Devourer, just why?
Why Riot? Why?
Lets talk Devourer, an item 2, maybe 3 champs build out of the jungle. We are looking at Warwick, Tryn, and Jax. I don't think there is an argument for many other champs building this item.
Why?
Warwick sits at a 51.52 win rate. Trynd and Jax are at 52.36 and 48.34 respectively, though this is not an adequate representation of the jungle variety. (I am excluding Xin mostly because he scales better off of warrior).
Why?
You are completely flipping from what you previously wanted junglers to do. You are giving every bronze and silver scrub the incentive to stay in jungle and farm up while bruisers like j4, eve, gragas, and reksai gank level 3 because farm is irrelevant on them. Your idea is this: "hey you already fall off early game with these items because you need them to stack, so lets cap the maximum stacks. We created a brand new item which is effective from the time from of 15-25 mintues, but completely ineffective afterwards."
You are completely relegating these champions to becoming poor bruisers who do not benefit as much from health because they haven't built Cinderhulk, don't benefit from raw damage because they will die too fast, which leaves them in a gray area between tank and fighter. This is Shyvanna all over again. She becomes irrelevant eventually because you have to go tank on her to survive and then her damage output is so low you can essentially just ignore her. This is a critique of a capped stack on this item. What makes Devourer truly good is that you can scale it so well late. This new upgrade will just cap it early, ending its late game effectiveness and turning it into the Trinity Force of the jungle: useless after 30 minutes.
If you want to improve Devourer, I'll give you my opinion.
Make Machete count the number of camps you have cleared before you fully upgrade your jungle item. This benefits in multiple ways:
- It encourages farming earlier when clearing the jungles is your highest priority.
- it decreases the lull where junglers feel they need to farm once they get the item to get stacks.
Next, keep kills and assists as +2 stacks. The point of the jungler is not to farm the jungle, it is to help other lanes. You don't win league of legends by having the most farm, you win by taking down turrets. Easiest way to do that is to kill enemy champions. By these 2 stacks per kill or assist, you are encouraging that junglers influence be felt in the lanes.
Next, keep the addition of Takedown and Rift Scuttler. These are incentives for the jungler to not only gain vision on crucial parts of the maps to avoid the "nice MIA" and level 6 kat roams, but it also does not punish the jungler for giving that midlane kog a blue around the 10 minute or so mark (depending on where you started and side).
You want the jungler to have an impact on the game, to feel like he is helping his or her teammates. By encouraging them to spend more time in the jungle, you are not encouraging this behavior, in fact, you will be punishing it.
