Reign of Gaming

I'll see if I can dig up some time to do some other matchups, but do people want to see Darius vs. or Garen vs, first?

Also, I would like to point out that this was done before Garen's nerfs. The reduction in Garen's Perserverance passive (20% less regen) makes his strategy of 'hit and run' ludicrously impossible against Darius now.

But more importantly, the change of Courage to only scale based on Bonus Armor and Bonus Magic Resistance instead of Total Armor and Total Magic Resistance slammed Garen's ability to trade early. Garen has some of the WORST armor scaling in LoL; Garen has less Armor at level 18 than Miss Fortune, masteries / runes aside.

Garen lost about ~6 Armor at level 4, which equates to minus ~120g in stats.

Jarvan IV. He's just a solid jungler that can be built in a number of ways. He fits into nearly every team comp as well, making him a great 'default' choice. He did not start out as my jungler main for S3, but after trying a number of junglers, he became my most consistent jungler by a noticeable margin.

The important thing about Jarvan IV, unlike a lot of the jungler cast, is that even when you are gold-starved, you can still contribute. Thanks to his E providing free AS and Armor, his Q providing armor reduction, and his passive always insuring a minimal consistent amount of damage, and his three forms of CC, Jarvan IV is always useful.

Vi and Hecarim are powerful offensive tools, but they don't bring as much control as Jarvan IV does to a fight. Their respective ults also can get them blown up pretty quickly when they're underfed and they initiate (Jarvan's and Xin ults allows you to spread their team out). They also rely on building some kind of offensive items, or rely on teammates providing lockdown to finish the kill after ults have been blow.

Xin Zhao is still solid, but he doesn't have quite the survivability in a teamfight. With only a single gap closer, he lives-and-dies by his first initiation. Xin has a tendency to just die in teamfights, as he has terrible disengage. Jarvan IV, Vi, and Hecarim all have better odds of escaping on their second set of cooldowns, using abilities to GTFO, and denying a kill.

Volibear is solid, but he's basically a tankier version of Vi and Hecarim. Charge in, flip, slow, spam AA's with frenzy and ult. The flaw I have is that his initiation is so easy to see coming; he has one of the overall slowest gap closers (compared to Jarvan, Hecarim, etc.) to initiate with.

Amumu, apart from being banned a lot, is solid. But it really depends on how well your opponents manage the Bandage Toss. If they're idiots and run in straight lines, or stay at medium distance, Amumu is a noobstomper. But if they stay at max range and move erratically, Bandage Toss becomes significantly less reliable of an initiation, and you're required to Flash+Ult to start the party. Works, but it's on a very long cooldown, making it less consistent than the other junglers that can just Ult their way into starting a fight alone.

Udyr post changes is interesting. Can't say I've played him enough to know, but he has surprisingly good staying power and disengage with Bear and Turtle spam. I found him to be as durable as J4 and I managed to disengage extremelly well spamming Bear+Turtle. His biggest flaw is his lack of strong single-target lockdown, but the fact that he can Bear-slap-rotate the entire enemy team during a teamfight is a unprecedented dynamic. It's hard to say how good he is without playing him more, but it's something I want to experiment with more now that he's viable again.

Quote from Richardhand »

but.. you can build zac jarven iv elise etc. full tank yet you atleast still take hp bars down. trundle doesnt seem right. I guess he has an autoattack reset so some damage items are strong on him but the character feels weak compared to the others when you are a gold starved jungler.

All of those champions have auto attacks, or normal abilities that do % Health damage. Elise and J4 also actually do a mix of Magic and Physical damage, making them harder to itemize against. Trundle's only % Health attack is his ultimate, and that's also his only non-Physical damage source.

Everything else Trundle does is autoattack + Chomp, all Physical. Against any tanky champion that has Armor + Health, you're going to do poor damage (outside of Subjugate). It's even worse if the target has Ninja Tabi boot, Doran's Shield, and/or the block masteries.

He reminds me of Tryndamere to some extent; Tryndamere also sucks against tanks, as he usually can't afford to build both damage and armor penetration in a build. This relegates Tryndamere, and possibly Trundle by comparison, as anti-carries, which is a hard role to play against teams with a lot of CC/Peel. Trundle Subjugates a tank to get beefy, then dives the enemy carries with Pillar+Domain, preferably using Chomp spam on their ADC to lower the enemy ADC's damage while relying on the extra Armor and Health from Subjugate to keep him alive for a few seconds.

Quote from Basinator »

I personally feel that CDR is actually more a luxus than a necessity. If you are way behind or need a quick way to get tanky I would skip kindlegame and get the basic HP/res items because they already offer a decent amount of tankyness.

CDR won't help you if you can't even initiate the fights or live in those for some seconds.

Totally agree here; again depends on how fed your team is vs. enemy team. But it also does depend on WHO is causing problems.

Locket + Kindlegem is stil great if the fed opposing player is the AP Mid. You'll be able to branch into Spirit Visage later.

Locket + Kindlegem isn't so hot if it's a fed AD carry or AD-Bruiser (Top/Jungle). It's not bad, but you could start down Warmog's / Frozen Mallet or Warden's Mail / Randuin's Omen if you want something more potent.

I have gone Locket + Giant's Belt in a number of cases where a fed enemy AD carry was a problem.

The issue without building towards CDR however, is that your teamfight potential becomes - Use one set of abilities and stand there, hoping the enemy hits you. If the enemy team is mobile and/or can get to your squishies, they just ignore you and blow up your team, finishing you last. If you're the initiator, like Xin Zhao or Jarvan IV often are forced to be, you dive in, and then just hope that the enemy is forced to demolish you instead of your backline.

Many of the more tanky/bruiser junglers have medium-cooldown abilities with CC components (J4 and Xin good examples), CDR gives them the better chance at a second round of abilities. You can initiate with your first set of abilities, then ideally get a second round off to peel for a teammate, chase, or re-initiate.

In any case, Locket of the Iron Solari is a great start because it is both tanky and CDR, and from there, you can decide what direction to go (tanky, CDR, damage), based on your gold income, and who the biggest threat on the enemy team is.

Quote from TreeBurrow »

You lose 5 AD and 10 ArPen (~280 gold), you gain 50 HP, 10% LifeSteal (~530 gold) and an awesome Aura worth 1,200 gold per nearby Ally AD champion (Usually 2 late game)...

Math here is a bit off. 5 AD = 200 gold tself. 10 ArPen, if you use ArPen Mark vs. AD Mark as a baseline, is worth 7.42 AD = 297 gold. 497 gold total.

50 HP = 132 gold and 10% Lifesteal = 400 gold. 532 gold total.

That's only a 35 gold advantage to Zeke's Herald for yourself. What you're really comparing is, in practice, this:

The Brutalizer (1,337g) + Kindlegem (850g) + Cloth Armor (300g) = 2,487g

Zeke's Herald = 2,550g

With the first combo, you have more offensive stats for yourself. You also have a bit more dueling potential against most junglers and laners thanks to Cloth Armor, not to mention it cuts down on jungle damage by a reasonably chunk. You're also on your way to completing the excellent The Brutalizer + Locket of the Iron Solari combo, which is a fantastic jungler combo for AD-based jungle bruisers. Later-game, you can convert The Brutalizer into Black Cleaver, once you've completed your core tanking set, a solid item for many jungle bruisers.

With just the Zeke's Herald, you've got better sustain and slightly more total health, but you're clearing slower (less AD, no ArPen) and take slightly more damage from jungle camps, causing a bit of a wash in the sustain department. You get a bigger edge when ganking for an AD-built toplane and the AD-carry botlane, and in teamfights you'll give 800 gold worth of good stats (AD) to ~two teammates, and 400 gold of questionable stats (lifesteal) to ~two teammate.

Zeke's Herald is defeniately going to be the better item in teamfights, but it does not feel like the superior item combo early.

Zeke's is also on problematic build path. It has a whopping 900 gold combine cost! Of it's core components, Kindlegem is great (850 gold), but Vampiric Sceptre has fallen out-of-favor of most junglers because it is so heavily weighted toward sustain and not on durability or damage (for early ganks).

So we start to see the problem with Zeke's Herald is not the total stats it provides, but in the crucial period where jungles have about ~1,500 - ~2,000 gold to spare, the crucial midgame where junglers hit level 6 and ganking goes wild, Zeke's Herald is on a weak build path at this point in the game. You could complete The Brutalizer and Cloth Armor for the cost of Kindlegem and Vampiric Scepter, or, fully complete your Locket of the Iron Solari. In either case, (Vampiric Scepter + Kindlegem) is a worse ganking combo than (The Brutalizer + Cloth Armor), and I'd still rather have Locket of the Iron Solair during ganks for the hp shield in case of emergencies.

So Zeke's Herald is in a weird spot. It's not the best defensive early buy (Locket of the Iron Solari is). It's not the best offensive early buy (The Brutalizer is). It's a hybrid item, providing a lot of great stats, being excellent in teamfights, but providing no clear powerhouse edge at critical early stages of the ganking game. With an extremelly high early combine cost, it will put you behind the enemy jungles by a few minutes, a risky manuever in the current gank-centric jungler meta where Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao, Hecarim, Volibear, and Vi are commonplace picks.

Quote from TreeBurrow »

If you're a bruiser jungler the only lane which won't benefit from your aura is an AP mid... Or an AP top... I definitely wouldn't buy this item if my team was running a double AP comp... But in 9/10 games this item is amazing...

The issue with Zeke's is that 10% lifesteal isn't necessary for most junglers. I don't even upgrade Madred's Razors into Wriggle's Lantern anymore. And in a teamfight, 10% Lifesteal is not that valuable of a stat. Lifesteal is generally a laning stat or poking stat, unless you're a fed AD Carry and already have a ton of AD / AS / Crit.

So, opportunity cost:

Kindlgem (850g) + Brutalizer (1337g) = 2187g

200 Health, 20% CDR, 10 ARP, 25 AD for 363g cheaper with the ability to build into Black Cleaver and many Kindlegem items later.

Ignoring the obvious 'Madred's Razor / Spirit Stone' and 'Boots of Speed', Locket of the Iron Solari is a great third buy.

But after (BASIC JUNGLE ITEM) + (Boots of Speed) + (Locket), where you go from there is very very interesting. 

• Is your support building an Aegis?
• Can you risk an offensive item? (Brutalizer, Spirit of the Elder Lizard?)
• Do you need to be tankier?

I usually push for 20% CDR by the time teamfights break out (esp on Xin, often on Jarvan). So it's either Locket + Brutalizer or Locket + Kindlegem (later, Spirit Visage) depending on how fed I am vs. how fed enemy team is.

If you're gonig for fun, better to build Crit Damage runes as well. Build an Infinity Edge, a bunch of AD, and go for huge numbers! 

It's probably not worth it; at low levels, Crit chance is one of the worst buys-per-gold. I believe Vinrar's ADC spreadsheet allowed for these, and they faired pretty poorly in calculations.

This is also why you generally never see pros buy crit items in-game early. Crit chance scales with the more AD you have, and early on, you don't have enough AD to make Crit valuable. Buying Crit early, or using Crit runes, gives your opponent an advantage if they buy/build AD and Armor Penetration instead.

It basically boils to this:

AD - High early-game damage, low end-game damage. Good for last hitting.

ARP - Low early-game damage, high end-game damge. Ok for last hitting.

AS - High damage all game, but lowest burst/ability damage. Bad for last hitting.

Because last-hitting is so important on ADCs, many go with ARP Marks and AD Quints (balanced setup). The math on Quints is kinda screwy; AD Quints are just much better than AD Marks for some reason, while ARP Quints are not that much better than ARP Marks.