So how many of you have tried a different Malphite Jungle

We know the jungle changes are coming although I'm doubtful they will improve tank viability much. The reason for this is that the jungle has been mostly dominated by gankers and will probably always be dominated by gankers. That means Khazix, lee sin etc. It's not just the fact that they are good gankers either, it's their ability to duel. Part of being resistant to counter jungling and also having a strong invade is your ability to duel. Tank junglers have less dps which generally leaves them with weaker ganks. Especially a tank like Malphite who doesn't have hard CC out of his ult. So without his ult his damage is pretty low in comparison and also not that easy to land besides Q.

Personally I am not a fan of spirit of ancient golem in the jungle for this reason if you have another option and I believe Malphite does. He can sustain just fine and dandy with elder lizard and his ganks AND sustain much stronger with it. Sure it leaves you less tanky in a team fight early on but you are almost never team fighting after your first jungle item. From their I buy a tanky item which is usually randuins or sunfire but right after I build that tank item I go to trinity force. Trinity force I find is the saving grace for pretty much every tank jungler. Malphite has a great ability to still be able to be enormously tanky while building some offense like this. I decided to try this build when I found out that rushing straight to a trinity force on Sion in jungle was so much better and reliable than trying to build all tank. The difference is on Sion I do build ancient golem to compliment his bonus health gain.

I could go on with points but I really just wanted to put it out there that you need to try out either elder lizard, trinity, or both on Malphite in the jungle. The superior ganks and ability to finish off your opponents quickly makes all the difference.

Last thing, I still advise going all defensive tree except 1 in offense when playing a tank jungler because the defensive tree just seems much stronger in general for what it provides. It's just overkill though at that point to build all tank as a jungler.