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Devourer's current manifestation is actually BAD for strategic diversity.

D rok·8/24/2015, 6:54:17 PM·5 votes·668 views

Frankly, I hate it when a devourer jungle locks in. But I'm going to try to make this less of a rant, and more of a discussion. (may fail)

I'm all for strategic diversity. I'm all for junglers being able to make decisions about how they want to jungle, and having multiple routes to affect the game... But this item seems to dictate that route too severely, and usually dictates what a team is able to do, strategically. In other words, devourer is not just strategic diversity for the** jungler**, but locks the whole team into a very specific style of early/mid game, depending on how well the jungler does.

For formatting's sake, these are my issues with devourer:

  • It's a feast-or-famine item.
  • it puts an enormous emphasis on your team's jungler.
  • it can pull strategy away from other lanes, and their ability to interact with the jungler, often disallowing strategic diversity from laners if the jungler is behind.
  • Immediately tips the scales of the game once stacked, and doesn't fall off.
  • It just isn't fun to play on the side of a devourer jungler who fails to stack. Strategically, it is extremely taxing and basically makes your jungler useless, cutting your teams options substantially, since the jungler is already locked into a certain style of play.
  • At its low, it hurts your team's objective control, map movements, and teamfighting. At its high, it can be outrageously difficult to play against (especially as certain compositions).
  • There seems to be no in-between. Either a devourer jungler falls behind hard, or absolutely crushes. (too snowbally an item?)
  • It just isn't needed. At all.

Am I wrong about some/all of this? I've had the same thoughts about feral flare and was thankful when it was taken away. I just don't see anything good about devourer. Aren't there enough benefits for being able to farm your jungle non-stop, take scuttle, or counter-jungle to add pressure? Is devourer really needed? Do you like playing with devourer junglers? Do you think the design is good? Bad? Are you still amazed at the results of yesterday's games? Other thoughts?

3 Comments

Zok728/25/2015, 1:47:21 AM2 votes

A lot of your points boil down to snowballyness (which is not good design I agree, but doesn't hurt champion diversity), and lack of strategic diversity after devourer is picked.

Let's ask the question of what devourer adds to the game if it is perfectly balanced (I know this is somewhat of a pipe dream, but it will illustrate a point). If devourer is balanced, then in some number of games the jungler will be a hard carry for the team. A team can build around this, making strategic decisions during champion select and after which supplement this strategy. For example, a team could use maokai, braum, sivir, and orianna to defend the devourer. A support or even a mid laner could build zeke's harbinger to make the jungler stronger. Teams will fight more over invading, counterinvading, crab control, dragons, and barons. Conversely, teams will not pick hard carry laners like ryze, vayne, or karthus, will not build greedy support items like randuins, and will not focus as much on towers and lane kills. Games with devourer junglers are definitely strategically different from other games. All of these decisions are built into a devourer jungle pick. So far I think we agree on the facts.

I would like to propose that a balanced devourer is a good thing. My reasoning is thus: while picking jungle Yi or Shyvana etc. locks your team into this kind of game, the same thing is true of a number of picks. Selecting kog-maw ADC for example means a protect the kog composition and selecting nidalee jungle or ezreal mid signals a poke composition. For items, Rod of Ages or tear items prevent your team from fighting in the early/mid game while trinity force gives you a very strong power spike during which your team should take objectives. In other words, devourer junglers may dictate the type of game you play, but so do most if not all other champions and items. In a world without devourer games are still directed by what champions are good at, but there is a subset of games which never happen because your jungler can never be an auto-attack carry.

Looking specifically at the current jungle, you can see that devourer is not unique in this regard. Cinderhulk is used for mid-late game teamfighting. Warrior and runeglaive are used for early game pressure. While technically a jungler can farm with a warrior enchant, doing so wastes most of its power and will cost that jungler the game.

TLDR: devourer adds to strategic diversity by adding to team wide strategies, other strategies close of in-game options just as much as devourer does, snowballing is bad for the game but does not impact strategic diversity