Spirit of the Ancient Golem -- the delicate balancing act and how to avoid future lane abuse

It doesn't sound so bad when you look at it that way -- players can complain about the item, Riot can judge if the complaints are justified, and adjust numbers accordingly. The only issue is that the new passive is a problem. Conservation makes this item much harder to balance around Riot's intentions with the jungling items than all of the others.

Why is this a problem?

For the most part, people were fairly happy with Season 3 jungle. It had a decent difficulty curve and allowed for different playstyles, even if it favored ganking junglers a bit more. The camps were difficult compared to the very weak Season 2 mobs but the jungle items were brought in to balance this out.

The jungling items ended up being incredibly cost efficient. And while on paper that was a good thing with the lack of sustainable income for junglers, it eventually became a problem when laners started abusing this cost efficiency. It was an issue similar to how support items were treated in Season 2 and to the problem that developed with Targon's Brace early in Season 4. It was good on some laner, fantastic on a select few and it even started becoming a core item.



The original SotAG, which built out of a Giant's Belt.

Everyone remembers blue Ezreal, which was given birth by the effectiveness of Spirit of the Elder Lizard's strength on him, or Vlad with Spirit of the Spectral Wraith. Hell, even Edward was building Spirit of the Ancient Golem whenever he was fed on support. When you create these iteams with the intention of being good on junglers and non-viable for laners and still arrive at the aforementioned predicament, there is a problem.

Herein lies the problem with Spirit of the Ancient Golem's current iteration:

If the item is not reworked altogether, Riot is going to have to be extremely delicate and clever with its balancing. If it remains as it is currently, junglers will still have a much weaker impact of the game than I assume Riot intended. With buffs, however, it will become an attractive item for laners, something Riot has been vehemently trying to avoid with Season 4.

Let me explain:

The HP from Spirit of the Ancient Golem was nerfed by 150 (to 350 down from 500.) While the item is still cost efficient, it doesn't give junglers the brawling power they need to commit to early fights. Increasing its tankiness is an issue, however, as it's going to be built on solo laners that can push very hard. Combined with the built-in tenacity, health regen and CDR, SotAG will mae a great iteam for bruisers or any other solo laners that can shove quite easily.

Why this is only a problem with Spirit of the Ancient golem and not the other two, Elder Lizard and Spectral Wrath, though? The answer lies with the Conservation passive.



UNIQUE - CONSERVATION: You generate Conservation stacks every 1.5 seconds, up to 80. Killing a large monster will consume up to 40 stacks and grant 1 bonus gold per stack consumed.



For Spirit of the Elder Lizard / Spectral Wrath, you are rewarded for assisting in teamfights and actively farming. However, Spirit of the Ancient Golem essentially rewards you for being away from the jungle. This is how it ends up being a problem: If you're able to shove up easily, your conservation stacks will slowly stack up and you can go take jungle camps. In fact, this has already been experimented on by a few streamers and turned out pretty effective even with the nerf, leaving out the option for Riot to simply to buff it back to where it was. Your performance in lane simply does not matter if you can push without dying and increase your gold income dramatically.

Even right now, the Spirit of the Ancient Golem only needs to make roughly 400 gold off of its passive for it to surpass the efficiency of its old version. While it's initial power-spike was removed, the passive can still be abused by laners who don't need to benefit from that power spike simply to farm. This brings us back to a problem in Season 2, where we'd have mid laners constantly shoving and then doing their jungle camps, leaving the jungler to starve, except the latter won't be a problem in Season 4.



The Season 4 Spirit of the Ancient Golem.

This is because Riot's gold generation strategy has shifted away from passive gold gain into a more interactive method. However, the way this was done was by generating more gold than the amount actually provided on the map. Due to the artificial increase in gold, this means if a laner and a jungler both carry this item, neither will suffer many losses from it, especially with the addition of the extra camp. This means as a whole, the team becomes stronger.

A lot of people are unhappy with the changes to the jungling items, but a simple stat change or price change will not heavily avert the potential problems SotAG in particular can create. Conservation stacks mean that gold is stacking up in the jungle for you while you shove, giving you a constant flow of gold even while your lane is shoved. This is an especially tempting choice with the nerfs to proxy farming in this patch. If the item is reverted to the previous health values or changed in any way in attempt to "help" junglers, I can promise it'll be abused by laners once again and we'll be back to square one.

Conclusion and Summary

Riot has created a unique idea for gold generation that can cause problems they've been trying to avoid the entire time. As opposed to simple number tweaks, Riot will have to find a unique way to combat this problem while still making SotAG more relevant for jungling. We've assessed that it is already potentially a powerful laning item that will only see more light if the item gets buffed.

Strong pushers like Lee Sin (maxing E) or Singed will be able to abuse the passive by shoving and clearing the jungle incredibly quickly while still getting combat-effective stats (even in the item's current state). This is potentially disastrous to the aggressive and rewarding laning phase Riot is trying to create and brings us back to a more stale, safe, farm-oriented playstyle.

My solution to the problem:

In order to give junglers that power-spike they need with the completed Spirit of the Ancient Golem - a spike that allows them to feel safer out of their jungle and more open to ganl - they are going to have to have the old stats, or at least slightly buff the item in other departments besides HP. Even a 5% CDR increase would be welcome, or a slight price reduction.

However, to combat the abuse of laners, I suggest the passive grant a higher Conservation cap when you're carrying Smite. This means, for example, that if a laner grabs this item and doesn't use Smite, he'll only have a Conservation cap of about 20 or so, while a jungler using smite can still stack up to 80. The way this fixes the problem is that even if laners decide to get cheeky and take Smite, they are down a combat summoner.Alternatively, Riot could also buff the stats of Spirit of the Ancient Golem while buffing the efficiency and cap of conservation, but stalling the generation of Conservation stacks when you kill a lane minion.

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Regardless, this is going to potentially be the hardest item to get just right for Riot, and hopefully they can develop a happy medium where junglers feel as impactful as they were, or at least in-line with Season 4 supports. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your own suggestions.



This is an opinionated editorial by Michale "DreXxiN" Lalor. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @GGDrexxin for more interviews, content, and general eSports news.