I played a jungle rammus game last night and was pretty happy with how he handles the new jungle. I did a red -> wolves -> blue start smiting both blue and red. I had to base after blue I had about 1/4 health left. After that initial clear it was super easy clears for the rest of the game. Gromp + defencive curl + sun fire is pretty awesome.

It's possible that the Spellvamp/Lifesteal is back to being really good in the Jungle. i know back in Season 2/3 it was pretty popular to take those mastery points and SV quints were occassionally useful. i hadn't considered them just because they've been so mediocre for so long...

If going Utility allowed you to get some scaling runes, that's a pretty big defensive boost to your midgame versus taking flat armor. While Runic Affinity is weaker for mages now with the shorter bluebuff, it's actually quite a bit better for junglers with the new buff durations...

holy novel hedgie.  I read it.

I was thinking about life steal quints as well on junglers.  Haven't gotten around to that yet.

Nunu/ww really don't require any changes to runes imo (though there's certainly something that's optimal).  I only mention those 2 as I've played w/ them recently and have no prob sustaining (as you'd likely expect). 

I'm now really starting to consider shaco more.  Leash free start on either side of the map and able to level 3/4 gank super quickly at full health.  Also, decent dragon control.  Same old potential late game problems for him.  I think the new jungle and season changes are making him look at ton better - possibly enough that it makes me think the late game trade off could be worth it. The shaco jungle setup roughly clears 2 camps at similar times btw (start 2 boxes outside of one (just outside of range where they would proc immediately when camp spawns) and another 2-3 where a camp spawns.  Do that 2-3 camp, then mvoe to your existing 2 boxes and start the next camp.  Super fast, zero leash clear - AND you are place boxes at less common spots so lower odds of enemy team busting you up. 

I'm also thinking that with the value of dragon skyrocketing due to the rewards, the value of weaker gankng junglers like nunu go way up - and even chogath is easily back in the running.

I actually think the highest value on junglers now is currently around dragon control (eg drag control > ganks).  That could go w/e way though ofc.

You are overrating dragons I think.  As it is currently set up, the first one is valuable.  The 5th one is incredibly valuable, but 2-4 aren't worth much.  And basing a pick on getting to 5 dragons is probably risky at best.

Or to put it another way, the first dragon is better than before, but dragons 2-4 are probably weaker than last season.  I'd rather have the gold than 15% more damage to buildings.  So I don't see a net skyrocket here.

My feeling is that it is probably most reliable to pick up dragons based on the old method of successful gank -> dragon instead of taking a pick that is weaker overall and trying to gimmick into it.  With the latter approach, if your gimmick fails, your chances of winning are very low.  With the former, you have a lot of options if things don't go ideally.

Or, to put this another way, ganking is always going to be better because a successful mid/bot gank gives you kills AND towers/dragons (and map presence), while dragon gimmicks just give you dragon.

heh... you think I'm overrating and I think you are underrating. Think about the timing and pacing.  Right now, there are more than a few cheese strats to take an early dragon.  But even if you go for a 5-10 min drag and get the 1st one, your team has that 1st stack earlier and has more dmg.  I'm not as wowed by some of the other upgrades, but I think that 1st buff is very valuable to all lanes.  But, same deal with the enemies 1st drag... also very valuable and def something you want to deny or steal.  I just think the priority goes through the roof on control/deny - certainly a little less after the 1st, but still worth. 

Those are flat armor, just scaling resist.  I'll test scaling armor later and see how it does, but I know I can't run kayle with that.

I'm going to tell you the same thing you have always been told when you try and justify gimmicks.

Gimmicks generally suffer from an inherent weakness over flexible choices in well designed games.  That is, gimmicks work well against bad players who don't know what they are doing (because they don't know how to defend against them), but they work much more poorly against skilled players (who will know how to defend against them).

But, why invest in strategies designed to work primarily against bad players?  After all, you should be able to beat bads with a wide range of strategies.  You should be investing in strategies that are optimized against GOOD players who aren't idiots, not what will work well on your many alt accounts or with random Gold V MadCast people.

Good opponents will usually disrupt plans.  Thats what good players do.  So if your entire game revolves around some very set plan in a position as inherently flexible as jungle, I am extremely skeptical.

Specifically, if you sell out on an early dragon strategy, what happens if you fail against an aware team?  You might very well cost your team the game because you are now so much weaker than the opponents jungler.  On the other hand, if you take a flexible jungler you don't sell out on a particular strategy.  So you still have a good shot at dragon, but don't have a really good shot at losing the game if you don't get it.

And, dragon isn't that powerful such that it justifies all that.  Even if you get your early first dragon, if they get the second dragon, you are likely in trouble.  You really have to snowball hard, and counting on a big time snowball is hard on a consistent basis.

And I'm quite well aware of how early dragon metas work.  I used to play WW back in the day when you did level 3 dragons with WW/Nunu/Shaco, etc.  But WW was different back then since you weren't giving anything up to do the early attempt.

so, in your opinion, its not worth taking a jungler with increased odds of securing dragon team objectives like baron/dragon - nunu/chogath good examples.  And don't factor in cheesy level 3 dragons or attempts to solo dragon.  Factor in increased odds of dragon control period (consume/feast).

i mean, i think there's a difference at taking someone who is naturally good at something, and playing that jungler to their strengths.

You don't take Lee Sin and farm: you gank.

You don't take Fiddle/WW/Nunu and ignore dragon: you slay it.

However, let's say you decide to do some silly runes + masteries (flat AP reds, flat AS blues, flat HP quints) to take dragon at the 3:00 mark "every time".  Well now rather than playing towards your strengths, you are 'cheesing' and really doubling-down on them. If your plan doesn't go 100% perfect, you are quite likely going to be a liability because of it.

You just have to make sure whatever you want to do is... actually good in the meta? When Feral Flare was released, you better have been playing an Autoattack Farmer. Season 2, you better have been playing a level 3 ganker. It's hard to say exactly where the optimal gank/farm/objective combination lies.

The gold values for the 8% AP/AD in the earlyish/midgame is something like... (i am going to sort of assume both teams will kill dragon once in 25 minutes, so i'm focusing on the gold value for the 15-20 minute mark).

550-600 for the ADC early game (assuming they go BFS - trinity carries get less AD, but more AP so it's probably about equal)

220 for the AP early game (assuming they are going Athenes or Tear + Morellos. DFG rushers who are fed and start off with an NLR will get about 400g).

Basically nothing for the support.

Junglers get ~200 gold in terms of clearing power. Once they finish their AD/AP item, they get another ~200 gold for ganking/teamfights.

2x Dorans + Brutalizer AD top laners get ~500 gold - pretty huge. AP tops who go RoA will only get ~200 gold.

So the first bonus is significantly better for the ADC, aggressive AD top laners, and AD/AP carry junglers once they finish their item (which actually means fast barons are LESS useful for Nunu since he is probably going the HP item right?).

Traditional mages would probably prefer the 200 gold for their completed item early-game, but once they have 2-3 items, the 8% AP is really nice. Assassins/Ahri/Syndra prefer the new dragon buff. Supports pretty much LOSE 100 gold (spend 100 on a pink, and they get nothing out of it). AP tops would probably prefer the 200 gold since they have to wait for Tear/RoA to stack anyway.

+15% damage to minions/monsters... hard to put a value on that. i suppose it is kind of like an old Machete? Without any of the regen. So that's worth like 150 gold max, except for the jungler. The real value of the 2nd dragon is denying the enemy their first buff.

+5% MS is a weak pair of tier 1 boots. Jungles who go Mobo get a little bit more of a benefit, but generally ~15 MS. So that's worth ~200. A lot of people would still prefer that 200 gold to go to a completed items. However, the %MS does help you close games since it allows you to initiate slightly easier.

+15% damage to turrets. Not very useful if you are WAY ahead (not many turrets to kill). Pretty useful in a close game if you're a siege comp, though. At the very least, it's worth ~900 gold (a pickaxe) on your ADC whenever they are shooting a tower.

Its a cost/benefit analysis.

Simply saying "taking somebody who is good at securing dragons is good because dragons are good" is not a useful analysis.  Its a question of what you give up to be better at getting those dragons.  If you give up too much, its not worth it (by definition I suppose).

I'm pointing out that having the combination of pretty strong ganks + pretty strong dragon + good scaling is probably going to be better than very strong dragon and not much else in most cases.  You don't have to give up anything to have "pretty good" dragon control.  But you do have to give up a lot to do more gimmicky things.

I'm not a Nunu fan right now because counter jungling (by just stealing camps) seems to suck due to long camp respawn times.  Counter jungling via murder should actually be good, but thats not Nunu's thing.  You could probably talk me into Cho, but he is just so clunky sometimes late game.

A fast, full health clear has other benefits.  Nunu can do great ganks bot with steroid on the adc, you can hit two slows reliably, do significant damage, and boost your adc with the 25% AS boost.  Ganking mid isn't so hot, but he can feed an adc great.

Testing a more utility+based mastery setup for Hecarim and Skarner (used the same "difficult" route of Red > Blue > Gromp rather than the more efficient route of Gromp > Blue > Red).

Skarner and Hecarim both seem do to a lot better as 5/13/12. There were about the same speed (ofc, it's not like the last 5 points of Defensive tree do anything for jungling), but ended up ~100 hp higher. i'd expect that he would jungle faster in successive clears with reduced smite CD + Runic Affinity + Vamprism keeping the Gromp/Stun/Blue buffs around longer and letting him stay higher health.

i think it might be kind of difficult for traditional AD champs to go at least 12 points into utility. You're going to be giving up your 3% increased damage, and there's a lot of jungle pressure to go 9 in defense for the -2 jungle damage + initial starting health.

i ended up trying out a 9/9/12 on Nocturne. It had similar performance as before (~2 seconds slower), but was ~70 health higher - a good sign! He'll suffer a little bit in teamfights without Executionar, Dangerous Game and the +3% damage mastery, but it might equal out if if he ends up being 1 level higher for most of the game.

i tried it out on Khazix - he did even worse than before. Not to mention Executionar + Dangerous Game are so important to his playstyle.

Sejuani was not really different, but i imagine the vamp would help her a lot with future clears. Part of the problem may be that she clears so slowly that the regen of Machete overrides the regen of Vampirism.

Here's what I want to throw out there - as long as we are talking about jungle, I'd def like to collect some data and then compile,share.

I know you fellas might already be over it, but if not, start any jungle champ discussion like this: champ: runes (specific 9 ad red, etc), mastery (pic if you like or just say 21/9, etc), items, path, status at 3-4min.  Then add just your basic feedback.  I'm personally curious about how champs do early (level 3-4).  I'm going to MAKE UP an example of what I think is useful - again - this is off the top of my head

EXAMPLE ONLY:
NUNU - 9 AS red, 9 Flat ARM, 9 FLAT MR, 3 MS QUINT.  0/21/9.  Items: machete 2 pots.  Path:  smite Gomp, Blue, Red - 90-100% hp at 3:40.  W, Q, E - then max queue for control.  (I start W if team with me to speed up dmg output/ms). 

That sort of thing is quite useful to me anyway.  Chip in if you like.  I'll share like that as I try things out going forward.

Is there any interest in playing ranked teams agian? I kind of miss it!

I was also kicking around the idea of having a ranked team with Peterdumptruck. It has train wreck written all over it but people would just have to relax and play for fun. It would be more about seeing how high we can get with the dumptruck leading the mid lane than about play really hard core.

I would be interested in 3's or 5's ranked.