"The Jungle is great!" Really?

I'm not going to try to convince you that I'm a jungle main in any way shape or form, though I do seem to find myself dabbling in it every now and then. In Season 3 and 4, I would normally be happy to fill in the jungle with my Nocturne, which I was proud of. But nowadays, the jungle really sucks. Here are the three extremely obvious problems:

1. There's basically one upgrade that a Jungler should buy. If you don't buy Cinderhulk, you're a chump and should leave the game, except under very VERY rare circumstances.

But why is Cinderhulk such a problem? This item was heralded as God's saving grace to Junglers everywhere when it arrived, but now it seems to be in the exact position that Warrior enchant was at the beginning of the Spring Split. It's not overpowered, it's not poorly designed, it's just the best out of any option. Warrior was nerfed into oblivion because it was the only viable option for a Jungler, but the reality is that it was never too strong. It's just that the other enchantments were so weak, it was the only valid option. Now that we have Cinderhulk as an option, Warrior is a joke comparatively. Warrior needs a buff big time to help it out or we're going to continue to see the same three jungle champs dominating every single game of LCS and solo queue. I'm looking at you Gragas, Sejuani, and Rek'Sai.

Currently, Warrior enchant gives:

40 AD 10% CDR 10 Armor Pen +30 Gold Per Monster Kill

To help it out, it doesn't need that much. Like I said, it was never in a bad place to begin with, it's just the rest of the enchantments were so bad. So buff this thing up to 50 AD and let's allow some early aggression junglers to shine along side the tanks.

And this doesn't even go into Devourer or Magus. Both of these have been terrible since they were released. Devourer, an attempt to help auto-attack based Junglers out, is a shadow of its Feral Flare predecessor, a "mistake" according to Morello. It's been placed into a irrelevancy because no one will give it the time of day. The fear that a Jungler could abandon his lanes for thirty minutes and come out an unkillable monster is just too much. So strong that Feral Flare saw competitive play once...a bad Master Yi game. And I'm not going to argue that its original state was a bit unbalanced, much like many new items that hit the Rift, but to make it useless isn't fair to the countless Junglers out there who main champs like Yi, Jax, Nocturne, Tryndamere, Shaco, Xin Zhao, and more. You've put them into a box and said "no play time for you" because you're afraid that it will be too strong. Don't get me wrong, the fear is understandable, but can we stop acting like it doesn't exist?

Currently, Devourer enchant gives:

+50% AS +20 Magic Damage on hit +30 Bonus Gold Per Monster Kill Killing large monsters increases magic damage by 1 and champion kill/assist increases it by 2

I think the main thing holding back a buff to this enchantment is the unlimited scaling of it. So let's change that. Let's keep the attack speed bonus, since we are talking auto-attack Junglers here, increase the Magic Damage on hit to 25, keep the scaling given, but cap it at 30 monster kills. This means that the most anyone can get is 55 Magic Damage on hit. The point has to be raised though that this will make the item weaker, since most Devourers exceed 35 stacks easily. Let's add a new bit into Devourer to help it out though. Let's add 10% Lifesteal, feeding off the idea that it is "devouring" the souls of these monsters/champions and giving you their life. So the new look would be:

+50% AS +25 Magic Damage on hit +30 Bonus Gold Per Monster Kill +10% Lifesteal Killing large monsters increases magic damage by 1 and champion/kill assist increases it by 2, capped at 30 stacks

This would allow auto attack champions to survive the new jungle through some lifesteal and attack speed, have better presence early with the 5 extra magic damage to start, but not let them get unrealistically out of control late due to power farming/ignoring laners.

Magus is a really strange item though. The champs that benefit from it also benefit from other jungle enchantments as well, mostly Cinderhulk now. And there are almost no Junglers that are going to be going full AP outside of Fiddlesticks and Karthus. You may see this on an Amumu every now and then, but it's in a rough spot due to the champs available. Elise would use it but she's completely trash right now. But everyone else recognizes that Cinderhulk is just that much better and you can buy other AP to support yourself and not sacrifice the strength of the tank. If you really want to help Magus, Riot needs to make a champion that thrives in the jungle as an AP. We only have two that do that and they're not exactly the most meta right now (Fiddle/Karthus). More AP jungle champs would help this item more than you'd think. It's just hard to buff an item that gives 80 AP and 20% CDR. Maybe give Magic Pen instead? I'm not sure. I'll leave this one up to the experts.

2. Some Champions are immune to nerfs

Hello Gragas. Hello Sejuani. Hello Rek'Sai. You know, we've experienced this problem before, where some champs just hung out at top tier for so long that everyone got sick of them. I'm really tired of seeing Gragas 100% Pick/Ban in almost every region. And it breaks my heart even more to see that even with this dominance, there are no incoming nerfs on the PBE for the Fat Man. Sejuani has received some love tap nerfs, but nothing substantial. Then Rek'Sai has been dominant ever since her release, mostly because of the phenomenal vision control and early ganks she gives. This might be another Thresh case, where the only way to deal with her is to nerf her into the ground, and even then she'll be strong because of the nature of her kit.

There are currently no Jungler nerfs on the PBE and there are no Jungler buffs on the PBE either. In other words, Riot seems pretty happy seeing these three run the Rift. Personally, I'd really appreciate seeing some Kha'Zix or Vi or (God forbid) a Nocturne pop up every now and then. At least at the end of Season 4, we had a pretty good Jungle diversity created, allowing a ton of new Junglers the opportunity to shine with Ancient Lizard being strong and Quill Coat helping tanks. With the revamped map, all of that was thrown away, then compacted, then they pulled out a small Cinderhulk to make it look pretty, but really just created the exact same situation as they had at the beginning of the season, but with new champions to replace Lee Sin and Jarvan IV.

3. Riot nerfs emerging strategies

This one is more of a pet peeve of mine, but it seems like whenever something attempts to break the current Jungle meta, it's put "back in its place." Let's take Pantheon for instance. I love Pantheon. I tried to help him apply for Culinary School once, but he threw a spear at me (he still took the application!). But whenever people found out that he could solo dragon at level 2, three minutes into the game, there was an uproar. "Unfair!" they cried. "OP!" they declared. And as soon as it emerged, it was demolished, making his unique interaction now useless and the different strategy now gone. But why? What was the real problem here? You get a free ward every single game and you can't see that there's a Pantheon and throw one in the pit? It's not that hard. Why not allow strategies like this to be possible instead of destroying them right when they come out. It wasn't broken. It wasn't overpowered. It was a strategy that could easily be stopped, but no. "Destroy it!" Morello decreed. "Steal his application! He shall never go to culinary school!" And thus was the end of Pantheon's time on the Rift.

Why not let champs with unique interactions have their unique interactions? It makes no sense to me.

As I said at the beginning, I'm not a Jungle main. Far from it. I avoid Jungle at all costs because the Junglers I excel with are awful in the current jungle meta. I just was hoping to create some form of discussion around this and maybe reach a solution because currently, the Jungle sucks. I don't have a problem with tanks being relevant. I welcome them aboard. But let's not do it at the cost of others as well. Let's not ignore those who could really use some love.