Proposed Shield Bash Buff/Change and Jungle Diversity
I have been experimenting with shield bash recently because it seems fairly week. As a jungle main, and someone who mostly plays tanks and fighters I feel there is a way to make the rune slightly better and give some variety to the jungle. Shield Bash currently only procs on basic attacks on enemy champions and does not really do enough damage or give enough defensive stats to consider taking it over Demolish (the tower damage/plate gold is worth much more, especially after a successful gank) or Font of Life (Although this really depends on which champ you are playing).
In fact, even as tank/bruiser junglers, it is most often a better choice to not even go for resolve when playing as a champion that uses shields. Resolve is pretty much the WORST tree Primary or Secondary for junglers, even if you are a tank jungler. None of the runes help with clear speed or survivability besides maybe Revitalize (again, depending on which champ you are playing). Any other tree is a more viable option for jungling.
Sorcery- Celerity/Water Walking can help with clear speed and better ganks Domination- Ravenous or Relentless Hunter for healthier clears or better clear speed and better ganks Precision- Legend line offers clear speed or survivability with Alacrity or Bloodline Inspiration- All of them except for Minion Dematerializer are useful in the jungle
Many top tier junglers right now who use the Resolve tree take it solely for Aftershock because it is the only Keystone that really helps at all as a jungler.
Grasp cannot be procced enough to be useful and Guardian is used on very few champs besides supports and Ivern.
I believe making Shield Bash proc on monsters would bring some lower tier or off-meta champs into the jungle. The lowest cooldown for a shield at level 1 is 10 seconds for a lot of champs, but there are some with lower cooldowns. This change would give a helping hand to some champs who struggle with clear early by giving them a little bit of extra damage every once in a while. At level 1 the flat damage is only 5 so I don't feel it would be over powered or anything.
Here is a list of champions that would be helped the most. With shield cooldowns at 10 seconds level 1: Shen, Malphite, Diana, Karma and Lulu With shield cooldowns below 10 seconds at level 1: Rumble, Tahm Kench, Orianna and Viktor
I can only really think of one champ who might be problematic with this change and that's Udyr, who has very quick cooldowns (about 3.5 seconds with 40% CDR), but I don't think most Udyr players would take it since he falls off late anyway and is heavily reliant on getting kills early so the slight boost in clear speed it would give would make it somewhat of a pointless option.
I feel like the champs most effected by this would be Shen, Malph, Diana, Karma, Rumble and Orianna (remember when
jungle was a thing? It was pretty fun.)
Shen, Diana and Malph are played rarely in the jungle with Malph being played mostly as a full AP cheese pick, despite his recent changes to make his clear better. Rumble, Victor and Orianna in the jungle would bring some much needed excitement to it, as the amount of AP junglers in meta currently is close to none.
What do you guys think about Shield Bash doing damage to monsters? Overall I think it could help bring some fresh faces to the jungle.