User blog comment:DoctorAsawa/League of Targon's - How Riot Effectively Killed Junglers/@comment-9048637-20131124231020

I might talk about the wider changes affecting junglers some other time, but for now, let's talk about Targon's itself. In my view, all of this item's problems come from the bonus gold that it gives. In the words of a great video, let me explain you why.

First off, let me just say that I don't think the whole 'duo-top' Targon's phenomenon is much worth talking about. The thing is, even with Targon's extra gold generation, having a duolane on top is still a substantial compromise of gold and exp, at a time when the jungle, though harder to clear, is actually worth more of both than ever. Admittedly, Targon's may have made duo-top more viable, but I don't think that's in danger of becoming meta. What I do want to talk about is the much more common and therefore more headache-inducing phenomenon of every support, and a substantial number of ADCs as well as even a few solo-laners, buying Targon's. That is a thing, and it annoys me to no end.

So then, with that out of the way, let's first of all ask ourselves what Targon's is meant to be: it's meant to be a gold income item for tanky supports. Hence the health and the health regen, and max health scaling. This is all fair enough. Where things start to get weird is the exact mechanic for gold income: basically, the holder gets to take one CS every 30s (at the moment) without depriving their lane partner of the gold; indeed, even healing them by a small amount in the process (and, at the moment, giving them extra gold).

At first, I thought this was just an entirely strange mechanic, that didn't really have any reason to exist in the place of a more conventional gold income mechanic beyond, "Riot wanted variety", but having thought about it, I realized why it has to be this way: pretty much, to avoid Heart of Gold syndrome. For those too new to the game to remember and who haven't read up on the history enough to be aware of it, Heart of Gold was a GP10 item is season 2 that gave health and GP10 (what a twist!), as well as building into cool items like Randuin's Omen. It was eventually removed because, basically, having health and GP10 on the same item proved to be just too strong: every role could benefit from it, and so, predictably enough, pretty much everyone (certainly, everyone wanting to be remotely tanky) bought it. Targon's wants to avoid this conundrum by only giving its bearer extra income if they're not already CSing; if they're CSing anyway, then it's just some health and health regen. Nice, but not that great.

Ironically, I think this would have worked perfectly... if it weren't for the bonus gold granted to your benefiting ally. Suddenly, with that thrown into the picture, Targon's is a way to directly give your lane partner extra income, or the jungler when he comes to gank. With the current mindset when it comes to supporting, this is practically non-negotiable. The fact that carries and solo-laners, typically rather entitled and selfish roles, are actually thinking of other people on the team in getting this item does have a silver lining in that respect, but it's still frustrating due to the homogeny.

And to what end? What is this extra gold meant to accomplish? Well, I think I do actually know the answer to that: it's meant to compensate for the exp lost from the minion, which unlike the gold isn't refunded to your lane partner (with interest or otherwise). But honestly? That's a rather negligible thing. One minion's worth exp every 30s isn't going to set anyone back a huge amount, especially given that exp is shared anyway. Perhaps more pertinently, exp is much less visible than gold. Even if 10 gold could be quantified as more or less the gold value of however much exp it is one loses by not killing a minion personally, people are going to take the gold over the exp any day. Fallacious? Possibly, but that's just how people think. Riot are clearly aware of this; they've been taking about visible versus invisible power for ages now. But they seem to have forgotten it for this instance.

So there you have it. This one little mechanic, nay, this one little aspect of a larger mechanic, is pretty much where all of Targon's problems stem from at the moment, I think. Everything else? Peripheral. The sustain it gives? Nice, but you didn't see everyone buying Philo stone back when it was still around; they'll get over it. The easier CSing? There to ensure that supports who can't last-hit don't end up denying their carry a bunch of minions. Kinda sad that that has to be the case, but hey, it's not going to change any time soon. Besides, if you are actively CSing and you need help to hit one creep every 30s... yeah. Targon's ain't going to save you, bro.

Even the heal I can get behind. I understand why it's there: tanky supports with a lot of utility but (usually) low poke tend to run very aggressive lanes, Leona being the prime example. At the same time, they tend to be somewhat short on ways to directly protect or sustain their carry. Targon's is a way of ameliorating that deficiency. I also think that there's a crucial difference between the effect of the heal and the effect of the extra gold income: the former encourages exactly the kind of play it's meant to, namely aggressive attempts to snowball. It makes that easier, but doesn't detract from its necessity; a snowbally carry like Miss Fortune can get all the heals she likes in lane, but if she doesn't manage to translate that into kills, she's going to fall off relative to a hyper-carry like Vayne or Twitch. Extra gold income, on the other hand, takes away some of the impetus to snowball; if they don't manage to get kills, oh well, they still came out of lane with a gold advantage, they're still in this. So that's why I'm fine with the heal staying but really wish they'd take away that gold.

Oh, and as a final note, I disapprove of the change I hear is on the PBE at the moment restricting Targon's to melee champs (or rather, making it so that only they can benefit from the gold income effect). For a start, it's lazy and doesn't address the real problem of Targon's, merely bludgeons some of the people who were getting it into not getting it. But even beyond that, there are several supports who really should get Targon's who now can't without sacrificing a significant portion of their gold income: Thresh is definitely the key example, but there are others, such as Galio, rare though he is nowadays and even moreso in the support role. Heck, even Lulu can be played tank; Tanklu should have the option of Face of the Mountain on the table for her. So yeah. Not a fan of that change.