@FeralPony Zenonthestoic Xelnath, Spirit of the Ancient Golem and jungle diversity

Jingerbeardman·Apr 10, 2014·7 votes·2,114 views

So the Patch Forecast (great idea btw) made mention that the spirit stone jungle items are getting looked at. I think that is great! In my opinion, the main culprit limiting jungle diversity right now is Spirit of the Ancient Golem and not the other spirit stone items. After the health reduction it received a while ago, jungle tanks started getting picked less and less. Jungle tanks like Maokai and Nautilus give up good base stats for their great CC, mitigation, and sustain (referring primarily to health). When Ancient golem took a hit, effectively, so did they. Both have abilities that scale off their health (Nauts shield, Maos passive) less health, means less defensive power, resulting in lower viability.

To help bring back Ancient Golem as a more attractive buy would obviously be giving it more health again. Since that would put it back in a state of giving to many benefits for how much it costs, just boosting its flat health is not an option. There is an alternate way however to approach this. The recent jungle item changes in how they grow as you continue jungling is a great way to bring back tanks to the jungle as well. Like Spirit of the Spectral Wraith, have Spirit of the Ancient Golem award additional health as you kill more jungle camps (up to a cap obviously). Since the issue before was that non junglers were picking it up before because of the stats it gave, having it grow as you jungle would keep it a jungle item and deter people laneing from wanting to buy it.

After Xelnath kindly dropped in with more info, I would say that adding a feral flare like stack of bonus damage to jungle monsters only might work well.

20 Comments

RiotXelnathApr 12, 20146 votes

The underlying issue tho is that tank ability to clear the jungle doesn't scale as the game progresses.

Space LizardApr 12, 20142 votes

Couldn't you solve or alleviate this by having Ancient Golem do bonus magic damage to a monster when they're effected by CC, or a damage amp for x seconds when a monster is affected by CC or simply over the duration of said CC? (In other words: Deal X dmg when a target is CC'd OR deal x% more dmg over y seconds when a target is CC'd or deal x% more dmg to a target while they are CC'd)

I realize this doesn't help Maokai or Rammus much, but it does help champs like Sejuani and Nautilus a whole lot, and I feel like Maokai and Rammus have issues more complex than just itemization.

LugignafApr 12, 20141 votes

It actually doesn't help them too much either. Sejuani's CC isn't that great other than Permafrost. And Riptide doesn't last that long either.

What if either the bonus damage to monsters scaled up on your Armor/MR/HP or you got bonus damage on hit equal to a percentage of your maximum HP? The latter wouldn't be as great for "full tanks" like Maokai, Rammus and Nautilus, but it would kind of help the tankier bruisers.

Space LizardApr 12, 20142 votes

Nautilus applies a snare on his autos, and Sejuani applies CC with pretty much everything. I think dealing damage to a monster based on CC duration could work here. The bonus damage doesn't need to scale with CC type. If it did for example, 50 magic damage per second to monsters you've CC'd, I think it'd be plenty strong and useful (although I don't think think 50 magic damage per second is particularly reasonable.) The idea isn't to CC the monsters for longer, it's to do damage upon using your CC, since tanks typically have more and stronger CC than bruisers.

The problem with scaling damage based on your resists or HP is two-fold:

Bruisers typically have better bases, meaning it helps bruisers more than tanks generally (tanks often become survivable with defensive steroids like Nautilus/Maokai/Rammus/Malphite/Skarner/etc.,)
Defenses are as much a bruiser stat as they are tank stats, and a bruiser needs to selfishly build defenses more than a tank does due to lack of defensive steroids.

Bruisers don't really have that many problems jungling. They go elder lizard into brutalizer then full tank, have good clear and dueling, and ganks variable based on the bruiser. I think giving damage based on resistances might just help fighters more than tanks.

Also, tanks typically have kind of crappy AS, so on-hit damage doesn't work well.

I think tanks need to be able to clear late game, and even have help early game, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't help bruisers more than tanks. For that, I think we need to identify what separates the two- in this case, damage vs cc, and then make an item catered to CC champions.

My current thoughts are damage directly based on CC. But, I can think of some other decent solutions off the top of my head:

Increase conservation stack cap on ancient golem. Tanks have better ganks than the other classes, so even if ancient golem became standard it helps tanks more than the others as a result.
Give Ancient Golem a thornmail effect against monsters. Have the effect stack with time, incentivizing early purchase of ancient golem. Worried about bruisers again, but they typically liked to build a bunch of damage, and the delay in their damage items for not a whole lot of tank stats might keep them in check, if they want to use the item as effectively as a tank. Pigeonholing tank junglers is a real concern here though, but that's going to happen when you try to solve the problem with items.
Increase early dragon rewards, increase dragon base damage. The dragon base damage increase will affect tanks less than other classes, as they're more likely to itemize early resists, and it would be more beneficial to have a tank when going for an early dragon, which would give more gold. Incidentally, this also alleviates the LCS 2v1 meta.

LugignafApr 12, 20141 votes

Sejuani's CC only applies on Q and Permafrost though. Her passive isn't free CC anymore.

Naut's free root is very low duration. You wouldn't get a very long increase in your damage on Naut's root.

As for the "ways to improve Golem Spirit" I'm going to address each of them.

That seems like it'll only kind of work. All other classes will get the same amount of gold off their spirit item as a Golem jungle, just 'cause they're clearing the jungle and cashing the stacks. Golem junglers will just get larger gold spikes, and less frequently.
That actually works really well I think. Or, something similar to Bladed Armor, except it returns more of a flat damage than a percentage of anything. Of course, that also brings back the problem of junglers stealing the buffs from their laners, so it'd have to be tuned correctly like that.
That hardly helps anything. The damage increase doesn't really change anything for the bruisers and full damage junglers since they have the sustain from the damage portion of as well as just higher damage overall. The tanks don't have any increased damage options, so this'll just make the junglers focus less on dragon taking, since it hurts them more with its %current HP attack that it gained this patch.

exec3Apr 12, 20149 votes

Crazy idea but what if bladed armor scaled (possibly non linearly) with your champions health?

AvanyaliApr 12, 20146 votes

I agree with the concept of this, but what if, instead, Ancient Golem gave a passive similar to naut's w active: DoT scaling off bonus health that only applies to neutral monsters. I say this because the other two jungle items immediately benefit a champion's clear, while Golem does not, In addition, Wraith and Lizard both scale directly into effectiveness for the roles that choose them. Fiddlesticks wants to deal more damage in teamfights, and Wraith gives him AP with the promise of more to come. Wukong wants to deal more damage in general, so he gets AD and more free passive damage from his physical damage. Nautilus wants to apply as much cc as possible to lock down priority targets, and he gets ... generic tank stats. Don't get me wrong, tanks want to be tanky, but there's no promise of scaling like the true damage on Lizard or the AP on Wraith, and the "spell/manavamp" is wasted on a non damage dealer. Perhaps that could be replaced by scaling cdr per camp cleared, similar to Wraith? That way tanks could do more of what they want to do in teamfights, based on how well they jungle: apply cc.

JingerbeardmanApr 12, 20142 votes

this is true. It is hard to think of a way to actually help tank junglers clear times without it being abused by the other archetypes in some way. Since all tanks build HP as a primary defensive stat adding an extra monsters only damage modifier based on total HP, Something like magic damage equal to 3-5% total HP, could be tried.

Another idea could be along the lines of an invisible damage aura (like sunfire cape) that only effects monsters and deals a % of their max health every second. I wouldnt have it effect baron or dragon though.

The question is at what period of the game are you guys trying to boost their clear time?

hashinshinApr 12, 20144 votes

They didn't in S3 or S2 either. The tank jungle item is just blatantly inferior.

Angry MonsterApr 12, 20141 votes

Jungle clear isnt the only issue. Late game team fight also mean nothing to tanks as there damage is low and CC is no where near spam-able.

Makeing fighters the better choice

ProfDrDeathApr 12, 20142 votes

That's why I think item 3160 is an interesting item for teamfight-oriented, nonganking tanks, if they're willing to eschew ganking for stacking the item 3154 . The flat on-hit heal is really strong, if you can couple it with tankiness of your own (as it only scales on your own AS and tankiness).

Sire HippingtonApr 12, 20142 votes

Are there any plans to buff tanks in the jungle regarding their clears with jungle items that give bonus dmg vs monster based on tankiness or stuff like that, or some plans on improving their viabillity in a sololane by granting less mancosts/better sustain?

It's a long time since if seen a real tank, and while i do quite well with nauti or mao top, i feel thats only because my enemies never seen them and don't know what to do. As it is now, tanks seem to have no place to go in this game, and thats pretty sad.

Tobasco da GamaApr 12, 20141 votes

Interesting. I see the real problem being almost the opposite. Namely, that tank junglers like Nautilus and Sejuani tend to A) not be very good at dueling 1v1 and B) have a very slow early-game clear.

It's true, probably, that their jungle clearing doesn't scale into late game, but in my mind it's not particularly relevant. Tank junglers tend to give up their buffs to allies, largely preferring to earn gold through assists and global objectives.

On Naut, for instance, it's not uncommon for me to give up every blue buff except the first. Furthermore, once the first tower goes down, I hardly bother going back into the jungle except to secure buffs. I'm clearing the jungle just to kill time between ganks and teamfights, basically.

From that perspective, what I'm really worried about is not keeping up my farm into the late game but rather avoiding counterjunglers/buff-stealers in the early game. If the other jungler slips through the ward net (not hard in solo queue) and steals my red -- or, even worse, kills me while I'm doing it and then steals it -- I'm pretty much doomed to be behind on gold and ineffective in ganks for the rest of the game.

JingerbeardmanApr 14, 20141 votes

simple way to fix this the early counterjungle problem... start red

Tobasco da GamaApr 14, 20142 votes

Most tank junglers can't get past their first clear without blue buff. The junglers who can get away with the red start tend to be the same ones who benefit from Feral Flare in the first place.

JingerbeardmanApr 14, 20142 votes

For nautilus that is not true. I main Naut as my jungle and only start red for the fact that they always try to take it. You have enough mana to clear red, wraiths and then blue without an issue. Once I have blue I typically will gank a lane right away, if that isnt your style go to wolves then wight and continue jungleing from there.

on a side note... feral flare is actually pretty op on naut.

Tobasco da GamaApr 14, 20141 votes

I guess I haven't been jungling Naut much since they flattened out his shield CD. Used to be you needed the CDR from blue buff in order to have your shield for wraiths and red.

JingerbeardmanApr 14, 20142 votes

nope not anymore, it will be up by the time you reach wraiths from red :)

ProfDrDeathApr 11, 20142 votes

Tanks are already starting to move out from Top Lane again, as most things that made them unbearable there were nerfed ( item 1054 , Perseverance).

Problem with most tank junglers is that they can't clear the jungle as efficiently. Also, the passive of item 3207 gives more of a late-game oriented teamfight stat, while item 3209 gives a passive that can do major damage in the early stages of the game, too. Also, Butcher multiplies own stat efficiency (more damage = more clear speed = more sustain and less damage taken).

JingerbeardmanApr 11, 20142 votes

those are some good points. I dont know if completely clearing the jungle is completely necessary though, once i have my jungle item when I play Naut i usually just clear my bonus gold from 2 camps then head out to gank. its not hard to clear a camp as Naut but it might be more challenging for some of the others i suppose.