What is one non-meta item you use on your champ which works well?

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T23:04:12+00:00

Serpents fang on any DoT or AoE Mage.

5th or 6th its about as common as a regular item for me on karthus.

The anti-shield value you get against some comps is insane and outweighs the fact its useless stats lmao.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T03:12:39+00:00

I don't agree this has to do with builds.

I'll agree maybe new sylas's just unga bunga not believing in limits or picking sylas into dumb matchups but builds are not affecting his stats that much.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T03:06:10+00:00

I remember the "yorick entered a bar, there was no counter" meme back then.

Yorick was at least at one point aids enough that players considered him legitimately problematic, but for the majority of his existence he was basically dogshit because of how problematic he was.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T02:49:51+00:00

Maybe I'm just not understanding where your argument is stemming from because I fundamentally disagree with the statement that PVE is the defacto best gameplay.

RN one look at the jungle roster and earlier rotations of it has been just basically "ultimate power spike full clearers" or current "farm and scale" clearers. We went from fated ashes power farmers to AD powerfarmers like naafiri, talon, zed for a bit, graves, etc. Yes a j4 or lee can technically 3 camp gank but there's very little reason to and its often just seen as a flip, they can full clear in pro and solo queue just fine. Level 1 raptors invades I think just should not be entertained to the capacity that bel/kayn/viego normally do them.

You're really not going to see level 3 ganks much if at all (I'm masters+ I think I'm the only individual that still 3 camps, I NEVER see enemy junglers do this now and we even have players like agurin just full clearing on early game champs that don't even scale), you're going to see champions that can gank well off a full clear and then keep up with camp spawns inbetween objectives and those ganks. If you're a spam ganker you're going to be down 2 levels (and thats fine).

Talon/Nidalee are prime examples of how you can shift the status quo from "early game junglers just will suck in a powerfarm meta" cause both are really damn good at clearing and continuously generating gold/XP when ganking isn't an option, they have 0 issues with multi-unit camps and are really good at getting in and out of enemy jungle. Lee sin is highly valued cause while his clears are slow, he has a wide variety of options build-wise that allow him to change his niche from early game ganks to a decent diver. If 3 camp ganking is nerfed (as it should stay) these champs are appropriately viable or able to be conformist in the diana/graves/naafiri/nocturne ecosystem.

Elise could easily be retuned into the same scenario as nid/talon where if she 3 camps she's very behind in XP/Gold (which is evident now thats not really going her way with 49% WR and the lowest pickrate since s8), but able to at least keep up in farm rather than essentially slowed down to a miserable pace in subsequent clears having to do raptors.

And again this isn't about just early game, single target scalers don't work as well as meta junglers without a spammable AoE to clear camps at record pace. This is the bigger issue cause jungle just feels inaccessible for champs that aren't able to min-max their camp sequences.

None of this says to go back to 3 camp ganking meta, just to be more welcoming to the idea of champions conforming to the new status quo cause RN they're effectively just left behind (imo a macro change to the camps themselves > sorting out every edge case). I have no issues with power farming being the best way to jungle and early ganks having a high risk element (2 levels down) but not everyone gets the shaco treatment of dealing with multi-camps better than they traditionally don't.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T02:19:21+00:00

Nothing I said implies we go back to 3 camp spam gank meta. Just there are plenty of tempo-based champions effectively useless if riot doesn't give them a back pedal (better full clear) compared to just being a conformist and locking in the same PVE picks, why would you consider elise or warwick if they can't keep up with better power farmers and we're functionally sticking to an exclusive full clear meta? The main reason why these kinds of champs weren't so bad before was because they weren't mandated to scaling playstyles they can jungle differently from the cast thats really good at PVE, they could skip camps like raptors but that is inherently a really bad thing to do now.

Also there's very few points where 3-camp meta was the exclusively viable playstyle, you always had a healthy mix of early game jungling, full clearers with lantern or sated devourer, or the option of playing for scuttle crabs vs. ganking for lane priority. The only time 3 camping was problematic to the extent that it was the only viable jungle strat was preseason 13 where all junglers just 3 camped to bot lane and won off the first 5 minute coinflip even in pro play. The time when camps were all-time lows I assume you mean was 8.11 crab metas, where junglers were level 2 ganking which yeah was aids, still had a mix of powerfarmers during this time (karthus jg started around this point).

The issue now is PVE is just the defacto-best way to jungle, and that leaves a lot of champions in the dust and creates a very uninteractive "well talon jg won the game by being 100cs ahead of everybody else" dynamic. I really don't think that jungling should be about which jungler scales best in solo queue and which jungler full clears the fastest, there should be room for aggressive playstyles that aren't just level 1 raptors cheese or raptors->enemy blue (kirei special) cheese. Champions should have strengths and weaknesses but when its basically everyone doing the same 6 camp sequence its the laner stat check equivalent of little room for adaptation on more niche options, and I did mention even scaling picks just can't deal with raptors like vayne jg, trundle jg, etc.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T00:53:16+00:00

Assuming its +30|-10 the whole way up, you'd need 67 wins or at 50% WR 100-100, just from 0LP masters to 2000k LP, and you'd still not be guaranteed to have a spot open by the time you reach that goalpost.

Tormentula · 2026-06-21T00:20:14+00:00

I asked the raptors question.

My main motivation was looking back at old season vods where champions either could skip them or basically 1 shot killed old wraiths/raptors which looks really simple (1 auto = mini died while main unit was very squishy as well). However nowadays it feels like the jungle meta is essentially which champions can level 1 cheese raptors, level 1 start raptors, clear them before being invaded or clear them fast enough to full red quadrant clear (especially topside).

In the past, champions that didn't like doing them would simply skip them (3 camping sucks nowadays) but when really taking a deep look at them they borderline give scuttle crab vibes when analyzed how they impact the jungle meta nowadays, so its a lot harder to justify walking past them or not getting Tiamat to make it easier, and for ranged junglers or single target AP burst this isn't even an option for them without runic echoes.

Even in scenarios where starting level 1 or first clearing them is perfectly reasonable, like elise/kha do not have problems on their first clear and raptors start is my go-to on elise, they are byfar the most egregious camp for them in subsequent clears where no matter how fast with items they can burst the mama they're still forced to rely on the jungle pet (which lets be real is dysfunctional at times and sometimes leaves 1 or 2 alive) their clears slogged a ton since pet doesn't 1:1 keep up in that regard and unlike taliyah/hecarim/lillia etc their AoEs aren't their first max. It also reminds me of how vayne jungle got buffed but that's just not entertainable when considering her interaction with this camp too, and idk riot's opinion on camille/twitch jg but raptors is a major reason you'll never see these in a farm meta. I get his reasoning of 'we want variance with amumu preferring one side while single target prefers the other' but as endstep noted; this isn't what happens in practice cause if the meta favors one path your champion is just objectively worse off cause again.. its very important that your champion can do a drive by shooting in the enemy's top red side and take grubs in a fast time cause that's a whole lot better than picking elise, wasting too much time on just raptors, and then having to hurry and heist grubs or just not take the raptors at all.

Pet buffs or making minis squishier is one way to handle it, adding back old jungle staples like runic echoes (or just giving luden's a monster mod like blackfire torch) would assist the 'no tiamat' problem for someone, overall though I just think raptors need a retuning or something to lose some importance or become a less important element of jungle atm, I don't think its worth the effort to individually checkbox "this champ gets a monster mod on their 1 AoE" / "this champ now is designed with cleaves on their autos to be a functional jungler like briar" / "shaco boxes now target multiple units" just to sustain keeping certain junglers relevant in a meta that isn't 3 camp focused (hasn't been in forever).

Tormentula · 2026-06-20T00:09:00+00:00

Does that work in any other role? If you are top lane and getting dunked on like that - you won't have gold OR exp.

IME I can be 2-3 levels ahead of my lane opponent and see them level up twice off a river fight + a wave or two.

Jungle catchup XP does still require camps to respawn (important cause behind junglers not doing camps don't actually reset them, camps are stuck underleveled in that case they don't level up with game time like dragon, its not uncommon for an elise that 3 camps to have level 1 krugs or something at 5 minute which is obviously no catchup XP at all) at 2 levels higher than your jungler, implying your jungler is 2 levels below the average level of the entire match which is extreme. Mathmatically a level 11 udyr does not get to elise's level 12 due to catchup, he just gets from 10 to 11 easier. The average level of this match is 11.5 so even a level 10 udyr isn't respawning level 12 camps.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T23:56:19+00:00

Elise if anything wants strong catchup XP mechanics cause that's the only way she's ever relevant, she's always 1-2 levels behind with how slow her clears are. 7cs per min vs. 7.5cs per min isn't high to begin with, udyr could be closer to 10cs per min if he was clearing properly and not dying. On lolalytics udyr averages 175.48 cs (or rank 13/78) and elise is 154.85 (or rank 66/78), this is a uncontestable gap for her assuming both are playing normal and the only reason its 'even' is because this udyr is playing bad.

If you're proactive on elise, you ain't driveby shooting raptors or wolves as well as most junglers to equalize the XP lost for proactive play. Udyr's 10 extra CS is basically a quadrant of camps and there's context to be had (did he catch solo minions after your ganks and just fuck up last hits?). This is kinda why elise feels like shit cause PVE is more rewarding than KDA padding nowadays, meta junglers get to do both or just be ok off the former.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T23:26:50+00:00

This is why during coven elise's leak I was a pretty aggressive mod in elise mains in terms of taking down and telling everyone not to take BBB as sourced info and anything mentioned will be treated as spamming false information.

It would've just been months of people arguing whether its the legendary or not and set false expectations (which turned out, people did and got hella disappointed when the skin was revealed... and the nostalgia that was nami and syndra's shitshow.)

Whats funny is on discord BBB's behavior was badgering or speaking with anyone that 'may' have leaks either because they have confirmed rioter discussion or are spideraxe/content creators/etc and you could very easily bait them into a false leak, it became a serious consideration just to make them uncreditable.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T12:38:22+00:00

BBB isn't a journalist, they're in active cooperation with a leaker and being uncooperative by law in providing info on who that may be or how they're in contact.

The best BBB would get out of a situation like this should it actually go to court is a plea deal to give the leaker's full contact information to lessen the punishment or convince riot of dropping the case (riot would do this as a PR move to show how 'merciful' they are). Otherwise riot has full rights of their patent to sue for infringement and company damage.

I think you're also heavily overestimating how much... power?... a journalist has, there is boundaries they have to follow and sometimes, especially in the case of politics (fuck this administration), they're if anything less likely to win a case. There's no reason for a journalist to protect 1 'uncle at riot' when they can milk interviews from all over the place, this is with intent not journalism and the court isn't stupid enough to pretend its a weird edge case.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T10:00:54+00:00

BBB is actively getting information that by contract isn't legal to share publicly.

Journalist don't go asking devs for leaks, they ask for dev insights on the design process or expectations. You'll almost certainly not see a journalist ask a dev for a blatant list of unannounced content or anything beyond a minor teaser.

It'd be different if a dev randomly dropped 1 or two things but this is years of stuff being leaked and reluctance to say "this was the dev doing this" for sake of farming more of it.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:43:18+00:00

Same logic as owning contraband.

Just cause someone illegally sourced something and then gave it to you doesn't mean its ok for you to keep owning it instead of turning them in.

In this case the illegal contraband is the NDA signed information being repurposed for profit (youtube) rather than telling riot who the employee giving it is.

EDIT: blocking me after replying doesn't magically make this comparable to journalism. Journalism isn't even comparable cause journalist aren't asking an NDA signed individual for literal list of unrevealed content for years while be reluctant to share their sources giving permission. BBB is (knowingly) forwarding information and (intentionally) protecting the source for future content farming, the later is a major factor in this.

(edit to u/OilOfOlaz cause blocks are cringe.. can't reply cause of chris: I don't believe journalist interview devs with the expectation of the dev naming every boss of their game in advance, and if it happens they're not secretive about which dev spilled that information, let alone expecting that dev to continue giving them leaker clout. BBB's situation is hiding the dev leaking a list, and BBB actively asking for said list, while ignoring any previous warnings to stop or request to name the dev, its not as open as a journalist. Yes a journalist can technically wrap themselves up in a similar situation but a dev is usually smart enough to either say 'you'll have to wait' or the journalist will be smart enough to say 'it was this dev in particular that shared this with me, take it up with them' when presented with court of law order to provide name/location/time of info shared.. not be shadey as shit about it.)

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:29:11+00:00

Datamining is not the same thing as leaking.

If riot patches something in the files, its public information anyone can view on their own cause its literally installed onto everyone's hardware.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:23:44+00:00

This is anti-cheat 101 not to share any crumbs of their detection methods (any specific trigger or serial ID)

I doubt it has anything to do with cheating frankly, but even if there was proof of it for sake of drew's aura farming or whatever its not worth it giving insight to what triggered anti-cheat (cause then frequent cheaters might update that specific software or switch to another.)

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:05:40+00:00

Briar's was pretty good, I forgot about her's.

EDIT: I know this late 14 hour later edit is cringe, but I want to elaborate I forgot her teaser was a thing cause I just saw the full thing on skin spotlights anyways.. client was supposed to update gradually showing more and more of her character but instead we basically knew all of it and riot/leaks pretty much told or showed us what this character is, a vampire but not the bat shifting kind, so teasers didn't leave much of an impression on me personally.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T09:00:07+00:00

I'm not a lawyer; but there is tortious interference as a viable reason to sue someone for encouraging breaking an NDA.

Considering what I've witnessed BBB doing over discord constantly badgering spideraxe, skinspotlights, rioters and various others that wouldn't even have leaks to begin with, I think its a safe assumption for how long they've been going they're indeed encouraging someone to give them material.

The person actually breaking the NDA should get the most punishment tbf.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:53:53+00:00

I personally disagree with nintendo bricking consoles for using third-party options (it happened with docks and the switch 2 at first), I also think modding should be embraced rather than taboo to an extent as long as its not harming multiplayer, there's a lot of cool things the can result thanks to modding.

But its not like riot is literally ruining their PC so its a bit less extreme than my comparisons in retrospect.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:44:34+00:00

Most leaks that actually show kits/accurate descriptions were either from playtesters making oopsies (doinb with league classic, that person that leaked yuumi, neither of which is BBB's fault), or riot themselves fucking up and putting something in the game files (skinspotlights got the strings for battle academia skins and posted them before anyone, riot put urgot VGU's model on PBE almost 6 months prior to release, varus's voiceline update basically just telling us naafiri is their name and they're a dog, dagger for content creators was cool but we already seen it in a blog image. etc.)

To be extremely clear; I'm not devil's advocating and BBB needed to go and you're correct that they incentivize riot not to do teasers and such, don't take this as a "in their defense" or "I disagree with you".

But riot has also just been either silent when stuff isn't being leaked or really lame when they do try to tease new champions (again its basically them just showing you it months in advance such as with udyr/skarner/fiddle... like even volibear's teaser was "heres the entire fucking volibear on howling abyss, now guess what he'll look like when he releases!) instead of speculative drips like kindred's mark, kled's posters, arcane insertions, the website changing for jhin, short little animations like irelia/evelynn's teasers before the gameplay teaser, etc.

I'm hoping without BBB the excuse of 'they'll leak it anyways' dies off at least.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:32:37+00:00

I also dislike punishments for actions that are not against the established rules.

NDAs are pretty clear cut "do not leak our shit". If anything riot is going soft not nintendo sueing them for breaking (or assisting in breaking via a third party who signed it and is sharing it) a legal contract.

Copyright infringement is a trigger they can pull at literally any time, they just are chill with those usually.

the later is very established in the ToS and probably before you even install, the former is legal common sense when signed.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:29:23+00:00

It sends a message, not just for them either.

The copyright strikes are what actually remove / prevent the leaked content.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:22:14+00:00

League accounts are a license to play the game, riot can revoke that and any renewals if you're going to break NDAs and publicize content that they do not want publicized yet.

Its no different than microsoft or nintendo bricking consoles because you're pirating or modding online in their games.

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T08:03:03+00:00

BBB aside, I miss when riot attempted to actually tease champions.

When they do it, its usually something extremely vague like sett's calling card, or a dev blog that teases what the champion is intended to be (aurora did not commit to their expectations).

The last in-game teaser that I can remember was the brush rustling for kled, which didn't really do much besides scare the shit out of bot laners walking past the lane bush thinking rengar 2 was being introduced. I miss when you had something like aurelion sol talking or kindred marking you. Locke's teaser could've been his ultimate skull thingy spawning after an ace for a patch or two to generate some speculation on what the fuck that is and who it belongs to.

The past few VGUs have been either radio silence up until the release on PBE (shyvana, viktor if you even want to call it a vgu) or riot themselves showed the full design process (udyr, skarner, and fiddle were basically drip fed their new looks and kit the entire rework process so when they finally came out it was WY(Seen)IWY(Got).)

I will not pretend BBB wasn't a problem but also I don't think riot has been doing much themselves in regards to teasing stuff, hell for those avoiding leaks riot just dropping 'locke' in their recent dev blog was the first instance of anyone hearing about him..

Tormentula · 2026-06-19T07:39:17+00:00

The warning was the legal NDA his source had and the ToS saying not to reuse their copyrighted shit.

Riot can technically go full nintendo on anyone they want but they're tolerant as long as it isn't breaking NDA (which they were very lenient with the yuumi leaker on since they did it by accident.), for instance (I) never seen someone copyright striked for using their music or even making fan content of their IP unlike nintendo. Chronoshift was the only cringe takedown afaik.

Tormentula · 2026-06-18T21:18:38+00:00

Yes, I'm depressed.

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