J4 Top vs J4 Jungle
I've always found it perplexing that J4 seems to operate better as a tank while in the jungle, yet the one time I chose to build cinderhulk over warrior, I actually felt like I was taking more dmg due to lack of AD from caufields along with hunter's machette allowing me to take advantage of lifesteal. To me the bami's cinder dmg just doesn't do enough to get me to where I need to be, and I suffer from lack of early cooldown.
In top lane this problem never seems to arise. I find myself staying much healthier due to purchasing corrupting potion, making it very easy to drive my opponent out of lane with constant Q poke and passive dmg and allow myself some easy farm and a fairly fast tiamat + phage buy (practically a whole item's worth of gold), as gives me aoe, regen, hp, and stickiness.
Imo it is a far safer and effective way to get the ball rolling, whereas in the jungle none of this safety exists due to lack of beefiness I acquire from my jg item one way or the other. I am either getting a nice chunk of damage with no tankiness, by which time I can easily be bursted if I gank mid, top, or get caught out by the enemy jungle since if I miss that q+e I am pretty much guaranteed to lose the trade and possibly even die since 15% cdr is the amount needed to have your abilities back up and save your skin should you realize you're losing. Or... I lack the dmg to help out my laner with during a gank, and one of us ends up dying, or worse we both get boned because cdr offers AoE dmg per second that J4 simply doesn't make good use of, and the hp scaling on the shield I get is minimal, and only truly shines if I hit multiple people with the slow. This means I have to hope the enemy jungler shows up to counter-gank so I can get a bigger shield (why would I wait to use an ability that slows and is a gank tool, that's counter-intuitive), or hope that I am the one performing the counter-gank, or just go bot because hey, maybe the ADC and support will glue themselves together.
This is a bit of word vomit, but I am looking for opinions on how to make J4 jungle a more optimal position. He only has two roles but I like playing him in both positions, because I feel he brings a ton to the table. I sometimes build a black cleaver early to get myself that combination of tankiness and dmg, and necessary armor shred that makes up the core of his build, but it is snowball reliant, and I run into the same problem during the building process: phage grants hp+dmg but no cdr, kindlegem grants hp+cdr but no damage to aid in my jg sustain.
