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Note to Junglers picking up Devourer

Shiroi Kitsune·2/9/2016, 1:30:51 AM·3 votes·1,038 views

As a preface, I'm a jungle main, and have been for three seasons now.

If you are picking up devourer, that is not an excuse to stop ganking. Ganking is one of the best ways to get your devourer completed extremely early as it allows you to take the 5 stack monsters easily. If you successfully gank top and kill him/ make him go back, that's a free Rift Herald. +5 stacks. If you successfully gank bot, then that's (usually) a free dragon. +5 stacks.

I don't understand why so many people seem to think the devourer enchantment is a signal to just sit in the jungle and farm. I gank multiple times per game with devourer and rarely have any problems getting devourer stacked between 15-18 minutes.

I am highly curious though why this farm-only play-style seems so prevalent, even with some higher elo players. If someone would like to propose an argument for why one should avoid ganking and instead focus on farming, I would be very interested in hearing it.

11 Comments

Pluie Battante2/9/2016, 1:37:58 AM4 votes

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Sasogwa2/9/2016, 7:24:17 PM3 votes

Most of devourer junglers are also farm and level reliant junglers with poor ganking abilities. They clear somewhat fast and can powerfarm very well. I can't count how many times I hear "devourer junglers can gank too, should gank blabla etc." Yes they can. Is it worth? Not all the time, and your ganking success is less reliable than with other ganking junglers. I will point out that it doesn't mean they should ignore lanes ; typically with good vision you'll see opportunities where there are freekills even when spending 90% of your time farming. Ofc there are some exceptions such as WW who should pretty much gank every time he has his ult and just farm otherwise. But you should not act as if a gank was always a guaranteed success + free objective. Also you have to be careful not to get counterganked. I've seen a lot of good -willed devourer junglers that spent a lot of time trying to help/gank which ended up incredibly badly, they were counterganked or the gank wasn't a success and they become behind, lose time not farming, and end up being strong too late or having no impact whatsoever (Yi for instance).

Meanwhile if you go dirty-powerfarm mode, you can have 1-2 levels more than the other jungler and basically become much stronger and much more of a threat. I like going this route and just taking TP for dumb counterganks that surprisingly work well, since I am usually ahead in levels already compared to the other jungler.

Also if you don't gank a lot early, you can afford to get lategame runes that won't hurt your clear but increase your presence lategame (typically; attack speed reds+quints, armor/lvl, mr/lvl)

Definitely Bait2/9/2016, 8:31:34 AM2 votes

Farming is generally safer 100% sure exp and gold. Ganks are inherently dangerous and near unnecessary. A laner should be playing just as safe and winning their lane in theory (Only taking sure kills, and focusing on cs). The jungle position originally started as a roaming support / extra resource gatherer. Basically warding and clearing camps. Devourer junglers go back to this root. They sit in jungle farming / warding (River, deep wards, etc) until they hit sated (Can be as soon as 12 or 15 minutes ). Then proceed to take objectives and abuse the sated power spike in the teamfight phase.

Taking potentially unsuccessful ganks at best wastes time (delaying the sated power spike) and at worst gives the enemy team advantages (Extra gold, vision on where you are so they can take objectives, etc). If a team is taking the safest route to win then literally the jungler won't gank unless it's a blatant free kill or planned and coordinated team gank.

I mean one full clear route after hitting devourer gives 20 stacks (5 for dragon, 5 for rift herald, 2x 2 for skuttles, 1x 6 for mob camps stacks). So on a optimal clear pattern you're literally hitting sated on the second respawn of the jungle camps (With skuttles). So it's not nearly as hard as people make it out to be. I mean you can do things in a relatively safe manner to get vision on the enemy jungler and steal his camps for extra stacks.

It also doesn't help that most devourer champions are good at dueling and split pushing. So when team fight phase hits the devourer jungler's group can just pressure but not get caught out or engage while the jungler split pushes and forces 2 or more enemies to react. Then it's just a basic 3 v 4 teamfight while the jungler distracts the 2 that pulled off. If they don't pull off then it's just a tower + kill for the jungler or inhib later on. (Unsafe without pressure on a lane, or deep wards to track enemy movement)

Even with this tactic it's still a good idea for the jungler to fill mid or top when they back. It gives a extra cs + exp advantage over the other jungler. Assuming they don't lose out too much on stacking.

Erockandroll2/9/2016, 7:29:41 PM2 votes

Generally, I pick up Devourer as a fail safe. Theirs no reason to focus getting those stack. They will come eventually. So it allows me to have Ganking pressure, while being able to carry or split push in the late game. And my go to champ for that is Jax. Partially because his Counter strike gives me the ganking pressure needed to pull off play, and yet, is also good against other Devourer Junglers.

However, if you neglect your lanes, you will never be in a position to carry. Even if you have a stacked Devourer, it does nothing if your team is already getting snowballed.

l Main Renekton2/10/2016, 3:05:12 AM2 votes

A good jungler can gank with devourer and not be affected because he knows that he can pick up the advantage by ganking successfully, whereas farming is always a safe and reliable method for any less experienced jungler, and it's pretty much always going to be a relatively safe way to get gold. Even if I don't support having that style of jungling on my team as much as a ganking jungler, I can see why they opt to farm more instead of ganking lanes and hope that the advantage they gain from farming outweighs what they'd do from ganking teammates (which can be a negative, or waste of time sometimes if they're inexperienced).