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Ivern Build Guide by garbocan

Jungle [13.24] garbocan's Complete Ivern Masterclass

Jungle [13.24] garbocan's Complete Ivern Masterclass

Updated on December 21, 2023
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League of Legends Build Guide Author garbocan Build Guide By garbocan 58 6 65,128 Views 2 Comments
58 6 65,128 Views 2 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author garbocan Ivern Build Guide By garbocan Updated on December 21, 2023
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Runes: Basically Mandatory

Sorcery
Summon Aery
Nimbus Cloak
Transcendence
Waterwalking

Inspiration
Future's Market
Cosmic Insight
Bonus:

+8 Ability Haste
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health

Spells:

Mandatory
LoL Summoner Spell: Flash

Flash

LoL Summoner Spell: Gustwalker Smite

Gustwalker Smite

Threats & Synergies

Threats Synergies
Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny
Show All
None Low Ok Strong Ideal
Extreme Threats
Ideal Synergies
Synergies
Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Champion Build Guide

[13.24] garbocan's Complete Ivern Masterclass

By garbocan
Ivern, Friend of the Forest
Ivern is the most unique champion in League. On paper he's just an enchanter who shields for his team, but in practice he does so much more. Ivern has many very unique and skill-expressive concepts like grove sequencing, bush placement, and Daisy control. These make Ivern a deeply rewarding champion to master through advanced strategy and understanding hyper-specific concepts that nobody else knows.


The open-ended nature of Ivern's kit allows for many creative uses of his abilities and interesting tech. If you enjoy discovering weird strategies and playing the game unconventionally, Ivern is the right champion for you.

About Me

Hi, I'm garbocan, a challenger Ivern player with over 4000 ranked Ivern games in the past 3 seasons alone. At the time of writing this, I'm currently the highest ranked Ivern player across all servers. I've also played a lot of Ivern across all roles. Here are the ranks I have gotten on each one:

Grandmaster 610LP • Challenger 1216LP • Challenger 892LP
Master 220LP • Master 300LP

Despite my expertise, I still find out new things about my champion on a frequent basis. This discovery is one of the main appeals for me, so in this guide I'd like to share some of my knowledge to help others with picking up Ivern.

My main account opgg link.
Ivern leaderboard if you want to check if i'm still the highest ranked Ivern.


Glossary for more advanced terminology

Is Ivern an enchanter?


Over my time playing Ivern, I've seen a lot of confusion as to what Ivern's class actually is. Is he an enchanter? Mage? Specialist? Does he even fall under any predefined classes? It's important to understand what Ivern's role is within a game and it will give context to a lot of my build decisions and why I find certain things mandatory.

According to Riot, there are 13 subclasses in League of Legends. Most champions will draw a few attributes from 1-2 different subclasses. For Ivern, there are 3 that stand out:

Enchanter
The enchanter class is the easiest parallel to draw for Ivern due to his main ability being an allied shield . One of the key roles of an enchanter is to amplify the effectiveness of allies and directly protect them from incoming threats, which is something that Ivern clearly does.

Catcher
If you look at Riot's official classification, Ivern is listed as a catcher. Catchers specialize in locking down enemies with ranged crowd control, which Ivern has an abundance of with Q / E / R. If I had to define Ivern by one class, catcher would make the most sense from how much of his kit is dedicated to CC.

Specialist
The specialist class is for champions that have their own unique play patterns that don't quite fit the existing categories. Champions like Azir or Fiddlesticks fall into this category. Ivern has many champion-specific patterns like playing around Brushmaker or Daisy!, so specialist would also be a fitting class for Ivern.

Now that we've established the 3 categories Ivern falls under, we can start looking at how this applies in actual games. What's interesting is that Ivern's identity significantly shifts over the course of a single game. Here's a rough breakdown:


EARLY GAME Before Level 6
// 70% Catcher, 20% Enchanter, 10% Specialist
In the early game, Ivern is mostly played as a ‎ catcher. This is because early game jungle activities like ganking and skirmishing value the aggression of his CC more than the protection of his shields.

The ratio between enchanter and catcher varies based on comp, with melee champions generally leading to a higher emphasis on enchanter abilities and vice versa. This is because Ivern can afford to play back and amplify a strong melee carry, whereas he relies more on locking down enemies for ranged allies.


MID GAME Levels 6-13
// 60% Specialist, 25% Catcher, 15% Enchanter
Once Daisy is unlocked, Ivern's playstyle gets completely flipped. The majority of what you do during this time will involve Daisy in some way, whether that be using her to deliver E slow in a gank or as a zoning tool around objectives. During this time period, there are many medium-scale skirmishes where you can greatly benefit from shielding Daisy and/or yourself over your teammates.

Because of how Daisy-centric this stage of the game is, Ivern can be considered as primarily a ‎ specialist in the midgame.


LATE GAME Level 14+
// 80% Enchanter, 10% catcher, 10% Specialist
At some point, the fights start becoming large enough where Daisy is easily dealt with. At the same time, any scaling champions will be reaching their big late-game 3/4 item spikes. For this portion of the game, there's a lot less room for aggression since you put yourself at much higher risk and are better off just peeling for the carries.

While the early and mid game playstyles can vary a lot based on comp, Ivern will almost always play like a full ‎ enchanter by minute 30. The only exceptions would be if the enemy comp has a hard time killing daisy (low single target dmg, low cc, etc) or if Ivern is very ahead.



There are many ways to play Ivern. Some people will build full support to spec into being an ‎ enchanter, while others will build full AP to maximize their abilities as a ‎ ‎ specialist. In this guide, I'll be teaching what I believe to be the optimal way to play Ivern, which is to accomodate for all 3 styles, and smoothly transition between each class with the flow of the game.


  • KEYSTONE
  • Summon Aery is by far Ivern's strongest keystone. I have tried to replace it many times, but it has proven to be the best time and time again. The key reason why it's so good is due to it's flexibility. It's good for‎‎ catcher and ‎ specialist Ivern due to the extra damage, while also scaling with extra shielding for ‎ enchanter Ivern. The perfect mix of offensive early damage and late game scaling.
  • SECONDARY: INSPIRATION
  • Cosmic Insight is a necessary rune on Ivern because of the immense value of having more Smite charges. Having smite up more often allows you to do anything that you'd normally want better. If you want to play for tempo, Smite allows you to save on pathing time. If you want to push a winning lane's advantage, you'll need to have Smite charges to take the enemy jungle. If you want to play defensively, Smite charges can secure camps that are at risk of being stolen. Having Flash up more often is also very helpful as a jungler. As you get better at Ivern, you'll find this rune increasingly irreplaceable.

  • Future's Market is a strong rune option due to Ivern's inconsistent income. Unlike laners or other junglers, Ivern can't always farm a bit more if he needs 100-200 more gold for an item. Due to the inconsistency of your income, Future's Market allows you to avoid awkward situations. It's also useful to accelerate your spikes, which is generally good on all junglers.

    Some Ivern players will opt to replace Future's Market with Perfect Timing. While this isn't the worst thing, I've found perfect timing to be only sometimes useful. On the other hand, I'll always get value out of Future's Market every time I take it regardless of circumstance.

Swappable Runes



NULLIFYING ORB

In games where you're being threatened by AP burst such as into Evelynn or Diana, you can swap out Nimbus Cloak for Nullifying Orb. The main drawback is that you lose early ganking power through self-cast Triggerseed + Flash. Always take Nullifying Orb into 4+ AP.

ATTACK SPEED

If there will be a lot of early fighting, Attack Speed does more than Haste. Attack Speed is also particularly good against weak early junglers like Kha'Zix or Evelynn, since it enables more aggressive plays. Attack Speed falls off in usefulness very hard, so I only take it when I'm certain of it's value. If you're unsure, just go Haste.

RESISTANCE SHARDS

The defensive stat shard slot is the most straightforward. Take Armor if you're against physical threats, MR against magic, and health for mixed. Since you aren't fighting your jungle camps and you aren't usually tanking towers, there is no bias towards armor, so focus solely on the enemy champions.



Cosmic Drive

Shurelya's Battlesong

Zhonya's Hourglass
As I mentioned earlier, Ivern has 3 different playstyles that he can apply, and each of them are most useful at different times in the game. My approach to itemization is to make sure that I'm playing towards my current strongest type while smoothly transitioning to the next. This leads to 2 main build options: or .

Why Cosmic Drive?
Cosmic Drive is the best first item on Ivern due to it's flexibility. It has incredibly good components with Fiendish Codex and Aether Wisp to make you strong early, it compliments ‎ specialist Ivern a lot upon completion with high AP, Haste, and Movement Speed to help you take aggressive fights during the mid-game, and scales well into ‎ enchanter Ivern with the AP and Haste being great for spam shielding.

But best of all: Cosmic Drive isn't a mythic, which allows you to adapt your build even further by not locking yourself into any specific path. Solo queue is a very unpredictable environment, so being able to delay your decision until you have more information is OP.


SHURELYA'S BATTLESONG
VS

MOONSTONE RENEWER
Shurelya's Battlesong is good for fast fights, picks, engage, and snowballing. You won't be shielding as much for the same amount of gold, but you'll be able to push advantages that you already have much harder. An advantage of Shurelya's Battlesong is that you aren't bound to buying Redemption 3rd, freeing up that slot for Zhonya's Hourglass. Moonstone Renewer is good for counterengage, front to back, slow fights, and scaling. Moonstone itself isn't that big of a spike, but really comes online at 3rd and 4th item with Redemption and Staff of Flowing Water, where you'll be spamming massive shields on a 3 second cooldown.

AFTER CORE OPTIONS
Once you're finished your core items, you're mostly free to build whatever you want. At this point in the game, the best items will generally trend towards the ‎ enchanter style. However, there are a few AP items that can get a lot of value here if you have the income for them.

ZHONYA'S HOURGLASS / REDEMPTION
Whichever one you didn't take in your core. Zhonya's Hourglass is one of the best items on Ivern since it allows you to play much further up safely. While Redemption isn't as good with Shurelya's Battlesong, it's still a great option for teamfighting.

STAFF OF FLOWING WATER
Insane value when shielding teammates. Even if your entire team is AD, Staff of Flowing Water still manages to be a high value item for the stats that it gives yourself. Since you'll have enough Ability Haste by this point, your Triggerseed cooldown will be low enough that it'll benefit from Staff's buff, since your E casts will be close enough together.

MIKAEL'S BLESSING
The situations where Mikael's Blessing is useful are pretty obvious. If your team is vulnerable to champions like Lissandra or Zoe, Mikael's is a great option.

RABADON'S DEATHCAP
Even though you haven't been building full AP, Rabadon's Deathcap is still such a strong item for raw power. It's always good if you can afford it, but the situations where that actually happens are very rare. Not worth forcing unless you came across a random 1000 gold shutdown or some other large amount of gold.

ITEMS THAT I DON'T BUILD:


NIGHT HARVESTER
While Night Harvester provides a bit more power than Cosmic Drive at 1 item, it completely falls off during the transition to ‎ enchanter Ivern since it's passive is entirely damage. It's also a mythic which means it locks you into the ‎ specialist playstyle, giving you much less flexibility.

MOBILITY BOOTS
Like Night Harvester, buying Mobility Boots makes one aspect of Ivern's playstyle very strong while sacrificing the others, this time benefitting the ‎ catcher style. Buying mobis makes you very strong in the early game, and you're able to match more timers and traverse the jungle faster (which also speeds up your clear). However, they start falling off as early as Level 6, since you miss out on the Ability Haste and Summoner Spell Haste of Ionian Boots of Lucidity.

RYLAI'S CRYSTAL SCEPTER
Rylai's Crystal Scepter is good for exactly one thing: chasing people with Daisy!. Since Daisy's attacks are treated as spell damage, Rylai's slow applies to every hit. The problem is that it's far too one dimensional and the enemy team can just focus Daisy, making the item useless. Ivern doesn't even have issues with chasing people in the first place, and it only makes a big difference for people who aren't microing Daisy properly.


As Ivern, there's only one really viable first clear. However, there are countless variations of that same clear that can be used to adapt to new information, making it extremely flexible.

For this section, I've include 3 different levels of Ivern's first clear variations. Move onto the next level once you're comfortable with the contents of the previous ones.

Level 1:
Basic First Clear
Beginner
Level 2:
Common Adaptations
Intermediate
Level 3:
Specialized Pathing
Expert

Level 1 - Basic First Clear (Beginner)
Level 2 - Common Adaptations (Intermediate)
Level 3 - Specialized Pathing (Expert)

Remember that just knowing these paths doesn't really mean anything on it's own. It's important to also be able to accurately discern what's optimal to go for at any given moment. Ivern's clear hardly requires any input, so use your abundance of downtime to stalk all 3 lanes carefully. The key to the adaptive Ivern path is to change your path as you're executing it.


So we've gone over theory, builds, and clear, but I haven't actually addressed the most important part, which is how to put this stuff into practice. For this section, I want to talk about strictly practical advice on how to win jungle as Ivern.

I will once again be splitting this into 3 levels, each talking about increasing levels Ivern fundamentals.

Level 1:
Basic Ganking
Beginner
Level 2:
Counterganking
Intermediate
Level 3:
Tempo Manipulation
Expert

Level 1 - Ganking (Beginner)
Level 2 - Counterganking (Intermediate)
Level 3 - Tempo Manipulation (Expert)




Thanks for reading! This guide is still WIP, and there is a lot that still needs work, so I'll be updating it more over the next few days to add more examples, clean up the presentation, and finish the synergies section. For now though, if you enjoyed reading about Ivern, you can read more on ivern.io, my blog where I talk about Ivern concepts and tech.

Also follow me on Twitter. If you have anything specific that you want to ask me directly, I'm most likely to respond there.
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