More on Jungle Poppy

Ok, so earlier this evening I decided to do some experiments by myself in order to figure out if Poppy can actually do a full jungle run. That's Blue, Wolves, Wraiths, and Golems. For her masteries, I went 1, 8, and 21, taking Smite in Offense, MR/Armor and Strength of Spirit in Defense, then the normal ones in Utility. For Runes, I took armor pen marks, flat armor seals, flat MR glyphs, and flat armor pen quints. Post hoc I learned that using so much armor pen is overkill while Jungling, and it will be better to have 6 armor pen marks, 3 AD marks, then AD quints. I also tested this using my AP build, which is magic pen marks, armor seals, AP glyphs, and AP quints. I didn't notice much of a difference between them overall. As usual with Jungling, start with cloth armor and 5 health potions.

In my control, I started the route by taking Q first, then wailing on the large golem until it died. Now, this is incredibly easy to mess up. As soon as that Q hits, queue two potions. Then, it's a race against time, but as she gets lower she becomes more efficient with her effective hit points, which will see you through the little minions if you kill the golem in time. After that, grab her E skill. Queue potions as you fling wolves into walls, and Q them down. Move to the wraiths, smite should be back up, and smite the big wraith. Then, proceed to kill the golems, neither of which do much damage to her, especially when she's low.

So, at this point all I have proven is that Poppy does have the capacity to solo the jungle, but whether or not that makes her a good Jungler is yet to be seen.

Why?

Can she gank well at early levels?

This part is more dependent on summoner spells, I think. Ghost and Flash are very good, yet I think Flash will be better overall for her on the basis that she can use her W, Flash ahead of the enemy, then E them to force the enemy back into your team. As I understand it, Jungling is a race to level 4, after which you need to begin a gank fest in order to make it worthwhile. If you wait til level 6 when she can towerdive like almost nobody else in the game, like MANTHEON, the enemies are probably too near that level for it to matter as much as an early gank. Lacking a slow is what bugs me when it comes to her trying to gank out of the jungle.

IF she wants to do this, she needs movement speed in order to get the necessary positioning to have her E be worth it. However, if you have enough team coordination, having one person with Exhaust in top and bottom, then they can pop that as soon as Poppy pushes the target back. Q and autoattack, and see what happens.

Currently I'm considering how to approach making Poppy a better laner, because she is terrible at farming. She has to get in close, and has not a single multi-target ability. Here's a quick link to a guide that has helped me a lot today:

Linku!

With this is a great point concerning the relevance of her Q after rank 2, which assumes that you, as Poppy, will be going after their carries when team fights break out.

This is the result of my labors today, and I think it was well worth it. Right now I'm wondering if I should continue trying Poppy as a Jungler, or go after that laning build in the link, which requires movement speed quints, which are damned expensive, but so worth it on her.

:D