Cinderhulk: the Rise of the Tank Jungler

Tank Junglers have not been uncommon in Season 5.  Earlier in the year, we saw a lot of Jarvan IV against the likes of Rek'sai and Lee Sin--more traditional fighter types that were popular at the end of last season.  However, with the nerfs in Patch 5.4 taking a hit at the bonus armor gained from Demacian Standard, we've seen a lot less of the prince in the Jungle.

It didn't take Riot long to reintroduce the Tank Jungler back into the fold with the addition of Cinderhulk in Patch 5.5.  Why could one enchantment have such a profound effect on the game?  Let's break it down into some numbers.

Enchantment: Juggernaut.  Cinderhulk replaced the Juggernaut enchantment for Tank Junglers.  It provided 500 bonus health, 10% cooldown reduction, and Tenacity (35% reduction of crowd control abilities).  The health is always welcome on a Jungler who is expecting to take a fair bit of damage, but most standard tank items offer some amount of bonus health.  The cooldown reduction, although nice for Junglers who tended to spam abilities, was more commonly obtained through Frozen Heart for the increased armor component.  Tenacity--although useful for a tank in teamfights to mitigate crowd control and come to the aid of the carries--could also be found on Mercury's Treads (if you wanted to sacrifice the extra speed of Boots of Mobility), or Elixir of Iron (which only provides a 25% reduction, but stacks multiplicatively and grants slow reduction).  Although the components were definitely essential for a tank-style Jungler, more often than not Jungle tanks like Jarvan IV would favor other enchantments to ensure they could do a little more damage in addition to their initiation.

Enter Cinderhulk.

On the outset, Cinderhulk seems to be a significant nerf in the health department.  It only gives a flat rate of 300 health, but also provides the benefit of 25% extra bonus health.  That extra bonus health proves to pay itself off ten fold for the Jungle tank.  Initially--just with the enchantment--it grants 375 health (125 less than Juggernaut).  However, the passive effect stacks significantly with the addition of other items.  Many common jungle items offer significant bonus health--like Randuin's Omen (500 health = 125 bonus health), Locket of the Iron Solari (400 health = 100 bonus health), Warmog's Armor (800 health = 200 bonus health), Spirit Visage (400 health = 100 bonus health), Righteous Glory (650 health = 163 bonus health), or Banshee's Veil (450 health = 113 bonus health), which in the end gives more significant bonus health than the original Juggernaut enchantment.  It also scales off of Sion's Soul Furnace and Cho'gath's Feast for additional effect for these Junglers (although you might have to be Kikis to pull either off smoothly in the Jungle).

Immolate, though, has proven to be a significant improvement.  The difficulty of being a Jungle Tank is that your clear times are markedly slower than that of more aggressive junglers (especially the likes of a Rek'sai, Lee Sin, or Nidalee, who decimate jungle camps with relative ease), which means that you're inadvertently punished for choosing a tanky jungler--one you probably chose because you wanted the increased survivability.  Although Smiting Gromp gives a similar benefit (poisoning attackers for 10 + 5% bonus health), this only helps with jungle clear and combat for 90 seconds, which hardly acts as a significant deterrent unless you happened to Smite Gromp right before heading into a team fight.  Immolate brings to bear the same effect as Sunfire's Cape without the extra gold cost and discourages extended trades with tanks (which are the sort of trades that tanks want to be in anyway).

Although Tenacity and CD reduction are lost on a Jungle item, the passive damage and potentially out of control health proves to be much more useful in the long run.  The introduction of the Cinderhulk buff made a Tank Jungler much more viable in the current meta.  Perhaps in upcoming weeks we'll see the roster expand to include some tank junglers that we haven't seen for a while.