Should stormcrown be removed

Vainglory Discussion Heroes, Builds, & Items
41

they could replace it with 3 contracts that cost 300 gold, and each passively give you jungle clear speed as well and another bonus suited to different styles of jungler. This would give you starting item choices, as well as not locking you into any kind of tier 3 item which does not suit your hero.

just as example:

Warrior Contract for jungler’s who intend to gank between rotations menacing different lanes.

passive: monster hunter (unique clear speed passive)

passive: Gain one stack each time you kill a jungle monster. Max of 8 stacks.

active: consume all stacks, your next basic attack deal 10 bonus true damage and slows it’s target by 2% for each stack consumed. 12 second cooldown.

Growth Contract for passive farming jungler who wan’t to maximize gold on rotations, at the cost of slower rotation speed.

passive: monster hunter

passive: 10 seconds after you kill a treant, a sprout appears on that location. Heroes who walk over the sprout within 3 seconds consume it gaining 15 gold and 2 xp.

Marauders Contract for junglers who intend to invade and contest jungle camps especially while enemies are nearby.

passive: monster hunter

active: fire a projectile in the target direction damaging the first jungle monster it hits dealing damage equal to 15% of its max HP. If this kills its target release a blast which deals 80 crystal damage to nearby enemies. This has 2 charges. 5 seconds cooldown, 25 second charge time.

42

Now you’ve done it. You opened my eyes and allowed me to think of new ideas.

Just kidding but forreal.

I would love these items to replace the current Halcyon Flask slot.

Halcyon Potion: Regenerate % of remaining health.

Barrier Flask: Gain shield based on level and 5% of maximum health. Higher barrier than the current barrier. Also replaces Halcyon Flask

Churn Strike: Gains the true damage properties of StormGuard items and true damage scaled higher due to higher cooldown but by not much. Can evolve into another item made for both non monster and monster.

Tech Phase: Finally a flash item. High cooldown around 90 seconds.

Lore could be that both Halcyon items are made from alchemy with the halcyon fountains. Churnstrike is releasing churn energy onto the monster from which I think churn energy is harmful to organics. And Tech Phase was created by the Technologists.

43

I see your point, but it’s still not a huge setback. 2 weapon blades isn’t so much damage that you can only fight or die — you can always just run. In the last match I played I was in a situation like you mentioned: a 2x weapon blade Taka caught me (Inara) as I was killing his Gold Oak and I just ran back to the middle turret with him hitting me. I didn’t have boots and didn’t get him off of me, but just plain running is still an option at the lowest levels.

By the second or third minute of the match it’s still possible to by some WP or CP, and at that point SGB+ is a match for whatever the pure WP or CP is building. Weapon Blade and Crystal Bit are very weak items in recent patches, so as long as you can quickly decide whether or not to lock into a fight, it’s pretty easy to just endure until you reach safety. With no boots it takes around 13 seconds to run from the enemy gold oak to your mid turret, so it’s really not possible to die in a 1v1 at early levels unless you stop and fight when you shouldn’t have.

It takes a trivial amount of time to earn enough to buy a weapon blade or crystal bit, and at that point the damage versus players evens out.

I do think SGB probably favors assassins over brawlers, since they tend to be built more around fleeing from fights which aren’t ideal, but you just need to pick which fights you want to be in at level 1. After you add a WP or CP item to the build (which should be at level 3 or 4) the gank power marchers pure builds.

I don’t really even avoid level 1 fights with SGB, I just don’t try to get kills. One hit is usually enough to deter an enemy from following me, so I give them a thump on the nose and go back to farming. I really just don’t treat fights like I have to win them — running away is fine for the first few minutes.

1 Like
44

Stormguard Banner and Stormcrown in their current states are fine, but in a way they’re just a stopgap. 3.10’s current meta is a step in the right direction. In my eyes, the next logical step for the items to go into is to simply add more build paths as Gatorrex said. Or rather, just 2 more. Stormcrown is perfect as is. The next 2 paths are, naturally, WP and CP. The issue with the paths is how to make them less attractive to laners stealing camps, yet still worth for a jungler to have and maintain as part of their build path.

My idea is this:
For WP “jungle item” you have it build out of SGB + Six Sins. For CP, it would be SGB + Eclipse Prism. Both of these items offer combat stats, at both lower values AND lower price points. They’re cheap enough to warrant a jungler buying them, but expensive enough that a laner would be weaker than simply completing their first item. In theory, anyway. To compensate, we keep Stormcrown’s true damage only on Stormcrown. The WP and CP items would either have SGB’s true damage passive or a slightly higher value.

With that in mind, here’s how I would change the jungle. And it’s a small change, really, but it would improve the state of the game as a whole and increase the jungle and mid hero pool. Keep the CP buff’s damage amp, but change the lifesteal from CP to simply bonus lifesteal. That way, WP junglers find worth in taking the buff beyond just gold income and WP heroes would be played mid more, and enjoy the lifesteal if gives.

Finally, on to my thoughts on SGB as a “combat” item. But first, let’s look at another famous MOBA League of Legends. I know this is a trite comparison, but hear me out here. In LoL, junglers are currently a very impactful role. They can gank lanes, power farm, or even skirmish with each other for control. But until their jungle item is fully completed, they build 0 combat stats. Their first clears and ganks are done without any real combat items built.

Bringing it back to VG, SGB is essentially the same thing. Yet junglers still manage to pull off ganks without going back for an item. Why? Because taking buffs early game compensates for this. The red and blue buffs give junglers the power they need to be effective early on without specifically needing offensive items early on. The additional build paths and proposed CP buff change would only serve to make the role better.

Sorry this is so long, and probably could be it’s own thread.
TL;DR
New paths for SGB. WP = SGB + Six Sins, CP = SGB + Eclipse Prism.
Change blue buff from bonus CP lifesteal to bonus total lifesteal
SGB is fine because buffs give combat stats.

45

You could buy WP or CP later on but then that’s delaying power spike. You could not get boots but then that’s missed opportunities. You could not fight but then what are you supposed to do? Everyone hates junglers that farm all game without doing anything. No matter how you see it or if there is a workaround it is still setting you back.

Again I am not saying this item is not viable so that you must avoid fights early on. Quite the opposite. What I mean is it’s too good and only viable option even on heroes that don’t need to use it usually. That is putting them behind. Literally hero AAs and abilities deal no damage early game. Heroes with good clear like Reim and Koshka don’t have any difference with slow clear speed heroes now. Everyone just uses banner.

46

You’re going to make me time it out, aren’t you? >.<

I already tested on a few heroes and found that SGB doesn’t set back the tier 3 power spike at all.

So, I just tested in a bot match with Inara. Starting with 2 weapon blades, it takes her until 2:40 to purchase a Heavy Blade. I cleared my whole bottom jungle plus the enemy crystal buff and bottom barrier treant.

Starting with SGB, it took her until 2:50 to get Heavy Blade. I added the two enemy bears and our sides Crystal treant to the rotation.

There isn’t a significant difference in the power spike between Heavy Blade + Weapon Blade and Heavy Blade + SGB. In fact, the SGB is probably more damage than a weapon blade, and it steals the enemy jungle more effectively, so it’s arguably superior.

It really just feels like you’re missing your power spikes by staring with SGB, but they are still there. Most heroes are still going to hit their tier 2 and tier 3 spikes at about the same time either way.

I think what might mess people up is that many of us are used to building up until we do adequate damage to farm and then buying boots or defense before going to our tier 3 items. If you do that with SGB, then instead of buying damage at 2:30-3:00, you’ll buy boots or defense. That really will set damage back a bit because usually you would have bought damage first and then bought boots/defense a minute or two later. To keep the power spikes, we’ve got to keep buying items at the same time, even though it doesn’t really take any extra damage to farm.

Until I started timing it out, I didn’t realize just how horrible the tier 1 items are. They are so low damage that they don’t even help you build up to your tier 2 and 3 items significantly faster. (For the record, every time I’ve checked it, SGB is a few seconds slower than WP or CP in building to tier 2 or 3, but it’s close, and you end up with SGB as an extra item in addition to whatever you were building toward).

47

But your tests are unrealistic and don’t take everything in consideration. I didn’t say they slow you down compared to if you JUNGLE without a banner. They slow you down compared to LANERS and jungling in OLD patches. If jungling with 2 blades or bits was as fast as banner no body would get banner. That’s what I am comparing it to. Then heroes that have bad clear will get it. Not literally everyone.

Now about your tests. You jungle for 3-5 minutes straight without doing anything else? How is that effective jungling? You don’t help your team at all. That’s ineffective. That’s AFK jungler basically. Unless it’s a hero that scales into lategame and is bad in lanes but VG doesn’t really have many of those if any. I think you still don’t understand me though. Of course banner doesn’t slow your rotations down compared to damage items. That’s why it is a problem and why this thread actually exists. It’s only viable option. Compare banner to no banner junglers from last patch though. Then you will see what I mean. If a jungler goes without banner, yes he will have later power spike than one with banner. But that’s unhealthy for the game. There’s no diversity. But if you have a banner junglers against let’s say 2 bits Reim, he will be at a disadvantage because Reim’s base clear speed is higher and doesn’t need banner. Banner should be help to heroes that need it. Not a must on heroes that are supposed to have good clear. Clear speed is just as important as movement, attack speed etc for junglers. Banner kills that.

48

A question: do WP and CP need “jungle items” or do they need “early game items”?

The reason I ask is that when I first started timing how quickly I could build different items, I was checking Spellsword as compared to Sorrowblade. My thinking was that for some situations where it might be better to get the weaker item out sooner, but the difference was like 30 seconds, so whatever power spike you might get from Spellsword was going to be over almost immediately. It hasn’t always been that way though: the old version of Tension Bow gave a good, cheap early game spike that lasted long enough to force a real decision between the early game and the end game.

As I see it, the problem with SGB and SC are that they give a jungler just plain better builds for about the first ten minutes of the game. You can still build your tier 2 and 3 CP and WP items at the same time, you just get SGB in addition to them.

It used to be that Aftershock and Tension Bow also gave early power spikes, but were generally inferior to other tier 3 items in end-game builds. So I’m wondering if it might not be better to drop the price of a few items to 2400, and set them up so they build out of the “heavy” tier 2 and a CDR item. The idea would be to give WP and CP some options for an earlier but weaker tier 3 power spike, to make it a bit more worthwhile to put up with slower jungle clears. I could see Spellsword and Aftershock as good candidates for the price reduction, since they both help with basic attacks, have fairly well-rounded stats (though AS would need its CP buffed). The point to building out of the heavy tier 2 item is that seems to be where the first power spike for WP and CP is.

People used to build certain WP and CP items first just to make the early game easier, but right now WP and CP seem to be balanced just around their usefulness in the endgame. That makes SGB builds objectively better than WP or CP (for junglers) for about the first ten minutes of the game, since there is no way to hit a tier 3 power spike faster.

49

If you read my post I sort of covered that topic. The problem with lowering the cost is that you’re going to have to decrease the stats it gives in some way in order to prevent it from becoming the best item in the game. (Like Pulseweave in 3.4-3.6 or TB pre hotfix in 3.8)

50

I haven’t been able to test it without doing anything else. Generally I get into about two fights in in the time it takes to build a tier 2 item, and 3 in the time it takes to build a tier 3. The unrealistic part is that I avoid killing any bots (bots mostly lose you if you walk into a bush).

In practice, I don’t find my times ending up much different in real matches, because the spawn timers on the jungle camps usually allow time for ganking lanes or harassing the enemy jungler.

Mostly you just have to keep moving. If you camp in a lane then you’ll fall behind, but even if you are farming as fast as possible you should be passing next to at least 2 lanes about every 2 minutes, so it’s trivial to get in some fights then. Any laner who’s not a moron runs and hides under their turret the second they spot an enemy jungler anyway, so there’s nothing to be accomplished by lingering. Remember that the damage against players will be equal before 3 minutes into the match, and in most cases, even if you get bogged down in a lane you would have had 2-3 minutes to farm first.

That said, I can see tanky heroes suffering a bit in the current meta, since they generally need to fight longer and stick around in one place, but I’m very happy with tanky junglers suffering a bit. With a few exceptions, the hit-and-run junglers were in a bad place, but now they mostly seem fine. The only junglers who really seem bad in this patch are the ones who have weak kits (Rona) or difficult-to-balance kits (Kensei). It’s nice being able to own the jungle and then jump out to punch someone in the ding-ding instead of having to spend the whole match sitting in a bush.

51

I’m not sure you would have to decrease stats. Spellsword is not a good item in most end-game builds, so buying it earlier would come with an opportunity cost similar to the opportunity cost with Stormcrown.

Not everything needs perfectly balanced stats because buying a powerful “early” item can block a slot you would want for a better but less-gold-efficient item later.

52

What I mean is you can’t make bots tests realistic. It’s like practicing CSing against bots. It’s easy but when you play against real players it’s much different.

What you said is true though. Jungling is better than it’s ever been in 5v5. I don’t disagree. Even with banner it’s fun. I even said that myself somewhere on this forum I think. I am just sharing opinion on needed improvement. I’ve said before that in 3v3 I literally played only jungle. In 5v5 I could never play jungle mainly in a single patch. This patch I am back to jungle. So yes it is muuuuch better. 1 more reason why banner is stupid though is because SEMC removed the roams needing IGC for gold and clearly said they don’t want jungle items. But at the same time now restrict you to only banner. That makes absolutely no sense.

53

I know testing versus bots isn’t perfect, but I only use it to compare farming. It’s not like laning, where if you miss last hits you might not earn anything at all — you need to clear the same number of jungle camps to earn a Sorrowblade no matter what you do. Things get weird if you get kept out of the jungle for a significant time (because it was stolen, because you’re covering a lane, or because you spent too much time chasing an enemy), but for the most part it’s not too hard to earn at the same rate as in a bot match while still helping your team.

54

But this test really shows nothing. I mean you proved it farms faster and that’s true yes. That’s why it’s built. But you miss out the most important job of the jungler — early impact. You don’t put their laners behind, you don’t counter jungle, invade or get your carries ahead.

I compared to lane because even if you can last hit every minion in practice it’s most likely not gonna happen in real game because of pressure. Same with jungle.

So I don’t understand what your test is supposed to show. Besides the fact that it’s better at farming (again that’s literally the problem with it).

55

The early impact really doesn’t take you out of the farming though. Counterjungling, helping your laners, etc. all take maybe thirty seconds and can be accomplished while you were between jungle objectives anyway. And invading is farming. Unless the match goes really pear-shaped, your still relying on farming the jungle so the relative speeds don’t change.

My tests show that there is a negligible difference in when SGB builds and WP/CP builds hit their power spikes. The majority of the jungler’s income comes from the jungle, and SGB builds pick up WP and CP items as quickly as builds which started as WP or CP.