Items

Sustain-focused tanky junglers now have an item build path that supports their playstyle from Hunter's Machete to Quill Coat to Spirit of the Ancient Golem. These new (and newly changed) items give high regeneration stats while ensuring jungle monsters can be taken down in a decent timeframe from the mid to late game.

The problem with the old Hunter's Machete and Spirit Stone items (at least for tanky sustained junglers) was that they were too damage-focused to really help the slow and steady Maokaii and Nautilii (Maokais? Nautiluses?) of the world.Wickd Irelia vs Jax

As a result, these tanky dudes fell out of favor against damage-heavy junglers like Kha'Zix and Pantheon or early pressure/utility junglers like Lee Sin and Elise. While these changes may not directly shift the landscape back to equal footing, we want to at least offer ameaningful choice for those who want to play the utility tank jungler.

To focus on the changes themselves, our goal here is to 'normalize' jungle clear speeds so that even a utility jungler can clear reasonably well throughout the game - even without buying a damage item. The solution to add Sapping Barbs (and make it based off a percent of maximum health) means that once a jungler gets a Quill Coat / Spirit of the Ancient Golem, they'll be guaranteed to clear a jungle camp withinWickd Irelia vs Jax - LoL  a set period of time. Adding a ward to Quill Coat and Ancient Golem also gives tanky junglers a way to fight back against high-pressure junglers through superior vision control, rather than giving more stats to out-duel the duelists. Final point: Spirit of the Ancient Golem scales with bonus health, so you'll need to be building health to see bigger gains.