[Jungle Itemization] @SmashGizmo - Why not remove Jungle Items Completely?

lm Krueger ml·Jun 20, 2014·2 votes·402 views

This has been bugging me more and more as the Season has progressed.

Ultimately, Jungle items were created to help open up the Jungle to new Champions and to alleviate Jungle gold income.

This was achieved originally with the passives:

Butcher (20% bonus damage, restores 6% of damage dealt as health and 3% as mana)
Conservation (Gain stacks per second, killing a large monster consumes stacks to gain bonus gold)

While this was great at helping low sustain Junglers to now compete, it created one massive new dependecy on any potential Jungler. If you can't make use of one of the Jungle Items, you can't Jungle. (I'll accept that there are one or two minor exceptions to this).

This can be seen pretty clearly if we look at how Jungle Itemization has evolved over the season.

At first only the 3 Spirit Stone items were viable, creating a situation where only Junglers able to use these items saw play. In order to open up the game to the "Carry Junglers" a new item was therefore created to try and offer them some way to compete. This became the Feral Flare.

We now see "Tank/Utility Junglers" being catered for with what sounds like yet another unique item specially made just for them.

At some point I have to stop and ask, why do I have to buy a specific item just to function in my position?

Let me put this another way. What if you created a set of items that stated:

Increases all damage dealt and grants Lifesteal and Mana regen, only against minions in the Top Lane.

This sounds pretty stupid right? Trying to force all Top Laners into buying one of three or four different items as their first buy. Imagine it being the same for every position! All of a sudden that lovely flexible item system becomes very rigid and boring. This is the situation that Junglers currently face.

So I ask you, rather than continually trying to add in new specialized items to fix certain champions, why not just remove the restriction that Junglers face and allow them to pick any of the already existing items in the game?

The immediate question of course becomes, "But what about all the efforts made to bring Junglers up to par this season?" As mentioned previously, we can boil down most of the necessary Jungling Itemization effects into three passives:

Butcher
Maim
Conservation

I'd like to make a suggestion at this point. The one thing that I think everyone agrees is basically mandatory for Junglers is Smite. I don't think its detrimental to the game to enforce this belief. Another thing this season has brought with it that wasn't around before are Trinkets. Rengar's rework has shown that it's not unthinkable to put down some additional mechanics into these items. My suggestion is as follows:

Create two new optional Trinket Upgrades that may or may not require Smite in order to be purchased.
You can now choose to add the Maim or Butcher Unique Passive to any Trinket for a fixed cost. (possibly competing with the current upgrades? possibly a completely unlinked additional upgrade path?)
Add the Conservation Unique Passive to Smite as baseline.

This will mean that as a Jungler you can choose to either rush an item, or rush the sustain/clear speed upgrade for your Trinket. You will retain the gold generation effects through Smite, and you have access to any and all itemization paths depending on your Champion's needs.

I think looking at the current direction that Jungle Itemization is moving, this would be a much healthier decision for the game in the long run. You don't want to have to continue to make additional Jungle Items every time it seems a different Class needs help with Jungling.

3 Comments

WorgslargJun 20, 20142 votes

You make some good points.

However, the jungle has enough influence in the game as is.

Removing jungle items would mean the jungle would be rebalanced for an acceptable clear time/ xp gain. This would mean that a junglers early game would be even stronger vs champions because they built normal items. Imagine the feeling of a early game xin zhao. now give him that brutalizer/ vamp scepter/ yomumu's. Add him popping out of the jungle at any moment, as strong as or stronger than the average player because of kills/assists. Once he gets a kill, straight back to the jungle to snowball his gold/xp gain over the other team.

Making them need items allows a gate for jungler early game power, while still maintaining a clear speed/ xp gain that is close/ equal to that of lane players.

That said, with enough testing and thought I can see this working in an amazing way.

lm Krueger mlJun 21, 20141 votes

Its a little difficult to predict exactly how jungle balance would change without some testing. It would absolutely require some fine balance and iterative testing to get it just right though.

I'm not so sure if Junglers would become stronger early game, right now the Jungle items are designed to be high cost efficiency but low slot efficiency. This means they're great when you first get them and grant an early boost, but they drop off as the game progresses.

While normal items are usually designed to have high slot efficiency. This means if we go back to Junglers building normal items, it will take them much longer to finish their first item. This gets amplified if we're forcing them to make a choice between their first item and their efficiency as a Jungler (Trinket Upgrade).

Ultimately, its less about achieving a perfectly balanced system on the first try and more about the long term change for the health of the game.

I genuinely find Jungle Items counter to what I at least believe are the founding principles behind items in general. To allow the flexibility in game to personalise your character. Its one of the main rpg elements the game has and it allows you to build items to counter your enemies or otherwise fit your playstyle. Any design that works to restrict your choices goes against that pillar imo.

I understand there are times when you need to limit the players choice and flexibility in the name of balance. I dont believe this is one of them.

Doominator10Jun 23, 20141 votes

I almost feel as though there is an argument to be made here regarding supports and sightstone or the Gp10 items in a similar fashion, but I'm not able to really write about it right now. Just something to think about.