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We can all agree Feral Flare needs some love, here is how I would fix it.

universe within·9/1/2014, 3:28:39 PM·23 votes·2,387 views

Something has to be done for Feral Flare. It's universally agreed to be a weak item. Riot balance is afraid that if the item gets buffed Feral Flare junglers would be too strong with it. I disagree, and I think with the right values it can be a decent item without making anyone overpowered. This is what I would do. Notice the distinction between Feral Flare and Wriggle's Lantern.

Kills and assists on Hunter's Machete, Madred's Razor, and Wriggle's Lantern now grant two transformation stacks towards completing Feral Flare. Upon completion of Feral Flare kills and assists count as one Feral stack as it does currently.

Note that the Feral Flare user who does not help his team early on and simply sits in their jungle farming will not notice this buff to Feral Flare. Only the players who actively help their team will notice that Feral Flare has been buffed. This change would place greater emphasis on ganking and helping your team. It would allow Flare users to be team players before Flare is completed which is something everyone wants if Feral Flare is going to be more popular.

It's quite possible that this buff alone would still not be enough to make Flare a good item choice, but it's a step in the right direction.

41 Comments

Hyrum Graff9/1/2014, 8:22:16 PM7 votes

I don't think the issue is with Feral Flare; I think the issue is with the Jungle in general. Since I don't feel the need to re-write stuff, I'm going to leave you with some copypasta from a comment of mine a while ago, with my thoughts on the jungle:

#The Jungle Morello recently mentioned not being sure the direction that you want to take the jungle. If I might be so bold as to suggest one...

I think the jungle should be the strategic core of league. The jungler should be calling objectives and rotations, and applying map pressure. They should ALSO feel like they are strong enough to make things happen, when they are present during pushes, etc, so powerfarming the jungler should be a viable strat as well.

Pressure can be applied in basically 3 ways:

  1. Ganking (duh)
  2. Invading the enemy jungle.
  • It forces the enemy jungler to either counter-invade or ask his team for support to drive you out - all rotations, in a manner of speaking.
  1. Powerfarming your own jungle.
  • Think FF release-era. If you let Yi powerfarm his jungle for 20 minutes, he comes out a monster, so it forces you to invade. Forcing map rotations = creating pressure.

When you nerfed Feral Flare, you stated that "it doesn't seem fair that a champ can powerfarm their jungle, where there's little risk, and then come out and wreck solo laners who have had to contend with an enemy while trying to cs." I think this wasn't actually the issue (OK, it was way too strong, but my point is that the idea of "junglers shouldn't be as strong as laners" was incorrect). I think the issue was that the other strategy - ganking - wasn't rewarding enough, and the direct counter - invading - was too difficult.

Therefore, here are my suggestions for a pre-season jungle rework:

  1. Increase jungle itemization to allow for many styles of junglers
  • There should be jungle items for most combinations of: Early or Lategame; Tank or Damage; AP or AD.
  • Specifically, we need a jungle item for late game AD casters, and spirit of the spectral wraith needs to be split into two items, one for early and one for late game.
  1. Make invading easier/more rewarding Options I thought of:
  • Give more or better-placed entrances/exits from the jungle
  • Allow a jungler to cross from one side of the enemy jungle to the other without taking a tower hit would help this (he would be seen, though). I don't think I'm a fan of this
  • Extend the jungle to the outside of top and bot, to allow additional invading and ganking pathways
  1. Make ganking more rewarding (you can cash in conservation stacks with kills and assists?)

Maybe some of these changes happen by changing itemization. Maybe some happen by changing the jungle itself (gold, xp, routes). Maybe they happen in the mastery tree. Whatever way they would happen, I'm more interested in: what you think of the direction, and the idea of different styles of jungler?

Phoneixflare9/1/2014, 9:41:05 PM4 votes

I had a good idea. Make the attack speed scale with stacks as well. in this way, you could change the immediate power or reduce minimum stacks to turn into feral flare with some more attack speed which is still powerful....then later game when it matters, much more attack speed meaning more procs of the on hit since the stacks would allow for it...

This way, almost every single feral flare builder would benefit from it.

Aids cuz League9/1/2014, 4:13:19 PM3 votes

I disagree with giving Feral Flare any kind of attention, its already a strong item for the junglers that can use it well, besides, the problem with feral flare isn't that its weak, or encourages a bad playstyle, it just further proves that people can't read or pay attention as when its in Wriggles Lantern form, it gains stacks off Champion Kills, on the Feral Flare side, im not sure if it does or not. If anything, Feral Flare needs to be removed or it needs a nerf, not a buff because too many people think its a worthwhile purchase and then they never gank cause they can't see that champion kills/assists give it stacks. Having the 3 Spirit Items was fine for jungling, I for one, would not be sad to see Feral Flare leave the game.

12tales9/1/2014, 4:19:17 PM3 votes

Feral flare is already a great item on pretty much every auto reliant or semi-auto reliant jungler. It doesn't really need any love, to be honest.

Necrotic Ranger9/2/2014, 5:21:11 PM2 votes

Feral Flare is a steam rolling item. I had 52 stacks last game with my flare, i finished it at ~13:00 and started stacking from there. By the end of the game, my auto attacks were pounding a mix of physical and magical damage to everyone. With a zephyr and t-force built, the only people who could survive more than three hits were straight up tanks who built both mr and armor. Add to it mah bleed damage... and well... This item doesn't really need any love at all. Buff it any way shape or form and it will go from an optional item, to a "Build this or you suck" Item. and no one wants that.

Cloud Potato9/1/2014, 3:41:45 PM2 votes

I like your suggested buff. The problem with Flare is that it encourages a bad playstyle, which is farm all day. Getting to Flare faster means you get to the point where you deal more damage to enemy champions faster, and doing so by fighting champions earlier helps solve the blind farming issue.

The item itself is currently strong enough; once it's at Flare it deals comparable DPS to Elder Lizard as long as you autoattack a lot, and gets stronger from there. It isn't a slot efficient item by any means but it's not supposed to be; it's supposed to be cost efficient while giving you extra clearing power, and it does that just fine.

PieCake9/1/2014, 3:35:54 PM2 votes

You know no one uses the boards right?

Knight SoIaire 9/2/2014, 6:35:08 PM1 votes

here is how i would fix it 1)remowe the feral flare 2)make an item that supports late game champs in jungle, lets say it stacks with ad just like spectral wrath

feral flare had to allow carry junglers aka late game champions to work in the jungle

the basics of their playstyle were supposed to be farm and gank only when you see a realy good opportunity, then become a realy strong champion in late game

the feral flare failed because it allows the autoatack champions (note that autoatacker is not always a late game champion, so feral flare helps the wrong kind of champs ) to scale infinitely and carry the game by themselves, so it got nerfed into oblivionn where it does not give anything worthwhile

the item is bad atm but it should be removed instead of buffed, because it supports an unhealthy playstyle that riot wants to kill

and to be clear making the flare stack better when you kill or assist is even worse, if 1 tf that lasts 1 minute can give you 10 stacks , then those champions will stack insanely fast once they reach their midgame probably they will even build full tank because flare stacks will give them insane power

PL559/1/2014, 7:36:46 PM1 votes

I use feral flare kind of differently from other people. What I do is I gank a lot in the early game, then if my team is winning I will "afk" farm until my flare is complete/has a decent amount of stacks. However, if my team is starting to lose, I sell my feral item to buy SotAG or SotEL.

MrBuffington9/1/2014, 7:57:35 PM1 votes

As much as I like feral flare, I think it's at a good spot. It's meant to be an item with moderate early/mid game benefits, but huge late game benefits since it stacks infinitely. The reason you don't see it as much in pro play is because pros rely on junglers being highly impactful early, not so much a late game carry. Also, feral flare junglers in general are typically lower than the top priority junglers, with the exception of Rengar (even pro Rengar players stop at madreds and do to other items before completing ff, since they need the early game pressure more).

ULTRAF0RCE9/1/2014, 8:31:36 PM1 votes

What if there was a complete rework so the item even if it is still called feral flare is a different kind of item that is useful for auto attack junglers, it is true that most of the users of feral flare need to farm more than other junglers, but that is bad in the current meta with a lot of early gankers in the game sadly I don't know what is needed for it to work as is in the current meta

iRetribution9/1/2014, 9:31:49 PM1 votes

This would be great IMO, I think a Spectral Wraith buff should come out first though, just a little one, so that some AP junglers could jump into the meta since AD midlaners have become a little more popular than before.

GanksLikeGast0n9/2/2014, 4:06:55 PM1 votes

I really dig this idea, I feel the emphasis on teamwork would really help break the mold of current flare jungles and push them to start pushing them to work with their team rather than just themselves.

Kat Believes us9/2/2014, 6:25:39 PM1 votes

I speak from the standpoint or a Gold 1 player who predominantly plays Irelia top. (#platlyfehereicome)

I believe feral flare as it stands is an entirely balanced item, and I'm not entirely convinced that your idea of buffing it would be bring greater balance to the game. Here's why. What I believe a lot of players don't understand is that the jungle is far more similar to being in a lane than people give it credit, although it may just be abstracted by the lack of direct competition and logistic consistency, with a few key differences.

In laning, both players compete in CS, objectives, and kills, which all translate to gold advantage. Jungle is similar except that, unlike laning, scoring a kill is not negatively correlated to time (and cs). If the jungle wants to possibly develop a kill advantage their cs will suffer as a result (and this deficit will rely on skill to some degree). That's what the jungle pays for for the utility of being to directly influence any area of the game.

At higher levels of play, this utility is the more focused on aspect of the jungler over the relative ability to safely farm. Ganking became the norm.

Feral Flame was originally introduced to give farm-focused, late game junglers more viability against teams that pick safe, early lanes, and to give gank-oriented champs and alternative in the same scenario. (Think LB, heimer, or Janna.) Frankly, Udyr sucked for the longest time because his only gank was running straight up to the laner with slightly higher than average movespeed. Feral Flame gave him some life.

However, should your buff be implemented, you reinstate the totally predominate gank oriented jungle meta because having the buff sit on machete and madred's at +2 stacks gives every single, gank-oriented jungle an insane snowball mechanic. If you look at the current meta, we see Vi, ww, j4, amumu, maokai, and elise, and all of them have extremely strong ganks. Now, if the buff exists on machete, early ganks can lead to a ridiculous snowball because the ganks pay for the wriggles, and by the time they have it complete, it'll be at maybe 20 stacks. At 12-15 mins the flare will be finished, and that's an insane power spike, all with no tangible tradeoff to the jungler.

And that's if they're successful in ganking, if not, then the forfeit in their build is nonexistent, because machete builds into every other jungle item. What would end up happening is AA oriented jungler's would be forced to sit on machete until their ganking powerspike (I'm thinking ww's 6) and then see how they perform after, while going into their core build in the meantime. If they do well, they build into feral with confidence, and if not, oh well. The trade is sort of there in jungle clear times, but it's not nearly high enough for the high reward potential.