Thats how it should be(my idea would have been a 'second' trinket slot for machete, ranger, poacher and co)
The concept of jungle items
The reason why we have a hard early jungle and specific jungle items that grant high bonuses vs jungle mobs is to prevent opressive early ganks and junglers that 1v1 sololaners early on.
Everyone who was around in S3 with double dorans Lee and Aatrox should know what i'm talking about...
In the current jungle, you are forced spend 850g on no-combat stats so your early isn't that dominant(really, double dorans Aatrox walking out of jungle with 50% health and killing the fullhealth toplaner 1v1 at lvl 3 wasn't funny)
A second funktion of jungleitems is to make poaching the jungler for laners not as attractive, as they have a harder time clearing camps early on.
To further reduce poaching other the cause of the game, jungleitems give aditional gold for jungleclear while the base glold for camps is rather low, so poaching gives suboptimal gold.
The jungle enchantments are ment to be a pay off for the 850 gold sink in the early, they are very cost efficient, and overall the jungle gives quite alot gold with an upgraded jungle item, so junglers can become relevant in terms of combat stats in the midgame.
Short: The idea of jungle items is to prohibbit excessive earlygame power but still give a midgame spike while also reduceing poaching from laners.
**The problem of jungle items
**
The problem is, as soon as a jungleitem gets really nice, it also becomes valuable for laners.
You will never have jungleitems that are really statisfying that aren't at the same time abused by laners, unless you tie some junglefarming to it like devourer.
However if a jungleitem becomes powerfull and is kinda unique while needing jungle farm, it needs everyone to be blanced around it, so every champ that can potentially abuse it has to be toned down so he's balanced with the item, limmiting their role to jungle, which is something i fear devourer is doing right now.
If you want to go for an on-hit built and scale meaningfull into late, devourer is kinda a must buy, so you have to go jungle. So soon, either those that scale really well with it and are kinda op right now get nerfed to a point where they need devourer and thus have to jungle, or devourer gets nefed till he has a not that statisfying powerlevel.
Short:_ jungle items will always have to be 'just viable' rather than great, else they will either force certain champs into jungle, or they will be bought by smite-laners._
The posibble solution for jungle items
By outsourcing the jungleitem to 'Smite-upgrades' or an aditional 'jungletrinket', you could achive the same limits for the early game aswell as for poaching.
The remaining problem would be that it sets junglers behind for the entire game, as they no longer have that efficient midgame-enchant.
One could simply increase the aditional gold that thos jungle items give so junglers can farm their way into midgame, maybe with aditional gold for takedowns rather than kills, so giving a buff or junglemob to your laners won't cost as much money, and maybe even expend the bonusgold to champion takedowns aswell, else farm junglers could have a to big advantage over ganking junglers.
However, that could make the jungle overall to snowbally.
So my aproach here would be to ad a credit effeckt on it. You pay 850 g early for that item, and later you get the 850 gold back from that item.
The idea would be to give ranger and co 19 conservation stacks. Each jungle (and evt champion) takedown consumes 1 stack and grants 50g.
That would mean by the time you consumed all 19 stacks, you recived all the 850g that you did spend in the early for it.
That way, Jungle could actually work like a lane in terms of items and goldflow, you could go for similar itembuilts as laners.
So the main remaining thing would be balanceing out the overall goldflow in the jungle to balance farming junglers vs laners vs gankingjunglers, but with no more strange item shenanigans.
Short: remove enchants, outsource jungleitems to smiteupgrades/jungle-trinkets and let them repay their goldcost over time
**TL;DR, **
Concept: The idea of jungle items is to prohibbit excessive earlygame power but still give a midgame spike while also reduceing poaching from laners.
Problem: jungle items will always have to be 'just viable' rather than great, else they will either force certain champs into jungle, or they will be bought by smite-laners.
**Solution:**remove enchants, outsource jungleitems to smiteupgrades/jungle-trinkets and let them repay their goldcost over time
