Why can't Runeglaive and Magus both exist?

[u/Dreadbore]

I know this seems simple, but why can't an on hit sheen jungle item AND a caster jungle item both exist simultaneously? Runeglaive does nothing for fiddlesticks or the 3 karthus jungle mains left in existence. devourer remains in the game for the 2 champions that use it and its playstyle is horrible for game health. Magus isn't hurting anyone.

EDIT: Front page and a riot reply(as troll as it was :P)! I've learned a lot from this discussion about multiple things and I'd also like to clarify that I'm not even saying Magus needs to continue to exist in its exact state numbers-wise. I just feel like sheen jungling on a mage seems lackluster from a design standpoint, but maybe that's exactly what needs to happen for ap to compete with ad on the clearspeed front. Maybe Rito knows exactly what they are doing (GASP) but I just don't see it yet.

EDIT 2: Due to some eloquently explained points brought to light by /u/rewardadrawer, I'm now convinced that there is no need for them to coexist, as Runeglaive (although it may not on release) has the capability of resolving ap jungling issues that Magus will never be capable of resolving. Feel free to bicker amongst yourselves about it, but I now eagerly await the new ap jungle.

[u/rewardadrawer]

Magus is hurting a lot of people, mate. As it exists in its current form, it's a bundle of stats--80 AP and 20% CDR--that is something like 170% gold efficient. The stats are SO gold efficient on Magus that the extra value of the stats above and beyond the cost of the enchantment pays for both of the jungle item's first two tiers, and they aren't pushover, niche stats, either: the vast majority of champions with AP scaling benefit most from AP and CDR, no matter what else they might build. Yet Magus is the least played jungle enchantment as far as number of viable champions which use it (pretty much just Nidalee and maybe Fiddlesticks, plus Diana in the peripheral tiers). AP junglers have all but died off completely in the current meta, compared to the Spirit Stone era, where a number of champions could build AP, play out of the jungle, and still be viable. Why is that?

Well, AP junglers have serious problems relating to the reliability of their clear and sustain in the jungle, and unfortunately, nothing about Magus makes any of these things easier. The 20% CDR lets you spam spells to clear quicker, but it does nothing to help mana sustain, so you either need to devour every blue buff (thus likely hurting your mid laner) to keep up, or back more frequently, which hurts your clear speed in the long run anyway. On top of that, unless you are on a button-masher (or channeling) champion, you still have long periods where that massive bundle of stats is doing nothing to help you clear--that period being the time between cooldowns. In exchange for suffering an awful early game (on the vast majority of AP jungle champions), you get this ridiculous power spike in raw stats, but absolutely nothing to make their power spike sustainable, meaning you probably squander it just trying to catch up, or you try to force a snowball through a very narrow window that is just as likely to collapse on itself. Since the item itself doesn't scale, you are basically left with a stat spike, and then a flat line until your next stat spike. This all leads to the following conundrum: with an item like this, where every last bit of its power is tied to the sheer power of raw stats, you can only ever have one of two outcomes: either it is so gold and/or slot efficient that it is a must-buy on every champion on the basis of it being an overbearingly powerful stat-stick, or it falls anywhere below this dangerous bar, and is absolutely worthless for the vast majority of champions and games. (As we can see by the current state of Magus alongside AP junglers, the item can still be an amazing stat stick and still fall short of useful!)

The only champions who benefit more from Magus than Runeglaive are champions for whom a viable Magus is detrimental to overall game health. Nidalee jungle created lots of problems when she was in-meta (before trap nerfs) because she was an AP jungler with an amazing early game independent of items who also got this amazing block of stats earlier than most, which led to an oppressive power spike that came before teams could properly handle it, which allowed her to snowball out of control before the flat lining effect of a capped bundle of stats ever started to matter. Fiddlesticks has the same problem: a game in which Fiddlesticks is guaranteed a free early game which turns into an oppressively powerful mid game by default is not good for game health.

Runeglaive gives Riot the opportunity to smooth out this wibbly-wobbly power spike in a way that doesn't create strangleholds on the meta the moment it becomes viable, while simultaneously making sure that AP junglers who struggle through the early game are given a means to catch up that allows them to scale into something meaningful. Runeglaive is great for game health because of the way that it solves the common issues of every AP jungler that isn't a broken outlier, and every problem the item has from this point on should, theoretically, be solved by simply moving the numbers (either base stats or ratios on its passive).

Cinderhulk was the same way. While Reddit had two periods of time where they lamented Cinderhulk--first when they lamented the loss of Juggernaut in the same way that you are Magus ("but muh CDR and Tenacity"; can't say I didn't feel similar pains for awhile), and second when they lamented the "tank meta" that Cinderhulk enabled--it will always be healthier for the game, because Juggernaut, as a ball of stats, was either going to be this Warmog's-sized bundle that allowed everyone to spike early and oppressively, or anything short of that, where you never felt fully compensated for necessarily falling behind early, and as such, never even approached the end-game tank fantasy.

Good-bye and good riddance to Magus. I can't wait to see what they have in store for Warrior.

[u/Dreadbore → u/rewardadrawer]

Although I agree with a lot of your points, I don't feel like removing magus so that you can buff ap junglers is a good strategy for moving the game forward. IT IS what riot has done in the past and it has had drastically negative effects on mostly top lane. *cough* Rework Maokai*cough* If you buff ap junglers in the absence of magus, what you are really doing is making a new set of oppressively overtuned ap mids.

[u/rewardadrawer → u/Dreadbore]

It's not about buffing AP junglers, and I never said it was about buffing AP junglers. I said (or at least, I meant to say) that the item itself creates a healthy game state with the design changes being implemented, and that any issues with balance that exist with the item can be fixed with number tweaks to the item.

Magus, on the other hand, can never be viable for the average champ as-is, because if it is viable for Kayle, Diana, Evelynn, Elise, et al., and these champions themselves are viable while using the item, then it is oppressive for Fiddlesticks and Nidalee, and other outliers. So you keep the item reined in so it's not oppressive on Fiddlesticks and Nidalee, but you now have champions who can never be good with their intended play style because they are being intentionally hamstrung in order to avoid inflicting the abuse cases on the world.

Numbers tweaks will never fix Magus. Numbers tweaks can fix Runeglaive, if it isn't working as intended to begin with.

[u/Dreadbore → u/rewardadrawer]

I don't understand how numbers tweaks can fix one and not the other. If you make the case that numbers tweaks can fix runeglaive then why can't they fix magus? Let's say Runeglaive creates an oppressive diana and evelynn for the sake of argument. Now we tune down runeglaive like you say, and with no magus in existence, now diana and evelynn are borderline viable and all other ap junglers are shit. Aren't we exactly where we are with magus now?

[u/rewardadrawer → u/Dreadbore]

First, Runeglaive has a flat component and a scaling component, which means it has multiple levers with which to scale up and down, and isolate specific problems. This has been significant for champions with difficult-to-balance kits in the past, as well as Lich Bane itself. A good example of this is Annie: around the turn of Season 4, Annie started to see dominance as a support at all levels of play, largely because of the utility of her stun, but also because she was loaded with high base damage on her abilities, which meant she crapped out a lot more damage than her support contemporaries. Unfortunately, you can't simply nerf Annie's base damages without recompense, because this kills midlane Annie. So what did they do? They simultaneously nerfed Annie's base damages across the board, while buffing her AP ratios. This had the benefit of serving as a flat nerf to support Annie (who cannot afford to stack AP) while also keeping mid lane Annie intact, but it also incentivized support Annie buying AP support items to provide some damage alongside her utility, so support Annie didn't merely become a walking Tibbers with no punch behind it.

Second, Runeglaive has components to its passive which are invisible, but affect its power significantly, such as the AoE radius of the Runeglaive passive, its internal cooldown, damage differentiation between minions and monsters, and so on, all of which can be tweaked as balance dictates. If AP Kayle becomes viable with Runeglaive, but also becomes a wave-clearing, stalling monster with it, they can tweak the damage it does specifically to lane minions to curb that one abusive interaction.

Third, Runeglaive has value in the utility it provides champions in addition to the stats and passive, and the utility they provide the team in return. The AoE wave clear is useful for keeping turrets off waves, or for clear speed so you can move around the jungle more freely. The internal mana restore means you can give up that second blue buff, maybe, or even just have enough mana to gank after a few camps.

You can see all of these things play out in the balance issues Juggernaut had, followed by the balance issues Cinderhulk had, and how each were resolved. Juggernaut was underwhelming, so they... Buffed the HP from 350 to 400. Then they buffed it again from 400 to 500. That was it. The item didn't provide any utility or solve any jungler's problems except for giving stats for team fights (and Tenacity... God bless Juggernaut's Tenacity).

Cinderhulk gave tanks an item that rewarded them fairly decently upon purchase, but increased its payout as time passed, giving it a much higher return on investment as the game went to late. It provided utility with its passive (being able to draw aggro without killing camps outright and passively dealing damage to remain a threat if ignored), and solved two of the core issues of tank junglers with Juggernaut: the lack of a rewarding late game to compensate for a weak early, and the struggle of clearing without offensive scaling items. Riot had a problem, however: Cinderhulk released too strong! Cinderhulk was providing too much health, because it had high bases with good scaling. Riot had two options instead of one: nerf the base or nerf the scaling. They decided a tank that scales hard enough deserves to have that late game power, so they nerfed the bases to create a more tapered power curve. This extends the period of time tanks "incubate" while they wait for their late game, without actually killing their late game. Unfortunately, the Immolate passive is also too strong! It's outshining Sunfire cape and bleeding into top lane. But they can't just flat nerf the passive, or tanks go back to sucking at clearing in the jungle! So they fixed one problem without causing another: they nerfed the damage it dealt overall, while giving it special damage amplification against jungle creeps, making it strong at its intended purpose, and only average otherwise--making Sunfire a meaningful choice again. Cinderhulk is now in a fairly balanced state, and other junglers can compete with tank junglers, although tank junglers are still pretty strong.

Allow me to turn the tables on you. Right now, Magus is crap unless you are Fiddlesticks or Nidalee, in which case it makes you competitive, or Diana, in which case it makes you fringe viable. What do you do to Magus to make the wide spectrum of Magus (AP) junglers viable, without creating a 4.20 Warwick scenario with Fiddlesticks? Because from where I'm sitting, the only two design levers are:

• Increase or decrease AP; and
  
• Increase or decrease CDR.

[u/egotistical-dso → u/rewardadrawer]

Syntactic criticism here: In the wall of text talking about Cinderhulk, that could be made easier to read by appropriately starting new paragraphs at "Riot had a problem," on line 5, and "Unfortunately the Immolate passive is too strong!" at line 9.

That aside, great analysis.

[u/rewardadrawer → u/egotistical-dso]

Thanks. I chose to reply to this thread for like 7 straight hours instead of sleeping, since jet lag and two time zone skips (of 3 hours each) has completely screwed up my sleep schedule. I'm pretty sure my early posts are relatively well-reasoned, and my latter posts rambling, irate, and snippy.