Thoughts about jungle items and the worries about recent direction of balancing

So, reading the PBE patchnotes since the season started, we can see one trend. RIOT has consistently over the course of this season kept nerfing Jungle items, almost every patch. This is a fact and whole no amount of mentioning it will get any attention it seems, so I'll pretend this makes a difference and go all out on why we should let this go on, the entire playerbase, NOT just the jungle mains.

First thing we should concider with these changes is, why does a jungle item get nerfed? Why, since Season 4, every time a jungle item got nerfed was because there is a single outlying champion that can expoit it; Runeglaive was BluEz mid favorite toy, Cinderhulk was Sejuani's rise to dominance in a single patch, and we had Udyr do well with Runic Echoes, and now it's Devourer on the chopping block, along with nerfs to Shyvana (severe ones) and Master Yi (less severe ones, but I think they might impact Yi more than Shyv's will hit her). At the very least Warrior is so mediocre it's never going to see nerfs based on the fact it's never going to see play unless a jungler can help it.

But what happened the patch after someone becomes opressive with a jungle item? Apart from Ez making the entire item to get scrapped and getting away scott free, all other changes went the way of the champion getting nerfed, the item they relied getting nerfed ater that and them being in the worst case unplayable later on (Sejuani) and i nthe best just keep doing what they were, only picked less (Udyr).

So why is this bad for the game? Simply put, power creep, a word that's been associated with game balancing for a long, long while now, albeit this goes in reverse. The "power creep" here is that as you keep nerfing items, other champions who used those items, but not to such a synergistic extent (WW and Xin come to mind) don't see more play, because that item was ALSO one they needed. So by nerfing that one item, you nerfed a whole subset of characters. And this is going to happen again, with AP junglers losing 20 damage on Runic Echoes (while 20 damage seems a little, the item has been nerfed for 25% of it's bnase, not a laughing matter) because of Udyr, no less! And what buffs are there? None at all at this point. Xin's buffs didn't cause him to rise to prominence, and yet, he got nerfed INSTANTLY (one can hope it was realized it was not the buff Xin needed). So what's the philosophy behind the jungle now? Hit the champs that abuse certain items, hit said items too and leave the junglers weaker, and on for a year, and now a quarter into the other, and up to this date, no Jungle item has seen an actuall buff (that wasn't accompanied by a nerf to something else or a full rework) as far as I know.

Even when Devourer was at it's strongest, Shyvana didn't have a 55% winrate, and why? Because there were people who used other items, and their synergy with them was better than her synergy with Devourer, which leads to the simple fact that Shyv is s o good right now because everyone's items but hers got hit out of the park. And of course, whomever mentions jungle gets no ansvers to any of their worries/questions, nor does RIOT give any info, as they are busy with their Mage Reworks . I'd probably just do the same and keep quiet, but the Sej buffs in the patchnotes got me woried. RIOT apparently thinks Sejuani mysteriously became too weak, forgetting the process of nerfing the champ, nerfing the item that left her in a sorry state compared to many of her peers (and of course, too proud to give her back her damage, instead giving a buff that's of... Disputable importance).

So yeah, is this the way it's going to be from now on for Jungle mains? There were already threads in which ot was stated that Jungle changes to gold mean jungle items should retain unique, cheap power to make up for their lack of gold, and reduced Summoner spell capacity. But those were apparently ignored and jungle took yet another hit, and keeps taking them every patch, with noting to compenstate. Jungle is notoriously difficult to balance, sure, but this pattern isn't new, and it seems it's going to continue untill we go back to Season 2 of Jungle being the 3rd wheel of the game.

So yeah, raise dust, if possible get some Red Posts to notice this, and see if we can at least get some info about the future of our role, if nothing else.