Riot, please do not ship the jungle item changes. Please.

Flavi Kang·2/7/2018, 7:57:35 AM·4 votes·672 views

Please, do not change the jungle items as they allow for different play styles. Skirmishers need the red smite for ganks/dueling. Jax/lee sin need tracker's knife for more mobility. Other junglers need blue smite for ganking. Removing them just limits our choices of play style and does not achieve anything. We do not need a control ward with our jungle item as we can simply buy one. Please do not ship those changes.

5 Comments

Azadethe2/7/2018, 8:03:52 AM2 votes

The item still has Chilling Smite (so it won't hamper that play style)

The two options getting removed are Red and Green

And in Green's place, we get a refillable Control Ward, which incentivizes junglers to anti-jungle.

I do think this will lead to mage junglers building more item 3092 (which they already do), but I don't know what LeeSin is going to do, since he now needs a Ward item again too. He's been overbearing early game with Tracker though, since he can clear wards, place his own, Zombie them, for a total of 7 wards at a time.

I do think the jungle change is mostly fine.

Tormentula2/7/2018, 8:07:33 AM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Flavi Kang,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NEmcfEAX,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-02-07T07:57:35.446+0000)

Skirmishers need the red smite for ganks/dueling.

for ganks no, for dueling sure. I'd rather them just get direct buffs then be balanced around a broken smite.. the smite gives true DoT and damage reduction, riot should enable that in their kits not one item especially when there are also other items to stack that with.

Jax/lee sin need tracker's knife for more mobility.

Fair point but the game can't revolve around these two either. These two can be buffed, and jax survived on 1 trinket in top lane for a very long time.

Something worth mention is you can ward hop to the control ward AND your regular trinket, since you won't need sweeping lens like you would with trackers, you'll still have two available wards. Control wards do all the sweeping you need.

Other junglers need blue smite for ganking.

You still have chilling smite

We do not need a control ward with our jungle item as we can simply buy one.

Still saves a lot of gold, especially for those who purchase several of them. It also helps late game when everybody has 6 items and you need a control ward.

Removing them just limits our choices of play style and does not achieve anything.

Don't really see playstyle limitation. Its not really a playstyle and more of a "this smite is clearly better on this champ" deal. Skirmishers is the go-to on a lot of stuff, and the rest of the stuff skirmishers is built to counter other skirmishers. Otherwise stalkers is the alternative because it works with everything. Trackers was the playstyle one, but it has a huge elo gap and breaks pro play especially in combination with the new zombie ward.

This change should fix trackers, keeps stalkers, and enable better balancing decisions for skirmishers so they don't rely on skirmisher's sabre abuse.

meowwow72/7/2018, 8:13:38 AM1 votes

wait control wards on jungle item? welp time to start running summoner 11 supports with unsealed spellbook

Teridax682/7/2018, 12:00:19 PM1 votes

My personal concern isn't that certain junglers need certain Smite types (they can get balanced around not having them anymore after the change ships), but that this update effectively forces every jungler down the same itemization path for the first few minutes of the game. Moreover, the end result is an item so overloaded with different effects that it begs the question as to why junglers as a role need all of those little bits of power. The basic tools of jungling, i.e. Smite and jungling items, have experienced such complexity creep over the past few seasons that it's become confusing what the end goal to all of it is. Apparently Smite and jungling items are there so that junglers aren't too strong early, but then the multiple large sources of sustain and XP they get counteract that. The payoff to Smite historically was that it didn't scale in effectiveness quite as well as other spells, mainly because it had no effect on champions, but now the spell does affect champions through an item, which also builds into cheap upgrades that all give the jungler enough power to scale. It's like there's this constant alternation between efforts to impose a restriction upon junglers, and changes that give them a little bit of everything a jungler would want. Because of this, I think Riot should either not ship the changes, or go a little bit further with them and take out as much unnecessary complexity from jungler-specific bonuses as possible.