Season 3 Jungle Item Changes: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

For many months now the jungle has been dominated by two primary jungling styles: Fast Clearing junglers and High Gank Rate junglers. Some times you have junglers who are both of these. Junglers who can clear the jungle fast AND provide great ganks from early levels, such as Skarner and Dr. Mundo. However, in most cases, you are deciding between one of the two factors. Rarely do you get to pick a jungler who doesn't fall into either of these categories. The Season 3 jungle and items that have been added change all of this.

Many players out there love to play Warwick. While he is a fun champion and born to be in the jungle, his early ganks are very lack luster and his jungle clearing speed is sub-par. Warwick specializes in focusing a single target while being able to absorb damage from else where. The new jungle allows this to happen. With focus being shifted to a single larger creep and the smaller creeps being significantly weaker than before, the jungle is now "single-target" friendly.

Many more junglers with a similar style, such as Xin Zhao and Fiora, will also see a strong boost in play. The greater diversity in the jungle role will allow greater diversity in team compositions which means we will see a greater display of the full champion list.

One of the other great changes we will see are in the items made for the jungler. These items will greatly help. You will no longer see the same item builds as there is a much greater selection and the same jungler may take different paths in each game. For now, lets start at the beginning with the basis to all of these new items: Hunter's Machete.

This item is a fantastic deal. For a mere 300g you get 10% damage and + 10 basic attack damage. That is roughly a 10% clear speed to jungle. The best part? It is the root item to all the other fantastic jungling items out there. At a price of 300g, you can still pick up 5 health potions!

The Hunter's Machete has two seperate paths though. You can build towards Wriggle's Lantern or the Spirit Stones. First, I'm going to cover the new Wriggle's Lantern.

Overall the cost is the exact same. The biggest changes are that the item overall is geared more to a jungler and less to a damage dealer. The -8 to attack damage is not a big hit, however, the Rend passive is +75 damage*. Over the course of 5 swings and assuming you get 1 passive proc, that means you overall see +35 damage dealt. Against a non-buff jungle creep, this -8 damage difference isn't very large at all.

The only other differnce is the loss of 2% lifesteal. This is reflected however in the fact that Vampiric Scepter is 10% now as well. The item is still really great and on junglers who are more offensive, it is a terrific buy. Good examples are Warwick, Lee Sin and Shaco. (* - There is a new patch that has increassed the damage on Rend to 500 damage)

This next item is the key to 3 larger items. The basic Spirit Stone is a great item that grows into even better ones. For junglers who need a bit more health and mana regen, it takes you in the right direction.

Similar effects to a Philosopher's Stone regeneration qualities, only 1 less health and mana regeneration per 5 seconds. The only missing effect is the 5 gold per 10 quality which is replaced by an upgraded Butcher passive: +15% Damage to Monsters. This effect when you think about it is similar.

While you are passively killing jungle faster, you are opening time for yourself to gank more which means you are creating more gold for you and your team. With jungle timers coming down slightly on the non-buff camps this item will be essential to your tankier and magic based junglers. For the same 800g total that Philospher Stone costs, this is a great item with great evolutions that come out of it.

Spirit of the Spectral Wraith is the first of the 3 upgrades we'll cover. This item is build from a Fiendish Codex and the Spirit Stone. 2400 total gold buys you some great stats! Though you lose the health regeneration from the Spirit Stone, however, you double the amount of mana regeneration and gain 20% spell vamp.

If you've built this item you would probably prefer the spell vamp to passive health gain. Once more you see an increase to the Butcher passive to 20%. While in the jungle, this will help replace that health regeneration. Overall, this item is incredible for ANY magic jungler. Some great users will include: Evelynn, Amumu and Fiddlesticks.

Spirit of the Elder Lizard is an awesome buy for our physical junglers. Just like before the total cost is 2400 gold and it supplies similar stats. The passive on it, Incinerate, is really a huge damage boost in and out of the jungle. 2.83 * Level + 15 true damage ends up increasing your damage greatly.

It adds 6 damage per second which is a huge amount at its lowest level. By the time you can afford to buy this item you will probably be closer to level 6 -7 meaning it will add even more damage than that. This item unlike its sister retains both the mana and health regeneration. This item is nearly essential on some damage dealer junglers like Jax, Rengar and Zed. 

So finally, we see the last item to the triad of Spirit Stone items, the Spirit of the Ancient Golem. This item is obviously geared towards any jungler looking to pick up health with their jungle speed. This item, like its bretheren, is 2400 gold. This time providing a HUGE boost to the health of a jungler, more than the older Heart of Gold. While it doesn't provide gold over time, it does give armor and retains the regenerative properties as well.

The big unique difference this time is the passive tenacity. This version is similar to that currently in the game reducing the effect of most crowd controls by 35%. I feel that this item will be favored on our tankier junglers (call it a hunch!) such as Malphite, Shen and Mao'kai.

All-in-all, I see the jungle this season to be even more diverse. There will be old junglers seeing tons of play again as well as all of our favorite season 2 junglers sticking around. Don't be surprised if you see new characters who previously didn't jungle giving it a shot as well. There are many new doors to be opened this season and I can't wait!

Have a happy 3rd season summoners!

I hope you find this guide useful! Have any suggestions or comments? Feel free to comment below. Want to see more guides like this? Follow me on Twitter: @WolvenNight