Wriggle's Lantern vs. Spirit of the Lizard Elder: Analysis

Editor's note: Since this article was written, Riot gave Spirit of the Elder Lizard an additional 10 percent CDR. This adds about 328 gold to its value

As much as the game has changed since the preseason update, at least one thing remains the same: Wriggle’s Lantern is the most popular item for AD-based junglers. According to LolKing.net's statistics, it has a purchase rate of about 10 percent. This is despite the introduction of an alternative item, Spirit of the Elder Lizard. However, players buy that item in less than 1 percent of all games.

To determine if Wriggle’s is a better purchase than SotEL, the first thing to analyze would be cost efficiency. Wriggle’s Lantern costs 1,600 gold, and it gives 1,600 gold worth of combat stats. It provides 30 armor, 15 attack damage and 10 percent life steal. It’s worth the price in combat stats alone, without even considering what else it offers.

Wriggle’s Lantern also gives a free ward every three minutes, which is worth 75 gold. If used on every cooldown, it generates the equivalent of about four gold per 10 seconds. If a player buys Wriggle’s 10 minutes into a game that lasts 30 minutes, the ward passive will earn the player about 500 gold.

Spirit of the Elder Lizard gives 50 attack damage, 14 health regen, seven mana regen and its unique true-damage passive. Without factoring in the passive, its base stats are worth 2,756 gold, and it costs 2,400 gold. When its two passives are taken into account, it’s also very gold-efficient.

However, SotEL is only that gold efficient once it’s fully built. Spirit Stone alone costs 800 gold and doesn’t give any combat stats until upgraded. SotEL is both more expensive and less effective in early fights. While Wriggle’s offers a strong mix of offense, defense and combat sustain, SotEL is purely an offensive item with a sprinkling of out-of-combat sustain.

Speaking of sustain, SotEL also provides less of that than Wriggle’s does. While certain champions don’t need the added regeneration, many need the extra health return while jungling, which is another point in favor of Wriggle’s.

In terms of combat stats, SotEL gives 2000 gold worth of attack damage plus the value of its passive. That passive is valuable but it scales, meaning it doesn’t reach maximum effectiveness until level 18. Once again, Wriggle’s proves more effective as an early purchase.

Another important aspect of these items is their increase in jungle clearing capabilities. Wriggle’s Lantern deals an extra 500 magic damage on 25 percent of a champion’s autoattacks, which adds an average of 125 damage to each attack.

Spirit of the Lizard Elder increases damage dealt to jungle mobs by 25 percent. If a champion uses auto attacks as its primary means of clearing the jungle, a champion would have to deal more than 500 damage on each attack for that passive to deal more damage than Wriggle’s—this will never happen in an actual game, so Wriggle’s wins here as well.

To sum things up: Compared to SotEL, Wriggle’s costs less, gives more well-rounded combat stats, generates gold with its free ward, provides more sustain and allows auto-attackers to clear the jungle faster. It’s simply the better option for junglers who use auto-attacks as their primary means of jungle clearing.

While it’s less efficient on auto-attackers, Spirit of the Lizard Elder isn’t a bad item. For junglers who use abilities to clearjungle camps, it becomes more worth the purchase. Those same champions also benefit more from its passive because they can apply it to multiple enemies in a team fight. Hecarim and Skarner are good examples of such champions.

In conclusion, it makes sense that Wriggle’s Lantern is more popular than Spirit of the Elder Lizard: it’s a better item on more champions, while SotEL is more of a niche purchase. For certain champions, it’s a great pick—but on the whole, Wriggle’s is still king of the jungle.