Yeah, too bad Kha sucks in jungle.  Or more precisely, he is a very niche jungler who is a "get good stats, lose game" champion in most comps.

Yeah, you will kill people out of jungle.  But you have no CC and no front line presence.  So you put a massive burden on the rest of your team to fill those roles or its a complete disaster despite your nice looking stats.  Its very similar to playing Jayce top back in the day.  If you can get a front line/CC from elsewhere, Kha is great.  Otherwise, its a huge mess.

We saw this twice last night.

Game one of jungle Kha we had you jungling him and a Vlad top.  Our team CC consisted of Vlad pool and a Karma slow.  I got the privilege of being the ADC.  Its not exactly fun going up against a Vi and a Zed when your peel consists of a Karma slow and your initiate consists of...maybe Vlad pooling in?  Kha going on a suicide run?  I don't know what the initiate was supposed to be.  I mean, I came out of the laning phase substantially up, and then just repeatedly died.

Game two we had you as Kha jungle and Dan went Nid top.  I saw this and went Leona jungle since I had complained about the lack of front line/CC the last game.  Unfortunately, I was going Leona into a double Diamond bot lane.  Who both mained bot lane.  And were an organized team.  And my playing partner was also not a bot lane main.

Now, this is where you need to look at the team comps again.  You choose to camp mid.  As I said after the game, I do not believe this was the right decision.  Yes, you started 6/2/x.  But as you also repeatedly pointed out, your stats quickly went downhill after that.  You know why?  Because you were playing an assassin on a team with no front line/CC.  As you said above, you want to wait for the engage, then go in and kill.  You know why we had no front line/CC?  Well, you essentially triaged bot lane at level 1 in favor of going elsewhere, which left your only front line threat way behind, which meant you couldn't do your thing late.  Instead, you camped a second assassin lane.

This is what I was trying to explain - I think that you need to look at team comps and realize that you are gimping the team comp in some respect by going Kha.  So you REALLY need a tank from somewhere.  So you MUST give some help to your (only) tank lane if they need it, otherwise you just auto lose the game if that lane fails.

Now, we were obviously going to lose anyway since the other team was just better and more organized, but the game would have been closer IMO if you had chosen to get your only tank stronger rather than work on getting a second assassin up and running.

Basically, its hard to win a game without any CC or tanking or ability to initiate.  REALLY hard.  Yeah, you can try doing some kind of all out split push.  But good luck with that.

So yeah, if you have a Leona bot and Renekton top, Kha is great in jungle.  But he just doesn't work in a lot of other comps.  Of course, you could pick Kha and hope that the rest of your team will pick around him appropriately, but that just isn't how things work out usually...

Agree with a lot of what you have to say Karl, but it does seem like you've got a S3 prejudice leftover on what is needed from a jungler.  There are so many more options nowadays as far as where to get your CC, tankiness, and initiation from non jungling champs that it really opens up the possibility for Carry Junglers more often.  , Lee, and Elise are some of the top picks and bans in high level play right now which means they are probably playable far more often than when you have a Rene top and Leona bot.

If Pacov wants to learn one of the top junglers in the game but the people he's playing with don't have the champion pool to cover 's deficiencies, oh well.   He is willing to fill in often enough for the team that I think he's earned a few non ideal team comp games.  Besides, it's 1000x better than having to listen to him complain about other people's meta choices while he's trolling you with Jungle Khassadin. Trust me on that.

Once he gets him dialed and starts playing Plat ranked games with him, his allies will most likely have the champion flexibility to be happy to cover team comp needs in order to have one of the better junglers on their team.  Problems he's going to face practicing with Silver and Gold players aren't going to be as much of an issue then.

In the jungle you have a great stable and know your shit.  Out of the jungle, you can play Taric, Cho, Tris, and... Well, out of the jungle lets just say your ability to contribute to a balanced team comp is somewhat more limited than when you jungle.  So you're going to occasionally find yourself in frustrating situations when you accept invites from friends who are in "I'm gonna play ____ in the jungle no matter what." mode, so best make your peace with that.

tl;dr Great advice on how to manage games from the jungle when your team comp is non ideal.  Bad advice telling someone that a jungler that has been the primary champ to carry a dude to the top of Challenger is hard to fit on a team.

What?  Lee and Elise have lots of front line presence and initiates, and Elise has CC, so they fit into like every team comp.  Thats why they get pick and banned so much at every level.  They work in pretty much every team comp.

There aren't that many more options for front line champs this season - its just a few supports like Leona.  The main difference is that junglers can effectively choose to build more damage (on champs like Vi) or go full tank.  But they still carry a lot of front line pressure/initiation responsibility in most lineups.

But anyway, the main reason that Junglers get stuck in fairly generic tank/CC roles is simple.  They only have to worry about team comp.  Laners have to worry about team comp AND they have to worry about lane matchups.  So it is better for the jungler to take a generic team first role and leave as much flexibility to the laner as possible so that the laner can pick appropriately into their lane.

If the jungler takes a niche pick, they greatly restrict the laners' picks, especially top.  This is especially bad since top is currently a very heavily banned out lane.  So now you have a top lane who probably has several picks banned out, and has to fulfill a very specific team role, and still has to worry about a lane matchup.  And he has to worry about his champion pool.  That can get into a nasty situation for that player very very quickly.

Once you get to Diamond/Challenger, yeah, maybe people can handle it.  But at Gold/Plat, its not a good idea to pray that your lanes can play the perfect champ that you cornered them into.  Especially if you don't give them help if they try and do it.

I don't have a problem with Kha as a 4th or 5th pick in the right comp, but jungle Kha as a first pick really messes with the whole team unless is well coordinated ahead of time.  I also don't have the problem with trying it out a bit last night - the first two games we did it it was fine.  But its a bit harsh to try it on in a 5v5 inhouse game when we are playing against a team with 3 diamonds and 2 plats.  I think that we should try and have a reasonable team comp there.

Uh...My entire friends list disappeared...I think...!...??

Oh wait it came back a_G

When facing 3 Diamond/2 Platinum teams, it is usually best to go with champs that you know well and have build options that go beyond Glass Cannon. Not really the case with Pacov's Kha'zix choice I'm sure.  Musta been frustrating, but no need to let games like that color your perception of Kha'zix.

Obviously Elise and especially Lee have a lot more utility and build options, but let's not get carried away.  A single target skillshot doesn't let Elise fulfill all your team's CC needs like Nautilus and if I had to choose between J4's ult and the faint hope that your Lee can pull off Insec-ing the opposing teams carry as my team's late game initiation choices, well yeah.  I lumped those 3 together because when you pick them, you're planning on trying to snowball yourself and/or your lanes with early ganks. Nobody chooses Elise thinking "I like playing her cause she has such a variety of build options!"

I'll grant that mentioning him with two God Tier junglers that have a chance to excel in/against every team comp is silly.  As silly as calling one of the better junglers in the game currently a niche pick.  One of the few that is capable of carrying a game from the jungle, which is rather appealing nowadays.

If it was a matter of some meh carry jungler, then yes it's totally not worth forcing one into the line up.  But a well played Kha'zix is really worth having on your team IMO, and I'm not sure if you've seen a really good one in action yet.  No offense, but Pacov playing him and ending up with a positive KDA as his tankless team weeps silently doesn't count.

Um, yes, junglers do pick champions like Elise and Lee for this reason.  Both can be played for damage or as front line bruisers/initiator types.  Thats one of the reasons they work as early picks that go in any lineup.

Junglers in solo queue get stuck in a swiss army knife type of role where they have to fill whatever the team needs (because lanes tend to pick on lane matchups first and team comp second, so junglers have to fill team comp needs).  That makes flexible champs like Lee and Elise popular, especially if you have first pick in solo queue.

Anyway, its not like I'm in some minority position here.  For example, read Stonewalls blog.  Not that I agree with him on everything, but he puts Kha in the middle of tier 2 not even accounting for team comp issues.  Thats just below Skarn/Voli and just above Cho/Yi.  So even without taking team into account, he is a somewhat mediocre jungler in Stonewalls opinion, which I think is fairly reasonable here.  Then in his notes, he says exactly what I've been saying: "pick him only if you have laning teammate who chose a beef champion".  Essentially, Stonewall is saying he can only be played out of the jungle given certain team comps.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of a niche champion?

Listen, Kha is really good.  Out of mid.  I wouldn't even give you top except as a niche champion (for the same reason - top is usually supposed to be somewhat tanky too).  But he is only decent out of jungle in the right team comp, and just bad in the wrong team comp.

Stonewall?  I prefer not to put too much stake into someone who used to simply grade junglers traits to decide which one is better.  At the moment I'm writing this, there is a Challenger I player named Nightblue3 using Kha'zix jungle, so I think that in high level play some people find him a little better than decent.  Skarner and Voli are nowhere to be found in the featured games being played at this time FYI.

http://cloth5.com/foxdrops-preseason-patch-3-14-solo-queue-jungle-tier-list/

You might want to start checking out this tier list for a second opinion in the future.  It has Kha as a Tier 1B jungler which I find more in line with the success some people have with him. 

I feel you misunderstood what I was trying to say about Elise, so let me clarify:  Elise's various build options are rarely if ever the PRIMARY reason she is chosen, though I'm sure everyone feels it's a nice bonus.  Stonewall mentions it as a strength for Elise/Lee but seems to praise other aspects of their jungling much more.

oh boy... you kids have been at it... going to try to catch back up...

a few things about kha - he is flavor or the week.  A challenger level jungle has been playing him pretty much every game on a stream starting a new account and plowing up to challenger in like a week (nightblue).  So, while this guy certainly has a much higher skill cap than me, he does appear to main kha in the jungle.  You do have MINIMAL cc, but the real strength is in how quickly you delete an enemy champ.  In many instances and with my lower skill cap, can delete an enemy champ before they can react in any way.  cc is less of a requirement when you can do that. 

I'd be complaining a bit if I was you as well as we did force you to bot.

You took it a lot more seriously than I did (madcast wore off on me a bit here, sadly).  In the future, if we do an in house and you are on my team, I'll make decisions more about what is best for the team than what I want to do.  Sorry, bro.  I saw it as an opportunity to work on kha against better players and was a bit selfish.

The fact that one high level player mains some champion doesn't make them great or anything.  In seasons past we had top 100 players who mained things like lane AP Mao and Teemo.  That doesn't mean that lane AP Mao was ever more than a niche pick.  It just meant that a highly skilled player happened to like that champion and played him.

Plenty of Challenger and well known Diamond I Players regularly play niche champions, but thats not an indication of impending greatness for that champ.  It just means that Challenger players can do well on non God tier champions.  Especially at lower ELO.  This is not surprising.

bah - pacov learns some new tricks on a champ he previous was smeh with and now is slightly better with him.  What other junglers have higher burst damage that can safely get in and out of a fight?  kha also gets a huge kill potential spike when he can evolve his wings (after evolving his q). 

I don't have a problem playing bot.  Like I said, I didn't have a problem playing bot the first two games.  And I really didn't even have a problem going bot the last game.

My problem was with the last game where you decided you wanted to practice Kha.  I had to go bot, which was fine.  Due to team comp, I was essentially forced to play Leona, which was kind of iffy into two Diamond players.  Then we got zoned out for 15 minutes with no help from jungle because you didn't want to gank bot.  That was followed by ~10 minutes of post laning phase ass kicking with a really bad team comp.

If we are going to play a game with against bunch of organized Diamond players who are looking for a scrimmage, lets not do really bad team comps with sub optimal lane assignments because you want to try something out.  Its not fun for the rest of the people on the team.

burlap SACK

"You took it a lot more seriously than I did (madcast wore off on me a bit here, sadly).  In the future, if we do an in house and you are on my team, I'll make decisions more about what is best for the team than what I want to do.  Sorry, bro.  I saw it as an opportunity to work on kha against better players and was a bit selfish."

I've been playing for a while and am well aware of this phenomenon.  SpamHappy (Zekent) with Poppy, Tiensinoakuma with Katarina, etc.  I realize that one amazing player maining and completely mastering a high skill cap champion does not make that champ good or even viable.

I don't feel this is the case at all.  Kha'Zix is a great jungler with the right team comp and a quick visit to ProBuilds backs me up.  

http://www.probuilds.net/guide/NA/1217807860/19877155

I'm fine with you not feeling the way I do about this champ and not sure anything could convince you otherwise since he doesn't fit your swiss army knife ideal of what role a jungler needs to fill.

I never meant to imply he was the second coming of Lee Sin, just that he's good IF you know how to play him and IF you have a good team comp and even if those two things aren't true, I think he's good enough to be worth practicing even in non ideal circumstances.  Maybe not the best time to practice would be when facing Diamond/Plat premades, but Pacov already said that which was a big part of the original argument so let's move on.

Um, your link backs up my case exactly.

You are linking to a game where they played a jungle Kha with the single tankiest top in the game and the best combo of intiating CC/tank/frontline support in the game.  Thats the exact NICHE that I said that Kha can be played into.  If you know you have that situation - if you are last pick or you have a premade for example - by all means take Kha.

Kha is nice in a niche, but as a general pick he puts stress on your teammates (because it puts a lot of stress on their picks), and assassins tend to work better out of mid anyway (assassins that fall behind the gold curve are REALLY bad, and thats less of a danger out of mid).

That link was a mistake.  Was attempting to link you to the full list of top player games with Kha'zix.

http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Khazix

I'll sum it up for you:  Lots of wins in the jungle by different top players, not a lot of wins in the lane.

And that's not your point that I accidentally backed up, it's mine.  You said you feel Kha is decent at best WITH the right team comp.  I think he's fantastic with the right team comp and very worth working around if you can.  Or practicing in a casual game if you can't.

It's ironic because personally I play junglers that better fit your ideal CC tank than you do.  This whole time I'm just saying that I like Kha's potential enough that I'm willing to work around having him on my team.  I'd actually never play him myself since I don't care much for coordinating picks or putting my team in a tough pick situation.