Thank you, Riot. On behalf of all Udyr Mains
Before this rework, Udyr was locked into the jungle and had several really annoying problems. At the beginning of Season 5 (back when Warwick and Udyr were the only viable junglers XD) I tested out Udyr's sustain and found that amazingly as long as he has mana he can farm the jungle indefinitely. However, running out of mana was an instant death sentence, and because Tiger Stance required you to reactivate it in order to deal significant damage there was a huge disparity between the two, even ignoring Phoenix's superior clear speeds. I'm not sure how others felt, but I built Frozen Heart or Triforce as a requirement on Tiger Udyr for almost the same reason: more Tiger Strikes without running out of mana every 3 minutes. The small difference of being able to stay in Tiger Stance has opened up his build path tremendously, and you've also not only allowed for but incentivized building health instead of relying on resistances and Turtle's spammable shield. When low on mana if you have red buff you can just Turtle smack the Scuttler for free. You can (theoretically, I haven't tried it) heal off turrets. And you can build something like
without feeling weak or like a total troll. And while I hate top lane with a passion these changes should make it viable to play him there, as his biggest deterrent was the lack of blue buff making it impossible to sustain. So from a guy who silently sulked when you took a bat to Udyr's kneecaps after the Ruinic Echoes patch (sure it was deserved, but it still didn't feel nice) I just want to thank you.
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