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

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.