Let's Talk Balance #1: League of Legends Jungle Items

Overview: A brief discussion of the four dedicated jungle items for Season 4 as of patch 3.15. I will break down the Conservation passive, which can be found on all three “spirit” jungle items, and compare it to the gold generating Wriggle’s Lantern passive. Lastly, I recreate the Wriggle's Lantern recipe to increase its popularity in competitive play.

Spirit of the Ancient Golem

- Cost efficient by 170 gold (LoL Wiki)

- Good on champions whose abilities scale off of maximum health

- Good versus team compositions with above average crowd control

Spirit of the Spectral Wraith

- Cost efficient by 170 gold (LoL Wiki)

- Good on champions who struggle to maintain their mana pool while jungling

- Not necessary if mid laner is manaless and the jungler is allowed blue buff

Spirit of the Elder Lizard

- Cost efficient by 326 gold (LoL Wiki)

- The only jungle item that does not build out of a CDR item

- The most cost efficient of the three “spirit” items

Wriggle’s Lantern

- Cost inefficient by 417 gold (LoL Wiki)

- Combat statistics on this item are worth 1213 gold, nearly half that of the Spirit of the Lizard Elder

- Ideal only on junglers that excel at clearing camps and rely on attack speed to do so

Conservation passive analysis:

The Conservation passive gold generation can be calculated by converting the passive into a gold per 10 passive with an “uptime,” defined by the time that the passive has ≤ 79 stacks.

Assuming that a jungler is able to keep the conservation stacks accumulating 100% of the time, the 1 stack (= 1 gold) per 1.5 seconds is equivalent to ~6.7 gold per 10 seconds. Thus, this can then be multiplied by the percent of the time that the stacks are not maxed out at 80. The formula is as follows:

~6.7 gp/10 * (% uptime) = Effective gold per 10.

Let’s compare that to the other gold per 10 items in the game:

- Talisman of Ascension: 2 gp/10

- Frost Queen’s Claim: 4 gp/10

- Avarice Blade: 3 gp/10

Typical Support Runes and Masteries:

-2 gold per 10 gold from runes

-1.5 gold per 10 from masteries

So assuming optimal play, each of the three jungle items are capable generate more gold than the other gold per 10 items. However, it is possible that a support player with runes and masteries focused on passive gold generation can generate more gold. Note that the Avarice blade can be purchased with any of the three jungle items. An interesting comparison arises when one compares the Conservation passive to the Wriggle’s Lantern 40% increased gold passive.

The Conservation passive has a linear gold generation pattern, as discussed above. However the percent increase in gold gained by this passive is high early game and falls off late game, when compared with the gold earned by killing jungle monsters. For example, a low level wolf or wraith may be worth 35 gold, but the conservation stacks can account for up to 40 bonus gold, an increase of about ~114%. Later on, the same monster may be worth 75 gold, meaning the 40 bonus gold is equivalent to ~53%. With this evidence, it is safe to say that the Conservation passive scales poorly into the late game.

Wriggles, on the other hand, provides a 40% permanent gold bonus from monsters, scaling better than the Conservation passive, despite both examples above being >40%. This is because the Conservation passive cannot always generate 40 gold as in the examples above, and that is why I am choosing to analyze is as a gold per 10 passive.

In the following graph, the x-axis indirectly represents time, because the longer the game lasts, the more gold each jungle monster is worth. Thus a jungler is capable of earning more gold per minute as time passes. The y-axis represents the gold earned by the jungler after taking the gold generating passives into account. Keep in mind that even though a jungler may have a Hunter’s Machete, this qualifies as an item with “no passive” on the graph. This means there is no gold generating passive on the item. This value is the base on which the other two lines’ values are computed.

Graph of Gold Generation Over Time — Jungle Gold Generation Analysis

As you can see, the Conservation passive is much more beneficial early on, while the Wriggle’s Lantern Passive is capable of generating more gold in later stages of the game. Overall, the total gold generated (as calculated by the area under each respective line) is roughly the same. The point at which these lines intersect is at 100 gold per minute. What time this occurs in game is difficult to say. There are far too many variables to test it by hand, but I approximate this value to occur very early on, perhaps around 15 minutes.

All in all, the total gold generated over the course of a game by both the Conservation passive and Wriggle’s Lantern passive appear to be the same. The reason I believe that the “spirit” items are much more popular than Wriggle’s Lantern comes down to the combat stats on each item (which can are compared above). To Wriggle’s Lantern, I advise either a higher combine cost with much higher combat stats or the same combine cost with a small increase to the combat stats. This would depend on how soon the designer wants to allow this item to be purchased. Below is my attempt to balance Wriggle’s Lantern.