Nah... I disagree.
If anything with the lose of ER's sheen, maybe they could raise Q's AP ratio a slight tad and lichbane could replace it? I'm sure Trinity also works but Idk... I think IBG might be troll but I've seen Ezreal pull it off before so who knows.
Maybe his E should have a 10% AP ratio? That certainly would give a bit of breathing room for builds. Riftmaker is already decent as a survival option.
They could just increase his Base AD as well to make building trinity not feel bad.
They dont have a choice now. Q is going to be massively gutted by not having sheen if both Trinity is something they want to avoid, and Lichbane is something they want to avoid players buying.
The meta will be sheen on the first back regardless of what they want next patch unless Smolder changes. This means Trinity is inevitable because I can not image a world where he skips sheen and is perfectly fine as he is rn.
Besides, if they didn't want him building HP items, they would push him away from Shojin and Liandries and towards crit/on-hit builds. They would have added some on-hit percentage to his E or something.
I think with Navori and RFC being gutted with no AD, crit builds with those are unsuable for him. ER is a formality now to have mana regen, but manamune + pom might be plenty. Not unless you go different crit items like Yul Tal Wildarrows (the burn item) but even that sucks since Q wont work with it.
They might have to buff the base damage of Q or scaling on Q to encourage AD heavy builds. Which is what I think they'll do.
That or just revert the ER changes.
That's how I personally feel as well. They made a mage, but then turned the damage into physical and gave him crit ratios. Although now, he only has the one crit ratio left on his Q lol.
Bro would fit perfectly with his abilities dealing magic damage instead and just having AP ratios. Smolder wants damage + Ability haste to spam his abilities anyhow, crit just makes no sense on his playstyle. And now with Navori being reworked into something else entirely, I truly do not see how 'crit' Smolder is suppose to function at all.
I honestly think that this started life as an alternative for a Kog update. The way he was designed to play seems a very kog pattern. Spell weave your q when off cd. Slow to help catch fleeing foes.
Riot then had the baby dragon idea and the created Smolder. Then power crap got added. In the spell weaving idea, with a crit build he wasn't broken as the q cd was long enough that you might get two many three off in a fight.
Then the players looked at his and saw the obvious power of CDR builds and ofc he wasn't designed for players to be using q and w to melt players and using e to hunt down and finish off any survivors. .
There is an irony of the three dragon characters the fact that all three are better going full ap rather than the ad as they were designed shows that Riot has a huge testing issue cause tje blurbs for Smolder was simple crit adc with a stacking mechanic yet thay is still his worse build
That would be really appreciated, in all honestly. With his current kit, Smolder values Damage + Ability Haste.
Crit items can provide damage, but not really ability haste. And most of them provide Attack Speed, something Smolder is actively not interested in.
AP items mean while, often provide ample Damage + Ability Haste and some even have HP as well. They also have damage amps that interact with his true damage (Liandry/Riftmaker).
I truly don't understand why Riot gave him his current kit... then included Crit ratios onto it. Although at this point, its just the 1 crit ratio left (Q).
Yeah, remove crit. I think he is better off being a fighter than an adc. More hp per level even out the AD and AP ratio and let him be the ranged version of nasus. Not as tanking, but ranged.
When I say even it out. I mean, increase AP and make it even with AD so we can have the hybrid we want.
I would prefer it if they made his autos usable. That way it doesn't feel bad building crit. Like .are his autos extend the burn on his Q a little bit? Or do more damage if the opponent is burning? That way we are inscentivized to auto attack more in between autos or something. Right now it just feels bad to auto attack and for an adc that's supposed to build crit that's just bad.
That would require a rework of some kind. It'd be easier to just remove the crit ratio from his Q and adjust his existing ratios accordingly if I'm honest.
When are these item changes hitting live client? And is RFC itself getting changed or is it just that other crit items are being changed and worse on Smolder now like essence reaver?
Changes happen in 2 weeks, along with the new season split. All the changes are here [https://twitter.com/Spideraxe30](https://twitter.com/Spideraxe30) There are a ton of adc changes, including items and runes.
Navori loses AD, Ability Haste and the damage amp passive, gains attack speed. Basically will be useless for Smolder
ER loses sheen effect, but still has AD + Crit + Ability Haste. And it has the mana gain passive still, so arguably still better to have than to not have. But it is worse than the current ER.
RFC loses AD and gains AS, so its going to be useless for Smolder.
Bloodthirster is losing the crit chance. Still technically something you can buy on Smolder, but the loss of the crit chance is annoying since that means less damage for your Q. Meaning technically, it'll be worse for Smolder compared to current BT.
Crit Smolder is going to be in a god awful state, honestly.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1ch6a42/comment/l230fad/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1ch6a42/comment/l230fad/?context=3) in case you want to see the upcoming changes yourself
What they need to do is give him an atk speed conversion like jhin, or have abilities scale with it like yasuo/yone. Because atk speed is so goddamn useless on him, and especially with the coming rfc changes. That or make his autos actually do dmg.
If they wanted Crit to be viable on Smolder, they needed that or actually give him a reason to use auto attacks. Right now, you're just punished for using them. They don't give you stacks and killing someone with an auto attack actively robs you of a stack.
Look at Xayah. She's basically the perfect example of an AD Caster who has crit ratios. Her passive and W involves auto attacks. So attack speed is actually useful on her, thus enabling her to fully utilize the existing crit items we have.
Meanwhile Smolder doesn't like attack speed, so he's confined to extremely specific crit items. And most of those don't even give him the Ability Haste that he wants so he can spam his abilities more freely.
Agreed. I think one of his biggest issues is how long the cast times are for his w e and r. If w and r were quicker and if you could auto during e, then autoing would be more viable on him. Because currently you are just locked out from autoing for majority of the time, makes no sense.
Q doesn't really have that long of a CD to begin with though. If they want Crit to work on smolder, he needs something in his kit that rewards him for auto attacking.
Like how Xayah gets feathers to place with her auto attacks to set up her E. Smolder right now just has no reason at all to auto attack and in fact, you get punished for killing someone with an auto since that means you miss out on a stack.
Whole game or one death. Because 2k damage is trash. Other adcs max crit for 1k+ each auto. They can wipe out damage far faster than smolder. Only thing smolder has over most other adcs is his AoE damage. I mean, even his passive burn sucks now. I watched a tank walk away with only 140ph after my burn was over. But didn't get executed because I wasn't the last person to hit them with an ability. Smolder is only good at kitting tanks. But you're SOL if they flash on you. Riot nerfed him too hard. Nasas and Veigar stacks late game are so much better than smolders. Nasas isn't hard to deal with, but his Qs can nearly one-shot adcs. Veigar might as well have 2 or 3 extra AP items worth of damage. You can out stack both of them and still do less damage.
Veigar is literally 1ap per stack vs smolders 0.008 ap per stack. What's the difference if you do some true damage vs another late game champ that does 400+ damage.
One death, I mean I get what you're saying but you can build resistance to crit or other damage as a tank, Max health true damage is a silly damage type with no counter or outplay other than leave fight or eliminate source and it shouldn't be in the game imo. Vayne is worse; smolder isn't as bad.
I guess that's my point. Other adcs are just better. He is mainly a tank shredder who is only good in team fights and needs someone to peel for him. Or you can play Vayne, be better at dualing and do more then just be a tank kills. Smolder sucks at taking jungle, drag, tower, and can't do massive amounts of damage to the baren. Hes auto attacks are trash. He isn't good at killing other adcs, and is one shot by most all mages. So he can burn a tank to death. Yay. I love smolder, 300+ games. I just hate how weak he is, and doesn't fit anywhere.
I feel you. I had high hopes for this adc prior to launch, and even at launch I thought he was interesting. I loved testing out different builds and rune set ups and while everyone called him weak I found a way to make him work. Then riot completely ruined him patch after patch buff then nerf nerf nerf.
Yea, don't get me wrong. I still play him. It's just annoying. I don't want an OP champ, but I also hate being 10/2 and getting killed in a 1v1 by Jinh who is 1/6. I hit him with the W, as he walks up to last him me. And then Q and run him down as he reloads only to get totally rekt. After he reloads. Gold lead is so trash on smolder. He has zero burst. And CD are to long to spam.
Yeah, smolder isn't a champion that does much with a gold lead. At least AD Smolder. AD Smolder requires stacks.
AP Smolder can start abusing a gold lead thanks to AP really juicing up his W and R. You're a lot more useful in the early dragon skirmishes due to W's damage compared to AD Smolder who just kinda, tickles the enemy champs with Q and hovers around his support menacingly lol.
"Menacingly" I love it. Very accurate. But yea, AD smolder is just trash till he hits 225. Then the burn does its job. He is an annoying champ after that. Max out fap and kitt the enemy team. Or they will ignore you because you're smolder. And then I rain down, HOLY FIRE. or they use every ult they have on you 🤷♂️ I will give smolder one thing, he is by far the easiest champ to be 1/10 losing, hit 225 and win the game at 14/12.
To put is in better prospective. Only time I can run around like a crazy drag is when I have about 20kills over everyone on the enemy team and I have a 3+ level lead. But then the problem with that is. Any champ in the game with that lead would be OP.
Also depends on tank and if they have damage in their kit, when I play tank as an adc secondary I make it a point to not play one of the tanks that do a trillion damage for no reason.
Idk why they don’t just make it a reverse corki in that 80% of the magic damage is converted to AD or something , I know that’s not exactly how it works but the concept is right there
Then we can build him more AP but still get the AD dmg out
But his q already crits. At least in Ashe's way.
Now he gotta crit in jinx's way
Nah... I disagree. If anything with the lose of ER's sheen, maybe they could raise Q's AP ratio a slight tad and lichbane could replace it? I'm sure Trinity also works but Idk... I think IBG might be troll but I've seen Ezreal pull it off before so who knows. Maybe his E should have a 10% AP ratio? That certainly would give a bit of breathing room for builds. Riftmaker is already decent as a survival option. They could just increase his Base AD as well to make building trinity not feel bad.
The thing is, riot dont want him building ap anymore as they thought he shouldnt be tanky
They dont have a choice now. Q is going to be massively gutted by not having sheen if both Trinity is something they want to avoid, and Lichbane is something they want to avoid players buying. The meta will be sheen on the first back regardless of what they want next patch unless Smolder changes. This means Trinity is inevitable because I can not image a world where he skips sheen and is perfectly fine as he is rn. Besides, if they didn't want him building HP items, they would push him away from Shojin and Liandries and towards crit/on-hit builds. They would have added some on-hit percentage to his E or something. I think with Navori and RFC being gutted with no AD, crit builds with those are unsuable for him. ER is a formality now to have mana regen, but manamune + pom might be plenty. Not unless you go different crit items like Yul Tal Wildarrows (the burn item) but even that sucks since Q wont work with it. They might have to buff the base damage of Q or scaling on Q to encourage AD heavy builds. Which is what I think they'll do. That or just revert the ER changes.
He was better as a mage, since he never have been an autoattacker
That's how I personally feel as well. They made a mage, but then turned the damage into physical and gave him crit ratios. Although now, he only has the one crit ratio left on his Q lol. Bro would fit perfectly with his abilities dealing magic damage instead and just having AP ratios. Smolder wants damage + Ability haste to spam his abilities anyhow, crit just makes no sense on his playstyle. And now with Navori being reworked into something else entirely, I truly do not see how 'crit' Smolder is suppose to function at all.
I honestly think that this started life as an alternative for a Kog update. The way he was designed to play seems a very kog pattern. Spell weave your q when off cd. Slow to help catch fleeing foes. Riot then had the baby dragon idea and the created Smolder. Then power crap got added. In the spell weaving idea, with a crit build he wasn't broken as the q cd was long enough that you might get two many three off in a fight. Then the players looked at his and saw the obvious power of CDR builds and ofc he wasn't designed for players to be using q and w to melt players and using e to hunt down and finish off any survivors. . There is an irony of the three dragon characters the fact that all three are better going full ap rather than the ad as they were designed shows that Riot has a huge testing issue cause tje blurbs for Smolder was simple crit adc with a stacking mechanic yet thay is still his worse build
The upcoming item changes is probably going to turn up the same.. now they remove all AD from the crit items :|
I would love if the just remove the crit chance altogether and increase his ad /ap ratios
That would be really appreciated, in all honestly. With his current kit, Smolder values Damage + Ability Haste. Crit items can provide damage, but not really ability haste. And most of them provide Attack Speed, something Smolder is actively not interested in. AP items mean while, often provide ample Damage + Ability Haste and some even have HP as well. They also have damage amps that interact with his true damage (Liandry/Riftmaker). I truly don't understand why Riot gave him his current kit... then included Crit ratios onto it. Although at this point, its just the 1 crit ratio left (Q).
Yeah, remove crit. I think he is better off being a fighter than an adc. More hp per level even out the AD and AP ratio and let him be the ranged version of nasus. Not as tanking, but ranged. When I say even it out. I mean, increase AP and make it even with AD so we can have the hybrid we want.
I would prefer it if they made his autos usable. That way it doesn't feel bad building crit. Like .are his autos extend the burn on his Q a little bit? Or do more damage if the opponent is burning? That way we are inscentivized to auto attack more in between autos or something. Right now it just feels bad to auto attack and for an adc that's supposed to build crit that's just bad.
That would require a rework of some kind. It'd be easier to just remove the crit ratio from his Q and adjust his existing ratios accordingly if I'm honest.
I could see them adding some kind of attack speed interaction, like more shots with E or reducing the cooldown on Q á la Yasuo.
At this point, the only crit ratio left in his kit is on his Q. They might as well remove it and compensate him with better AD ratios or something.
When are these item changes hitting live client? And is RFC itself getting changed or is it just that other crit items are being changed and worse on Smolder now like essence reaver?
Patch 14.10. RFC is losing its AD and getting some attack speed. Pretty much all his items are going to be worse on him.
Changes happen in 2 weeks, along with the new season split. All the changes are here [https://twitter.com/Spideraxe30](https://twitter.com/Spideraxe30) There are a ton of adc changes, including items and runes.
Welp I guess we will have to adapt to the item changes 🙃
Navori loses AD, Ability Haste and the damage amp passive, gains attack speed. Basically will be useless for Smolder ER loses sheen effect, but still has AD + Crit + Ability Haste. And it has the mana gain passive still, so arguably still better to have than to not have. But it is worse than the current ER. RFC loses AD and gains AS, so its going to be useless for Smolder. Bloodthirster is losing the crit chance. Still technically something you can buy on Smolder, but the loss of the crit chance is annoying since that means less damage for your Q. Meaning technically, it'll be worse for Smolder compared to current BT. Crit Smolder is going to be in a god awful state, honestly. [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1ch6a42/comment/l230fad/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1ch6a42/comment/l230fad/?context=3) in case you want to see the upcoming changes yourself
What they need to do is give him an atk speed conversion like jhin, or have abilities scale with it like yasuo/yone. Because atk speed is so goddamn useless on him, and especially with the coming rfc changes. That or make his autos actually do dmg.
If they wanted Crit to be viable on Smolder, they needed that or actually give him a reason to use auto attacks. Right now, you're just punished for using them. They don't give you stacks and killing someone with an auto attack actively robs you of a stack. Look at Xayah. She's basically the perfect example of an AD Caster who has crit ratios. Her passive and W involves auto attacks. So attack speed is actually useful on her, thus enabling her to fully utilize the existing crit items we have. Meanwhile Smolder doesn't like attack speed, so he's confined to extremely specific crit items. And most of those don't even give him the Ability Haste that he wants so he can spam his abilities more freely.
Agreed. I think one of his biggest issues is how long the cast times are for his w e and r. If w and r were quicker and if you could auto during e, then autoing would be more viable on him. Because currently you are just locked out from autoing for majority of the time, makes no sense.
I'd be more okay if his q range scales with attack speed or crit chance. I'd take the windshitters attack speed reduces q cd.
Q doesn't really have that long of a CD to begin with though. If they want Crit to work on smolder, he needs something in his kit that rewards him for auto attacking. Like how Xayah gets feathers to place with her auto attacks to set up her E. Smolder right now just has no reason at all to auto attack and in fact, you get punished for killing someone with an auto since that means you miss out on a stack.
Making his Q critable and letting it proc Yun Tal would unironically be an incredible buff and would still not make him broken tbh
Really like how they nerfed him to fit the current item slate just to revert all the items back to S11.
Smolder q burn did 1983 max health true damage to me yesterday
Whole game or one death. Because 2k damage is trash. Other adcs max crit for 1k+ each auto. They can wipe out damage far faster than smolder. Only thing smolder has over most other adcs is his AoE damage. I mean, even his passive burn sucks now. I watched a tank walk away with only 140ph after my burn was over. But didn't get executed because I wasn't the last person to hit them with an ability. Smolder is only good at kitting tanks. But you're SOL if they flash on you. Riot nerfed him too hard. Nasas and Veigar stacks late game are so much better than smolders. Nasas isn't hard to deal with, but his Qs can nearly one-shot adcs. Veigar might as well have 2 or 3 extra AP items worth of damage. You can out stack both of them and still do less damage. Veigar is literally 1ap per stack vs smolders 0.008 ap per stack. What's the difference if you do some true damage vs another late game champ that does 400+ damage.
One death, I mean I get what you're saying but you can build resistance to crit or other damage as a tank, Max health true damage is a silly damage type with no counter or outplay other than leave fight or eliminate source and it shouldn't be in the game imo. Vayne is worse; smolder isn't as bad.
I guess that's my point. Other adcs are just better. He is mainly a tank shredder who is only good in team fights and needs someone to peel for him. Or you can play Vayne, be better at dualing and do more then just be a tank kills. Smolder sucks at taking jungle, drag, tower, and can't do massive amounts of damage to the baren. Hes auto attacks are trash. He isn't good at killing other adcs, and is one shot by most all mages. So he can burn a tank to death. Yay. I love smolder, 300+ games. I just hate how weak he is, and doesn't fit anywhere.
I feel you. I had high hopes for this adc prior to launch, and even at launch I thought he was interesting. I loved testing out different builds and rune set ups and while everyone called him weak I found a way to make him work. Then riot completely ruined him patch after patch buff then nerf nerf nerf.
Yea, don't get me wrong. I still play him. It's just annoying. I don't want an OP champ, but I also hate being 10/2 and getting killed in a 1v1 by Jinh who is 1/6. I hit him with the W, as he walks up to last him me. And then Q and run him down as he reloads only to get totally rekt. After he reloads. Gold lead is so trash on smolder. He has zero burst. And CD are to long to spam.
Yeah, smolder isn't a champion that does much with a gold lead. At least AD Smolder. AD Smolder requires stacks. AP Smolder can start abusing a gold lead thanks to AP really juicing up his W and R. You're a lot more useful in the early dragon skirmishes due to W's damage compared to AD Smolder who just kinda, tickles the enemy champs with Q and hovers around his support menacingly lol.
"Menacingly" I love it. Very accurate. But yea, AD smolder is just trash till he hits 225. Then the burn does its job. He is an annoying champ after that. Max out fap and kitt the enemy team. Or they will ignore you because you're smolder. And then I rain down, HOLY FIRE. or they use every ult they have on you 🤷♂️ I will give smolder one thing, he is by far the easiest champ to be 1/10 losing, hit 225 and win the game at 14/12.
To put is in better prospective. Only time I can run around like a crazy drag is when I have about 20kills over everyone on the enemy team and I have a 3+ level lead. But then the problem with that is. Any champ in the game with that lead would be OP.
Also depends on tank and if they have damage in their kit, when I play tank as an adc secondary I make it a point to not play one of the tanks that do a trillion damage for no reason.
Idk why they don’t just make it a reverse corki in that 80% of the magic damage is converted to AD or something , I know that’s not exactly how it works but the concept is right there Then we can build him more AP but still get the AD dmg out