When are "Jungle Tanks" going to get some love?

Tryphikik·May 23, 2014·11 votes·964 views

We're past the halfway point in the season and they got nothing, so it is beginning to look like the entire role of jungle tank is going to spend season 4 being nonexistent.

First to clarify, there is a difference between a jungle tank and a champion that slaps on a randuins and banshee's to become tanky. Champions like Nautilus, Maokai, Cho'gath, Zac, Sejuani, Rammus, and maybe Skarner. Most these champs are irrelevant in soloqueue with garbage winrates and all of these champs are irrelevant competitively. That is an entire role of champions eliminated from the competitive game. Why?

The answer to that is really simple, yet it hasn't even started to be addressed. There is zero reward for playing these champions, its the most unrewarding experience in the game outside of overcoming the obstacles the champion gives you. Lets expand on that answer, RIGHT NOW playing these champions means you're weaker early game, you have no jungle control, no clear speed, you have no objective control, if you start to snowball you still lose any duel and any countergank, you still don't have stronger ganking than champions like Elise/Eve/Lee Sin/etc and the most egregious thing is if you make it past all that you still don't scale any better.

60 minutes in Nautilus/Maokai still aren't as useful as the relevant picks that dominate early game cause you get late game and realize your champ does nothing important. Oh Nautilus is going to lockdown your backline? Rengar/Kha'zix is going to two hit them, Shyvanna is going to zone them and hurt them really badly while rocking massive aoe on everyone else and being just as tanky. Top lane bruisers can do anything old tanks used to do but better while being just as tanky and doing waaaay more damage.

This is what the role used to have going for it, it could make the early game sacrifices but scale so much better, locking down the feared adc's of the time and being way tankier than everyone else. Now they aren't even way tankier, their damage is nonexistent, adc's aren't as feared as they were in previous seasons, what are they going to do then, peel? Doesn't work either, even if you lockdown the Shyvana, Renekton, Mundo, etc, they are still rocking massive aoe damage and going to eat tons of abilities from everyone before dying, being more useful than your generic tank ever will be(This is why Rammus/Sejuani still have decent winrates in soloqueue but remain uncompetitive, competitive can't justify them for all they give up in game control but they at least have the one thing going for them of spitting out a lot of aoe damage while locking down/getting locked down and killed on the frontline so they do scale well, the other jungle tanks have literally nothing to compensate for their other weaknesses cause their aoe damage has been weakened so much over time).

The role needs a niche to fill, you can't have other roles be equally relevant in teamfights while still having the jungle tanks getting destroyed in the jungle, in ganks, objectively, in jungle farm speed, in snowball ability, and in scaling the one thing we used to have going for us. You'd think with a list that long i'm exaggerating their weaknesses, but i'm not, go try and kill the wight as these champions, go duel some top picks, go try and do a dragon/baron the way you would on other junglers, try and countergank an elise, try and get a lead and then take control of the enemy jungle, auto-attack some towers, please explore the role and tell me i'm wrong, at 40 minutes tell me that the weaknesses were worth getting to this point when you're still weak, I can win on these champs at times as well it doesn't mean these overwhelming weaknesses aren't a reality.

Make the role rewarding to play again in some way, because as it stands the reward is nonexistent. Outside of the ego boost or feeling like a hipster.

12 Comments

ThalesMay 24, 20142 votes

No mention of Amumu? He's been rocking one of the highest win rates in the game for ages now.

The role could use some help, I'll grant, but Riot is understandably reluctant to give it too much of a hand because when jungle tanks are king, the game gets a little strange. Naut, Zac, and Mao, and all the others are better gankers than the likes of Elise and Kha'Zix. When Zac was king, top lane (when the top laner wasn't Zac, that is) basically consisted of people hanging back as far as possible desperate not to get killed by a Zac gank from deep within the fog of war. Riot does want to boost jungle tanks, but they want to avoid a winter of paranoia.

The lategame isn't so bad as you assume. Sejuani is one of the strongest lategame junglers in the game. She won't kill people by herself, but she leaves the entire enemy team vulnerable. Zac and Amumu can put out incredible AOE magic damage while building pure tank. It's tanks who have a lot of the percent health shred, after all.

TryphikikMay 24, 20141 votes

Amumu is a strange case that I didn't really mention just because his build versatility is so immense that it is hard to judge him PURELY as a tank. Hybrid(Tank/AP) Amumu builds are pretty popular, or even massive damage builds. So he's just a weird case to talk about but in general the reason he is viable in solo queue is the same reasons i mentioned why Rammus and Sejuani are viable, immense aoe damage. Why he is unviable in competitive play is the exact same reason as ALL the jungle tanks, too vunerable, too little control of his own jungle/objectives/ganks, all can be outdone/countered by fighter/bruiser/assassin junglers.

As for Zac, I basically just disagree with you. He once had those things, he doesn't anymore. You're selling me a champion that is great at ganking, great in team fights, does a lot of damage and tons of tankiness. Yet he is in the bottom 10 champions in Diamond and Challenger winrates. So he can't be as strong as what you are selling. He clearly has significant issues to make him lose games so frequently. His issues are similar to most the other tank junglers and his ganks really aren't as amazing as you're saying. His damage got nerfed so his ganks are lower damage then something like Elise/Lee/Eve but only slightly easier to get in on and he suffers the same problem they all do where if he goes in and the other jungler is around you basically got your lane doublekilled.

But it doesn't even matter because those are isolated examples in a general discussion of the state of the role. None of them are competitively viable(not a single one) and there are a couple outliers that maintain soloqueue viability because their aoe damage hasn't yet been nerfed to the ground. In general the role is in a bad place that doesn't really have a place in the meta.

Hyrum GraffMay 25, 20142 votes

Did you say paranoia? Nocturne

ChaosThiefMay 23, 20141 votes

Currently they just need something to reward them for taking damage in camps, or an easier clear time. A thornmail for jungle monsters would work great, like Rammus .

TryphikikMay 24, 20141 votes

That wouldn't do much to improve their competitive or soloqueue power. It'd improve their clear time a bit, but I mean, most of them aoe clear fine, it's their single target that is weak and that wouldn't improve their single target clear much. Plus they'd still have all the other problems along with losing their jungle to other champs.

ChaosThiefMay 24, 20141 votes

I guess, but building tank just makes them last a bit longer, and only helps when ganking. Anything you can think of?

TryphikikMay 24, 20141 votes

They need to be made to scale better into team fights. Whether that be increased aoe damage, increased inherit tankiness, longer cc durations... It could be a lot of things.

But if we were to summarize tank junglers, we would conclude that they should clear slower then farm junglers, they should lose duels and lose invades to fighting junglers, they should have less objective control then control junglers, where they shouldn't be outclassed is in team fights and scaling yet even now they are outclassed there.

There are a lot of improvements that could be made to get them to being more impactful and relevant in the team fights. A lot of those changes should be in the champion kits, it can't really be itemization because champs like Shyvana/Mundo will always build those improved tank items and use them to tank just as effectively and deal more damage.

TortungaMay 24, 20141 votes

What most tank/support junglers got in common is there AP scaling, which is to me there largest weakness; If they don't got any spammable or permanent damage abilities (rammus ult, sejuani weapon swing or mumu's cry for example) or high base damage/% damage (elise/zac) what whill they bring in team fights in the late game? Almost nothing; They are a more tankier support with worse cc. AP bruisers/AP tanks without consistent spell damage just doesn't work (just image leblanc with 100 AP but with 200 armor/mr/3.5k health, she can root/silence but isn't really a threat to anyone). Amumu/rammus/sejaun aren't that bad because of the consistent spell damage aspect (there early game are just holding them back extremely hard). Changing the ap scaling to scaling from defensive stats should help atleast a couple of them in the late game.

ChaosThiefMay 25, 20141 votes

That isn't really a bad thing, the bad thing is they have to use abilities, which they go oom most of the time too fast.

TortungaMay 26, 20141 votes

It might look like it isnt that bad but it is; Like i said if the champion is missing any permanent magic damage ability or an ability with extremely high AP scaling (rammus ult is 240% ap scaling for example) the champion will bring no damage to late game at all. This is the mayor problem (atleast to me) between AP (most non played tank/supp junglers) and AD tanks/bruisers (only a couple of them arent that played much).

ADC gets there damage from AD/crit/attack speed/armor penetration. Thats 4 different sats. An AD tank/bruiser can drop crit/attack speed and just focus on AD/armor penetration and pick up 1 or 2 damage items and focus on doing damage with abilities rather then AA, which works fine because AD abilities got really high scaling (100%+ for almost every ability). Getting 250-300 AD with AD runes/masteries and 2 AD items is possible.

AP carries at the other hand only get damage from AP and magic penetration. AP bruisers/tanks can't really skip one of those stat so they often get some magic penetration and some AP. Because you can get massive amounts of AP (600+) scaling on AP abilities are often low (40-50% is normal). A tank/bruiser with 2 AP items and AP runes/masteries can, if he bought 2 very high AP items, get mabye 150-200 AP. That's lower then an AD bruiser, while an AD bruiser/tank even has higher scaling.

Just look at all the current played tank/bruiser in general in almost any leage; They are all AD scaling ones. Only elise (high % damage, doesnt need much scaling), signed (permanent AP damage), Amumu (permanent AP damage) and rammus (extremely high scaling on his ult (240%) and scales with armor) are played as AP bruiser/tanks.

And thats why (atleast for me) AP scaling on tank/support junglers without any permanent damage, extremely high scaling or % based damage is just not working. You need to much AP-items to do any significante damage late game and tank/support junglers cant get that without sacrificing all there tankinish. It could be fine if they would bring so much better team fight abilities then there AD counterparts, but they often don't.

So or they got to change the scaling and let them scale with defensive stats (or mabye both AP and defensive stats) or greatly increase there team fight abilities (counter jungling would still be problem).

ChaosThiefMay 26, 20141 votes

That's the problematic part though. Armor is easier to get than Magic resist is, and these AD tanks most of the time have huge weaknesses late game because they scale too poorly.

If they give too much AP scaling, you can run full AP and demolish enemies. I play AP Malphite and will play AP Nautilus mid, as those are pretty good examples.

(Don't nerf their scalings riot. They're good this way.)

The AP tanks that are most underplayed are, for example, Maokai . He has waaay too much mana hunger early game, and will never catch up on mana. He doesn't hurt, so no one-man-armying this. And since I play in mid-low silver, people don't notice me ganking, even when I ping. And when they do, they're too afraid to go in.

BreakstarMay 24, 20141 votes

Edit: Okay, that's probably way too much to stuff into one comment. I'm going to put my suggestion in its own thread so I don't hijack this one too hard.