Monster Hunter, Smite-Takers and Funnelers - how Jungle Items remove alternative metas from the game

Hi G+! The majority of this post is based upon explaining why non-1-1-2+jg metas (the "current duolane meta") are discouraged by monster hunter - scroll down to the Smite-takers and funnelers section for some of what monster hunter heavily discourages.

Monster Hunter and the meta Let's start with the basic assumption that a meta (in the sense of player position configuration) requires at least approximately the same total amount of XP and Gold to be absorbed by ally champions as the enemy team, which immediately removes meme configurations like 5 mid, and the pre-30 classic of duotop + duobot (more on that later). As a quick recap, the two primary sources of experience are standing near dying minions and killing jungle monsters, while the three primary sources of gold are killing minions, killing jungle monsters, and support items. Building from this, there are 4/5 (depending on whether you split the jungle into two) locations available on each side of the map, with 5/7 if you include the enemy jungle as a "reliable" source of gold/xp income:

1. Top lane
2. Mid lane
3. Bottom lane
4. Allied topside jg
5. Allied botside jg
6. Enemy topside jg
7. Enemy botside jg

The current duolane meta consists of one person farming minions and soaking xp toplane, one person farming jungle minions in the allied topside+botside jungle while farming minions from the enemy topside+botside jungle where they can, one person soaking 65% of normal minion XP botlane and taking farm (ADC), and one person soaking 65% of normal minion XP botlane while gaining gold from support itemization. As a result of this, we can consider the current meta earning 110% minion xp in total, and 100% of minion gold, jungle gold and jungle xp.

In order to maintain total gold and xp numbers comparable to this, **an alternative meta requires at least one person in every lane while minions are dying **(to soak minion gold + xp), and the ally jungle being farmed at a rate compared to the enemy jungler (on top of this, counterjungle pressure has to be dealt with). This is part of why the 2-1-2 meta doesn't work - it results in 120% minion xp in total and 100% of minion gold, but 0% jungle gold and xp (and a competent enemy jungler can theoretically reach up to 200% of jungle gold and xp)

Due to the nature of jungle items, any champion farming the jungle without a jungle item receives 50 less xp per camp, which at level 1 equates to almost a 33% increase in jungle xp) - any champion which doesn't bring monster hunter and tries to farm the jungle is inherently putting their team at a disadvantage (this is especially tangible at level 1, where those without monster hunter can't get level 2 from Monster Hunter effectively cuts the minion gold earned in half for the point in the game it's relevant (the average gold per minion is ~19.73 at the start of the game, and ~22.61 at 15 minutes, and Monster Hunter reduces minion gold by 10 per minion), which means that any champion farming lanes with monster hunter is put at a massive gold disadvantage - assuming that both players farm evenly, the player with monster hunter is a kill's worth of gold behind for every 30 minions farmed - equal to approximately every 5 waves, or every 2.5 minutes.

This results in a distinction between "jungle-farmers" and "lane-farmers" - which results in the current duolane meta being prominent, with only two theoretical alternatives:

1. The support constantly roams between lanes as waves crash, resulting in a 1-1-1 + support + jg comp, but this is essentially just a support roaming like they normally do while trying to leech the most XP they can
2. One champion farms each lane, while two junglers farm vertically and constantly gank+invade - this idea's been discussed lots of times over the years, but never seems to take off - my personal theory is that a combination of trouble 1v2ing botlane, support+laner collapses making vertical jungling extremely risky and catch-up xp making invading less valuable all make the double jungle meta far more difficult and riskier to pull off correctly than the current duolane meta.

Smite-takers and Funnelers Given that both lanes and the jungle must be farmed in order to compete with the enemy team's gold+xp, the only alternative to the support/jg and duojg metas are those which laners/supports bring smite and take partial amounts (or the entirety) of the jungle. There are two main version of this - those which take partial amounts of the ally / enemy jungle for an xp / gold lead ("Smite-takers") and those which replace the jungler and force other champions into taking supporting roles - "Funnelers".

I'm not here to make an argument for funneling (although I personally believe it to be something which riot could have attempted a less heavy-handed approach to nerfing, perhaps by nerfing jungle gold and xp when more than x% of your income is from lanes) - my focus is on smite-takers, which bend the meta in a more subtle way. Previous examples of smite-takers include the notorious smite singed support (who doesn't bring a jungle OR support item for some reason :/), smite nunu support and smite talon/aatrox mid (even though the latter two were more geared towards getting level 2 early, so them taking smite is a side effect of that implementation of monster hunter). Smite-takers are debatably a watered-down version of duo jungle, but are reduced to only the counterjungling support variants. The intent of this post is primarily to spark discussion about non-jungle smite-takers, funnelers and double jungle metas - is there a world where they exist in a balanced fashion, are any of the above this something which riot should endorse? Should monster hunter be removed altogether (including the buff to jungle xp in smite items) and champions which can take raptors/krugs/gromp level 1 get level 2 early at the cost of some health and/or a summoner spell? Is there a way to find an inbetween (monster hunter's debuff is partially removed upon completion of stalker's/skirmisher's?