How they ruined Runeglaive

The new changes coming up for the Runeglaive jungle item are going to make the item beyond worthless. For those of you who do not know, Runeglaive will no longer convert the basic attack damage to magic damage, and you can now only proc the spellblade effect on monsters. So, why is that bad?

Well, the creation of this item already seemed iffy to me. Instead of having a general AP item for junglers, they made an item that has a unique niche by providing an aoe spellblade effect. While there are not many AP junglers to speak of, what happens to a champion like Fiddlesticks who only auto attacks camps for the first 5 minutes of the game? Building this item would not be worth it for him, and so he would be denied the option of choosing which smite he would like (which in my opinion is crucial for jungling now). But for most AP junglers like Nidalee or Diana, this new Runeglaive item seemed great. No longer would I have to work a Lich Bane into my build, I could rely on Runeglaive and then work in more efficient items into my build. So now what happens with these changes?

First of all, if Runeglaive will no longer convert the basic attack damage into Magic damage, it loses a great deal of its use right there. Then on top of that, the spellblade effect will only be triggered on jungle monsters. This means while the item will be giving me a minor boost to my jungle clear time, it provides little or no use to my ganks as I will not be applying any extra damage with it. Now I do not claim to be great at adding up damage numbers, but here is my attempt at it. For the sake of making this simple, I'm going to exclude any AP from Runes and Masteries. Now, runeglaive provides 50 AP, 10% CDR and 200 mana. The spellblade effect is 100% of your AD and 30% of your AP. so say you have 60 base AD and the 50 AP from the item, your spellblade is doing roughly 75 damage combined. Now, compare this to lich bane. While Lich Bane will cost you about 800 more gold, it also provides you with 80 AP, 250 mana at 5% movement speed. While it is not providing you with CDR, an argument can be made that the movement speed would be more effective on a jungler, as MS items are scarce while plenty of items can provide CDR. Now, the Lich Bane spellblade provides 75% base AD and 50% AP, so once again assuming 60 base AD and only the lich bane (80 AP), your spellblade will be doing 45+40=85 damage. Not only that, but this damage is going to be MAGIC DAMAGE. Considering you will most likely be building spell penetration as an AP jungler, this is better for you.

Now based on these stats alone, Lich Bane is simply a more effective item. It is providing you with a hell of a lot more damage than Runeglaive, and is only costing you about 800 gold more than Runeglaive. Now, you may not be applying your LB spellblade passive in an AOE, but you're dealing out magic damage rather than physical damage with Runeglaive, and you're dealing a lot more of it. Some would argue that if you do this, then you are missing out on the extra gold from the jungle item and missing out on empowered smites, which is completely legitimate. Runeglaive even has a mana regen effect on it which can be very useful. But honestly, I could get relatively the same stats from building a Morellonomicon, and it would be more cost effective than the Runeglaive anyway. So maybe Runeglaive would just be a good early item to have since it seems to have more early game power than lich bane. But as soon as you get your second item, the damage gap becomes larger and larger. Lets say you want to rush a Deathcap as your second item. Its giving you 120 AP, so add that to your 50 AP from Runeglaive to make 170, then add 35% of that and you have 229.5. Decent amount of AP, and this makes it so your runeglaive is dealing about 70 damage from your AP, so now you're dealing 130 damage with the spellblade (still assuming 60 base AD). Now do the same math with a Lich Bane. You would have 270 AP factoring in the Deathcap, compared to the 230 of Runeglaive. Then adding the spellblade, that adds up to 180 damage. Already, the spellblade will have 50 more damage on it, and it will be dealing magic damage. It may only be dealing this damage to a single target, but if you're an AP jungle you're most likely an assassin, and you would only be dealing with a single target anyway. Now that extra 40 AP is also helping out your abilities as well, and you're far outdoing Runeglaive at this point. So what is the point of Runeglaive?

Honestly with these changes, I will probably be bypassing Runeglaive altogether. What is the point of buying an item that gives you early game benefits for a lackluster effect? Building it for the extra gold is not even worth it for me because AP jungers like Diana and Nidalee should be focused on ganks and map pressure. And honestly I wouldn't even need a boost to my clear time, my clear is perfectly fine as it is now. Worst of all, It is not even applying the effect to anything but jungle monsters. That extra damage from the spellblade effect will not even be helping me with my ganks, which is mainly what I am doing to begin with. So what in the world is the point? Am I supposed to build a Runeglaive for the jungling specific effects and then if I want the extra damage on champions, build a Lich Bane? That is extremely unefficient and honestly would be a waste of gold. Now I'm not extremely high ranking in league, and I don't claim to be an expert. You can even ignore all of the numbers I posted earlier if you want, I only included the item numbers to keep it simple. But just from that alone, I am not seeing the point of building a Runeglaive anymore. Once again, Riot created a unique item and then immediately beat it down to a pulp. I'd be better off rushing morello for similar stats and then getting my lich bane.

TL;DR RIP AP junglers, you'll never keep up with Sated Devourer now.