[5.4] Strong alternative junglers from a Diamond Jungle main

So with 5.4 rolling out basically the entire reddit community is stuck in a state of frenzied nerf-herding and mindless whining. I'm here to tell you as a diamond-level jungler main there are a LOT of options that are not only viable but actually very strong and capable of competing with the top 4 (in the scope of soloQ at least). So here I go, I'm going to create a short list of some of the junglers that I currently find success with right now in SoloQ and some of their strengths and weaknesses.

Shaco - Shaco has insane early game gank pressure, invade potential and jungle sustain (through damage mitigation using boxes).

Strengths

• Early jungle pressure!

• Very strong first buff cheese

• His boxes can absorb a lot of damage and make clears very fast in the early game

• Can stall a losing game with obnoxious splitpushing

• Can snowball a winning game with backline assassination in teamfights and creating picks all over the enemy side of the map with his mobility and assassination potential when fed

• Unknown to many, can actually function very well as an off-tank bruiser with the right build

Weaknesses

• Takes a lot of experience to learn how to play the early game optimally

-Decision making is very very important to getting fed early

• Can fall off quite fast if you neglect to farm or fail too many ganks

• Has weak teamfighting power if behind

• Can be tough to navigate teamfights successfully especially if you get pink ward baited

Nocturne - Farms like a beast, has very strong presence on the map post-6. Can easily snowball a good early game into a carry from the jungle. Nocturne's win-rate would skyrocket overnight if people learnt not to use his ultimate as a suicide engage but rather as a follow up to allied engages.

Strengths

• Very fast clear speed ($$$)

• Strong sustained dps for a jungler

• Spellshield buffs in 5.4 ayyyy

• Strong 1v1 duelist, hard to invade him

• One of the best counter-ganking jungles around with his ultimate, Nocturne's level 6 DPS usually exceeds most other junglers as long as he isn't bursted (hello spellshield)

• Passive offers small form of sustain

• Chilling Smite nerf doesn't effect him as his ultimate will place you directly on top of them

• Great carry dive / CC follow-up

• Great potential to catch people out mid and late game with your ultimate. Catch a squishy support warding river = Free gold

Weaknesses

• Weak early game pressure

• Takes a lot of damage from monsters (need to buy more pots until you get lifesteal via bilge/botrk)

• His clear and sustain was somewhat hurt by not being able to go trailblazer -> switch to chilling smite at 6 (you need stalkers 100% of the time on Nocturne).

• Is inherently squishy, spellshield circumvents this in skirmish but likely to be bursted down quickly in teamfights

• Easy to suicide or be baited with a bad ult and cost your team greatly esp. late-game

Cho'Gath - A long forgotten jungle terror. This may be a strange comparison to some but he plays out a bit like an AP jarvan in my opinion (without the mobility j4 brings). Both have high single target burst, strong ganks with knockups starting level 2, high tank stats, high base damage, high ability scaling with strong teamfight utility.

Strengths

• Silence! - One of the last remaining silences in the game; also it's AOE so it's hard to miss and can effect multiple champions - Very strong against specific champions like glass cannon assassins/fighters Ie Kat, Riven, Yasuo, zed. One good silence leaves them stranded in the middle of your team with no escape options

• High sustain - Cho's passive grants him a ton of bonus health and will see him rarely needing to base past the first clear meaning more ganks and more farming

• Strong early game ganks - Cho has strong base damages and lots of CC, while it is possible to juke his rupture it is often difficult to do so before champions have boots and you can always chilling smite them to ensure it hits. If you silence them before rupturing there is literally no way for them to dodge it. When ganking use W+Chilling smite -> Q. They cant even flash because they are silenced

• Objective control - The best in the game at securing dragons and barons, good luck outsmiting Cho's 2000 damage feast+smite. Not even Nunu has shit on this guy.

• Fast AoE Clearing - His vorpal spikes add nice early game clear speed and all his abilities are aoe making it very easy to burst down the small mobs at camps and once you get his ultimate you get very easily oneshot camps with a spell rotation -> feast big minion.

• Itemization - Cho has TONS of itemization choices from full tank to full AP. I find a good median to be somewhere in-between. I think the best build path on him right now is Magnus -> Frozen heart -> Banshees/Randuins -> Banshees/Randuins -> Situational (More damage, More tank or GA). This build is rock solid providing damage, tankiness and importantly 40% cdr very early in the game which is helpful for utility/damage and keeping feast stacks high if you die. If you are snowballing you can throw in an optional RoA before frozen heart and potentially replace banshees with abyssal getting a deathcap or zhonyas to further compliment your Ap bruiser goodness.

• His ultimate is so good - It destroys carries and tanks alike, true damage is virtually impossible to itemize against outside stacking flat HP. Cho's ultimate does as much damage as a fully bleed stacked darius ult being able to do 300/475/650 TRUE DAMAGE with a .7 scaling ratio is just absolutely nuts but people seem unable to realize how strong that is.

• QoL changes - Cho was rarely played because he felt clunky and unresponsive in regards to his abilities like Q and R however riot has been steadily been implementing quality of life changes slowly over the past few years that have really added up and made cho feel much smoother and more fluid when combo'ing than when he used to.

• Ability damage out of the jungle - It's virtually unseen these days, there are basically no strong AP junglers left besides Nidalee so it's a good go-to when your team is AD stacked (which happens quite frequently).

Weaknesses

• Death's are costly - You lose those precious feast stacks meaning it can be easy to get reverse-snowballed if you keep dying while trying to farm feast stacks back up in aggressive games

• Poor duelist early - Cho is quite weak early, he cannot duel many if any junglers early on however with his CC and innate sustain its usually pretty hard to die on him you are just forced to run away which isn't that big of a deal really. If lee sin for example jumps you at your razor's just Q+W him and walk over to wolves and carry on like nothing happened - It really won't set you back that much, just concede anything he tries to contest you for and keep farming or ganking elsewhere. Also once you hit Magnus + Glacial shroud/frozen heart the table completely turns, you will be unkillable 1v1 to most AD jungles (so almost all of them) and should have a lot of kill potential on them. Its rare for junglers to itemize magic resist before a randuin's in current meta and a lot of junglers even swap out their magic resist gylphs for CDR meaning you will have even more power against them

• Mana issues - His spells are quite mana intensive which is why I believe you NEED to get either RoA or frozen heart (or both) as your second item. Otherwise I find you just go oom way too fast, even if you max vorpal spikes first and just auto attack jungle camps to death you will still go oom in skirmishes and teamfights so I think it is important to build mana.

• Hard to land rupture - Most champions have mobility abilities or movespeed buffs or simply the mechanical skill required to dodge Cho ruptures. This problem gets worse as champions pick up more movespeed items such as T2 boots and items like shiv, trinity, PD, Lich ect. This can be somewhat circumvented by using chilling smite in conjunction with your silence then attempting to rupture them meaning they cant rely on their abilities to dodge and have lowered movespeed to try and juke.

Overall as you can see I think Cho'gath has many many positives and very few weaknesses which are imo quite easy to play around.

Well thanks for reading, I'd just like to remind everyone that instead of spending so much time flaming and nerf-herding about your favorite FoTm jungler being nerfed you should actually try to find new champions that you actually enjoy to play and see if you can make them work in the jungle. I made it to diamond playing almost exclusively unorthodox junglers and I never felt that disadvantaged. It's up to you to figure out how to utilize your favorite junglers to their fullest potential. You shouldn't feel like you have to continue spamming the "God" junglers to climb ranks because that's total bullshit you just have to actually invest a bit of time learning and refining your champions and I'm sure you can find a lot of success on some uncommon junglers as well.

Honorable mentions: Fiddlesticks, Pantheon, Xin Zhao, Rengar, Hecarim, Sejuani, Kha'zix, Wukong, Nunu