Sated Devourer Outclasses Other Jungle Items.
"Need to make the jungle more diverse." -Riot, summarized jungle ideals for season 5.
If you wanted to make it more diverse, it needs to not stop making such things like Sated Devourer, but instead make more Sated Devourer equivalents. Here are some of my ideas about the jungle items as a whole. I fully believe that being a jungler means that you dedicate your time to objective control, clearing for money, and ganking lanes.
First up is Cinderhulk. The damage per second is less than Sunfire Cape, and while it doubles against monsters, it isn't ideal when you could instead buy the actual Sunfire Cape and duel with Champions rather than just monsters. It's incentive on release was to make it easier for tanky Champions to clear the jungle just as fast as other Champions. However, I don't think it truly rewarded them to stay in the jungle. In order to make this a bit more favorable for tanky Champions, it needs to hit on the idea that it will be used on a tank, and if it can't have a strong offensive passive, then it needs the strong defensive passive. As with Sated Devourer, the percent bonus health could scale with large monster kills and assists, making it stack up from 15% all the way to 25%. Through the same cap as Sated, that would be about .33% for each stack. This would really emphasize the idea that a tank Champion needs to be in the jungle just as much as an assassin. Of course, these numbers are just hypothetical, so take these ideas with a hint of salt. Once the cap was finished off, it would be sated, granting another bonus in the same way Devourer grants on hits twice, such as bonus health regeneration in combat or a tank stat of the like of percent damage reduction around 5% or so.
Second up is Warrior. Undermined by the plethora of Champions that could swap it out for Devourer at any time, It only gets so much attention before it gets replaced in later games. When it was created, it was meant to help assassins in the jungle, giving them the potential to scrape up some extra kills when they aren't farming. Of course, this means they won't be in the jungle for monsters so much as they will be out ganking, but stacking up for a hypothetical Sated Warrior could do the trick. As with above, we could compare this item with Youmuu's Ghostblade. It's niche is to be for assassins to get close and shred through a squishies armor. So, as a sort of thematic ideal of a warrior, let's have the Sated Warrior grant bonus flat movement speed and attack damage with each stack, while lowering the base attack damage it gives just by a little. This lets assassins run right into lane a bit better for assassinating a prime target, and certainly fits the theme of finding a target like a warrior would. Once sated, it could grant another stat similar to Devourer's double on hit, such as bonus movement speed towards enemies, or bonus armor penetration.
Third, but still not last, is Runeglaive. Runeglave fits a nice sort of niche as an item for mages. It actually lets a lot of squishy, magic damage based junglers to clear with decent time, but at the cost that they can mostly only do that. For this item, it would be tricky to change up nicely to bring it up to par with Devourer. In my instances, I have seen ideas to change it to something like Luden's Echo for the splash damage, and have seen ideas to give it a passive like Iceborn Gauntlet so that the mages can be stickier. I don't think either of these are what it needs in order to bring it into light, however, I have had one concept that fit quite well. Mages are supposed to deal damage through spells, and the ideal jungler that deals magic damage would need to make it either bursty or unavoidable. Since it can be tricky to do either, it makes sense to give them something more reliable on their spells. Let's give Runeglaive a new passive that marks enemies, with a rune for thematic effect, that auto attacks can then trigger. Since basic attacks aren't avoidable except by dodging, this is a guaranteed way to get them some more damage. Also, it means that the champions themselves need to land their spells, otherwise the mark won't be applied. The damage of this mark might increase with stacks, and once sated, the cooldown for the passive could shorten or the mage could mark multiple targets.
Finally, for my last subject, as a side note to anyone that still cares about Poachers Knife, I have a concept for that too. The 'White Smite' has been underused since its' release, and their's a reason why. Nobody needs to focus on counterjungling if they can just gank or farm their own lane. Granted, they still need to protect their red and blue buffs, but other than that, this variant of smite has hardly any use. As a crazy idea, let's give this smite an advanced power; this item grants smite 50% increased true damage. This allows for someone wanting to smite monsters and only monsters the advantage, while they lose out on other forms of power the other smites bring. This would allow for them to contest dragon with greater ease, and even let them clear out their camps faster and push back superminion waves.
These are just my ideas on how the jungle items should make diversity actually work. Give certain niches of champions even more of a reason to be that niche, instead of conforming to the meta like robots. Of course, I really don't expect too many of these ideas to be implemented anywhere in the game for now, and with Pre-season coming around the corner, it's just a waiting game to see what Riot does this year. Thanks for taking the time to read this, if you did, and tell me what you think about the above ideas.
