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Tahm Kench has received a number of buffs to the point that people like Voyboy have been monkeying around with him in the Jungle. I've tried a couple of variations on builds for Tahm to see how he stacks up.No. 1 Issue
I haven't tried out a build that gets you through more than about three jungle camps and slowly at that. Generally you will have to back after Krugs and Red Buff even with a good leash. This means that he is very vulnerable to counter juggling during the early stages of the game, by either being caught while on low health or simply being out of the jungle as you back to heal.
Now after you get a point in you three basic abilities, life gets much easier.
I've tried maxing both
Devour and Tongue Lash and it doesn't seem to make that much difference in terms of clear speed.Part of the issue is that he can't eat the Red Brambleback or the Blue Sentinel. This makes those camps interminably long to take down. I've tried starting those camps so I can get help from my laners and it doesn't seem to make that much difference.
Once you do get going though you have a choice of going complete tank or more bruiserish.
I find going
Enchantment: Devourer to be more entertaining. You can pair that with a Titanic Hydra and Dead Man's Plate for some insane damage output.You can round out your build with something like
Spirit Visage and Warmog's Armor for some insane tankiness plus even more damage output because of the passive damage you gain by putting levels into Devour. Boots are case by case. My top three choices would be Boots of Swiftness, Mercury's Treads, or Ninja Tabi.Tahm is super good at peeling, so if one of your carries is fed, all you do is stick by them and fend off any attackers. Word of caution though, try not to deposit a half health ulting Nasus next to your carries.
Late game with the above build you may even be one of the carries, albeit a really hard to kill carry.
DevourIf you eat say an ulting
Garen before the animation completes, it will stop the ult.Oh since you don't have any preconditions to eating an ally, unlike an enemy on which you need to get three stacks of
An Acquired Taste it is easy to accidetally eat a nearby ally close to your target rather than your target, so be very careful where you click when attempting to devour someone in a scrum. DevourIs kind of hard to use for transportation if you aren't in a call with one or more of you laners.
Also I've had trouble with accidentally only hopping a short distance if I have it on smart cast. It has two components. You first have to select a target location and then press R again to go there otherwise you will sit there and channel for the full duration even though there may be no one there to hop aboard.
If you want to go directly into the Dragon pit {from blue side) you have to be about even with the first line of trees outside your base.
tldr;
If you make it out of the early game and you laners are in decent shape, you are probably going to be able to carry the game if you go Devourer. If you get invaded and your laners get shut down you are going to have a difficult time coming back.
Update
Running 9-21-0 with Atk Spd, Health/lvl, MR/lvl, Arm Quints you can get though the majority of the jungle in pretty good order if you go
Devour then Thick Skin, but it is clean your shorts out close on Red. You heal up a pretty good amount after. Bad time to be caught by the other jungler though. Double juggling could fix this, but not something I would count on at my ELO. I would get Tongue Lash third to have an additional damage ability, then one more in Devour if I am going to farm though, if I were going to gank, I would opt for my fourth point to be in Tongue Lash for the increased damage and slow.So farm:
W+E+Q+W
gank:
W+E+Q+Q
The devourer build certainly is fun, but it is quite a bit more risky as you are relatively squishy and hence vulnerable to counterjungling or outright dying when ganking. If the rest of your team is oriented toward late game you might want to skip this build in order to be strong enough to facilitate your team getting to late game.
In the top of the list below I have two losses:
4/8/8 game - my mid laner and top laner where struggling either do to an unfavorable match-up or in
1/4/2 game -
The victory in the list
12/4/12 game - In this game I had an opportunity to farm in relative peace and only gank when good opportunities presented themselves. By the end of the game I was making
Masteries: 21-9-0
Runes: Atk Spd, Health/lvl, CDR/lvl, Arm Quints
Jungle Start:
Gromp with a leash, Smite, click on him so you can see his HP,
Head back into the Red Side of your jungle. The route choice at this point is pretty much up to you. Just don't forget about the scuttle crabs as they offer good XP and gold and don't do any damage to you and your kit is great for taking them pretty quickly or even snatching them from the enemy jungler if they are trying to take them.
Tips:
On things you can devour aside from enemy champions, you can use Tongue Lash and Devour together in order to eat them. Just cast Tongue Last and while it is in route. Hit Devour.
Exposed inhibitor or minion wave pushing on a turret? Have you team go cause a disturbance elsewhere and take your ADC or anyone good at killing buildings and give them an Abyssal Voyage over to the turret or inhibitor to quickly take it out.
Don't forget to activate
Builds:
You can go
However if you are the only tank on your team or you get behind early then go tank.
--Tank Build:
Why Zz'Rot Portal. Tahm benefits from all the stats it provides. He is also a great candidate for getting it into place. He can
--Bruiser Build:--
You have quite a few options at this point since Giant's Belt build into so many things these days.
Armor + HP + Bonus Move Speed + Dmg + Slow:
HP + Dmg + Active Dmg/aa reset:
Arm+ HP + Atk Spd Reduction + Active Slow:
My usual preference is for
And follow that up with
So final bruiser build will usually be:
You are definitely less tanky with this build path, but you will still be quite bulky and dish out extreme amounts of damage, a large potion of which is AoE thanks to Titanic Hydra.
Why don't you just eat one of the little dudes at red or blue and hit the main monster with that? It is admittedly weaker than eating the main monster directly, but damage is damage.
Good question. That is in fact what you resort to. But it does pretty minimal damage to the buff monsters. I've also found it to be somewhat tricky to actually hit both the buff monster and the remaining creep with the one in you belly. It is kinda like bowling. Sometimes one pin blocks for the others.
Like you would think that
X x
o
If you chucked o (the one in your belly) right between X (buff monster) and x (the other small creep), you should be able to damage them both, but it doesn't always work.
In fact you usually end up devouring both little creeps at some point. It takes that long to kill the buff camps.
Another tactic for dealing with Blue Buff that I read was eating Gromp at 430HP and then spitting it at Blue to start that camp. Going to have to give that a whirl.
If you accidentally eat your laner. Use
Thriek has a Jungle
Another reason to eat the largest creep in the camp is that when devoured they take damage based on their maximum health.
I hate taking blue and red buff with Tahm. The other camps are smooth. If only you could eat The Red Brambleback or The Blue Sentinel. Tahm's early game weakness is causing me to want to drop him as a jungler.
One guide i read recommends doing Krugs, Raptors, Scuttle Crab, Red, then ganking. Will give this a whirl and plink around with runes and masteries a bit more now that I have a better idea of how to maximize his early jungle to see if I can come up with a combination and route that minimizes Tahm's difficulties in the early jungle so that I have the option of ganking a lane if a good opportunity presents itself.