I Want to Talk About the Jungle!

Hey all, Everybody's been talking (and complaining) recently about sated devourer, runeglaive mid, and jungle diversity... I've been dying to talk about the state of the jungle as a whole, how it can be improved, and what everybody sees as the ideal jungle. I want to pitch a change to the current iteration of jungle items in hopes that it will facilitate discussion and help us settle on something that will not only make the jungle a beautiful place for junglers, but also keep laners from feeling oppressed by new items or forced into using smite for a "better" item. I failed to keep this from being a wall of text, but I hope you'll have a read anyway! [tldr at bottom]

First, increase the number of different roles that can come out of the jungle: I dream of a world where supports, mages, assassins (AD and AP), fighters, marksmen, tanks, and whatever I missed can jungle and all feel like they have unique play patterns and they can do the job that they're meant to for their team. Obviously, each champion from each class will have different strengths and weaknesses, and many might not be able to jungle. I think it's fine that some champions are just bad at clearing the jungle (maybe you should just keep that Jinx in the bot lane Q.Q) -- as long as each (or at least, most) roles have some representation in the jungle, even if it's only necessary for niche strategies and comps. With something like Runeglave, it does help mages clear the jungle a bit, but only those who could already clear the jungle fairly easily with the first two or three clears. On the PBE, Riot tried something that I thought was pretty cool: the health regen during combat on machete increases when your health is under 50%, allowing weak early-game junglers to sustain a little bit through their first few clears and actually survive until their power spike. The obvious problem with this is that it changes what the optimal clear is for strong junglers. Instead of trying to stay at high life during their clear by chugging potions, they could instead sit at 50% health and clear without taking any damage, then smite red buff and be at basically full health. You would get a more efficient clear by letting yourself get more injured. This is very counter-intuitive and I don't think Riot, nor my "Ideal Jungle" want to reward players for letting themselves get low in the jungle, EVEN if it seems like "Risk vs Reward" in the fact that you could be invaded while you're at 50%. However, expanding on this same idea, what if your damage against monsters increased by, say, 20% at full life, down to 0% at 0 life. The magic damage on hit would have to be toned down a little bit to compensate, but now weak junglers who need the extra sustain give up the extra offensive power to survive, while junglers who keep their health up without using the machete's full power get rewarded with slightly faster clears. Everybody's happy! Additionally, a small increase to mana regen while in combat with monsters increasing with missing mana would slightly reduce mage dependence on blue buff, allowing them to get out their main damage spell at least once or twice more before having to back.

Now that a few more champions can persevere through their first clear, lets talk about what they can buy. Personally, I like how the jungle item + enchantment system is right now. It creates a lot of possible options and grants more champions the ability to jungle well by either supplementing their weaknesses or fortifying their strengths. That said, poachers needs a bit of tuning to increase its allure. Possibly just giving move speed when smiting and killing a large monster in your own jungle, or allowing smite to be used on enemy champions for a large, but rapidly decaying movespeed buff away from that target, making you feel a bit safer when venturing into the enemy's jungle with smite. Skirmisher's is a little bit awkward too, since its purpose is to give junglers a tool to duel strong opponents, but it's still commonly used on tanks as a mini-exhaust to stay in a carry's face for way too long. I think a healthy change would be to decrease the damage reduction % and move some of that power to increase movement speed each time the marked target is attacked. This allows skirmishers to be able to stick to their target, as well as slip away if need be, but not be unkillable. I also want to introduce a new item, primarily for junglers who don't need the sustain from ranger's and simply want to farm their own jungle (it's probably not necessary, but I want to add another enchant, so it's only fair to add an item as well!). This could decrease the respawn times of smited camps, give additional gold every time a large monster is smited, give an extra stack/charge for your jungle item, or, you know.. something cool... I really want to talk about the enchantments way more than the base items. Cinderhulk is a weird item. It creates a hyperscaling tank that basically has to build more health if they want to be efficient. Moreover, its power isn't connected to the jungle at all, so of course top-laners and tanks outside of the jungle would want it. I believe tanks shouldn't challenge marksmen in the late-game scaling department, but instead challenge them with their engage and crowdcontrol ability. Something like "400 health, 10% cdr, unique passive: deals [20 + 5% bonus health] magic damage to when attacked (half damage to champions). unique active: increases movespeed of nearby allies by 10% (+1% for each large monster takedown, up to 35%) for 3 seconds. If used within 20 seconds of taking down a large monster, it also shields for [50 + 30%AP + 10% bonus health] for the duration and causes your next basic attack against enemy champion to root for 1 second." I imagine it being thorn-themed, for the root and return damage effect, but I suppose it doesn't matter too much ^_^. The return damage helps these tanky champions clear the jungle a bit faster, as cinderhulk did, but doesn't deal as much damage to champions, especially if they're able to focus fire on the back line and not attack the tank in their face. The movespeed is a bit weak early-game, but will eventually ramp up to create big pick and engage opportunities. For the others, I kind of lump Runeglaive and Devourer together as "balanced on a select few and really bad on most" or "balanced on most, but really broken on a select few." Most players would tell you, Sated Devourer on Yi, Shyvana, kayle, Jax, and a few others is ridiculously strong, especially when they (shyvana in particular) can get tanky and still do tons of damage. Although the idea of a "shadow hit" sounds really cool, when a small handful of champions benefit from a mechanic way more then the rest, it becomes really hard to balance and a lot of champions that could be fairly strong in the jungle with this item just get completely overshadowed by those that synergise really well... I think I would keep it exactly the same, except change it to every second attack within 5 seconds deals an additional [40% Total AD] physical damage and ignores 30% of the target's armor and magic resist. This is still a huge powerspike when reaching 30 stacks, and it still synergises decently with buying things like botrk, since its on-hit damage would ignore some magic resist, but this way it would be more consistent across many champions and it creates a hyperscaling mechanism that makes this item extremely powerful when the user has no tank stats, and a bit less powerful when they opt for the tank route. Runeglaive is the same way: if you would be a good Trinity Force user, then you're probably a good runeglaive user. While there are a lot of decent triforce users trying runeglaive out in the jungle, it still doesn't make sense to me that the only AP item in the jungle would only be a good pickup on champions that can already proc sheen well and have decent base AD. My suggestion addresses these problems and ties a good amount of its power to clearing the jungle, (so AP Ezreal mid can stop 1-shotting me now, thx). Builds from Aether Wisp and jungle item: "Gives 50AP, 10 magic pen, 5% movespeed and 10% cdr. Unique passive: killing a large monster grants a charge, max of 4. Charges are consumed on basic attacks and spell hits on champions, dealing bonus magic damage (scales with AP). If a spell hits multiple champions, deals 50% bonus damage to each. Unique active: Consume a charge to create a small aoe (think hydra but runeglavey) that deals the same amount of magic damage to champions and minions, and double damage to monsters. Returns 20% missing mana if used on monsters. Epic monster takedowns instantly grant 4 stacks. " Warrior's (Builds from jungle item + pickaxe): Grants 30 AD, and 10% Cooldown Reduction. Large monster takedowns grant 1 stack, up to 5. Activate to consume all stacks, giving 3 bonus AD, up to 15, 3 armor pen, up to 15 and 2% movement speed, up to 10% for 15 seconds. Epic monster takedowns grant 5 stacks." I wanted to allow early-game fighters and assassins to feel like they get to be aggressive and come out of the jungle fired up and ready to get their lanes rolling early, whether they're AP or AD. That said, I think it's important to allow them to feel distinct from one another. While early-game mages can focus on their combos to chain all 4 charges in an explosive gank, or land a couple and save the rest for a return gank, to help clear their jungle, or to help other lanes. The AD assassins, however are more explosive, charging in with the movement speed and combat stat boosts of all their stacks in an all-or-nothing blitz. Finally, a new enchantment: An arcane magic enchant for late-game mages! It's built out of jungle item and needlessly large rod. "+80AP, charges up to 750 before transforming. Each charge increases max mana by 1. Unique Passive- Insight: Grants Ability Power equal to 3% of maximum mana. Large monster takedowns restore mana by 4% max and adds 10 charges. +5 charges for each basic attack or spell cast that hits a monster (max 2 times per 8 seconds). Epic monster takedowns grant 25 charges. At 750 stacks, it transforms, adding arcane fire to all abilities, dealing damage over time (scaling with ap and current mana). Line and AoE Skillshots (Ezreal q, corki q) will leave a trail of fire behind its path for 5 seconds, dealing damage over time to any enemies standing on it. Single target spells (Ezreal e) deal additional damage over time to that target (~1 second of standing on skillshot trail damage), Multi-target spells (Karthus ult) deal half the damage of single target spell burn to each target, Damage over time abilities (Malzahar e) apply the same as single target spell, only once on first tick. Channel (Karthus e) burn for about 50% dps of standing on skillshot trail, fire disappears immediately when spell is deactivated or out of range. I would hope that it does nothing for non-damaging skillshots (karthus w, lux w), but who knows if that's hard to code. I can think of some champions who would get a lot more out of this effect than others (heimer w, singed sounds pretty dumb?), which is the same problem that I have with sated devourer and runeglaive (to an extent). Any other ideas for an interesting lategame mage jungle enchant? Do you guys think we need a mage jungle enchant?

I obviously don't expect anybody to read this and be like "oh shit, you're right... this will fix all the problems," but I think it's a good place to start discussions. I want to hear your thoughts on what's wrong with the current jungle, what's wrong with my jungle and how riot could get the jungle to the state where they can "just stop fucking with it already." What I'm really looking at is tying jungle power to clearing camps in an interesting way and giving different roles the feeling that the jungle item they choose is enabling them to do their role properly, without any one or two champions or roles being completely dominant. I'm sure everybody has their own ideas how this would be best accomplished, so lets hear some interesting thoughts. Thanks for reading and commenting (^^)/

[don't get too hung up on the numbers. I did a little bit of work comparing it to other items and cost-efficiency of each stat, but most of them are pulled straight from my anus. Remember: numbers can be re-balanced, but if the item is unbalanced or uninteresting in its core mechanics (which I think sated devourer is), then that's when it becomes a problem. ]

[tldr : Increase jungle diversity by changing hunter's machete to accommodate weaker early junglers and reward stronger ones. Something like 0-->20% bonus damage to monsters, increasing with % current life, and 6 health per second-->10 health per second while in combat with monsters, increasing with % missing life.

Instead of Cinderhulk: "400 health, 10% cdr, unique passive: deals [20 + 5% bonus health] magic damage to when attacked (half damage to champions). unique active: increases movespeed of nearby allies by 10% (+1% for each large monster takedown, up to 35%) for 3 seconds. If used within 20 seconds of taking down a large monster, it also shields for [50 + 30%AP + 10% bonus health] for the duration and causes your next basic attack against enemy champion to root for 1 second."

Instead of Runeglaive: "Gives 50AP, 10 magic pen, 5% movespeed and 10% cdr. Unique passive: killing a large monster grants a charge, max of 4. Charges are consumed on basic attacks and spell hits on champions, dealing bonus magic damage (scales with AP). If a spell hits multiple champions, deals 50% bonus damage to each. Unique active: Consume a charge to create a small aoe (think hydra but runeglavey) that deals the same amount of magic damage to champions and minions, and double damage to monsters. Returns 20% missing mana if used on monsters. Epic monster takedowns instantly grant 4 stacks."

Instead of Warriors: "Grants 30 AD, and 10% Cooldown Reduction. Large monster takedowns grant 1 stack, up to 5. Activate to consume all stacks, giving 3 bonus AD, up to 15, 3 armor pen, up to 15 and 2% movement speed, up to 10% for 15 seconds. Epic monster takedowns grant 5 stacks"

New Enchant for Mages: "+80AP, charges up to 750 before transforming. Each charge increases max mana by 1. Unique Passive- Insight: Grants Ability Power equal to 3% of maximum mana. Large monster takedowns restore mana by 4% max and adds 10 charges. +5 charges for each basic attack or spell cast that hits a monster (max 2 times per 8 seconds). Epic monster takedowns grant 25 charges. At 750 stacks, it transforms, adding arcane fire to all abilities, dealing damage over time (scaling with ap and current mana)." (fire burns in the wake of skillshots and aoe)]