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Monster Damage

Karlyr·3/10/2015, 3:54:39 PM·1 votes·507 views

On the PBE Riot is decreasing the amount of damage dealt by jungle monsters. It's pretty much a fact that it will get onto the live server at this point.

I'm not here to say that's an horrible mistake and begin to Riot bash like every other post on the forum. I'm just here to make a comparaison with the time where tank junglers were viables and season 4 jungle with low damage monsters.

Back in season 2, to be able to jungle meant to be able to sustain the damage of the monsters (Red and Blue buff more accuratly) and also be able to have enough health afterwards to gank. This was why unusual/hardly viable junglers had in them Wukong/Rengar in them. Xin Zhao (post nerf) had a lot of problems jungling because he was taking a lot of damage.

In season 3, the jungle damage has been lowered SIGNIFICANTLY. Why didn't we see hard carries yet ? Money earnt there. But tank junglers were on the decline because most of the time better early presence meant better early damage. And this is when the Wukongs and Rengars began appearing.

Variety was coming. And honnestly I was happy at the time. Problem was Season 4. The low damage of monsters was kept but also increased gold for the junglers. And this is when tank junglers disappeared. Basically it meant that if you were able to have a good early presence, you would also get the gold from the jungle and scale super well into the late game. If you missed your early presence, well stay in the jungle a bit and hope for the best.

If you translate that to tank junglers... Well... It basically meant that you were out classed. You have early presence, but less damage than a Xin or a Vi or a J4. (which all have early presence) And since tank junglers doesn't requires a ton of gold, you would get outscaled by these bruisers.

All I'm saying is that I'm kind of affraid that the cinderhulk enchatement won't do enough. There is a lot of chances that the same reasonning will still apply. It will CLEARLY help tank junglers, but I don't think it will be enough.

TL;DR : I really doubt that Cinderhulk will bring enough for tank junglers.

11 Comments

ValyrianBlade3/10/2015, 4:46:11 PM2 votes

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're only lowering damage on two camps, Gromp and Raptors.

Now, this will definitely help sustain of all junglers. Two points here though. Gromp is meant to be the tank jungle camp early on - you smite it for the buff (which will now scale with bonus hp) and then do other camps. Making him do less damage should help tank junglers more than anyone else. He's also the only camp with just 1 monster, meaning high single target dps champions (i.e. non tank junglers) take it down much faster and thus don't gain as much from it.

Raptors are the opposite end of the spectrum. They're a value smite for everyone since you get the free oracles. They're the largest camp: tanks prioritize it because they often have some sort of AOE, whereas assassin and high dps junglers avoid it (at least early) because the small creeps just do way too much damage. I think the biggest point to be made here is that this camp DID TOO MUCH DAMAGE. It was the highest damaging camp by a long shot when it was previously a lower damaging camp. I think your non-AOE (mostly non-tank) junglers avoided this camp entirely in their early clears. With 6 camps and ganking, you could afford to ignore a camp. I often ignored Krugs for large parts of the game playing Hecarim (not a true tank jungler, but definitely still tankier than most), it wouldn't surprise me if a Kha'zix ignored raptors for example. So again, I don't think the damage reduction is going to make a huge difference it, it may make more options for non-tanks and it will be a straight buff to tanks. Add in the extra AOE damage on cinderhulk and perhaps it's even better for tanks.

I think we have to see what happens. I agree that damage reductions in general will hurt tank junglers. I definitely think giving tank junglers some early damage for clear speed will really help them stay relevant though. Give it a week on live and I think we'll get a good idea of how things actually turn out - I'm fairly optimistic though.

Karlyr3/10/2015, 4:44:18 PM1 votes

Bumping for more reactions on tank junglers.

RogueWill3/10/2015, 6:10:52 PM1 votes

I'm actually happy with the cinderhulk changes, besides the loss of the tenacity which it should be core for tanks, however I don't I will be picking many item 3111 over item 3009 any time soon so I'll guess I'll stay rooted for longer xD After all I'm still abig lump of think meat and shoudl bodyblock most skillshots