Can we make Gromp buff actually worth it?

Hibeki··39 votes·2,942 views

Starting gromp compared to golems is uncomparable. The stun from the golems on anyone even remotely useful for auto attacks can be abused in so many ways making it actually a really good starting buff.

Even those without auto attack based kits can managed to cancel an auto of a jungle creep with the stun, saving them quite a bit of damage.

Starting at gromp just isn't worth it. 3 damage every second to attackers is awful. It can't be used to strengthen peoples kits in any way, and is just a terrible buff. The only time I ever start gromp is when I absolutely NEED to start blue, or I want to start ganking level three and I go from gromp, to blue, to red.

Seriously, buff the gromp buff. It's terrible.

55 Comments

Fondling Gems9 votes

IIRC near release gromp buff was actually the best buff for any champ w/o an attack speed buff. It got nerfed because of the silly damage it could do to enemy champs early. As a tank I think it is also quite strong. The ability to aoe clear is a lot more useful on things like Sej than a stun every 6th auto.

nightman3601 votes

I start gromp on sej most of the time but sometimes I will do krugs first and just haul ass to blue mainly do this to get the aa stun so i can gank early bc lvl 2 stun> lvl 3 slow and some gromp dmg lel

Fondling Gems11 votes

....The stun doesn't work on champs. Also on a champ that needs to level up and get items early running across the map on Sej is super inefficient.

nightman3602 votes

I pretty much feel retarded now idk why i thought it worked on champs I could have swore it does man seriously. strange things. probably why im bronze.

Fondling Gems4 votes

Haha, dw about it. Far from the worst mistake I have seen people make.

What Is Smite2 votes

Play morde jungle, you can start either side no worries

Theorchero1 votes

[{quoted}](name=What Is Smite,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=d4XRJdEM,comment-id=000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-07-24T06:07:05.464+0000)

Play morde jungle, you can start either side no worries

+1

IPromiseTomorrow1 votes

But Mordekaiser jungle has the highest jungler winrate.

No kappa

Hue hue hue

chipndip13 votes

[{quoted}](name=What Is Smite,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=d4XRJdEM,comment-id=000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-07-24T06:07:05.464+0000)

Play morde jungle

https://media.giphy.com/media/Gzus0eadeEFIQ/giphy.gif

Wheatloaf1 votes

Also, attacking a tower consumes the buff entirely to deal bonus damage.

Hibeki2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Fondling Gems,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=d4XRJdEM,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-07-24T01:19:52.057+0000)

IIRC near release gromp buff was actually the best buff for any champ w/o an attack speed buff. It got nerfed because of the silly damage it could do to enemy champs early. As a tank I think it is also quite strong. The ability to aoe clear is a lot more useful on things like Sej than a stun every 6th auto.

Since sejuani has AOE for every ability, the entire camp is gonna be cleared anyway from your abilities, so the stun would really be more preferable.

Even coming down to level 1, would you rather trade 150+ hp every auto for 3 damage per second? I'd prefer to finish a camp with 300 extra hp.

Its possible to buff it and not have it do too much extra damage to champions. "Attackers take 12 damage every second, enemy champions take half this much damage" done.

Fondling Gems4 votes

IDK where you are getting your numbers but you clearly missed that Gromp buff also deals 5% of your bonus hp over 3 seconds. Small camps also do about 50% of a large camps damage (varies by camp) so killing them early actually saves you a lot of health. For reference Red Brambleback does 80 dmg per hit. The 2 cinderlings do a combined 24 damage per hit at the same attack rate but are all but impossible to kite due to their range. As such with proper kiting mechanics they do attack almost twice as frequently as the Brambleback, doing 48ish damage for every 80 damage Brambleback does. Killing them earlier effectively cuts that camp's damage by about 1/3 .

If you get the stun on Brambleback 2 times while clearing it you reduce the damage you take by 160, not 300. If the cinderlings deal 24 damage every .6 seconds then if you kill them 11 seconds sooner you negate that damage.

At level 3ish Sejuani has about 800 HP w/o runes/masteries. With runes and masteries she should have about 100 bonus health (50 from veterans scars + 30 from strength of ages + 20ish runes) That means Gromp buff is doing about 10 + 5 damage over 3 seconds or 5 damage a second to all 3 of them which means that in the 10ish seconds it takes a level 3 Sej to fully clear Red Buff (she is pretty slow about clearing early) it will have done a total of 150 damage spread among the 3 monsters.

It is also procing the Hunter's Talisman's passive Tooth dealing 50 additional damage to each of the cinderlings and restoring 100 health that a Sej wouldn't have had with proper kiting (A sej who doesn't kite would have gotten the healing but would have taken much more Bramblback damage) This takes the base 160 damage that Heavy hands would have negated, and reduces it by 100 to break even. This leaves you at 60 damage that needs to be negated by the faster killing of the cinderlings. Over the 8ish seconds it would take Sej to kill Red brambleback they would have taken 80 damage each, saving Sej 2 AA's worth of time vs each. Sej has almost the same AS as the cinderlings at this point. So in 4 AA's time (with one cinderling dying 2 AA's in) She would normally take 72 Damage from Cinderlings which has now been negated. This means that with excellent kiting Gromp buff is marginally more useful on Sej than Gift of Heavy Hands.

Overall the difference is minimal and changes as you clear more camps plus the thousand and one different variables that have to be taken into account. Basically they are the same in terms of efficient clearing on someone as slow as Sejuani.

If you don't have good kiting then Krugs is definitely better so long as you are using your aoe to hit the small camps as well as the big ones.


TLDR


They are basically equal on champs with similar attack speed to Sej who take Strength of Ages.

LankPants1 votes

Overall the difference is minimal and changes as you clear more camps plus the thousand and one different variables that have to be taken into account. Basically they are the same in terms of efficient clearing on someone as slow as Sejuani.

This is only a valid conclusion if you don't run AS somewhere on your runepage, which many people do. It's also worth noting that Sej has an AA reset, which allows you to utilise the Heavy Hands buff far better than otherwise. You not only have the stun slightly more often because you reset your AA, but you can also time it to ensure that you counterfeit the Reds attack.

damage each, saving Sej 2 AA's worth of time vs each. Sej has almost the same AS as the cinderlings at this point.

It doesn't quite work out that way in practice, you can, with the correct setup AA once and let Red buff burn them to death. Your E also comes up in time to finish them off too.

Fondling Gems1 votes

You were the one who told me sej gets 2 uses of gift of heavy hands, and I was accounting for the fact that you are using them to counter the brambleback's 2 autos.

Like I said, if you are running AS it becomes slightly more efficient however my point was less Sej in particular or that Gift of the Toadstool was straight up better and more to show that on tanks with a slow clear (with Sej being the example I used since that was the previously discussed champ) Gift of the Toadstool is just as strong as Gift of Heavy Hands in your first clear.

It is just in a wind drag position where the stats prove that it is just as good as the other dragons but it feels weaker so you don't notice the impact.

If it got buffed at all then it would completely outclass Gift of Heavy Hands unless you had a strong AS buff or short cd AA reset.

RetroSplurge1 votes

Well, not only that iirc the Gromp buff gives the most exp to junglers as well.

Fondling Gems1 votes

Yes and no. It gives the most xp of any single camp, but all the camps (minus the buffs maybe? Think you only need to kill the big and one small one for lv 2) give you the same xp total.

Moesnd6 votes

There is a singular champ that gromp is strictly better on.

Fiddledicks

WoonStruck1 votes

{quoted}

There is a singular champ that gromp is strictly better on.

Fiddledicks

Warwick Chogath (maxes E in the jungle with AS runes) Skarner (if you don't have to start E, you have an extremely healthy clear; you do anyway if you have to start gromp side) Zac all essentially do not take damage, or as significant amount enough to matter, and can use the extra clearspeed+sustain (it trades HP from the monster to you, not just healing you) via tooth+item 1039.

All of them can easily do a full clear without having to base (though its not always the best option if you're going for a level lead via item 1041 item 1039 exp bonuses).

Jungle Lux God3 votes

The exp bonuses don't stack anymore. You get as much from getting one of them as you do getting both of them.

WoonStruck1 votes

I don't recall ever seeing that change documented. Thanks for letting me know though.

Makes champs like Cho and Zac actually have an advantage in the jungle now.

Maiziea2 votes

They changed that months ago, all they changed was making it an unique passive so it might've gone unnoticed.

WoonStruck1 votes

That's not all they did. They combined the two experience passives and attached them to the unique passives already in place.

That's pretty significant, because it means you aren't forced to base early to keep up in levels.

Champs like Cho, Skarner, Zac, etc who can clear extremely healthy and relatively quickly can keep afk farming and looking for times to apply pressure to pushed lanes without being set back.

Maiziea1 votes

I meant that's all they had in the patch notes. I know it was a big change to jungle, but from what I recall it didn't look like a big change in the patch notes, thus it might've gone unnoticed by some.

The Deckowner4 votes

I honestly think it should just do extra damage to monsters.

morris14 votes

I manage to get better clears starting at Krugs over Gromp as Amumu.

As Amumu.

Fondling Gems2 votes

Really good reason for this actually. Amumu has really strong aoe clear and actually doesn't want to kite monsters out because getting attacked reduces his E cd.

(Gromp is only ever more effective because it procs tooth passive on talisman while kiting which most aoe champs can't do)

Zero Skill Tank3 votes

There are champions on which early gromp is important, because it will proc item 1039's 'tooth' passive constantly, giving them a lot healthier clear.

The Deckowner5 votes

Champions who build tailsman first usually have aoe that constantly procs the heal anyways tho.

Zero Skill Tank1 votes

It's not necessarily up all the time, like gromp is.

The Deckowner3 votes

The healing is a heal over time effect, so you don't have to do aoe all the time, as long as you can refresh it once a few seconds it works.

Fondling Gems1 votes

Keep in mind that being in a position to aoe creeps increases your clear speed but also makes you take more damage due to no kiting.

The Deckowner1 votes

most champions can still kite while constantly procing the healing, gragas for example, all 3 of his basic abilities are aoe, so he can throw out q, use e to proc tails man, walk away to kite while dranking w, auto with w, then walk away again and proc q.

Fondling Gems1 votes

Nunu, Shen, Mundo, Trundle and WW can't. Rammus, Tahm, and Sion* can't consistently.

*Sion can always have it up but realistically it takes a silly amount of kiting that causes him to take more damage anyways.

That is just counting champs that can jg and would commonly take gromp start. I could also compile a list of all the Krug start champs that can't make proper use of Hunters Talisman passive which they would get after first back if you want.

GrReaper963 votes

Maybe they should make it +50% damage to monsters

UPfreely3 votes

They should just buff it's damage to monsters.. %50 %100 w/e makes sense

Cherysse1 votes

I do agree it needs an early buff to it's damage, yet the late game damage should be the same.

Spaceman5pff1 votes

If the damage from gromp is enough to be relevant in combat at level 1, then we will see botlane smites to abuse it. Just like if Krug stun worked on champions.

Spaceman5pff1 votes

Ever consider the fact that gromp buff scales, and is very good lategame?

HaloDragonX1 votes

Increase the base but don't change the max?

Spaceman5pff1 votes

No, Don't increase the base. The base is just fine since it scales with levels.

If they buff the base so that it is relevant at level 1 we will see people taking smite botlane and smiting the krugs for level 1 advantage This goes against many recent changes aimed at preventing level 1 abuse of jungle camps by laners

HaloDragonX1 votes

then don't overbuff it to the point where smite in lane is too strong

Smite in lane already sucks, I doubt giving a 1 minute bleed buff will help it.

Spaceman5pff1 votes

Let me reiterate.

If gromp buff damage at level one is relevant enough to be worth watching out for as the attacker, then it will be taken botlane. Especially given how it scales with hp and the ability to go Strength of Ages item 2303 (which now gives hp / level) item 1413 you will force an Alistar Braum meta into play where the red side just picks a strong early adc + Alistar Braum Leona and forces you to either bite the bullet and get fucked as blue side or swap lanes and lose turret pressure due to upcoming game dynamic changes meant to nerf lane swapping.

cyberchade1 votes

try jungle cass gromp buff OP

VvVVvV1 votes

Just jungle with Voli...you dont need a leash and dont have to worry about starting Gromp or Grugs. Depending which side im on I either start red or blue....and if im top lane ill go solo steal enemies red or blue......dont even need a jungle item......just start E.

Villainous V1 votes

Imo its really just dependent on who the champion is. I for one prefer gromp over krugs on champs like rammus because the extra damage back with your W up is pretty good and on champs like ammumu and naut because again with your W up it does some good AOE dmg when being hit back. champs like shyv jax and your usual AA based champs i prefer krug buff.

a special one1 votes

just no... gromp buff is more/just as useful as krugs buff on about 50% of junglers. no explanation needed

Slamurai Jack1 votes

I haven't found it makes much of a difference either way. I finish my clears with around the same health whether I start gromp or krugs. This seems to imply they're fairly equal in power early on.

FantasySniper1 votes

All neutral monster buffs should benefit from Runic Affinity. Then Gromp should get a 50% damage bonus against monsters.

Ryzing2Diamond1 votes

It is worth it... It's just not the best camp. You shouldn't expect every single camp in the jungle to give the same amount of gold or experience, some camps have to be better than others. Plus, you can give your gromp to your top or botlane if they're having issues farming their lane due to the enemy lead.

Hibeki1 votes

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