My favorite junglers right now, and why!

Also the third, and last (lazy), post of the year, so MERRY XMAS!

Okay, so with season 3 having received its first, and so very needed, balance patch, it's time for my list of junglers at the moment. I'm gonna list 3 candidates to the title of jungle champ, but it's not a top 3, so disregard their order of appearance, I list pros and cons with all of them.

Amumu was my number 1 champion in season 2, and overall one of my favorite champs of the game. He is still strong, but his eternal weakness of being really easy to counterjungle and countergank, still applies, even more so with the harder jungle creeps, and the delayed boots. He is also really dependent on blue buff, especially if he doesn't get any kills or assists early.

Pros

• Moderate clear time, consistent.
• Item route really strong overall, new items suit him very well.
• HUGE TEAMFIGHTS
• Loads of cc = hard to shut down completely.

Cons

• Super squishy early, susceptible to counterjungling.
• Very mana hungry, needs either items or blue buffs to clear jungle.
• Can't sneak objectives.
• Ganks are easy to avoid / counter.

Nocturne is a cool champion, and hella grimdark. I thought he was really sub-par in season 2, but season 3 has brought him back. I like him a lot, especially for soloQ, but you need to make the good calls. He is a bit dependent on the lanes early though, especially if they want presence from you.

Pros

• Decent clear time, rather safe jungle.
• Can be quite flexible in his item build.
• Can gank rather stronk pre level 6, if your lanes cater it.
• Can call the shots and crush the enemy team in soloQ.

Cons

• Dependent on wriggle.
• Can end up having little presence pre level 6.
• If you make bad calls, you will lose games.
• Can get out scaled hard.

Olaf is one of the coolest champs in Leauge, and in Brolaf skin, possibly the coolest. He was good in season 2, although I didn't really fiddle too much with him back then, but his clear times really shines in season 3. He is a really snowballing champion, although you might have a hard time getting back in the game, if you fail early.

Pros

• Insane clear times with blue, good clear times otherwise.
• Safe jungle.
• Strong early game pressence.
• Snowballs like a Brother Tucker.

Cons

• If broken early, he will be irrelevant late.
• Can be kited, even with ulti.
• Brings no CC.
• Needs some items to be really scary.

Hope you enjoy!

I also think: Having to go wriggle is a disadvantage, unless you can combine it with Spirit of The Ancient Golem, which is a vastly superior item.

Let's talk Black Cleaver, and Arm. Pen.

Yes, I know that It's nerfed now.

So, if you play Leauge regularly and have done so for the last month or so, you are probable aware of how vastly OP Black Cleaver, and armor pen in general had become, as a result of the season 3 patch. In fact, the item was so OP that it made AP champs rather useless compared to BC wielding bruisers, and actually became -the- item to build. Now, you might not have played enough to know why or maybe your dyslexic, either way, here is way. 

Black Cleaver, after the nerf, is still a good item, especially on bruisers, since it provides them with the vast majority of the stats they need: CDR, AD, Armor Pen, HP. This stat combination alone, almost without regard of amount/value is and was enough to make this a beast item for any bruiser, especially since it builds off a Brutalizer, making it easy to get fast, getting you all that early dmg to snowball your team and fulfill your role as bruiser effectively. Now, what it also did and still does, although in a slightly weaker version, is that it applied a debuff reducing the targets armor by a percentage (keep in mind that the S3 patch also introduced an update to the way penetration was calculated, meaning that % penetration is now subtracted BEFORE flat, which is immensely better than before) this debuff stacks up to 4 times, and provides a solid chunk at the fourth stack. Now, Riot has admitted the item was broken, but have thus far claimed that you could not get more than 4 stacks, even with 6 Black Cleavers, thus debunking some of the wildest rumors, saying that 1 hit with  6 Cleavers would instantly remove 100% of the enemy's armor. However, even with the debuff stack being capped at 4 regardless the amount of cleavers, more cleavers still = quicker application of the debuff; basically, if you have 4 cleavers and hit someone once, they will instantly have 4 stacks, meaning that your next attacks will deal a lot more damage.

The reason for this, was the lack of unique abilities on the item. The application of the debuff was not unique, which as explained was rather good, but neither was the CDR nor the Armor Pen. This was broken, through the roof broken. What it meant was, that a snowballing bruiser, would fairly quickly be doing true damage, to your entire team. That is insane, especially considering champs like Riven or Talon, whose abilities scale with ad and does physical damage, as well as being AOE.

Let's do the math. 

Running Riven top, Phreak has gone for full arm pen marks and flat AD quints, giving him 12 armor penetration flat. He is also running 9/21 masteries (for the sake of fairness and to avoid the glasscannon syndrome) providing him 8% armor penetration. Doing the game he gets fat and farmed all sorts of good thinks and buys 4 Black cleavers, T2 boots and a Last Whisper. This gives him the following:

40% CDR, 1K health, 240 AD, 60 flat armor penetration, 35% armor penetration and the debuff from cleaver providing an additional 30% armor penetration since it is applied instantly. Phreak smiles, since his Riven, who mind you does only physical damage, and almost only AOE, now ignores 73% of the enemies armor, and an additional 72 afterwards. 

WHAT DOES THESE NUMBERS MEAN!? 

They mean, that the bruiser who will be sitting at 300+ AD and does physical damage with ALL her abilities, (most of them doing AOE as well) will hit everyone on your team for 100% of her damage: True Damage. The only ones negating any of the slaughter will be tanks with heavy armor builds.

And that, is why Black Cleaver was broken as fudge.

NOTE 1: There is confusion as to whether or not armor pen % is capped at 40 game mechanic wise, or just on champ sheet. I believe it's the latter, due to the numbers I've seen bruisers dish out.

NOTE 2: Black Cleaver is STILL an extremely good bruiser item, even after rather tough nerfs. It still gives you an incredible set of stats.

Hope you enjoyed, and survived!

Introduction

Hello!

If you have found this place it probable means that you know me to some extent, and as such, you might already know why I put up this blog, however! On the off-chance that you stumbled in here on your own, here's a short introduction of me, and this blog.

Me, well, im Roostie, a 2K rated scrub jungler on EUW, in League of Legends. I play a lot, I watch streams a lot and I think way too much about the game, and I'd like to think that it gives me some sort of knowledge about the game, insight, one might even dare. 

This of course leads us to,

The blog! This is where I'll write down my thoughts on the current meta, from items to champions over summoner spells and all the way to the most manly way to play. I will blabber on quite a bit I think, and I hope I can stick with what is useful information. I will also link a bit to Surrender@20 and eSports news sites, and comment on their news and such goodies. 

Lastly, I will also answer any questions about the game you might have, and I'll even answer questions about myself if they aren't too stalker-ish. 

Now, you might be thinking that their isn't much new too this, and that you could find the same thing by just browsing the forums, oh, and that 2K is kinda low and that I'm probably trash anyways. 

And you might be right in all of those. 

What I do believe I can offer, is a condensed and sound analysis that spares you the horrors of MOBA game communities; a fresh attitude in commenting (I'm sadly not affiliated with any pro teams, or Riot, so I can say pretty much whatever I want, how I want it).

I also believe I have a good sense of what the game is about, and I have some experience with trying to break it down into easily digestible parts, fit for new players, or players struggling with "Elo hell".

And I'm a really nice person as well.

That was It for now, and I hope you'll give the blog a chance!