lanes, they can stand to be behind themselves.

Additionally, you need to give a new Smite upgrade item that grants vision where you Smite. Is Smiting the entire enemy jungle toxic? Is a speed boost to troll the enemy too frustrating? Fine. Then give us free wards because we're the ones taking so much risk venturing into unknown territory.

Someone else had an idea to make the Machete enchants based on 'trophies' that you collect in the jungle by killing mobs, rather than just gold (to discourage laners from using jungle enchants). This would be fantastic for counterjungling. The ability to delay your opponent from getting their early game power spike if you do your job well enough is a great reward and would replace the bonus gold reward from Poacher's Knife.