How to Make Poacher's Knife Good

Poacher's knife is bad right now. That's pretty clear. But why is it bad? There's two main reasons:

1. Buying poacher's knife alerts the enemy team that you are intending to counter jungle. Other upgrades tell the enemy team nothing, since they're used for things the jungler is going to be doing anyway. With Poacher's, the enemy team knows that you'll be in their jungle, which is NOT a place you would usally be otherwise. New information is gained, and they can adapt to that, ward their jungle, and collapse on you if you try.

2. Poacher's knife DOESN'T HELP YOU COUNTER JUNGLE. Look at the other three upgrades. Each provides you with additional utility to do whatever you plan on doing. Stalker's makes you BETTER at ganking. Ranger's makes you BETTER at farming. Skirmisher's makes you BETTER at ganking/dueling. Poacher's does NOT make you better at counter jungling. It rewards you for counter jungling (which is pointless because successfully counter jungling is its own reward). Therein lies the key difference.

Before we go any farther, let's look at what counter jungling requires so that we can figure out what would actually make Poacher's good. And since Riot just released a whole champion based on counterjungling, let's turn to Rek'sai's kit for some clues.

1. Vision Rek'sai has tremor sense. For those not graced with the ability to burrow underground, some form of vision control is required to safely counter jungle.

2. Clear speed Rek'sai clears pretty quickly with Queen's Wrath. Many of the League's other counter jungle champions excel at their role because of their high clear speed. Shyvana and Nunu come to mind. Regardless, the less time you spend in the enemy jungle, the safer your counter junging is going to be.

3. Mobility This one is key. Since you're in the enemy jungle, you're vulnerable, and that means you have to be ready to get out at a moment's notice. Rek'sai's tunnels give her a quick way in to the enemy jungle and a reliable exit path if she's discovered and has to flee.

So if we're going to make Poacher's Knife a good item, it has to provide actual utility in one or more of these three ways. Here's a few ideas:

1. Vision Trinkets cover a lot of the vision design space, and doubling down on them (ala Feral Flare/SotAG) seems a little lackluster. An alternative for vision control would be to have a 10 second active on Poacher's knife that would alert you if you are seen by a ward. It wouldn't reveal the ward, but it would let you know that the enemy team probably knows where you are, and that going deep into their jungle might not be a good idea.

2. Clear Speed Obviously just upping the damage of Smite would create imbalances when contesting objectives. I think this could avoided pretty easily by having Poacher's smite hit a monster for the normal smite damage, and then burn them over the next 3 seconds for 0.5-1x the smite damage. It would make clearing enemy camps way faster, but wouldn't give you a 2k smite to contest baron with.

3. Mobility A little speed boost that you only get if you manage to kill the camp just isn't enough. I think that when you use the Poacher's Smite on a monster, it should give you a 3 second window in which you can reactive it to flash a short distance. As soon as you take a camp, you can flash over a wall and be on your way out of the enemy's jungle. And if the enemy team is collapsing on you, you can smite the monster early just to get the escape. More so than anything else, I think this would really give the feel of a poacher who was taking things he shouldn't be and then slipping away before he was caught. Additionally, it'd be the ultimate poaching fantasy, to flash in, smite steal baron, and then use your 3 second smite flash to jump back out cleanly.

Boiling it all down, I think the problems of the Poacher's Knife would best be solved one of two ways:

1. Combine Poacher's and Hunter's (solves problem 1 and problem 2)

• Reduced cooldown
• AOE stunning smite
• Smiting monsters in the enemy jungle deals additional true damage over 3 seconds equal to the smite value.

2. Build a Better Poacher's Knife (solves problem 2 well enough to outweigh problem 1)

• Active that alerts you if you're seen by an enemy ward (doesn't reveal it).
• Smiting monsters in the enemy jungle deals additional true damage over 3 seconds equal to the smite value.
• Using smite on a monster let's you recast it within 3 seconds to flash.

Either way, 20 extra gold for risking life and limb just isn't cutting it.