Counterjungling in the new jungle; or why Poacher's Knife is less useful than Executioner's Calling
OK I'd like to start by saying the gromp buff and cinderhulk changes have been fantastic for the jungle, putting tank junglers from somewhere around "irrelevant" to "back on the map". Strategic Diversity (or lack thereof) I think has a lot to do with why you almost never even see certain junglers. Particularly dedicated counterjunglers, the ones who cannot gank and snowball lanes or themselves, but focus on crushing the enemy jungler's ability to scale.
Now let's get to the meat of it. Ganking is a solid strategy for obvious reasons, it gets your lanes ahead so they can carry you, while you sacrifice your own time that you could be spending building your own strength. Farming is a different strat that is optimal when there aren't any ganks available, or if your lanes are winning on their own, building your own strength so you can carry later, but potentially costing your lanes the early game if the enemy jungler is getting ganks on them. But what about counterjungling? Ganking junglers leave their jungle wide open, while farming junglers require, well, farm in order to succeed. Counterjungling should at least be an effective strategy to limit the strength of the enemy jungler. But does it do this? I think not. There are a variety of reasons for this. First and foremost, the changes to gold and experience in the jungle have shifted more of the gain to the smaller monsters in camps, preventing junglers from being punished as hard by partially clearing camps. Also the rubber-banding effect of the levelling jungle camps helps keep a jungler who has been set far behind catch back up with disproportionate ease, and the always-hits-late-game state of the game really makes it hard to justify the huge early risk of invading the enemy jungler. Add to this that dedicated counterjunglers typically offer weak to non-factor ganks, and you have a whole class of character that is an innate liability to their team.
With all that said, what can be done? Overall, I think the jungle changes so far are outstanding, at least when you factor in the last patch. The xp/gold balance of jungle seems pretty solid. I wouldn't touch that. Let's look at the Poacher's Knife. Strong counterjunglers, especially the dedicated ones, typically can either win fights or avoid them with overwhelming ease. These include types like Shaco, Lee Sin, Nunu, Shyvanna, Reksai, and Tryndamere. The movespeed passive on Poaching smite is completely unnecessary on them, and even if it were effective, it would be countering the one means of countering the counterjungler (thats a lot of counters, but who's counting?), which is warding your jungle and using teamwork to collapse on a guy who is now running away at homeguard speeds.
Adding the bonus gold and lower cd of the poaching smite is nice, but the point of counterjungling isnt to farm, it is to crush and starve the enemy jungler. It is the riskiest strategy by far, and has the least effectiveness to show for it. Because of the rubberbanding xp effect in jungle, you have to CONSTANTLY deny their camps throughout the game in order for your strategy to be effective. You have to be able to put them far enough behind that they cannot contest your own moves. The counter-strategy of course is to ward and catch/kill or at least drive off the enemy jungler, and prevent him from denying your camps, wasting his time so that he is the one who is not farming effectively, and as you clear your own jungle, that rubberband effect should pull you back into the game, whereas the counterjungler, through his failed efforts, has set himself behind.
I think that instead of the movespeed effect on Poaching Smite, Poacher's Knife should Desecrate the target jungle camp if it is used to kill the large monster (no effect if it fails to secure the monster, so as to force junglers like Nunu to contest camps with their Smite instead of Consume for the full effect), lowering the gold and experience that the enemy jungler can receive from it on its next spawn (no deduction from gold or xp that you earn by clearing it a second time for obvious reasons). You could potentially also allow this to buff the base stats of the camp for its next spawn, making it harder to clear, but I think that might be going too far, and might not have the intended result. It might be a good idea to remove the lowered cooldown on poaching smite as well, if you decide to do this.
I think this change would make Poacher's Knife a viable item, and promote a more interactive and rewarding counterjungle playstyle.
TL;DR: Remove the movespeed buff on Poacher's Knife, replace it with an aoe effect on large monster kill (only if smite deals the last hit) that debuffs the camp on its next spawn to grant less gold and experience to the enemy team than it normally would. (No effect on you if you clear it a second time). Might also consider reverting the smite CD bonus it offers, since the two effects in conjunction might be too strong.
Thoughts?
