Talk:Hunter's Machete/@comment-64.78.68.193-20121206202916

This item was added to the game and the jungle was made more difficult (especially early) specifically for the purpose of making early ganks less frequent and harder to pull off by forcing junglers to not be able to start with boots, meaning you can only effectively gank after your first buy which is usually after a full clear which takes at least 3 and a half minutes on even the fasest clearers with machete.

As a someone who primarily jungles, it's a little disheartening that I have less of an effect on the progress of the game than I was able to in Season 2 since I can't pressure lanes early on when it most matters, but I understand that this was necessary for the developement of the game since early jungler pressure was promoting unfun and toxic passive play within lanes, particularly top lane, since laners were afraid that if they try and extend in their lane at all to make a move then Maokai is going to jump out of the bush and auto-kill them at level 2.

For this reason, wave-clear mids like Orianna / Karthus and early gank-machine junglers like Maokai were pretty much the only viable competitive picks. Hopefully the jungle change and the addition of this item will heighten the viability of the non gank-machine junglers so we can see some more variety in the jungle, and thus, more variety in mid and top lane.

Now if they would just remove Ezreal from the game already we would maybe see some more variety in bottom lane too.