Proposed Balance Changes to Sated Devourer

Sated Devourer is a cool item. It has a unique passive when fully stacked and is generally really fun to use. Being able to see a champion almost completely "transformed" from this weapon is a cool experience.

At the current time, sated is a really powerful item, not really conforming to Riot's idea of an item with "high highs" and "low lows", as described by Scarizard in the most recent patch notes.

After reading these patch notes I thought of an idea that could possibly fix this problem of Sated Devourer (SD) being too safe of a pick. Something that increases the risk of getting the item, retains the feel of that "epic farm" quest for the first 15 or so minutes of the game, all while keeping those high highs and low lows of the item.

I suggest putting a timer on Sated Devourer. This would require some calculations on Riot's Side. I'm sure they could calculate the optimal path/farming options and then properly adjust for variances within the game (Average death's per jungler, average amount of deaths per jungler, etc.)

At the very least they can get a rough number of the average time that sated devourer is fully stacked. They can take this data and add a minute or two to it for some extra leeway, and when the timer stops the current state of the weapon is analysed and a buff is given depending on the amount of large monsters the player has slain in the time limit. The timer could also just cause the item to stop stacking, leaving the player with its current power.

Perhaps these additions can be scaling and the timer can have intervals where buffs are given slowly throughout the game at certain intervals. It could possibly just have a single interval, at X minutes you either get the extra on hit, or you don't. If you hit the cap early, it immediately changes into sated as it does now. The timer is there as a cutoff, to stop the stacking of the item at a certain point.

This mechanic retains the "low lows" of the weapon by limiting the buffs a player is able to get with the weapon as a whole, whereas with the current iteration of SD, as long as a player is diligent with their farm they will eventually get fully stacked, gaining the same exact buffs as the player that got SD 5 minutes before them (This feels really crappy for the jungler that got SD early. All that counter jungling for nothing!). The timer puts a break on this and gives the player appropriate buffs depending on their performance.

On the other side, this retains the "high highs" of the weapon by rewarding the player for doing well. It feels good to have a metric that assures you you've done better than the other jungler, it also feels worse to know you lost but it gives you a clear defined way to do better (get more stacks by a certain interval). Perhaps the last timer interval is the extra on hit procs. Other intervals being extra magic damage on hit. I'm sure Riot would have a field day with this kind of mechanic.

This mechanic, by virtue of the previously mentioned two situations (tons of farm or little farm), increases the risk of getting SD. If a player does poorly with SD, they're guaranteed to be weaker then the enemy jungler who played the "SD game" better.

All in all, I believe this mechanic to fit with Riot's vision of the item as being high commitment item with potentially huge pay-offs and also potentially huge losses all while retaining that "farm fest" feeling.

What are your thoughts on this idea? Good, bad, terrible? What would you change about the interval/timing mechanic? What would you implement that's totally different?

LET'S HEAR IT!