Monday, May 7, 2012

Jungling: Wriggle's Lantern

Since its introduction in patch v96 Wriggle's Lantern has been a jungling standard. It gives a jungler everything they could want: sustain, durability, damage, and free wards. Wriggle's is also highly overrated.

For all its benefits Wriggle's is no longer the de facto jungling item it once was. It was designed with a very different jungle in mind, one which was unforgiving and brutal. Between the mastery and jungle remakes that difficulty, and the necessity of Wriggle's, vanished. Clearing the jungle safely and quickly no longer requires a specialized item.

This is not to say that Wriggle's should never be built, but that it should be built only when it has strong synergy with the jungle champion. These champions are typically, but not always, bruisers with attack speed steroids or spammable resets, making them threats to dragon as soon as they've completed the item. Without that threat the value of Wriggle's drops dramatically. Champions whose clear times and dragon control don't significantly improve with Wriggle's are usually better off with a different item.

Too often the community defaults to Wriggle's for new jungle champions. Despite the fact that Nautilus has the worst attack speed scaling in the game and is clearly from the Amumu school of jungling (i.e. Philo + Hog) I've seen Wriggle's on him many times. Hecarim is a less obvious example, but his lack of attack speed steroids and huge synergy with movement speed and CDR (e.g. Shurelya's) puts him in a similar category. It's important make item decisions based on an examination of a jungler's qualities rather than auto-piloting a build.

Again, Wriggle's is not a bad item, but it is not the preeminent jungling tool it once was. The alternatives have never looked better, and should be considered even on champions who historically have been lantern bearers.

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