Devourer Conundrum

Riot has historically been strugglign with these on-hit, stacky items. Feral Flare was rebalanced a few times, and ultimately removed. Then however we saw the return with Devourer which again has been rebalanced and reworked several times... Following the latest nerf, Riot has come out and said "Devourer itself is a problem" and that more / bigger changes will likely be made to it this season;

_"We're nerfing Devourer because we believe Devourer itself is a problem. It's intended to be a mid game power spike that at present is coming online too quickly and contributing a bit much before it's sated. As a result we're both making it a bit harder to stack and reducing its power when not sated. While Devourer itself hasn't been changed recently players have got significantly better at optimizing collection of stacks, those from Scuttle/Dragon/Rift Herald in particular. We did look at whether we should reduce the number of stacks those monsters granted. We felt strongly though that pulling Devourer junglers into more contested objectives was really valuable though, as a way to offset the low interaction PVE play that farming junglers engage in.

Longer term I suspect we may end up making heavier modifications to Devourer too sometime this season. It does some cool things, but the play patterns it promotes and some of the power spikes it creates have been costly to the game at times. It's also an approach that can be extremely dominant in low level play without being functional at all in top tier play."_

I agree it does some cool things, the Phantom Hit mechanic is neat.

Why is Riot so stubborn on keeping the jungle-stacking mechanic in the game though? It has always been a problem for the longest time, through-out every iteration. "Spikes too hard," and "Poor play patterns" have been repeated so many times throughout the history of Feral Flare and Devourer.

This item seems entirely redundant to me; junglers are already stacking gold from camps in order to buy their items in the first place. Junglers are already counter-jungling / being counter-jungled because that influences their income and power timing. Junglers are already drawn to contested objectives, because they're important in their own right, not because they give 5 stacks. Junglers are already looking for kills assists to stack more gold or snowball their laners.

I think it would be fine to turn Devourer into a more moderate item with Phantom Hit, that only costs gold.

Better yet, have Devourer give Junglers something new to care about that unlocks Sated.