Winrate Of Former Devourer Junglers Plummets - Why It Happens And What To Do Against It

After Bloodrazor's Release and the changes made to Guinsoo's Rageblade, a lot of champions had a shift in their winrate. Not all of the former users of Devourer had it to the same degree though, you can see patterns in groups of former Devourer users. Some of them had the most decrease in winrates or may have even come out on top. After categorizing those groups and defining which champions belong into them, I'll analayze just how much impact the changes had to them, why their winrate evolved as it did - and lastly, what changes in builds and playstyles might bring their winrate up again.

Devourer + Guinsoo's Carrys: ( Master Yi, Xin Zhao, Aatrox, Jax ) These champions make up the biggest group of former Devourer uses and have probably taken the biggest hit of them all - Xin Zhao's Winrate has dropped to 46% from being one of the top champions with a winrate of 53% in 6.8 ; Yi's and Aaatrox' Winrate have hit an abyssmal 43%, Yi from 49% and Aatrox from 52%, that is a decrease of a whole 9% within one patch cycle.

This of course stems from the fact that they relied on the combination of Guinsoo's Rageblade and Sated Devourer. When it comes to Devourer itself, Champions like Yi and Xin made us of the fact that you had the phantom-hit passive up all the time once you got sated, whereas Guinsoo's new Phantom-Hit Passive has to be stacked up first. Not only did they rely on the phantom-hit being up all the time because their kits focus on having an immidiate impact ( you want to jump one enemy champion and focus him down as fast as possible ), the amount of autohits you need to get off once you get Guinsoo's Rage has gone up to 6 from 4 on melee champions which makes this much more difficult than before. Then there's the Way Guinsoo's itself works now. As I said, it has been nerfed for melee champions because you need more hits to get Guinsoo's Rage and its cost Efficiency has gone down by a bunch. The only benefit that you draw from it is that its build path isn't as bad as it used to be but considering that you were farming instead of fighting the most time anyway it didn't bother you as much.

Now I want to go over what you need to change in your playstyle and builds to couteract all the problems I mentioned above. The solutions here vary from champion to champion though, so I'm going over them one at a time.

Xin Zhao: When it comes to your playstyle you now have to be much more aggresive and make use of the early game power that Xin was once known for. Since you don't need to farm all the time anymore to get sated you can make good use of the fact that your ganks are actually really strong, all your damage combined with the knockup makes for pretty good early ganks and before sated devourer hit the rift Xin Zhao used to be a ganking Jungler anyway. You can also duel the enemy jungler pretty easily. With enough Jungle knowledge you can trace your enemy down and prepare to counterjungle and countergank him to hold him back. With all the control you have now you can also focus more on objectives. Both Herald and the Dragons are much more important now and you can solo dragons rather easily, especially with all the %HP damage you now have.

When it comes to builds I would recommend you to flat out skip Guinsoo's Rageblade. You will need much more time to stack it up to make actual use of it, it has gotten much more expensive and you won't make as much use of the AP it gives. It's also now more of a lategame item and since you want to focus more on early pressure it just does not fit the build.

What I've gone for instead and what has worked extremely well for me is going for Bloodrazor into penetration items. The first reason to go for penetration is that most opponents, especially squishy ones will not have a lot of armor early on. And because of the way diminishing returns work you will deal a ton of extra damage with your passive and an early Youmuu's. If you keep stacking armorpen you will keep their armor values really low and continue to deal tons of damage. It even works pretty nicely against tanks, because you get % HP damage from your Ult and Bloodrazor and %armorpen on Black Cleaver and your passive, which gets better the more armor your enemy stacks. Lastly armorpen combines really well with all the base damage you have - your Q has a much higher base damage than AD ratio, Bloodrazor's %max. HP damage and the base damage combined with the %current HP damage of your ult.

I rush Bloodrazor on Xin Zhao and buy either Mercs or Tabis after, depending on what the enemy team has. Then you can go for either Youmuu's if you are fed and they have a lot of squishies or Black Cleaver if they are stacking a lot of armor. Then you can get the item of the two that you haven't bough yet or a Maw or a Dead Man's Plate when you are behind. A full build would look somewhat like this:

Bloodrazor ( Challenging Smite ) - Tabis/Mercs - Black Cleaver - Youmuu's - Dead Man's Plate - Maw of Malmortius

For Runes I go standard Attackspeed Quints, AD Marks and Armor Seals, For Glyphs I take 3 MRperlvl and 6 CDRperlvl to get 40% at lvl 18.

My keystone was Strength of the Ages for that sweet midgame HP boost, going 12 - 0 - 18.

Honorable mention also goes to Nocturne, who also works really well with that build and is a great alternative to Warrior Nocturne.

Master Yi: He is definitely the most problematic of them all - where most of the other candidates can make use of their early ganking, controlling and dueling power Yi has none of that and is still more of a farming Jungler, which means that we will still have to go for a more lategame-oriented playstyle. You can still solo dragons but you might not want to duel the enemy jungler early on and avoid most conflict until you have got a bunch of items and only go for opportunistic ganks while staying on the safe side.

His build has changed a lot too. You still want to go for Guinsoo's Rageblade because that Phantom-Autohit is just too good to pass up but because of the nature of the new Rageblade you will get it much later into the game, when its expensiveness isn't as bothering as it is in the early game and when you already have stacked a bunch of attackspeed to get it stacking properly.

In the early game I'd go for something that I might get a bit hated for, which is ditching Bloodrazor for Warrior. Especially after they've changed his E and the fact that the phantom-hit is much harder to get access to makes it so that Master Yi scales much better with raw AD than he does with attackspeed, even though you still need a good mix of both.

With both of these things considered, a build would probably look something like this: Berzerker's - Warrior ( Challenging Smite ) - BotRK - Youmuu's, Rageblade, Dead Man's Plate - Scimitar

Runes and masteries have not changed a lot. For Runes I still go Attackspeed Quints, AD Marks, Armor Seals and MRpervlv Glyphs and I still go for 18 - 12 - 0 with Fervor of Battle as my Keystone.

Aatrox and Jax: I'm putting these two in the same category because they are very similar and I have talked about most of their aspects already when talkinga bout Yi and Xin - they both will now make more use of their dueling powers and early control just like Xin does but they will still go for an on-hit build rather than a pen-oriented one. Both will be good at clearing camps and securing scuttles, drakes and heralds while preventing the enemy jungler from doing the same.

Their builds have also changed aswell. As pointed out above when I was talking about Yi, Guinsoo's is much better now when you get it later into the game, which leads me to believe that going for BotRK after Bloodrazor and then for Guinsoo's, probably after going for some defensive item choices first is the way to go.

Here's the build example again:

Bloodrazor - Tabis / Mercs - BotRK - Dead Man's Plate - Guinsoo's - Maw of Malmortius ( on Aatrox ) / Wit's End ( on Jax, trust me on this one )

For Runes you go for the same as Xin or Yi. I'm still a big fan of Strength of the Ages ( 12 - 0 - 18 ) but you can go for Fervor of Battle ( 18 - 0 - 12 ) aswell if you are ballsy enough.

Beefy On-Hit Devourer Bruisers: ( Shyvana, Warwick, Udyr (?) ) While they still took a good hit it wasn't as hard for them as for the Guinsoo's / Sated - Carrys because they don't rely on the phantom-hit and Guinsoo's Spike. Instead they work more with their base damage, their interaction with on-hits and their interaction with attackspeed. They usually went for Titanic Hydra into fulltank after Devourer ( now Bloodrazor ). I think the problem here is not the fact that Bloodrazor is weaker than Devourer but that their playstyle has changed and gotten a bit more difficult - less farming and more action in the early game. I'm pretty sure that slowly their winrates will rise again, especially on those who collect experience on these champions. As for how much their winrates actually dropped: Warwick's and Shyvana's went down to 49% from 53% and Udyr's went down to 46% from 49% ( though this number is not as reliable because there are still a ton of AP Echodyrs )

Shyvana: Same as always, focus less on farming your own Jungle and more on getting early pressure. This counts even much more for Shyvana than it does for other champions because she is one of the best if not THE best jungle duelist in the game and definitely has the best clearing speed in the game, which is pretty healthy to. Drakes and Herald are no problem for her, even less so that before because your autohits will deal 5,5% of their max. HP - 2.5% from your E and 3% from Bloodrazor, which just absolutely melts them. Sure, your lategame is worse now but the early game power you have now makes up for it even though you need a bit of jungle knowledge and training to pull it off properly.

Only two minor things have changed with her build in my opinion. The first and obvious one is that you take Bloodrazor instead of Devourer. The second thing is that you might want to take a Wit's End or a Banshee's as your MR item instead of a Spirit Visage because it is now giving less of the base stats you want but more regen and healing which you don't really make that much use of. You still go for strength of the ages and the standard attackspeed rune page.

Here's an example build: Bloodrazor - Tabis/Mercs/Swifties - Titanic Hydra - Dead Man's Plate - Wit's End - Randuin's Omen

Warwick: I don't even know if talking about this guy is worth it because no one plays him and he's just soooo boring. Still, for those of you who actually like him for whatever a reason, here you go.

Warwicks playstyle mainly consists of farming the jungle whenever you can, waiting until you have your ult, use it in a gank and then go back to farming until its up again. Pretty much an endless cycle until you reach the late midgame or the lategame.

The good news is that you can do exactly that much better now. Warwick could solo drakes even before that and now he does it much faster. Bloodrazor also helps with his extremely slow waveclear and he is now one of the only select few who can solo Rift Herald if you are fed enough and do it properly, considering how much it got buffed that's very rarely ever heard of. His ultimate also synegizes really well with the new bloodrazor because it will proc on-hits 5 times, which means that it will deal and extra 15% of the enemy's max. HP.

His lategame is worse now but it wasn't really all that good to begin with. Because everyone gets QSS for your ultimate at that stage and you will get kited much easier so you are essentially just a w buff-bot. In some cases players don't do any of the two so you might be fine anyway.

His builds and runes are still the same, just as Shyvana except you can actually buy Spirit visage and make use of it. You could also consider going for a BotRK instead of or with a Titanic Hydra as it is an item that is pretty much made for Warwick but you will have to give up some defensive stats for it.

The obligatory build: Bloodrazor - Tabis/Mercs/Swifties - BotRK - Titanic Hydra - Dead Man's Plate - Spirit Visage

Udyr: This is more of an experimental one since it has been a long time since Udyr was played as an on-hit bruiser. But considering how much Bloodrazor augments his early control power it might be time to put him in the spotlight again. I'll also talk about an off-build that focusses on Tiger Stance rather than Phoenix Stance and is more about stacking a lot of AD.

The playstyle of both versions is as active as when you are going for Runic Echoes but you will focus more on invading, dueling and taking drakes instead of stacking utility items and ganking a lot. As a rule of thumb Runic Echoes grants more utility where Warrior and Bloodrazor grants more fighting power and less utility.

On all three I'd suggest going 12 - 0 - 18 going for Strength of Ages and you are probably already sick of me repeating that again and again.

You all already know how to build Echodyr so I'm instead going to talk about Tigerdyr and Bloodrazordyr. On both you get the standard attackspeed page but with 10% CDR at lvl 18 in the glyphs to max it out.

On Tigerdyr you of course max your Q and go for Warrior, Black Cleaver and Death's Dance as your core items plus some defensive stuff like Dead Man's Plate. Since his Q has a really damn good AD Ratio you build a lot of Raw AD and you also get a lot of CDR because it is an essential stat on Udyr. Black Cleaver will give you extra Movement Speed and the Q DOT will shred the enemy's armor rather quickly. Death's Dance will not only heal you for your autohits but also the physical extra on-hit and the Q dot which gives you a lot of dueling power.

Warrior - Swifties/Tabis/Mercs - Black Cleaver - Dead Man's Plate - Death's Dance - Maw of Malmortius

On Razordyr you go for the typical on-hit bruiser Shyvana build with Titanic Hydra instead:

Bloodrazor - Swifties/Tabis/Mercs - Titanic Hydra - Dead Man's Plate - Frozen Gauntlet - Wit's End / Spirit Visage

On-Hit Devourer Marksmen: ( Kindred, Kayle, Vayne and Kog'Maw (???) )

Where most attackspeed-oriented junglers loved devourer, everyone that was ranged didn't make as much use of it as they'd like to do because Sated Devourer was gimped for ranged champions to only proc on every 4th instead of every 2nd auto. While this kept Kindred in check every other on-hit focussed marksman was held back by it. But now with the new Bloodrazor that isn't gimped for ranged champions and the new Guinsoo's that is more accessable for marksmen aswell, it might just be their time to shine.

Kindred: Even though she got a nerf for her early game in 6.9, building Bloodrazor makes up for it now. I personally think the only reason why Kindred's winrate isn't skyrocketing back to the 54% she used to be already is because people don't seem to adapt to it too quickly and are still building Warrior instead of Bloodrazor.

I think right now a good combination of attackspeed, on-hit and armorpen is the way to go on her though there are a lot of different opinions on what the best options are right now:

Bloodrazor - Zerker's - BotRK - Runaan's - Youmuu's - Sterak's/Maw of malmortius/GA/Scimitar

For Runes and Masteries you still take the same as before.

Kayle: Where she used to be held back by the fact that Devourer was gimped for ranged champions even though the phantom-hit is absolutely bonkers on her, the new Bloodrazor combined with Fervor of Battle and her E makes it incredibly hard to itemize against her because she deals both a lot of magic and physical damage now. It gets even better because she is one of the few champions Guinsoo's actually has improved on - it only needs to be stacked 6 times rather than 8 times for ranged champions and the new Guinsoo's Rage that gives her the phantom-hit without any penalties for ranged champions makes it an absolutely amazing item on her.

I go for a more CDR-oriented build as some others might go but it is absoluetly necessarry to keep her E up at all the time and to get her ult on a low cooldown. That is also why I take 10% CDR at lvl 18 in my glyphs. Something that might confuse some people is that I buy a Hextech Gunblade on her. Not only did the active improve quite a bunch aswell as the build path with the new Hextech Revolver, you will actually heal off all your on-hits, something that gives her a whole lot of sustain. Fervor of battle 18 - 12 - 0 as per usual.

Bloodrazor - Zerker's - Nashor's - Guinsoo's - Zhonya's / Abyssal - Hextech Gunblade

Kog'Maw and Vayne: You might declare me crazy but this actually has at least some validity in my opinion. Vayne and Kog'Maw always were really great with on-hit oriented builds and it just so happens to improve a lot for ranged junglers. Both have enough %dmg in their kits to clear properly and a Bloodrazor into Guinsoo's build seems to give you an immense powerspike early on. I didn't test it myself because I suck with Marksmen but some of you guys might test if it works. If so, please link me the game in your match history, I'd love to see how good it actually is or if it might actually suck completely.

You would take the standard attackspeed rune page and standard marksmen masteries with fervor of battle.

Bloodrazor - Zerker's - Guinsoo's - Runaan's - BotRK ( you might also try Hextech Gunblade on Kog'Maw for that sweet on-hit heal ) - Scimitar / GA / Wit's End

So that's basically it. Hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading until here.