Jungle Diversity and why it has failed thus far

Since the start of Pre-Season 5 Riot's attempts at diversifying the jungle have failed each and every time. Now I'm aware that's a very strong opening statement but hear me about before you reflexively slam the downvote button and send me to the depths of hell.

Before I go any further I want to make it known right now this is all my own opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree as you see fit. I may be right on the money or I could miss the mark so far that I'm on a completely different continent to the mark. Also, LONG post ahead.

With that foreword out of the way allow me to begin. Let's go back to where this all started, Pre-Season 5. Riot introduces four new Jungle exclusive items:

1. Stalker's Blade
2. Skirmisher's Saber
3. Poacher's Knife
4. Ranger's Trailblazer All of which affected smite in different ways.

Along with four enchantments for the items in the same vein (No not that ) as boot enchantments:

1. Juggernaut
2. Warrior
3. Devourer
4. Magus

So that sounds good right? 16 different Smite combinations, certainly more than the entire ONE we've had previously. Pretty diverse. With these in place and the pre-season underway each was being purchased pretty evenly as people got a feel for each item and enchant along what they all did.

Now we finally come to where the diversity fell at the first hurdle. Let me ask you this, how often do you see Ranger's Trailblazer? Every now and again right?

Okay, so what about Poacher's Knife? How often do you see that? Pretty much never, right? Upon their release Poacher's Knife and what it provided to the user simply didn't stack up in comparison to the other three jungle items and Trail Blazer wasn't far behind, but at least still picked up. So for a while Skirmisher's Saber and Stalker's Blade became the two most purchased Jungle items (and in my mind still are). At the time the enchants were all purchased relatively evenly since they all provided pretty good stats for who they benefited and for a while things were actually diverse.

With Season 5 now underway Riot decided to rework the Juggernaut enchant into something more inetersting. "Great" we all thought "Can't be anything wrong with making something more exciting is there?" While we weren't wrong to assume such a thing what they came out with would define the meta for a long time to come.

Weeks later Riot comes out with Cinderhulk, an item, like it's predecessor that was designed with tank junglers in mind. It gave lots of flat health, %Bonus health along with an AoE damage aura like Sunfire Cape. Sounds pretty cool right? The problem with Cinderhulk however is that upon release and for several patches following it provided WAY too much for it's relatively low cost, and thus began the Tank Meta.

Tanks became so stupidly tanky whilst still being able to dish out crazy amounts of damage for what they're suppose to provide (CC and being a resistance/HP wall) This got to a point where tanks dominated team compositions with there being anywhere from two to up to four tanks and one ADC. Some toplaners even started to take Smite so that they too could get Cinderhulk (Anyone remember Smite/TP Shyvana?)

The Tank Meta was the second time that attempts at Jungle Diversity failed. Instead of seeing more variety we ONLY saw tanks because they were too strong, and playing anything else at the time was outright objectively worse. (Of course there are always those that pick off-meta stuff but they're too few and far between) So over time Riot nerfed Cinderhulk and eventually it became pretty balanced and the status-quo returned for a little while (Although with YET ANOTHER nerf next patch despite the tank meta being way over, Cinderhulk may fall to become the least purchased enchant. But that's for another day)

Next up Riot announced they were going to rework the Magus Enchant into something more interesting "Great" we all thought "Can't be anything wrong with making something more exciting is there?"

Not long later they released Runeglaive, the new Magus enchant designed to give AP Junglers a slightly easier time. The problem is however that RG turned out to be useful on only a small subset of the already small subset of AP Junglers. With it's release RG led to what I like to call a "mini-meta", that being Runeglaive Ezreal.

In attempts to make the jungle more diverse, Riot failed that and made the midlane less diverse in the process as Runglaive Ezreal became a Pick or Ban scenario. The reason being is that Ezreal synergised so crazily well with RG that he became the dominant midlaner. But a single patch later RG was tweaked so that it wouldn't work so well on Ez anymore and was nerfed as well, making it even less useful than before. (The mana restoring AA on monsters notwithstanding)

Finally we come to what is currently the case. Once again Riot announced the rework of one of the jungle enchants, this time it was Devourer. Now in my opinion the reason I don't think the old Devourer was as broken as Feral Flare used to be (#neverforget) is because it was objectively weaker than FF used to be. Old Devourer wasn't outright bad and personally think it was in a decent spot, if a little dull.

So anyways not long after they released it's successor....also called Devourer, only this time the stacking was tweaked and it applied a few other neat effects. On top of that it only stacks 30 times compared to Old Devourer and Feral Flare's infinite stacking. Now that sounds good at first right? A stack cap means it's can't spiral out of control as the game get's longer. Wrong.

The problem is that even with a stack cap Devourer is crazy strong on junglers who are heavily auto attack reliant (Or basic attack reliant, whatever). Along with that at 30 stacks it transforms into: Sated Devourer, which makes it even stronger on those AA reliant champions.

Because of this we're now in a Devourer dominated meta. While you can still choose other types of junglers they're simply going to get outclassed by those that can better utilize Devourer. Since the tank meta ended, how many tank junglers have you seen? Now how many have you seen since this new Devourer was added? It's even less isn't it? Because in short they don't stack up (no pun intended) to Devourer Junglers. And with yet another Cinderhulk nerf next patch they'll fall even more out of favour.

In conclusion Riot have made admirable attempts at spicing things up in the jungle but each time it's fallen flat and done the exact opposite of what they intended. Instead each time the meta has revolved around the single enchant they changed at the time. Each enchant rework thus far has been released with far too much power and instead unified the jungle each time, instead of diversifying it. As it currently stands Warrior is the only enchant that has remained mostly untouched since release (bar a few minor stat tweaks), and given the way they've been going it's bound to be next on the list when they finally nerf Devourer into the ground as they did the last two times.

Whatever Riot does with Warrior I sure hope they don't other do it as they have with the last three enchant reworks. Even then if they do they'll nerf it into the ground, which will hopefully bring it on par with the rest of the enchants rather than just having one definitive best enchant, and three mediocre ones in comparison.

-MrWasjig