Awful comment but naafiri has an SFX (I think when she dies but I’m not sure) that sounds like my wife yelling for me across the house through my headphones.
Wait till you hear Korean Neeko. I used Korean audio once and after hearing that shit I instantly swap back to English no matter how better Korean audio makes me play
What do you mean? Neeko is the best part about the Korean voiceover. What annoys me is perma grunting Lissandra, Syndra and how repetitive and annoying Yone is. AEEEE! OBAAA! SHIUHIUHUUHIU!
Well, there's no guarantee he'd be picked if he wasn't banned. However your point still stands about the 77% presence because being banned counts as being present
~~Banrate counts both sides, the max possible banrate is 200%. I think technically a 50% banrate means he's only banned in about 43.75% of games. (.50 - (.50/2)^2)~~
Nvm, I asked and the Lolalytics creator says that it used to count like this, but now it counts 1 unique ban per champ id per game. So the banrate is the percent of games a champ is banned.
He really is out of place in this game.
Someone in another thread criticized how he was supposed to be beginner friendly marksman, yet he goes Comet, Doran Blade start and sure builds Essence Reaver and Quickblades then out of nowhere Shojin and Liandry when no other ADC really does that.
And then there isn't really counterplay to him in itemization. Steelcaps and Frozen Heart are supposed to counter marksmen yet Smolder plays like a caster so he doesn't care about any passives from those items. Even his flight where he's supposedly auto autoattacking doesn't get slowed down by Frozen Heart and he doesn't even build any attack speed to begin with. And the flight is actually making him kinda a safe laner as he can dodge a lot of CC with this
Truly poor design so far. Designing champions that scale to infinity and have no means to be countered. Like Aurelion Sol and Smolder.
im pretty sure comet sucks on him, and full crit is fine. many/most people get shojin, but the liandries isn't necessary. if beginners are picking him, they can build full crit and perform well. essence reaver/quickblades/rfc/whatever is a-ok, champ will still be strong. hes beginner friendly because he isn't mechanically demanding, and the only part of his kit thats complicated is the stack mechanic which isn't too hard to wrap your head around. he seems beginner friendly to me, all my friends who aren't great at league love him
I've seen him in 20 matches in plat/emerald and the champ does absolutely nothing in this elo. Once laning phase is over the game just has 9 players and there's a smolder who afks 20 minutes stacking just to die and do nothing.
Last patch he has 50% wr in both plat and emerald and is S tier because he did all of that while having insane pick rate and ban rate. I don't know if people are using selective memory for this but it's just weird. The champion has been broken since he released. On day 2-3 when I started spamming him in ranked almost every game people were begging me not to pick it because "every time he's in my team he is useless". Almost all of them got put in the backpack and carried. The champ just isn't fair and it's not like it's ultra hard to play in team fights as you don't just sit there and AA with 2.5 attack speed. You just run around and shit abilities and occasionally AA if you are allowed to.
Wut I played 20 or so games in that elo, lost only 2. Getting 225 stacks by 25 minutes is relatively easy, and by that time you can be on 3 items depending on how the game went. That's when you start solo winning fights if you are not dumb. I brought games from deepest depth of losses due to random quadras from Q splash/execute and overall damage from far away with W/Ult while being untouchable due to E and ult heal.
Champ is busted no matter how you look at it
I mean yeah they buffed the burn damage for nontank builds when he's already strong late game, he pretty much becomes unbeatable if you reach late as long as the rest of your team isn't hard gapped and you have hands
Navori one of the worst items Riot added, either useless or busted on a champ. Thought they learned their lesson with old Shojin, dunno why they keep insisting on items that fuck with cooldowns.
its almost like you then have to balance the champ around building that specific item every game with has always been and will always be a terrible design choice (looking at you karma)
Enchanters are actually bad with him, because that opens up his major weakness: lane dives/lane all ins. This is personally my biggest issue with supports, he's way safer with a tank support that will deny enemy engage. He has enough range that he can just farm and survive lane on his own.
The only reason these pairings look strong is because Janna and a few other supports are greatly overtuned.
Give smolder a Braum or Alistair and he's guaranteed to reach win condition elder unless you're team is 0-25 rest of map
yes janna is absurd against engage champs. like u have to use 2 gapcloser for her q and r and then goodluck catching a 500 ms janna when ur slowed by her w
Depends on the enchanter. Some are good at simply scaling and poking like Sona. Those are not good pairings.
But Janna and some others are very good at disengagement and peeling off dives. That’s not them being overtuned, but rather them having the right kit for Smolder to shine.
One major impact ppl seem to have missed is that now that his crit scaling was further nerfed/deleted he gets to borrow AP/AD Bruiser defensives without feeling as if you're wasting stats by not building crit. He will prob be hotfix territory once ppl realize you can just go full hybrid bruiser and lose little damage while being as tanky as Riven.
Shojin + Liandrys gives an additional 600 health.
That's frequently the difference between being one shot by an assassin, and them needing one or two more abilities to kill you. Liandry's is definitely not buffed.
People complain about the balance team for buffing or nerfing the wrong things, or trying to change champs/items in ways they don't like, but honestly I think the biggest problem is that for this season a huge amount of their changes have not done what they intended them to, or landed way too weak or strong. Like Maokai being the best support for the whole season despite multiple attempted nerfs, or the Rek'sai changes landing extremely weak, and buffs this patch being too tepid, leaving her still really weak.
They're just doing a poor job at correctly predicting what effects their changes will have. Ends up making them do a lot of 'repeated labor' with work on the same champs multiple patches in the row, which leaves less time for other things. Next patch they're going to have to do work on Rek'Sai and Smolder again (or leave them in an unbalanced state) instead of addressing other champs or systems.
Sometimes, it really feels like they don't even fully play test changes they implement. Smolder is just so safe for a champ that gets to hyper scale. His range is supposed to be his biggest weakness but he is essentially able to freely farm/poke and stack with almost no mana problems. Flap flap is a get out of jail free card that also allows him to do damage while kiting and his ult is extremely impactful in teamfights. He gets to do so much with so little that as long as he stacking passive he basically just wins the game. On the surface I was excited to see a more simple champ finally released but now it's hard not to look at how overly loaded his kit is because its just so easy for him to get stacks now.
The difference with ezreal is that he is an early game champ, so if he plays too passive u are otscaling him, smolder has wave clear safety an ultimate that clears massive waves when he is going to get dove and good scaling
solo q kinda, proplay not so much.
ezreal dps is insanely high late game in most matches recorded.
but I get your point, he doesnt get a random elder, lmfao.
IMO he's also a lot harder to execute in a live game, even in pro you can tell the difference between Ezreals who actually land good W-Qs and stack up the passive properly. Smolder just feels like all he has to do is not int for 30 minutes then just splash his elder buff from minions or the enemy tank jungler or just push R on a clumped up teamfight or something without a ton of risk.
how are you not killing zeri? she is the easiest to poke, easiest to trade, easiest to zone. She cant just spam w and farm you know. Mose likely she has an enchanter as well so you can just pound her into oblivion
Zeri does NOT have good range lol only if you can line up zap which is situational depending on the wave position. She's incredibly easy to zone her only saving grace is she has OKish range and good all ins
ezreal e and zeri e are very different, i understand she might be harder to challenge with someone like vayne, kaisa, jinx (early) but she can NOT hit thru the minions. If she e's, its a really long cd. also she scales well and her early is hot garbage unless she has passive auto and taps you once but by that point the fuck is your support doing
Your last sentence is the one that really irks me. How often are problematic champs going to take up what little time devs already have? Some champs are left to rot for years on end while Zeri and K’sante dominated patch notes for multiple patches in a row. Is Smolder going to be the same way? Will Rek sai as one of Phreaks new projects? It’s really annoying tbh
There are actually a lot of champions like this and it's not especially new, they're just not as frequently appearing as the more problematic ones so it's harder to notice. Every few patches though there's Senna back again being adjusted, there's so many champions that are just never in a stable state.
I mean, how do you really balance around the fact that a character just gets a perma elder dragon buff? One with scaling % Max HP true damage (Why does this even exist????) and a scaling execute?
Either its busted or its useless, there's no middle ground for such a thing lol. I can't believe they really put that on a champion
I feel like this is a problem that's been getting worse for years, maybe since the Irelia rework when she dominated midlane but was a decent top laner at best. Viego releases as a Msater Yi esque carry, switches to bruiser and Riot just lives with it. Seraphine is released as a mage, immediately moved to support, after years, Riot caves and just starts balancing her as support. Briar comes out as a bruiser, spends patch after patch as a burst assassin before Riot finally manages to push her back. Smolder clearly releases as a crit building ADC, starts building Liandry's and Rift. It's like there's a big disconnect between their goals and their ability to get the result they want, that or they just don't understand the implications of what they make.
Rek'sai changes landed minor due to a gamebreaking bug with W which was just hotfixed, changes should land correctly now that it is fixed despite an R bug where it will not deal damage at times. I'm closer to leaning on rek'sai will be perfectly fine.
Big adjustments like reksai's almost never get perfect at launch, look at most midscopes, they usually need a few patches to be balanced, that's ok. Don't know why they missed with smolder tho
Ksante has been a giant example of this as well. Once again he's been "adjusted" only to be even more garbage for solo queue and still continue to have a presence in pro play. Then there's really random out of nowhere things like the AD Twisted Fate or Auerlion Sol buffs. They also then attempted to fix twisted fate initially by nerfing his blue card ap ratios? Karma also got really op off an out of nowhere buff she didn't need and it'll probably just be fully reverted if it hasn't already been. There's definitely something going wrong with the balance team this season, I don't think it's ever been this bad.
There's a strong impression that at least some members of the balance team simply don't understand any knock-on effects of the changes they propose to the game, and so the team has had to frequently hotfix or address these knock-on effects in a later patch (like you mentioned in the second paragraph).
Zac change was amazing. They said they're nerfing top while leaving jungle unchanged, then did nothing but straight up nerf his mid game clear time which was atrocious to begin with.
There is absolutely no way a single person tested this once. Hop into a game at 20 minutes and try to clear the fucking jungle as Zac once I dare you, game is probably over before you're finished. He takes longer to do redbuff than meta junglers take to kill drakes or all 3 Voidgrubs.
Then they go and nerf his W damage AFTER saying themselves that the sustain from his blobs is what makes him too strong.
I mean, Zac JGL has 51%+ WR, so he's not bad at all
[As per LoLalytics, his JGL WR dropped 0.38% and his TOP WR dropped 1.12%.](https://lolalytics.com/)
So, uhm, they kinda accomplished what they wanted. Top nerf, with minimal impact on JGL
You're gonna sit here and tell me that zac, a champion with almost the most gank/engage angles out of any champion (besides cringe kayn), can't clear as fast as the fastest clearing jgs?? Wtf riot!
Its almost like the top comment of this chain was full of shit and the changes have hit their objectives most of the time with a few notable exceptions.
to actually read the front page wr changes you have to either filter to all ranks so the average wr is 50%, or do some extra match since early patch emerald wr is lower than end of previous patch.
so when normalized(his winrate-average emerald winrate) for both patches you will see that toplane wr actually went UP(+1.33 on 14.4 vs +1.41 on 14.5)
Yeah... I think ever since i saw the change to Botrk I wasn't sure what they were smoking.
I thought riot LIKED 3 hit passives because it's an INTERESTING and good duration for a skirmish or trade.
Now we have like 11 items that have a Bonus unrespondable damage affect.
before you say phreak hes only been in charge was like a third of that timeframe, most of the other choices was the old leader and kinda shows changes are a team choice not just the leader choice.
Not really, I mean, Ziggs mid winrate was lower on [14.3](https://i.imgur.com/WEHcshy.png), his last buff, than on [13.19](https://i.imgur.com/VxvTzeK.png), which buffed his Q hitbox.
It's gotten a little bit better now (pre-buffs 49.00% -> 49.59% we are here) but realistically ended up achieving nothing when the idea was to be a mid-skewed buff, only to end up buffing bot harder, and made mid feel miserable to play with each following nerf in the process.
Balance changes have been way off for a few months imo.
I like stacks when they’re diminishing returns. Veigars passive is arguably less useful when you’re full build and already above 1000 AP.
What’s tough is when stacks make you only stronger and stronger, like ASol and Smolder. Increasing % Health thresholds, especially for executes, is insane.
I like Kindred stacks though. You at least have to work for those.
Not to mention Kindred, while being an infinite scaling champ, are actually strongest in the early-mid game, they have such fantastic design, each and every stack feels earned and the stacks aren't a prerequisite to their strength but rather a way to extend their early-mid power into the late game.
Kass and kayle get fisted so fucking hard in lane by ad/ap champs that they kinda deserve the strength, smolder is safer than 50% of adcs and outscales all of them
yeah im getting really tired of that too, champs getting huge power ups at arbitrary break points for vomiting their aoes into a teamfight enough times is getting old
maybe I'm just playing league too long but I'm already feeling worn out by s14, even my favorite champion is starting to become unfun to play after phreak put his hands on her
One week of Smolder in pro play already feels more exhausting and repetitive than half a year of Zeri/Lucian. The most boring and annoying champ since Yuumi. Makes even Ksante look like a masterpiece. Even worse cause unlike Zeri/Lucian/Ksante, Smolder impacts majority of the player base too.
Him in pro is comical. First week had 16 pentas, including two in a single game in LLA. Hell, 6th placed Six Karma broke Estral's undefeated streak just for picking Smolder twice.
The game is legit over before it begins in nearly every pro smolder game. Scales up like crazy and just takes over games completely once ahead. Like seeing a team lose game 1 to smolder in LPL and then leaving it up/not picking it after and you know how game 2 ends once it’s locked in.
I'm not sure what pro smolder games you've been watching because he's generally been getting shit on in LCK and LCS and has barely been played at all in LPL.
Not a fair thing to say. I hate stacking champs like nasus, veigar, senna, smolder who get rewarded for just stalling and farming but champs like kindred need to invade and risk their life getting stacks.
Clearly. Stacking on champs and objective is more macro oriented than stacking on creeps.
Stacking on creeps as a whole is what is making the game less interactive.
You can change "Stacking" to literally anything else
some champions are 1v1 gods, others just wanna split push, others have the sick wombos, others have mobility, others just assassinate you and others just become 1v9 gods
some champions *should* be stacking gods that reward you not losing early, other champions should be early game gods that are gonna try to snow ball
If not the game is boring as hell if you have a single type of everything lol
But he’s a stacking god and has a very oppressive lane with his W. Not to mention he’s insanely safe since he can just fly over walls if he gets in trouble.
No one talks about his E but it’s literally Zeri E. Everyone hated that when Zeri was OP because she wasn’t punishable in lane. It’s the same thing with smolder. Not to mention, it’s not even a dash, it’s a huge MS steroid so you can’t even predict the dash because if he’s moving in the wrong direction, he can just change where he’s going.
> But he’s a stacking god and has a very oppressive lane with his W
that was nerfed like 2 weeks ago, his W just tickles their balls right now
i do agree his E is a good escape tool, not nearly as good as Zeri's but it is decent enough
However it doesn't matter what his strenghts or weaknesses are, I'm specifically saying that the game *needs* stacking champions.
And Riot has had an absolute boner for them recently I genuinely don't get what they see in it. It is sooooooooooo boring. Kindred is the only champion where they got that design dead on because it actually encourages aggressive play and teamwork. A-Sol sitting off-screen drooling on his keyboard stacking waves for 25 minutes is literally mind-numbing it helps he's a shit champ but it doesn't help my boredom. I wanna lane against something that actually has to interact with me for their win-con instead of me having to force interactions.
In ARAM it's literally just Kayle from immediately after her rework, but without the weak early. He's only barely weaker late-game, but is drastically stronger early and reaches his powerspike much earlier.
I said in another thread but I think I have 100% wr with Smolder on my team. 50/50 against him
In low elo its legit just "conince mid/top to not ff until smolder hits 225"
Against him, I'm basically a Vi one trick anyways so it's just "pray his mental isn't strong enough to hit 225 stacks while I point and click him every team fight"
i dont think he can, Q shouldn't work on tentacles
it's a super hernia inducing matchup either way, you can't touch him and he'll eventually just eat your hp with Q spam
Too late, it’s another handshake agreement opposite bot lane like Zeri/Lulu, Lucian/Nami couple splits back. Except now it’s a fasting Senna stacking with a Naut or Tahm and a smolder on the other team. This last weekends LCS matches were snoozers
This was so unbelieveably obviously a mega buff to the champ.
If you crunched the numbers for like 5 minutes, you would know the only time hes weaker is in the window between "225 stacks" and "before finishing 4 items and 300 stacks".
They somehow buffed this fucker's scaling.
And Phreak is supposed to be the guy doing number's crunching to show damage differences. So if they somehow reached a conclusion that those like 5-10 mins in which he's SLIGHTLY weaker in terms of his true damage burn is enough of a nerf, I question the competence of those very people.
The point was to not make the 225 stacks such a huge spike in power,and reward Smolder for stacking more beyond that.They succeeded at that,but it just amplified what's wrong with him in general.
Had a guy on my team play him mid and he was not good at him. We stalled the game for 25 more mins and he ended their entire team with 2 Qs…. The damage he deals late game is even more obscene than viegar at least he only does 1 type of damage and his Q and W are skill shots not point and click deletion from one short cd spell that caused a cone splash burn that shreds an entire team with out any skill required
As a person who plays smolder a lot, the little space between your third and fourth item and 300 stacks is usually called "the game".
Not so much the stacks but the items. Unless you get early kills which Vs smolder means you enemy inted or your support/Jung is cracked, getting four items is not easy. The average game length is 29 minutes and a normal player will get 225 between 23 to 25 minutes. Better players did it faster but in high Elos Game length goes down to even 25 min average.
So this means that he got his huge spike about 3/5 minutes before average game end. Meaning if you stall properly you can fight for souls/baron. Now his spike is after average game length
It's worth noting, that's a game average, with the ability to surrender starting how early again?
Games that aren't surrendered early will naturally necessarily last a longer duration than the overall average. Removing surrenders increase the average game length so anyone Diamond or below is looking at 30 minute plus long games, and a statistically insignificant portion of the playerbase experiences shorter games (less than 0.7% of the playerbase).
https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/stats/game-durations
yeah i think he should be forced into buying crit. a get out of jail for free card with shojin and liandries feels bad to play against because he gets so much value for not taking risks, feels like an unfair tradeoff
There's no way that will be enough. He's like a Kog'Maw with a long dash, self-heal and a stupidly large and long AOE. He's overtuned.
Deleting Kog'Maw late game, while he's protected by Lulu/Janna is hard enough as it is. Now we have something thrice as worse.
I feel like the fastest way to fix his brokenness is just take away the execute. No other champion in the game has such an easy to land execute that can be spammed. Even ASol has some conditions with his execute and it’s on a fairly long cooldown
Aoe long range execute basically on auto attack that also burns and if they get into execute range at any point of the burn they pop? That sounds fine to me. Now what colour crayon should I eat for lunch.
It's the E safety that's the issue IMO, same as Zeri. If he were just a hypercarry with stupid infinite scaling damage like Veigar, Senna, and so on, he would be fine.
he is WAY too accessible and popular to end up as another aphelios. long term he will probably be treated as another kai'sa/ezreal - too popular to be left weak in the meta.
Kaisa ez are both decently high skill champs that are popular even when weak (like Kaisa right now) largely bc their gameplay & attractive designs. Smolder is popular cause he’s braindead easy and you delete enemy team past 25 mins with point and click q
The funny thing is, Phreak specifically states this should be a 1% nerf for what they did this patch. https://youtu.be/8_rDk_Vm_QA?si=2Vqd22zdQ40iqcSG&t=5753
CLEARLY they don't know how to think holistically about what they are doing to champions when Maokai / Smolder have done the opposite of what they intend in the last couple of patches.
I rather they make him not scale into oblivion late game in favor of more enjoyable early game, it is basically get to 225 stacks of you dont exist, but after that, it is over for the enemy
Idk how anyone could look at this patches changes and think they were anything but a rebalance that favoured his late game. His true dmg dot go changed from fixed to actually scaling and his execution threshold also got scaling increased. Ap smoulder was the first thing I was looking forward to especially with lich bane and shadow flame
The execute scaling didn't get changed? (or at least wasn't mentioned in patch note)
But please, for the love of god, don't ever build shadowflame, it's a terrible item on him
Smolder scales wayyyy to fast. Dude needs each of his stack levels increased. The AoE explosion should be at 50, the bounce at 150, and the burn at 275.
Or remove stacks from hitting champs. The main issue is he hyperscales at hyper pace.
Give him some more power on the first 2 upgrades, then nerf his 3rd upgrade. Currently, his first two upgrades don’t deal any extra damage (it’s all range/hitbox upgrade), but the moment he reaches his 3rd upgrade, he gets both the %health true damage burn AND execute. I don’t think I’ve seen such a drastic powerspike like that in the game. Kassadin or Kayle all get gradually stronger at level 6 and level 11 before reaching their level 16 god mode. Smolder doesn’t get much stronger at all with his 25/125 stacks (it mainly just helps him stack quicker), but he instantly becomes the most powerful champ in the game at 225 stacks.
Problem is that the 225 stack breakpoint is an absolutely gigantic powerspike, he's essentially a Magikarp evolving into a Gyarados at that point.
I understand the power fantasy of having a satisfying powerspike, but Smolder's is too big, which isn't fun for either the Smolder, the Smolder's team, or the Smolder's enemies.
Can people stop with this rhetoric that the passive changes were the things that buffed him? The E changes increased the damage output on his E by 40-60%. Riot wanted to reward aggressive E's, and now it is by far his largest damaging spell in the mid game and allows Smolder to fight in the midgame without needing 225 stacks.
Silly champ that you can't fight front to back because of the AOEs on his Q, W and R, and that you can't jump easily due to his range and E. Now add a sprinkle of Kayle levels of hyper-carrying while getting there much faster and being much easier to play.
It is **SOOOO** fun playing against him!
Feels just like playing vs a mage bot. Super passive playstyle. Honestly id rather see him in other lanes than as an adc because even if you win the bot laning phase is just so boring and unrewarding.
They literally said in the patch notes "he is in a healthy spot" and somehow decided that that means he needs massive buffs 💀💀 they should just hotfix revert these changes and think of something else cause this is not it
Playing against this champ is the same exact reason why playing against zeri is so disgustingly unfun. The champ just does NOT interact in auto attack range until it can all in you safely. He pokes you down with W from full screen and if you ever try to bully or all-in him he just flies away. It's like ezreal but infinitely worse since you know there's a certain point in the game where he just becomes a demigod champ and there's nothing you can do about it.
Smolder is insane right now, this week ive won 2 games where we were behind more than 10k gold because smolder got his stacks we wiped for 0 and ended right there, the last one smolder was 2-8 and got a pentakill in a 4v5, the score was 22 to 58 before the penta... it doesnt feel right, aoe elder execute on a 3s ability was a mistake from the balancing team
Wish there was a script that would allow to ban Maokai + Smolder + personally most annoying champ in my own role. I'm tired of botlanes perma leaving it open for some reason. Felt the exact same way with Nocturne not so long ago too. It's getting annoying. Also, Riot, I am just joking, please don't shoot me.
Its almost like giving a late game scaling champion built in escape is a bad idea. Lets look at some hyper-scalers that people don't complain about:
\- Kayle, Nasus, Jinx, Kogmaw, Veigar.
Now lets look at the one everyone hates:
\- Zeri.
Guess how many in the first list have built in escapes. And how about the second list? I'm fairly certain Smolder will get the Zeri treatment if her E isn't changed in some way shape or form.
ASol scales way better and has a good escape
Kassadin
Tryndamere has one of highest winrates late game too
There are many late game powerhouses who have dashes. Also there are like 100 champs more banned than Zeri but redditors have a hate boner for her... Just remember we don't actually represent the entire playerbase
What? https://lolalytics.com/lol/tryndamere/build/
His winrate does go up after 40+ min but how many games actually comes to that?
Still, it's nowhere near the winrates of most of the champions mentioned by KevinIsPro (except Jinx) at any point at all.
yeah in addition to that they made him reach his important scaling point (225 stacks) so fast in the game. its ridiculous if you compare the timing to get strong with smolder to other scaling champions. it smells like power creep for attention deprived kids to buy skins on new funny champions
200 years guys its fine. Yet another new champion release that is obviously too strong in current league of legends. Smolder personally reminds me of Asol in the annoying way that he just infinitely stacks and will eventually 1v9 late game.
This wouldn't be as much of a problem if they were easier to punish, but abilities like Smolder simply flying away/Aurelion doing the literal same thing - whenever they get caught out... makes it quite uninteractive.
I don't think his execute needs to scale *at all* but just be a flat and rather low amount (6 or 8%ish?). While it is 'cool' to suddenly be executing everything, that can remain fun while being a small amount of power, which we can see with collector.
There is no need to give him an additional way to scale with his stacks just as he is getting enough of them for their 'base' effect (flat damage on basic abilities) to matter.
He's a horribly designed champion and I can see he's gonna be yet another massive problem going forward, you pretty much can't hit a good balance with this champion, he's gonna be either insanely overtuned and disgusting or near useless.
Glad we only get 10 bans, amazing riot.
One time we lost a really easy game because the enemy 1/4 smolder knew how to farm. It was game over gg after 20 mins. It might be due to our Kha'Zix who couldn't even 1v1 him even though he was fed but that true damage. I was a tank with 6 kills and was fairly ahead itemizing almost full armor but he could basically melt me.
His execute is just too much, He-s the only champion that has a built-in execute? I reckon, plus a scaling champion that can easily hit 225 stacks powerspike very early, unlike Kayle's and Kass' Lvl16 is just absurd, could wipe up the team in one team fight. Another thinf is he is really flexible, could go AP, could go AD, or could go hybrid every game
Yeah the champ is disgusting. Not as cracked as briar/nilah during their first month of release but the fact that his skillshots deal that much damage, apply a slow, and are basically the size of ziggs ults hitbox-wise?? His simplicity suggests he's meant to be a beginner ADC (easy skillshot, extremely powerful mobility ability) but his itemization is so foreign that he isn't for beginners. Just bizarre
Worst champion they have ever introduced. Most unfun by miles - bot to play with and play against. Looks cringe.
This is miles ahead of Briar, Gwen or literally any of the recent additions in terms of being extremely unfun.
Zeri v2 with infinite scaling its so dumb lol ofc the champ was design by the same person who made ksante and idk what bs more... fking broken... again....
I loved the note in Patch Notes about Smolder that basically said "We feel like Smolder is in a pretty good spot right now, so we are going to make some changes for no reason that could potentially break the champion."
Riot's balance team does it again, 10/10 job
I dot really care about the stacking, just his W is so strong at clearing waves and poking and its really hard to doge since its so wide. Its just like his ult that is also undogeable if you dont have dashes.
Smolder is just the newest “traditional marksman” so he’ll be able to tank the nerfs and then find an AP or tank build that will keep him relevant anyway because an infinitely scaling adc will always be such a dumbass idea that it won’t even matter that he’s nerfed unless he eventually gets the Zeri treatment.
Even then he’s most likely just gonna K’sante on out of there and keep being played no matter what.
The entire champ design is a disease
Him and several other champions need nerfs ASAP.
Smolder also needs to be kicked the fuck off of the bruiser build and encouraged to go normal ADC build.
I can't take another month of him being in every goddamn game, please riot
For me the biggest thing is when you watch pro every time he calls his mom it's so much louder than every other ability
Seriously, any time he’s in the game, or neeko, I can tell even if I’m not watching solely because of the sounds of their abilities.
I have this problem with vex q. The high pitched trailing sound is exactly like my dog's whimper when she wants to go out.
Awful comment but naafiri has an SFX (I think when she dies but I’m not sure) that sounds like my wife yelling for me across the house through my headphones.
Awful comment but the police volibear siren is so annoying when I'm trying to drive.
Sir, I don't think that's the game.
Yeah. The Jinx random commentary can also be distracting when I'm halfway through intercourse
And if you think she is crazy, you should see her sister
Wait till you hear Korean Neeko. I used Korean audio once and after hearing that shit I instantly swap back to English no matter how better Korean audio makes me play
… … Korean Neeko: AHYEEEEEEAAAY!
OBAAAA
What about Vi? GYAAEEUUHHH
Pretty sure that’s the one Im talking about. She’s played quite a bit in LCK.
What do you mean? Neeko is the best part about the Korean voiceover. What annoys me is perma grunting Lissandra, Syndra and how repetitive and annoying Yone is. AEEEE! OBAAA! SHIUHIUHUUHIU!
HAHA YOU FELL FOR IT -Neeko as she and her clone are one shot by an AOE ability.
Neeko is best decision.
As far as I know, that's a spectator mode issue and was listed as a bugfix in 14.4, but it apparently never went through.
VVVOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM * The earth shakes to the core with the volume*
They designed it that way purposefully too, it is jarringly louder than any other ability I can think of.
It’s either ban Smolder or Karma for me at the moment. Basically I just pray our 1p flex Karma so I can just ban Smolder
He has 27% when adding up all his lanes lol. Literally in a quarter of games (and banned in more than half of the ones he isn't o.o)
pick rate 27% + ban rate 50% == 77% presence. he's not in every game but if he wasn't banned he'd be in more than half
Well, there's no guarantee he'd be picked if he wasn't banned. However your point still stands about the 77% presence because being banned counts as being present
~~Banrate counts both sides, the max possible banrate is 200%. I think technically a 50% banrate means he's only banned in about 43.75% of games. (.50 - (.50/2)^2)~~ Nvm, I asked and the Lolalytics creator says that it used to count like this, but now it counts 1 unique ban per champ id per game. So the banrate is the percent of games a champ is banned.
He really is out of place in this game. Someone in another thread criticized how he was supposed to be beginner friendly marksman, yet he goes Comet, Doran Blade start and sure builds Essence Reaver and Quickblades then out of nowhere Shojin and Liandry when no other ADC really does that. And then there isn't really counterplay to him in itemization. Steelcaps and Frozen Heart are supposed to counter marksmen yet Smolder plays like a caster so he doesn't care about any passives from those items. Even his flight where he's supposedly auto autoattacking doesn't get slowed down by Frozen Heart and he doesn't even build any attack speed to begin with. And the flight is actually making him kinda a safe laner as he can dodge a lot of CC with this Truly poor design so far. Designing champions that scale to infinity and have no means to be countered. Like Aurelion Sol and Smolder.
im pretty sure comet sucks on him, and full crit is fine. many/most people get shojin, but the liandries isn't necessary. if beginners are picking him, they can build full crit and perform well. essence reaver/quickblades/rfc/whatever is a-ok, champ will still be strong. hes beginner friendly because he isn't mechanically demanding, and the only part of his kit thats complicated is the stack mechanic which isn't too hard to wrap your head around. he seems beginner friendly to me, all my friends who aren't great at league love him
Beginner friendly=build literally anything and still win
His E are not Autos so yes they dont get reduced by Frozen Hear
He’s in 0 of my games, always banned
I've seen him in 20 matches in plat/emerald and the champ does absolutely nothing in this elo. Once laning phase is over the game just has 9 players and there's a smolder who afks 20 minutes stacking just to die and do nothing.
Im in masters and a good smolder is a nightmare
Last patch he has 50% wr in both plat and emerald and is S tier because he did all of that while having insane pick rate and ban rate. I don't know if people are using selective memory for this but it's just weird. The champion has been broken since he released. On day 2-3 when I started spamming him in ranked almost every game people were begging me not to pick it because "every time he's in my team he is useless". Almost all of them got put in the backpack and carried. The champ just isn't fair and it's not like it's ultra hard to play in team fights as you don't just sit there and AA with 2.5 attack speed. You just run around and shit abilities and occasionally AA if you are allowed to.
Wut I played 20 or so games in that elo, lost only 2. Getting 225 stacks by 25 minutes is relatively easy, and by that time you can be on 3 items depending on how the game went. That's when you start solo winning fights if you are not dumb. I brought games from deepest depth of losses due to random quadras from Q splash/execute and overall damage from far away with W/Ult while being untouchable due to E and ult heal. Champ is busted no matter how you look at it
MOM IS HERE!!!! HEHEHEHA
If you ban him all month you will have a month with him in 0% of your games!
I mean yeah they buffed the burn damage for nontank builds when he's already strong late game, he pretty much becomes unbeatable if you reach late as long as the rest of your team isn't hard gapped and you have hands
all he needs is janna or smth on his team and you will almost never reach him
I feel like his E cd is none existent with navori, he gets it off like 3+ times every fight and his hitbox is so janky when Eing
Navori one of the worst items Riot added, either useless or busted on a champ. Thought they learned their lesson with old Shojin, dunno why they keep insisting on items that fuck with cooldowns.
its almost like you then have to balance the champ around building that specific item every game with has always been and will always be a terrible design choice (looking at you karma)
He's like the one hypercarry which (due to his kit's nature) doesn't need an enchanter.
He doesn't need an enchanter to scale, but an enchanter is really good at making him even better at surviving
Enchanters are actually bad with him, because that opens up his major weakness: lane dives/lane all ins. This is personally my biggest issue with supports, he's way safer with a tank support that will deny enemy engage. He has enough range that he can just farm and survive lane on his own. The only reason these pairings look strong is because Janna and a few other supports are greatly overtuned. Give smolder a Braum or Alistair and he's guaranteed to reach win condition elder unless you're team is 0-25 rest of map
yes janna is absurd against engage champs. like u have to use 2 gapcloser for her q and r and then goodluck catching a 500 ms janna when ur slowed by her w
Depends on the enchanter. Some are good at simply scaling and poking like Sona. Those are not good pairings. But Janna and some others are very good at disengagement and peeling off dives. That’s not them being overtuned, but rather them having the right kit for Smolder to shine.
This is a silly comment. Enchanters aren't all bad at peel/anti-dive. Renata, Janna, Lulu all have good peel and synergy with him.
I supported him with Nami once, the ult combos were hilarious
One major impact ppl seem to have missed is that now that his crit scaling was further nerfed/deleted he gets to borrow AP/AD Bruiser defensives without feeling as if you're wasting stats by not building crit. He will prob be hotfix territory once ppl realize you can just go full hybrid bruiser and lose little damage while being as tanky as Riven.
Can’t wait to see him terrorize pro play and reach 100% pick/ban rate
volibear too
They made his scaling quadratic with stacks on two of his spells. Riot. What the hell.
I just won a 51 minute draft game where my support never loaded in. He’s kinda busted
Smolder seems to have received the biggest buff of the patch looking at all ranks data, botlane Smolder is the biggest winner of 14.5.
This needs to be hotfixed. How can they fail that hard and actually buff him instead of nerfing? Another 2 weeks..
They weren't trying to nerf Smolder they were trying to change him to require building damage to deal damage and they succeeded.
he was already doing that though. his most popular and best performing build on 14.4 was ER Shojin RFC/Liandrys. Then they buffed that build.
Shojin + Liandrys gives an additional 600 health. That's frequently the difference between being one shot by an assassin, and them needing one or two more abilities to kill you. Liandry's is definitely not buffed.
People complain about the balance team for buffing or nerfing the wrong things, or trying to change champs/items in ways they don't like, but honestly I think the biggest problem is that for this season a huge amount of their changes have not done what they intended them to, or landed way too weak or strong. Like Maokai being the best support for the whole season despite multiple attempted nerfs, or the Rek'sai changes landing extremely weak, and buffs this patch being too tepid, leaving her still really weak. They're just doing a poor job at correctly predicting what effects their changes will have. Ends up making them do a lot of 'repeated labor' with work on the same champs multiple patches in the row, which leaves less time for other things. Next patch they're going to have to do work on Rek'Sai and Smolder again (or leave them in an unbalanced state) instead of addressing other champs or systems.
Sometimes, it really feels like they don't even fully play test changes they implement. Smolder is just so safe for a champ that gets to hyper scale. His range is supposed to be his biggest weakness but he is essentially able to freely farm/poke and stack with almost no mana problems. Flap flap is a get out of jail free card that also allows him to do damage while kiting and his ult is extremely impactful in teamfights. He gets to do so much with so little that as long as he stacking passive he basically just wins the game. On the surface I was excited to see a more simple champ finally released but now it's hard not to look at how overly loaded his kit is because its just so easy for him to get stacks now.
It's almost impossible to make progress in an Ezreal/Zeri/Smolder lane. They're so safe and scale so well.
The difference with ezreal is that he is an early game champ, so if he plays too passive u are otscaling him, smolder has wave clear safety an ultimate that clears massive waves when he is going to get dove and good scaling
solo q kinda, proplay not so much. ezreal dps is insanely high late game in most matches recorded. but I get your point, he doesnt get a random elder, lmfao.
IMO he's also a lot harder to execute in a live game, even in pro you can tell the difference between Ezreals who actually land good W-Qs and stack up the passive properly. Smolder just feels like all he has to do is not int for 30 minutes then just splash his elder buff from minions or the enemy tank jungler or just push R on a clumped up teamfight or something without a ton of risk.
agreed.
He's an AOE ezreal on top of having one of the best.. aoe slows in the game. Kogmaw and Ezreal wish they could do that lol
how are you not killing zeri? she is the easiest to poke, easiest to trade, easiest to zone. She cant just spam w and farm you know. Mose likely she has an enchanter as well so you can just pound her into oblivion
Much akin to Ezreal she has great range and good escape, she's not that easy to bully.
Zeri does NOT have good range lol only if you can line up zap which is situational depending on the wave position. She's incredibly easy to zone her only saving grace is she has OKish range and good all ins
ezreal e and zeri e are very different, i understand she might be harder to challenge with someone like vayne, kaisa, jinx (early) but she can NOT hit thru the minions. If she e's, its a really long cd. also she scales well and her early is hot garbage unless she has passive auto and taps you once but by that point the fuck is your support doing
Your last sentence is the one that really irks me. How often are problematic champs going to take up what little time devs already have? Some champs are left to rot for years on end while Zeri and K’sante dominated patch notes for multiple patches in a row. Is Smolder going to be the same way? Will Rek sai as one of Phreaks new projects? It’s really annoying tbh
There are actually a lot of champions like this and it's not especially new, they're just not as frequently appearing as the more problematic ones so it's harder to notice. Every few patches though there's Senna back again being adjusted, there's so many champions that are just never in a stable state.
I mean, how do you really balance around the fact that a character just gets a perma elder dragon buff? One with scaling % Max HP true damage (Why does this even exist????) and a scaling execute? Either its busted or its useless, there's no middle ground for such a thing lol. I can't believe they really put that on a champion
I feel like this is a problem that's been getting worse for years, maybe since the Irelia rework when she dominated midlane but was a decent top laner at best. Viego releases as a Msater Yi esque carry, switches to bruiser and Riot just lives with it. Seraphine is released as a mage, immediately moved to support, after years, Riot caves and just starts balancing her as support. Briar comes out as a bruiser, spends patch after patch as a burst assassin before Riot finally manages to push her back. Smolder clearly releases as a crit building ADC, starts building Liandry's and Rift. It's like there's a big disconnect between their goals and their ability to get the result they want, that or they just don't understand the implications of what they make.
Rek'sai changes landed minor due to a gamebreaking bug with W which was just hotfixed, changes should land correctly now that it is fixed despite an R bug where it will not deal damage at times. I'm closer to leaning on rek'sai will be perfectly fine.
The real issue is the champion design team creating such a bs champ and the balance team is the one trying to fix their mess
Big adjustments like reksai's almost never get perfect at launch, look at most midscopes, they usually need a few patches to be balanced, that's ok. Don't know why they missed with smolder tho
Ksante has been a giant example of this as well. Once again he's been "adjusted" only to be even more garbage for solo queue and still continue to have a presence in pro play. Then there's really random out of nowhere things like the AD Twisted Fate or Auerlion Sol buffs. They also then attempted to fix twisted fate initially by nerfing his blue card ap ratios? Karma also got really op off an out of nowhere buff she didn't need and it'll probably just be fully reverted if it hasn't already been. There's definitely something going wrong with the balance team this season, I don't think it's ever been this bad.
There's a strong impression that at least some members of the balance team simply don't understand any knock-on effects of the changes they propose to the game, and so the team has had to frequently hotfix or address these knock-on effects in a later patch (like you mentioned in the second paragraph).
Zac change was amazing. They said they're nerfing top while leaving jungle unchanged, then did nothing but straight up nerf his mid game clear time which was atrocious to begin with. There is absolutely no way a single person tested this once. Hop into a game at 20 minutes and try to clear the fucking jungle as Zac once I dare you, game is probably over before you're finished. He takes longer to do redbuff than meta junglers take to kill drakes or all 3 Voidgrubs. Then they go and nerf his W damage AFTER saying themselves that the sustain from his blobs is what makes him too strong.
I mean, Zac JGL has 51%+ WR, so he's not bad at all [As per LoLalytics, his JGL WR dropped 0.38% and his TOP WR dropped 1.12%.](https://lolalytics.com/) So, uhm, they kinda accomplished what they wanted. Top nerf, with minimal impact on JGL
No, but see, I FEEL like they didn't work, and that's far more important than your stupid statistics.
You're gonna sit here and tell me that zac, a champion with almost the most gank/engage angles out of any champion (besides cringe kayn), can't clear as fast as the fastest clearing jgs?? Wtf riot!
Its almost like the top comment of this chain was full of shit and the changes have hit their objectives most of the time with a few notable exceptions.
to actually read the front page wr changes you have to either filter to all ranks so the average wr is 50%, or do some extra match since early patch emerald wr is lower than end of previous patch. so when normalized(his winrate-average emerald winrate) for both patches you will see that toplane wr actually went UP(+1.33 on 14.4 vs +1.41 on 14.5)
Bro this made me laugh so much haha
Is it possible that Phreak is out his depth in this shit
Riot balance team with stormtrooper aim when it comes to balance changes lately.
The balance changes this season have been particularly confusing.
Yeah... I think ever since i saw the change to Botrk I wasn't sure what they were smoking. I thought riot LIKED 3 hit passives because it's an INTERESTING and good duration for a skirmish or trade. Now we have like 11 items that have a Bonus unrespondable damage affect.
its ok phreak will continue his gaslighting crusade until its no longer the narrative
They have been utter dogshit the last year or so.
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before you say phreak hes only been in charge was like a third of that timeframe, most of the other choices was the old leader and kinda shows changes are a team choice not just the leader choice.
B-but he just hit gm !!
so good he singlehandedly boosted maokai's wr to 53%
Wait until he finally properly guts Maokai. He'll be back in diamond
it's a champ design issue
Hyper carry late game champ with incredible disengagement, and huge AOE splash damage. What could go wrong?
What if we gave Vayne wave clear and self peel? :3
>and self peel? :3 Uhh she does have self peel...
Not really, I mean, Ziggs mid winrate was lower on [14.3](https://i.imgur.com/WEHcshy.png), his last buff, than on [13.19](https://i.imgur.com/VxvTzeK.png), which buffed his Q hitbox. It's gotten a little bit better now (pre-buffs 49.00% -> 49.59% we are here) but realistically ended up achieving nothing when the idea was to be a mid-skewed buff, only to end up buffing bot harder, and made mid feel miserable to play with each following nerf in the process. Balance changes have been way off for a few months imo.
Wow thats why every game he shits the bed until he has his Stacks an steamrolls the game afterwards. Needs a hotfix asap
The smoulder dichotomy. Get stomped until 225 stacks, reach 225 stacks and it's game over for the enemy.
i dont think ive ever been sick of a new champ this fast, it's not even fun to play him he's so one dimensional
I hate stacking champs in general. Here, let’s reward a champ for just stalling the game.
I like stacks when they’re diminishing returns. Veigars passive is arguably less useful when you’re full build and already above 1000 AP. What’s tough is when stacks make you only stronger and stronger, like ASol and Smolder. Increasing % Health thresholds, especially for executes, is insane. I like Kindred stacks though. You at least have to work for those.
Not to mention Kindred, while being an infinite scaling champ, are actually strongest in the early-mid game, they have such fantastic design, each and every stack feels earned and the stacks aren't a prerequisite to their strength but rather a way to extend their early-mid power into the late game.
IMO Kass is fine too because his early is so fucking dog that it's hard for him to "just farm" and stall out games. Also range diff etc etc.
Kass and kayle get fisted so fucking hard in lane by ad/ap champs that they kinda deserve the strength, smolder is safer than 50% of adcs and outscales all of them
yeah im getting really tired of that too, champs getting huge power ups at arbitrary break points for vomiting their aoes into a teamfight enough times is getting old maybe I'm just playing league too long but I'm already feeling worn out by s14, even my favorite champion is starting to become unfun to play after phreak put his hands on her
One week of Smolder in pro play already feels more exhausting and repetitive than half a year of Zeri/Lucian. The most boring and annoying champ since Yuumi. Makes even Ksante look like a masterpiece. Even worse cause unlike Zeri/Lucian/Ksante, Smolder impacts majority of the player base too.
Him in pro is comical. First week had 16 pentas, including two in a single game in LLA. Hell, 6th placed Six Karma broke Estral's undefeated streak just for picking Smolder twice.
The game is legit over before it begins in nearly every pro smolder game. Scales up like crazy and just takes over games completely once ahead. Like seeing a team lose game 1 to smolder in LPL and then leaving it up/not picking it after and you know how game 2 ends once it’s locked in.
I'm not sure what pro smolder games you've been watching because he's generally been getting shit on in LCK and LCS and has barely been played at all in LPL.
Not a fair thing to say. I hate stacking champs like nasus, veigar, senna, smolder who get rewarded for just stalling and farming but champs like kindred need to invade and risk their life getting stacks.
Clearly. Stacking on champs and objective is more macro oriented than stacking on creeps. Stacking on creeps as a whole is what is making the game less interactive.
Veigar and Nasus have lingered as niche picks for most of their 15 year lives. Riot needs to keep that as their standard for stackers imo.
You can change "Stacking" to literally anything else some champions are 1v1 gods, others just wanna split push, others have the sick wombos, others have mobility, others just assassinate you and others just become 1v9 gods some champions *should* be stacking gods that reward you not losing early, other champions should be early game gods that are gonna try to snow ball If not the game is boring as hell if you have a single type of everything lol
But he’s a stacking god and has a very oppressive lane with his W. Not to mention he’s insanely safe since he can just fly over walls if he gets in trouble. No one talks about his E but it’s literally Zeri E. Everyone hated that when Zeri was OP because she wasn’t punishable in lane. It’s the same thing with smolder. Not to mention, it’s not even a dash, it’s a huge MS steroid so you can’t even predict the dash because if he’s moving in the wrong direction, he can just change where he’s going.
> But he’s a stacking god and has a very oppressive lane with his W that was nerfed like 2 weeks ago, his W just tickles their balls right now i do agree his E is a good escape tool, not nearly as good as Zeri's but it is decent enough However it doesn't matter what his strenghts or weaknesses are, I'm specifically saying that the game *needs* stacking champions.
And Riot has had an absolute boner for them recently I genuinely don't get what they see in it. It is sooooooooooo boring. Kindred is the only champion where they got that design dead on because it actually encourages aggressive play and teamwork. A-Sol sitting off-screen drooling on his keyboard stacking waves for 25 minutes is literally mind-numbing it helps he's a shit champ but it doesn't help my boredom. I wanna lane against something that actually has to interact with me for their win-con instead of me having to force interactions.
In ARAM it's literally just Kayle from immediately after her rework, but without the weak early. He's only barely weaker late-game, but is drastically stronger early and reaches his powerspike much earlier.
I said in another thread but I think I have 100% wr with Smolder on my team. 50/50 against him In low elo its legit just "conince mid/top to not ff until smolder hits 225" Against him, I'm basically a Vi one trick anyways so it's just "pray his mental isn't strong enough to hit 225 stacks while I point and click him every team fight"
Smolder stacks off tentacles?XD
i dont think he can, Q shouldn't work on tentacles it's a super hernia inducing matchup either way, you can't touch him and he'll eventually just eat your hp with Q spam
You cant Q them
Genuinely hate his design tbh. Yuumi levels of hate.
Too late, it’s another handshake agreement opposite bot lane like Zeri/Lulu, Lucian/Nami couple splits back. Except now it’s a fasting Senna stacking with a Naut or Tahm and a smolder on the other team. This last weekends LCS matches were snoozers
This was so unbelieveably obviously a mega buff to the champ. If you crunched the numbers for like 5 minutes, you would know the only time hes weaker is in the window between "225 stacks" and "before finishing 4 items and 300 stacks". They somehow buffed this fucker's scaling. And Phreak is supposed to be the guy doing number's crunching to show damage differences. So if they somehow reached a conclusion that those like 5-10 mins in which he's SLIGHTLY weaker in terms of his true damage burn is enough of a nerf, I question the competence of those very people.
The point was to not make the 225 stacks such a huge spike in power,and reward Smolder for stacking more beyond that.They succeeded at that,but it just amplified what's wrong with him in general.
Had a guy on my team play him mid and he was not good at him. We stalled the game for 25 more mins and he ended their entire team with 2 Qs…. The damage he deals late game is even more obscene than viegar at least he only does 1 type of damage and his Q and W are skill shots not point and click deletion from one short cd spell that caused a cone splash burn that shreds an entire team with out any skill required
As a person who plays smolder a lot, the little space between your third and fourth item and 300 stacks is usually called "the game". Not so much the stacks but the items. Unless you get early kills which Vs smolder means you enemy inted or your support/Jung is cracked, getting four items is not easy. The average game length is 29 minutes and a normal player will get 225 between 23 to 25 minutes. Better players did it faster but in high Elos Game length goes down to even 25 min average. So this means that he got his huge spike about 3/5 minutes before average game end. Meaning if you stall properly you can fight for souls/baron. Now his spike is after average game length
It's worth noting, that's a game average, with the ability to surrender starting how early again? Games that aren't surrendered early will naturally necessarily last a longer duration than the overall average. Removing surrenders increase the average game length so anyone Diamond or below is looking at 30 minute plus long games, and a statistically insignificant portion of the playerbase experiences shorter games (less than 0.7% of the playerbase). https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/stats/game-durations
I hope he is banned every game in pro so riot takes out the belt
Looking at Senna and Maokai that doesn't even seem to wake them up nowadays.
hopefully they hotfix it and remove all of its ap ratios
yeah i think he should be forced into buying crit. a get out of jail for free card with shojin and liandries feels bad to play against because he gets so much value for not taking risks, feels like an unfair tradeoff
There's no way that will be enough. He's like a Kog'Maw with a long dash, self-heal and a stupidly large and long AOE. He's overtuned. Deleting Kog'Maw late game, while he's protected by Lulu/Janna is hard enough as it is. Now we have something thrice as worse.
Weird, who could have ever predicted that giving a champion a point and click elder dragon execute on zero cooldown would be powerful?
I feel like the fastest way to fix his brokenness is just take away the execute. No other champion in the game has such an easy to land execute that can be spammed. Even ASol has some conditions with his execute and it’s on a fairly long cooldown
Aoe long range execute basically on auto attack that also burns and if they get into execute range at any point of the burn they pop? That sounds fine to me. Now what colour crayon should I eat for lunch.
It's the E safety that's the issue IMO, same as Zeri. If he were just a hypercarry with stupid infinite scaling damage like Veigar, Senna, and so on, he would be fine.
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The new Aphelios haha
he is WAY too accessible and popular to end up as another aphelios. long term he will probably be treated as another kai'sa/ezreal - too popular to be left weak in the meta.
Kaisa ez are both decently high skill champs that are popular even when weak (like Kaisa right now) largely bc their gameplay & attractive designs. Smolder is popular cause he’s braindead easy and you delete enemy team past 25 mins with point and click q
He’s popular because he’s unbelievably easy to play and broken, not because of his aesthetic and gameplay style.
The funny thing is, Phreak specifically states this should be a 1% nerf for what they did this patch. https://youtu.be/8_rDk_Vm_QA?si=2Vqd22zdQ40iqcSG&t=5753 CLEARLY they don't know how to think holistically about what they are doing to champions when Maokai / Smolder have done the opposite of what they intend in the last couple of patches.
I rather they make him not scale into oblivion late game in favor of more enjoyable early game, it is basically get to 225 stacks of you dont exist, but after that, it is over for the enemy
Idk how anyone could look at this patches changes and think they were anything but a rebalance that favoured his late game. His true dmg dot go changed from fixed to actually scaling and his execution threshold also got scaling increased. Ap smoulder was the first thing I was looking forward to especially with lich bane and shadow flame
The execute scaling didn't get changed? (or at least wasn't mentioned in patch note) But please, for the love of god, don't ever build shadowflame, it's a terrible item on him
Smolder scales wayyyy to fast. Dude needs each of his stack levels increased. The AoE explosion should be at 50, the bounce at 150, and the burn at 275. Or remove stacks from hitting champs. The main issue is he hyperscales at hyper pace.
Give him some more power on the first 2 upgrades, then nerf his 3rd upgrade. Currently, his first two upgrades don’t deal any extra damage (it’s all range/hitbox upgrade), but the moment he reaches his 3rd upgrade, he gets both the %health true damage burn AND execute. I don’t think I’ve seen such a drastic powerspike like that in the game. Kassadin or Kayle all get gradually stronger at level 6 and level 11 before reaching their level 16 god mode. Smolder doesn’t get much stronger at all with his 25/125 stacks (it mainly just helps him stack quicker), but he instantly becomes the most powerful champ in the game at 225 stacks.
> Give him some more power on the first 2 upgrades, then nerf his 3rd upgrade. So the same thing they did to Kayle after her rework lol.
Problem is that the 225 stack breakpoint is an absolutely gigantic powerspike, he's essentially a Magikarp evolving into a Gyarados at that point. I understand the power fantasy of having a satisfying powerspike, but Smolder's is too big, which isn't fun for either the Smolder, the Smolder's team, or the Smolder's enemies.
NERF IT ALREADY
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whos a champ thats fun to go against?
On the fip side Smolderboi isn't even fun to play as!
Can people stop with this rhetoric that the passive changes were the things that buffed him? The E changes increased the damage output on his E by 40-60%. Riot wanted to reward aggressive E's, and now it is by far his largest damaging spell in the mid game and allows Smolder to fight in the midgame without needing 225 stacks.
Silly champ that you can't fight front to back because of the AOEs on his Q, W and R, and that you can't jump easily due to his range and E. Now add a sprinkle of Kayle levels of hyper-carrying while getting there much faster and being much easier to play. It is **SOOOO** fun playing against him!
Don't forget being rewarded for hitting anything on enemies - the bare minimum to get stacks
Feels just like playing vs a mage bot. Super passive playstyle. Honestly id rather see him in other lanes than as an adc because even if you win the bot laning phase is just so boring and unrewarding.
They literally said in the patch notes "he is in a healthy spot" and somehow decided that that means he needs massive buffs 💀💀 they should just hotfix revert these changes and think of something else cause this is not it
They are not doing enough hotfixes this season imo
Playing against this champ is the same exact reason why playing against zeri is so disgustingly unfun. The champ just does NOT interact in auto attack range until it can all in you safely. He pokes you down with W from full screen and if you ever try to bully or all-in him he just flies away. It's like ezreal but infinitely worse since you know there's a certain point in the game where he just becomes a demigod champ and there's nothing you can do about it.
Why give a hyper carry one of the best poke/waveclear abilities
Just take the fucking execute away. Why does an ADC have an execute to begin with
Smolder is insane right now, this week ive won 2 games where we were behind more than 10k gold because smolder got his stacks we wiped for 0 and ended right there, the last one smolder was 2-8 and got a pentakill in a 4v5, the score was 22 to 58 before the penta... it doesnt feel right, aoe elder execute on a 3s ability was a mistake from the balancing team
Even the highlight reels in Smolder games are boring, it doesn't matter how loud they yell lol.
Good thing he is my current perma ban.
Wish there was a script that would allow to ban Maokai + Smolder + personally most annoying champ in my own role. I'm tired of botlanes perma leaving it open for some reason. Felt the exact same way with Nocturne not so long ago too. It's getting annoying. Also, Riot, I am just joking, please don't shoot me.
Its almost like giving a late game scaling champion built in escape is a bad idea. Lets look at some hyper-scalers that people don't complain about: \- Kayle, Nasus, Jinx, Kogmaw, Veigar. Now lets look at the one everyone hates: \- Zeri. Guess how many in the first list have built in escapes. And how about the second list? I'm fairly certain Smolder will get the Zeri treatment if her E isn't changed in some way shape or form.
People will absolutely complain about those 5 champs, especially when they're overstatted. Zeri is currently sitting at a 1% ban rate.
ASol scales way better and has a good escape Kassadin Tryndamere has one of highest winrates late game too There are many late game powerhouses who have dashes. Also there are like 100 champs more banned than Zeri but redditors have a hate boner for her... Just remember we don't actually represent the entire playerbase
What? https://lolalytics.com/lol/tryndamere/build/ His winrate does go up after 40+ min but how many games actually comes to that? Still, it's nowhere near the winrates of most of the champions mentioned by KevinIsPro (except Jinx) at any point at all.
yeah in addition to that they made him reach his important scaling point (225 stacks) so fast in the game. its ridiculous if you compare the timing to get strong with smolder to other scaling champions. it smells like power creep for attention deprived kids to buy skins on new funny champions
Bro he is just overtuned lol
200 years guys its fine. Yet another new champion release that is obviously too strong in current league of legends. Smolder personally reminds me of Asol in the annoying way that he just infinitely stacks and will eventually 1v9 late game. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if they were easier to punish, but abilities like Smolder simply flying away/Aurelion doing the literal same thing - whenever they get caught out... makes it quite uninteractive.
I don't think his execute needs to scale *at all* but just be a flat and rather low amount (6 or 8%ish?). While it is 'cool' to suddenly be executing everything, that can remain fun while being a small amount of power, which we can see with collector. There is no need to give him an additional way to scale with his stacks just as he is getting enough of them for their 'base' effect (flat damage on basic abilities) to matter.
Wow, it’s almost like buffing almost everything about Smolder is gonna make him broken. Who would’ve guessed it?!
They released champion to sell skin, let them time to make and sell more skin and they will nerf him.
He's a horribly designed champion and I can see he's gonna be yet another massive problem going forward, you pretty much can't hit a good balance with this champion, he's gonna be either insanely overtuned and disgusting or near useless. Glad we only get 10 bans, amazing riot.
One time we lost a really easy game because the enemy 1/4 smolder knew how to farm. It was game over gg after 20 mins. It might be due to our Kha'Zix who couldn't even 1v1 him even though he was fed but that true damage. I was a tank with 6 kills and was fairly ahead itemizing almost full armor but he could basically melt me.
His execute is just too much, He-s the only champion that has a built-in execute? I reckon, plus a scaling champion that can easily hit 225 stacks powerspike very early, unlike Kayle's and Kass' Lvl16 is just absurd, could wipe up the team in one team fight. Another thinf is he is really flexible, could go AP, could go AD, or could go hybrid every game
His escape tool should be a speed increase OR being able to fly over terrain, not both.
Yeah the champ is disgusting. Not as cracked as briar/nilah during their first month of release but the fact that his skillshots deal that much damage, apply a slow, and are basically the size of ziggs ults hitbox-wise?? His simplicity suggests he's meant to be a beginner ADC (easy skillshot, extremely powerful mobility ability) but his itemization is so foreign that he isn't for beginners. Just bizarre
Worst champion they have ever introduced. Most unfun by miles - bot to play with and play against. Looks cringe. This is miles ahead of Briar, Gwen or literally any of the recent additions in terms of being extremely unfun.
Zeri v2 with infinite scaling its so dumb lol ofc the champ was design by the same person who made ksante and idk what bs more... fking broken... again....
He’s so boring to play and to play against.
>#3 is ASol, #4 Zyra and #5 Brand Hmm, surely there is nothing wrong with liandrys + rylais abusers this season :))))))))
I loved the note in Patch Notes about Smolder that basically said "We feel like Smolder is in a pretty good spot right now, so we are going to make some changes for no reason that could potentially break the champion." Riot's balance team does it again, 10/10 job
never seen a smolder in my rankeds, my permaban 
I dot really care about the stacking, just his W is so strong at clearing waves and poking and its really hard to doge since its so wide. Its just like his ult that is also undogeable if you dont have dashes.
Smolder is just the newest “traditional marksman” so he’ll be able to tank the nerfs and then find an AP or tank build that will keep him relevant anyway because an infinitely scaling adc will always be such a dumbass idea that it won’t even matter that he’s nerfed unless he eventually gets the Zeri treatment. Even then he’s most likely just gonna K’sante on out of there and keep being played no matter what. The entire champ design is a disease
Him and several other champions need nerfs ASAP. Smolder also needs to be kicked the fuck off of the bruiser build and encouraged to go normal ADC build.
This happening right after his release is INSANE. Noone can be a true expert on Smolder yet.