He's been in a pretty good spot for some time now. People just haven't been able to find any really cheesey "EZ" buildd for him.

With (Ruby) Sightstone having been taken out of the game, Warding at the moment is going to rely on Trackers Knife and Pink Wards if you are going to focus on using more than your trinket.

I hesitate to speculate on changes that I will have to make in the build/guide because we don't know for sure what we will end up seeing in the final official patch. For example, some of the jungle item changes on PBE could drastically change how we feel about our jungle Item, and the removal of Celestial Body may not matter if other things tip Ivern's balance in favor of one playstyle over another.

Ivern is a really good way to learn EARLY macro and how you can abuse it to hit timings and take objectives. His clearing power in jungle is unaffected by items (outside of smite CD) and you should never have to itemize to clear waves as Ivern. As such, his late game Macro is abysmal and relies on teammates to know what they are doing on the map, or at least be willing to listen to instruction.

Yes Ivern is a good Jungler to help you learn about Macro in terms of early timing, but it is important to remember that you hit a ceiling pretty quickly as Ivern, and you won't be doing as much macro-play with him as you would with other junglers. You basically have really good early macro, then as you finish your first item, you convert to towers and other objectives. When you hit your second item you are basically capped out in terms of how much macro influence you can have at best, and you are looking to put the final nails in the coffin and close the game. This is where no matter what you do, the game will start turning against you. With Ivern, Prolonging games just makes it incrementally harder to close, rather than giving you time to practice macro.

In many ways Ivern can feel like a one and done kind of champ. Against skilled players, too many mistakes or bad decisions quickly lead to unrecoverable games.

While you are learning jungle, Ivern is a great way to start. Getting in depth knowledge of how his and other champions timings work will benefit you immensely, especially as you are working out how to counterjungle with him correctly. However once you start to plateau on Ivern you should switch to another jungler with more traditional scaling. This isn't because Ivern is bad, but there is a limit to how much he can teach you when his window of effectiveness is so much shorter than other junglers and once you reach a certain skill level, you need to add some variety.

To give you an example, one of the best Ivern players in the game currently favors a tanky Glacial Ganks build -- (inspiration + resolve with Glacial Augment. He builds tanky so that he can contribute to skirmishes without being made of paper, and he uses Glacial to spends his early game focusing on GANKING and not COUNTER-JUNGLING. A significant part of why this works for him, is because skilled players EXPECT Ivern to be counter-jungling more (in part thanks to this guide), so he mind-game's them and just plays "Tree-Sin" instead. However, if you are just learning jungle, when you reach the point that you should be making that kind of transition in basic playstyle, it would do you more good to experience other jungler's play curves and come back to Ivern later.

I will be making updates to the Guide to reflect some of the current and upcoming changes but I want to get my hands on the finished product first.

My sincerest thanks for your compliments!

Thanks for the input. I hope you enjoy!

I think it is both a Pro and Con that Ivern can be built so many different ways -- hence why I have three different builds in just this one guide. Feel free to message me here if you like. Discord gets kind of glitchy for me, but we can work something out if you really want to trade notes.

I believe I have corrected the issue. Thanks for the heads up, and for the feedback!

Ivern as a lane support seems like it would be a little awkward, but I can see the potential. I think the spell/tank, or Triggerseed builds would be best for it. I am curious if he can hold up on a more constrained income however.

Thank you for the compliments! I was not sure how the income analysis would be received when I added it, as I have not seen anyone do anything like it in a guide before. It came about as part of a long debate regarding power-spikes and what merit there is in chasing certain items over others.

I am glad you found it useful!

I stand by my assertion that Ivern has no BAD matchups in jungle.

I did create a section detailing my thoughts on jungle counterparts and how Ivern matches up to them. While I agree that every champion has a counter, I have found that there isn't a single champion played in the jungle role that shuts down his game.

Yes, there are junglers that are more challenging than others... in particular, high yield powerfarmers like Graves, Yi, and Udyr, can itemize very quickly to become faster than Ivern in clearing camps allowing them more freedom to roam and gank, and then get more fed over the course of the game. However, the tipping point for them becoming unmanageable lies in their ability to successfully gank as well as farm. If you and your team play smart, you can always at least keep them at parity.

As far as Khazix and Rengar are concerned, their ability to out-duel you is muted in the early levels (1-6), unless you make a huge mistake. Your best course of action is just to leave them be! Walk away from the area... if they gain a foothold in your jungle, minimize their reward to the camps they can take. Don't hand them the bounty on your head for free. You can do far more damage in retaliation by protecting your lanes and counter-jungling. If they decide to CHASE you instead of counter-jungling you, you are wasting their time and exposing them to collapse from your team. Also, counter-jungling is actually much easier for you when the enemy jungler tunnelvisions on camping on your side of the map because you are better at it than they are. Once you have Daisy at level 6, their ability to 1v1 you is minimal (Daisy makes any duel a 2v1!) unless you are building particularly squishy. The awesomer thing about Daisy is that she has a long uptime when you use her, and a remarkably short downtime (unless she dies early). So the window of threat these kind of junglers have to ACTUALLY duel you only opens when you call Daisy for a gank and she dies very quickly, exposing you to a longer CD (without having her up). So you either DON'T throw Daisy away frivolously, or you play much more conservatively when you lose her. Perhaps more importantly, the tenor of the game should be shifting to objectives post-6. If your enemy counterpart wants to make YOU an objective by counter-jungling you heavily or trying to duel you, bait him in and have your team collapse on him. Collect your gold and go take a dragon, or a tower.

Your points on bushes being helpful to Rengar and Khazix are valid. But given their difficulty in actually DUELING you, the immediate impact is negligible. It is more relevant to warn players not to bush frivolously in team fights, so you don't give these junglers easier access to your backline. I would also point out that, while you might be more conservative in using your bushes in skirmishes, you are still able to "bush inside a bush" to gain vision of the area, if you suspect an enemy jungler is in an area trying to jump you.

So far, the only true "counter" I have found to Ivern is Syndra. Her damage is absurd at the moment, and she has a very wide/near area of threat -- which you will be FORCED to engage though to get to her and her team. Normally, your reaction to a wide/near engage is to send Daisy in to disrupt while you look for opportunities to follow up on. However, the low Cooldown on Syndra's [ w ] allows her to fling Daisy back in your face minimizing Daisy's impact in skirmishes. Fortunately for us, Syndra a very poor jungler, allowing your team to deal with her through other means.

I am always glad to see that my guide helped someone on the path to helping others.

I haven't replied to this comment till now because I wasn't sure how to respond without appearing as though I was pandering or puffing my chest.

So I just want to thank you for your endorsement. I plan on continuing to work on this guide through the introduction to season 7. I hope it continues to provide people with insight not only how to play Ivern... but how to win.

Thanks for the compliment! Ivern is definitely much more complicated than I think people give him credit for. It is so easy to want to force him into being tanky or force carry... but he is much more rewarding when you embrace the "support" side of him, and play to his strengths.