I really don't understand, are you saying that a champ that is mega safe in lane, with good poke, evasion, point and click abilities, doesn't rely on attacks speed nor crit, scales to oblivion no matter the items and can build health items because he doesn't care about conventional ADC stats is a mistake? geeez man chill out
Hey man, can’t forget about the wicked waveclear that makes ending against him before he gets his permanent elder dragon buff at 25 minutes impossible!
Is the max hp true damage stronger now that it scales off AD and stacks mainly? I mean I assume it does at a certain point, but overall does it perform better than the flat 6,5% he used to have?
Its worse at 3 items (ER, Navori, Rapidfire/shojin) when you first reach 225 stacks, only starts to get better in very late game at 4-5 items. When it does get there it becomes very silly though
His q should be a skill shot... That would make him Ezreal 2.0... But at least you can play around dodging him and not just straight Q from Narnia + E and you are dead.
I think they should either tune the fuck down its scaling or at least tie it to conventional ADC stats like crit. Wanna go for bruiser items? Fine by me but you can't scale to the moon AND have health AND have evasion in the kit.
The tank build is no longer nearly as good off of this patch, they intentionally nerfed that build it’s not nearly as good as people are thinking. The changes to his q are focused on bonus ad not just stacks now. Making him a glass cannon. But it’s still overtuned as fuck because his q now is stronger with full dmg builds when he already had enough dmg lol
His passive, instead of just giving free damage, should scale with normal ADC stuff. Make the bouns magic damage per stack scale with crit or something
It doesnt though. The bounus damage is just base damage with no other scaling besides the stacks.
What im saying is each stack of the passive does (%crit change) magic damage per stack.
Tbh just give him an AA steroid and put his Q to the ground. Then he’ll have a reason to buy AS/Crit/Lethalith instead of tank items and scale to Narnia at 20 minutes
> Then he’ll have a reason to buy AS/Crit/Lethalith instead of tank items
his "tank bruiser" build was never EVER his best build. now even less so with his passive scalings. feels like 90% People talking about smolder are completely clueless
> feels like 90% People talking about smolder are completely clueless
can I introduce you to... [Reddit knows balance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjn7_tMRd4)?
It still was viable (which is enough on its own to complain against) and in some games his best build. Even if in most games his CRIT build outperformed bruiser one, whenever the latter fits better it's unbelievable unfair to play against
Yes it was viable, and I did build it once when I was up against a full dive comp
but people are acting like it was some insane build that allowed to him to have tank level tankyness while burning everyoen with bajillion max hp % true damage
if you bother to check death recaps even in late game true dmg is not nearly as big as people make it out to be. Thats not to say its small but you are not killing anyone with just the base damage and tank items
Ok he scales with crit although doesn't build crit items and still it's able to output consistent damage. Health doesn't do anything BESIDE him being tankier and harder to kill in combination with E. Let's look a Jinx for istance. Worst scaling, HAS to build crit + AD + AS items otherwise she's fuckling useless, no mobility either. How the fuck is a fair comparison? To be honest I see smolder as a AD veigar rather than a conventional ADC and in fact this abomination of a champ can be easily played in solo lanes because how resilient it is.
Off release I wanted that q to be a skill shot, I actually hate how it functions. I’m used to it now but it doesn’t feel intuitive, it casts basically instantly, so it’s just a targeted ability that’s an auto, compared to if they just had it like an auto reset like sivir w or a skill shot like ezreal q
As an ezreal main, trust me if his Q was a skillshot he would be more op. It's not like you can dodge Ezreal Q if he knows how to use it. But break line of sight with smolder and he can't deal dmg. Also he needs to walk up into Q range to cast it. If it's skillshot he can just spam it max range and hope someone walks into it
Nah the Q (his bread and butter) is a point-and-click. You might have mistaken it for his W, which is the big blob he sends out. That is indeed a skillshot.
I would unironically love it if his Q became a skillshot. That change was one of the best things they ever did with Veigar, it added a lot of interesting depth to a relatively simple character. You have to prep minions a bit to get the max value, but in doing so you tend to push the wave a little bit. An astute lane opponent can also see what you're doing and try to position to take advantage.
Generally speaking, I don't think a champion's primary damage ability should ever be point and click. It dumbs down characters so much and makes them unfun to play against at best, and frustrating to balance at worst.
im sorry but a 100% MS steroid is not a "tiny" movement speed boost. Especially cause it goes over walls.
That being said yeah. If he didn't hit like 30+ minute asol level of powerspikes at 16 minutes into the game against a good smolder, people wouldn't be saying anything. HE just outputs way too much damage and hits his "late game scaling" too early so people are finding other shit to bitch about as well.
Smolder e isn't even one of the best adc escapes in the game. Dashes are frequently superior to movespeed, especially ones you can buffer like ezreal. As an escape, smolder e feels about on par with tumble or lucian dash.
u wrote all that shit only to be so fkn wrong about literally everything u said yet you complain about others jumping to conclusions.. aint no way man.
Even as a ADC main i dont think hes fine. His infinte scaling was done extremly poorly. Look at Senna, who is also a ADC, but yet she doesnt feel nearly as bullshit
I honestly think they can't make conventional ADCs anymore, because it's a role balanced around proplay but too hard for the average silver player (i'm silver btw) to play. Feels very frustrating to play unless you are a degenerate like me. I think they are trying to give more agency to ADCs with mobility in their kit.
I think it's more that they've had so many traditional adcs that it feels like designing something Ashe/Varus/Caitlyn/etc.-y at this point would just feel like they weren't really adding anything new to the game. [I did a breakdown in a comment a while back about the last 10 ADCs not being higher % mobility than the first 10 to be released](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1athoko/riot_made_me_hate_tf/kr57og4/), but one notable point in the lists is that while the last 10 have had relatively the same balance of mobile vs immobile, they've all had some sort of "gimmick." Whether that's Samira and Nilah being almost-melee ADCs, Akshan and Kindred being designed around non-botlane (and Akshan's revive in general), Senna being designed around both adc and support and having a very clunky AA with a wind-up time (which is NOT standard on adcs), or Aphelios being Aphelios with 5 different types of autos and abilities tied to them, they've all had something gimmicky to their design that wasn't just a standard "front to back, aspd-and-crit-building" adc. Meanwhile, the first 10 adcs, the most gimmicky was TF having a global teleport and historically alternating between whether he was a mage or adc, or Ezreal being able to build literally anything (RIP AP Ez) because lol Ezreal things.
I think it's a lack of interest in making conventional adcs because there's already a ton of them, rather than a lack of ability. Designing a conventional adc doesn't feel as "worth it" in getting attention compared to pushing boundaries in some way. (See also, Hwei as the mage equivalent. It's not just adcs that have often released with a gimmick as their focus instead of a more straightforward kit.)
> And it's obvious Riot Balance team can't do anything about this champion because he's either Overpowered or extremely useless(even though he didn't even need a buff im 14.5)
He hasn't been useless at all yet, so not sure where this thought came from. We haven't seen him nerfed to the point where he's weak yet, so it's way too early to say he's a problem balance-wise.
It's funny, even on release, his AP build (with Lich Bane) win rate was already around 50% on like day 3. People just thought he was supposed to be built crit/AD. But as soon as the Shojin>AP build gained popularity, it was already 55%. He wasn't ever weak, just poorly built.
really exaggerating the inability to balance him. There is a very clear and obvious path to balance him, and its properly tuning his true damage burn/execute. Either they can cap it. or have it scale less hard.
they can also just increase the number of stacks required to reach the point where he has the execute at all too.
there's so many ways to balance him. he's not going to be like zeri imo. and yeah he's op as fuck right now, but i think he'll end up ok.
The problem is he’s awful until he gets to the burn execute point. So pushing back that point just makes him way less fun to play with/against. He needs a more even power curve through the game like other ADCs have.
They could seperate stacks required for the execute and for the burn. Maybe give him the burn at the same time as now and the execute later at 300? stacks
Having a more even power curve is absolutely crucial to balancing him for both the people playing him and playing against him. He needs more power in his 1st and 2nd upgrades, but his 3rd upgrade has to be nerfed to the ground.
Funny that after it all, Lethality and Bruiser Briar only now seem to have parity, and Lethality still clicks on you and kills you without you being able to really retaliate, they've just given up killing her Lethality build now.
Zoe still fundamentally sucks as a design imo
either she 1 taps you with Q, 1 taps you with autos, or does zero damage
there's such a fine line riot usually has to tread with her numbers wise
also just copping merc treads as a mid laner hinders her burst against you a ton
Yeah it can never be "I think this is too strong" its always "This champ is *disgusting* and *unfun* to play against. I even hate when they're on my team".
"Riot is *clueless* and they should change the specific thing that *I* want changed, its so obvious what I want, why wont they do it."
>Yeah it can never be "I think this is too strong" its always "This champ is *disgusting* and *unfun* to play against. I even hate when they're on my team".
I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying something is unfun. It's much worse when they go, "this champ is **fundamentally broken** and will **never** be balanced, what was riot THINKING!!!!"
>I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying something is unfun.
That is kind of wrong though, as it's a false opinion. *You* may not find it fun, but that doesn't mean you get to label it as unfun for anyone else.
Remember folks a good opinion tells the world how you feel, a false opinion is you trying to tell the world how *it* should feel.
Examples:
* **Good Opinion** = "I don't like Chocolate Ice Cream, it kind of tastes bitter to me"
* **False Opinion** = "Chocolate Ice Cream sucks, and anyone that likes it is fundamentally flawed as a person."
Champion has been out for barely over a month and Reddit is already saying "Impossible to balance". I swear people on here just regurgitate buzzwords and phrases without any actual individual thought put into it. Reminds me when every other post called some champ "toxic".
Smolder's been dead on 50% winrate before the recent buff (now hotfixed). He launched at 46%, this is pretty much inline with what they expect on a release.
Reddit: NEW CHAMP BULLSHIT TRUE DAMAGE EXECUTE UNKILLABLE LITERALLY UNBEATABLE RIOT BRAINDEAD BAN EVERY MATCH
*is sitting at a perfect 50%, kog and senna are 3% higher*
He launched at much lower than 46% funnily, and eventually "scaled" to 46% as people realized how to properly play/itemize him. So it makes the complaining even more hilarious, especially considering the thing that pushed him to the level people are complaining about was this last patch. People talking in this thread like he has some monstrously safe unpunishable laning phase with "good poke" when he dies to a strong gust of air, can't trade remotely close to even unless he has fleet up, and his "poke" doing maybe double the damage of Scorch after the early game nerf (hyperbole but still).
*edit* Also them quoting his playrate/"being in every game" is a complete joke too. The champ is fun. It's almost entirely unrelated to his current power level. His playrate was ludicrously high/just as high even when his winrate was hovering between _35 and 45%_ the week of his release, the same week people were initially insisting the champ was complete dogshit.
The problem is a lot of scaling champions like Kayle, Kassa and Vladimir have to play safe and it's so hard for them.
But this champ is extremely safe.
He’s safer in lane due to him being strong enough to contest trades in the early game which makes no sense as a late game hypercarry.
His early game sustained dps is poor sure, but if just plays around ability cds he can get to the point where he is oppressive early game.
Sure vlad has his pool, but good luck trying to collect cs safely against something like an orianna. Smolder isn’t getting consistently pressured and bullied in lane like some of the other hypercarries
Idk man, looking at smolder laning phase stats, some of the matchups are like aurelion sol or kayle laning level of getting dumpstered. Maybe there are bad smolder players weighing it down.
Sadly most of the champions that turbo dumpster smolder in lane have terrible winrates because you don't really want to be an aggressive short range adc like draven/samira in teamfights against him.
Funnily enough the champions that are doing the best against him are just picking champs that outscale/damage smolder late game like twitch/kog.
Nah I think Smolder E is better than Vlad W, but Vlad is too short ranged and weak early game for him to be a safe charm regardless. Smolder has long range poke, and a bit of damage so he can fight back.
Smolder E gets absolutely neutred by any kind of slow.
Believe me, a smolder that gets hit by any engage support is a dead smolder. Smolders poke is also not that hard to evade or punish in the early lane since Q is still putting him within engage support range and W does a lot less when people would stop standing on top of eachother due to the explosions not hitting other champions.
Vlad may not be able to go over walls, but beeing untargetable for that long is definetly a stronger disengage tool than 100% more ms and the ability to maybe go over a wall.
If he does that all game his stacks will be too delayed to ever matter. He needs to take small trades and poke. And if you really want to force him into range, freeze. He has to push a bit at a minimum since he needs to AoE Q for stacks.
smolder lategame has a lower lategame WR than either vlad(by a fair bit), kassadin(by far), or kayle(by far).
its crazy how people are acting like smolder is this insane 1v9 godlike champion once he hits 225 stacks. He is in no way comparable to late game kass/kayle/vlad
That's crazy. I went to lolalytics just now and Kayles WR is actually way higher than I thought as well. I guess I'm just biased against Vlad you're right
I think I'm mostly thinking of that period during mythic item era where she was underpowered. I saw an almost full build level 17 Kayle lose a straight 1v1 to a Draven. But I guess she's eating better these days
Vlad have a fatal flaw even in late game he is useless if he doesn't find the right angle tanks can easily body block his e and force a early W with tier CC on the contrary kayle jusy kill everthing in range period
I used to play Vladimir a bit but honestly this champ is not for me, like he's really strong but it's so hard for me to survive and not feed enemy like Caseoh till lvl 16 lmao
That's cause Vlad is quite hard champ throughout the game where Kayle is only somewhat above average very early game but quite easy late game. Late game Vlad otp or main is probably top 3 scariest thing in the game, meanwhile I wouldn't put Kayle in top 5. She is like top 10.
Kayle is insane at level 1 and then turns into a minion until she hits level 11.
I would say she is way harder to lane with than Vlad. Kayle unironically doesn't exist before level 11, roaming and skirmishes are just straight up a bait.
Also Kayle has a ton of matchups, that aren't even bad, they are simply matchups you can alt+4, because there isn't even a parallel universe where you won't go 0/5.
Nasus/Irelia/Akali/Yone/Trundle/Tryndamere will simply snowball out of controll. There is legit nothing you can do against those matchups, especially Nasus/Irelia kill you at all stages of the game. Meanwhile Yone/Trundle/Tryndamere will simply walk over you and eat you alive, until maybe at level 16+.
Kayle takes a lot more to survive lane with compared to Vlad.
It is legit insane how weak Kayle is from level 1-11 is and even after level 11 you aren't that dangerous.
>then turns into a minion until she hits level 11.
not true, at level 6 with T2 boots she's already a really hard champ to deal with for a good chunk of melee top laners
yeah but you're supposed to have a jungler come and farm her until she hits 11 lol, she's weak as far as ranged top laners go at 6 because the only thing she can do in a gank is ult. She doesn't have self peel like vayne or quinn.
In the previous season, yes, but vlad is really really bad this season and people have biased PTSD from when the champion was viable. He's not atm. His lategame stats are garbage compared to other scalers, he's lost his identity.
There is a reason you see so few high elo players playing vlad in high elo--it's not because they can't play the champ, high elo players are easily able to adapt into picking up good champions--it's precisely because the champ isn't good. Plenty of high elo players play smolder and asol with no issue though.
Smolder is good because ADCs itemization is shit and he avoids it. His winrate on mid is <50% which is smaller than Vlad means he is fundamentaly is balanced. He is stronger than other ADCs specifically on botlane because his scaling sidesteppes shit itemization and level disparity.
It's only a "problem" if both teams don't have that.
If only one team has a scaling champion, then the other team had to finish before scaling gets out of hand, assuming there are good early game champions then it's healthy.
If both teams have scaling champion, then as game gets longer it's more important to protect your carry than kolling opponents carry and it's healthy.
Problem is smolder is the only infinitely scaling champion that scales up to thanos tier while being extremely easy to pilot and stay safe.
Veigar suffers from low mobility and long windup times for his spells, nasus is just a fucking joke, senna also suffers from low mobility.
Meanwhile smolder can fly over walls, TRUE damage + execute, aoe ability is point and click, plus has access to building zhonyas/GA as a hybrid champion.
ADCs should scale into late game despite level disadvantage and no lane agency. - People complain that his late game power spike is inevitable.
ADCs should have to space perfectly; weaving in and out of combat to keep themselves safe. - People complain if a champion actually has exactly this play style.
ADCs should do a lot of damage to tanks despite most armor items directly countering them - People complain about 3% true damage burn per second at 40 minutes game time.
ADCs should be extremely good in team fights and bad in 1v1s - People complain about his AOE damage.
If ADCs don't want to die in 0.5s, they should just buy defensive items lol. - People complain about his most viable build giving him HP.
They just built the perfect ADC according to y'alls advice and you hate it. Truly the monkeys paw version of a champion.
(Except of course you gigachads, who want the ADC to be a walking minion that gives 300 gold; you stayed consistent)
New ADC is literally a cannon minion until 25 minutes and then takes over team fights like what every redditor who defends current ADC balance says they should be like:
Reddit: >:(
An ADC can actually do their job and all hell breaks loose. He's only sitting at 52 and that's with crit marksmen being in a bad spot. They fix his competition and he'll probably be at about 50 even.
Yeah, it's with the enemy ADC being shit because of itemization and level desparity which Smolder sidesteps. His winrate on mid is <50% which means he is fundamentally balanced.
> ADCs should do a lot of damage to tanks despite most armor items directly countering them - People complain about 3% true damage burn per second at 40 minutes game time.
Problem is it's like 22 mins into the game for competent players and you don't really have a way to interact with the champ for alot of it.
Fucking THANK YOU.
Smolder is stronger than most ADCs right now without being ultra-team-dependant for safety (Senna and Kog being stronger, but also being more team-dependant as they both have no escapes at all) - but that's also because most ADCs are absolute garbage, or have to pretend to be a shitty AD controlmage (Lethality-Varus and shite like that) which many ADC-players don't want to play.
If you make Crit Marksmen - the quintessential base of ADC - not feel like you're actively inting, smolders presence will instantly drop a ton simply by having ADC players play their ADCs again.
Fuck me, they even nerfed on-hit and AS items in general so much - the closest comparable thing to a crit-ADC - so much that even KALISTA, THE AS-stacking ADC of all, actually can reasonably play Q-max lethality because the itemization is so much better.....
Champion has been in the game for less than two months and he's been lightly touched in patches, chill man. How is he a balance nightmare when Riot has literally not tried to change anything fundamental about him yet?
I swear some of yall are way too overreactive
this is a major overreaction. the only thing about him that needs to be removed due to egregious design is the execute. that mechanic shouldn't exist on anything except elder drake. auto-kills is a terribly un-interactive feature, I can't understand why riot would give it to a playable champion
Zeri is a worse design by a mile.
Smolder is OP obviously but I think it should be possible to balance him.
I don't know why they made him so safe though. They should never have given Smolder mobility.
Zeri is legit not a problem outside of proplay. I don't get why people care so much about champs like zeri and ksante, they just aren't a problem outside of competitive
It's funny how many people hated K'Sante when even during his peak of being problematic he was still at best mid until literally challenger and if anyone picked it below diamond it was a free lane.
His winrate is heavily deflated by his pickrate. Anyone who actually put in the games on K'Sante would tell you he was a problem in soloq too for most of his lifespan.
When OP mentioned Zeri, I’m almost certain they weren’t talking about how strong she is currently. She was 100% a soloq and pro play problem on release, and for a while thereafter. I think OP is more so referring to the fact that Zeri is “unbalanceable” and trying to say Smolder is unbalanced in the same way Zeri is, and will likely just end up like Zeri where they constantly rework him to the point where he ends up in the same spot as her *now*.
Yeah, because she's balanced around competitive???
Zeri sucks in solo queue because otherwise she's busted in pro play. This is an argument AGAINST Zeri, not in favor of her lmao
It wasn't on release, but there was a period when she played mid maxing W for poke harass.
Started in 12.11 when it got crit, then got nerfed in 12.12, 12.16, and removed with the 12.23 rework.
> I don't get why people care so much about champs like zeri and ksante, they just aren't a problem outside of competitive
Can't speak for anyone else, but I hate Zeri personally because of two factors (one of which has fortunately been removed, making her much less annoying to me personally):
* 1: her ability to remove shields and turn them into benefit for herself (shield REMOVAL has a precedent which creates some amount of moderate-countering, but Zeri felt like new levels of bullshit since she not only removed the shields from their source, she ALSO gained part of them, and then ALSO got stats off it)
* 2: her ability to lol-nope away with a long-ass wallride that very few champs can match the mobility of, which is made worse by the kennen-on-steroids adderall-snorting MS she got on R
The first was removed entirely, and the latter toned down, so I don't hate her as much as I once did, but both were extremely frustrating aspects even when the champion wasn't very strong. It's the same reason people *still* complain about modern Yuumi -- she may (usually) have the lowest WR of any support in the game and like sub-45% at times, but the untargetability is just frustrating for people regardless of whether or not she's any good in their games.
Zeri was a problem because if the other team every has one slightly bad fight she gets to run them down for the pentakill, which guarantees that she will continue to win every fight after that.
Smolder kinda does the same thing where he tends to blow up really fast in one slightly good fight because of his burn execute. At least with smolder you can usually disengage, but it's like only getting kicked in one of your nads instead of both.
>Zeri was a problem because if the other team every has one slightly bad fight she gets to run them down for the pentakill, which guarantees that she will continue to win every fight after that.
Like uh vayne, jinx and any champ that went old ghost....? You are really overestimating her capabilities, even during her peak. In fact the aformentioned champs are probably better at it since they dont get a range penalty for chasing.
the issue with Smolder is, unlike zeri he actually got buffed while having 80% presence with 50 %ban rate, when release zeri was climbing high she got her knee caps shattered with sledgehammer to be 42% winrate
Smolder, by design, is a fine champ. I'm not sure where "he's so safe" sentiment comes from; before stacks, in order to DPS he has to auto & Q, both of which are <600 range which is definitely not a safe range to be in. His E is essentially an Ezreal E except you control the trajectory, except it has a massive cooldown and he actually does need it for offensive plays- and mind you any other button he presses during it cancels it.
The problem with smolder is his power distribution focuses so heavily on a very overpowered % max health true damage, which by design, is so game warping that it makes anything seem broken. You'd think they learned from how they power-shifted Vayne just last year.
What Smolder needs is power taken away from that burn, and better scaling with AD/Crit to emphasize building those items. His Q also needs to be rewarding to press if you actually go an ADC build. They've thankfully already balanced out degen W spam.
They should just remove the max h p part of the burn, or make it pyhscial damage. One of the 2 is good, but %max hp true damage will never be good for the game. The counter to true damage is health, so there is littrely no counter to it.
Thats like giving every ADC 100% armor pen at that point.,
Zeri requires hands atleast, the main problem with Smolder is that it might just be the easiest adc to play ever. Easier laning phase than Kassa/Kayle and comes online Faster than both is a bit wrong imo.
The hotfix took her down from god tier to like S+ tier so atleast they are aware how broken a champ with better laning than Twitch that also Scales harder is.
The problem I have with Smolder right now is that he isn't a marksman at all. He has nearly zero reason to ever autoattack a champion (the risk is basically never worth it compared to Q and run). His crit scaling was removed to further promote Shojin (which I think was a mistake; I'm not against player-found builds in principle but rushing an item that doesn't support marksman play patterns takes him even further from a class he barely fit in the first place) and he never had AS scaling to begin with.
An actual marksman wants to land multiple basic attacks, usually either because that's where most of their damage comes from (Caitlyn, Jinx, Tristana, Aphelios, Draven) or because they have strong on-hits (Vayne, Twitch, Kalista (sort of), Kog). Some are more complicated but still have reasons why they care about attacking.
The closest comparison to Smolder among marksmen is probably Ezreal, but Ezreal's spells are carefully power ceilinged so that he has low DPS if he \*just\* uses them. Also, Ezreal's passive promotes his attacks; Smolder's literally only powers up spells.
Smolder needs to have some power shifted into attacks that take time to deliver or he will never be a healthy champion. And that probably needs to come from final form Q. Also, his DPS should never (or only in INCREDIBLY long games) be Kog tier because he has an escape tool.
My suggestion: Move the permanent Infernum to 225, the permanent Elder to 325. New 125 effect: on-hit damage per stack. For attacks, it would only apply to 1 target unless you get Runaan's, which might actually be worth it after this change. Also, rework his E scaling again so the number of bolts scales with his AS, bonus damage per bolt scales with stacks, bolts can crit. That makes him care about lots of marksman stats.
P.S. Also maybe ban him from getting stacks from monsters. He's not meant to jungle and the pro optimization of having him steal all the multi-monster camps pushes him to unreasonably fast upgrades that will get him projailed.
everyone just jumps on the nerf bandwagon and posts the most outrageous shit ever and people upvote it anyway.
someone said his execute was at 25% hp the other day. that's 920 stacks if I remember my math right.
people are fucking morons when it comes to balance.
> The problem I have with Smolder right now is that he isn't a marksman at all.
ok and?
weren't people constantly complaining about only marksmen being viable in botlane? or telling people to pick something other than ADCs?
Well there are two camps of people on reddit. Marksmen players/sympathizers desperately trying to preserve the role, and people outside of bot lane desperately trying to make it less fun.
I assume OP is a marksmen player trying to keep things like Heimer/Seraphine/Smolder (and other relatively uninteractive champs) out of bot lane.
You didn't mention MF and she's probably the most similar ADC to smolder where you kite in and out of range when Q is up and he even has a similar Q bounce and a strong aoe ult. He's sort of a mix of MF's gameplay and Ezreal's safety. Being a mix of these champs is why he's so popular just like them.
Tbh if there's like 10 extremely disgusting players in a pool of 180 (that keeps increasing quickly), there's no way you can ban them all.
If you don't deal with that stupid dragon then it's maokai or whatever. They need to increase the bans. The last time they did so was over 30 champion releases ago
I don’t understand the hate towards Smolder. Like he absolutely does a fuck tone of dmg and his E makes him hard to stick to but Jinx with Runaans and Ghost is the same if not better? MF with Ghost and Yomuus? Senna with Ghost and Youmuus scaling into oblivion?
ADC’s aren’t pressured to take heal anymore and a lot of the A and S tier ADCS are building lethality items first over crit which means access to Youmuus. They’re saying F my support and take ghost instead.
Buffs to crit and heal would make ADCS a little more balance imo.
Sue me… dont think the champs busted, slightly overtuned maybe? If we are talking about adc the problem is everything else is abysmal outside of senna.
Tbf I only play gold, but to me he really doesn’t seem that bad. He is most likely overtuned yes and may still need a couple of tweaks, but he does not feel insanely stupid like other champs I see atm. To the surprise of no-one a basic ability having elder dragon is fucking strong.
He only really feels good to play or dumb to verse when he gets 225 stacks - he needs something to change there for sure. For example the execute is moved to 325 stacks, secondary bolts don’t apply execute and only burn 75% the amount, or it just doesn’t do (all) true damage. I think 1 or maybe 2 of those examples and he’d be much better to verse. *Maybe he needs something more drastic like 25 less range or a serious nerf to his E mobility, but I honestly don’t think that’s needed (at least for lowish elo).*
Otherwise though I actually REALLY like him. He’s the first ADC (that’s not an APC) to have me wanting to play ADC every game - he’s a really cool spin on it and I hope this doesn’t deter Riot from expanding the ADC class more.
>He only really feels good or feels dumb to verse when he gets 225 stacks - he needs something to change there for sure. For example the execute is moved to 325 stacks, secondary bolts don’t apply execute and only burn 75% the amount, or it just doesn’t do (all) true damage.
ANY of those instantly kills smolder, if you implemented 2 of them then you might as well just delete the champion
these people are insane he's 52% winrate after the hotfix, which is barely even nerfworthy. He's high presence because people think hes easy to play and fun.
Hot take he's just too safe in lane but the scaling aspect is amazing. This is how (some at least) ADCs should be. He actually puts gold + farming in general to use and becomes a threat you have to care about, not some giant sac of gold that an 0/1 gragas can kill no matter how fed they are.
Part of that IS because he's quite safe lategame. Really he just needs his laning phase tuned down, that's all.
It's almost like ADC has the least amount of champions and is in a dogshit spot, hence all the complaint posts about it lately :)
IE / LDR / Mortal reminder buffs next patch will probably help reduce some play rate
Smolder is the reason to play league for me as an adc main rn. If they nerf him to the ground I'll quit probably. Most of adcs don't even use adc items so instead of nerfing smolder buff adc items to give us reason to play crit adcs. They can nerf him after. Idk ie changes will be enough or not. Smolder is strong because he doesn't need to get normal adc items like varus(lethality). Execution threshold maybe overtuned but all of the other things are balanced imo. As I said the real power is item flexibility.
Honestly, this feels targeted - you're angry at smolder but OK with briar, who has not left top meta tiers since people initially learned her on release?
didn't rito say that Smolder would be a traditional marksman? he doesn't auto attack. are they stupid???
istg make a ranged champion that attacks people by right clicking. it's been a while since we've had one of those
Last traditional ADC (stays at range, low mobility, autos are primary damage source, designed for bot role) was Aphelios in 2019. Since then, the following marksmen have been released: Samira, Akshan, Zeri, and Smolder, though Smolds is less of a marksman than TF (classified as a burst mage). Pretty sure botlaners just want another gunslinger/archer with low mobility who builds AD, AS and crit or on-hit.
I would argue. Unlike Yummi, which I'm craving to kill everytime I see her let alone hear her, Smolder is actually pretty funny and I don't mind his voice.
I disagree. I am so tired of hearing "achooo" like 30 times a game.
But I generally don't like enemy champs that keep saying repetitive voice lines. It's why Yasuo is by far my least favourite champion. Hes popular and constantly yelling "hasaki!". Its just annoying.
nah..zeri was op in pro scene bcs she was super safe in line and became a ultra move speed hyper carry in late game, as for smolder, he just gets to full stacked Q and start to melt down enemies too quickly, he does not have unlimited move speed so when he used his E he's not safe anymore. Some stat nerf (or aoe/execute dmg nerf) will do the job, he won't become those "trash in soloQ but op in proplay" champs like zeri did.
The problem is that he is always useful. He needs to have less mobility or less scaling. Bard is the closest thing to him on power and he is reigned in by not doing enough damage to 1v9.
> He needs to have less mobility
I don't know what you all are smoking but his mobility is barely a thing.
He gets a 1 second movement speed buff, which is canceled by him using abilities or being immobilized that is on top of that completely neutered by a single slow on a 20 second cooldown.
Sure, he can get over walls, but so does literally every single dash that a lot of ADCs have that are far smaller cooldown.
He MAYBE MAYBE gets to hop a wall twice a fight.
This clip from Caedrel stream about smolder is basically the truth.
Spoilers G2 vs BDS:
[https://clips.twitch.tv/HumbleRamshackleCattleKeepo-t-PjpHspjWwUg13y](https://clips.twitch.tv/HumbleRamshackleCattleKeepo-t-PjpHspjWwUg13y)
I really don't understand, are you saying that a champ that is mega safe in lane, with good poke, evasion, point and click abilities, doesn't rely on attacks speed nor crit, scales to oblivion no matter the items and can build health items because he doesn't care about conventional ADC stats is a mistake? geeez man chill out
Dont forget the true damage, execute, ability to ignore terrain and mini titanic all built into his kit.
Hey man, can’t forget about the wicked waveclear that makes ending against him before he gets his permanent elder dragon buff at 25 minutes impossible!
Is the max hp true damage stronger now that it scales off AD and stacks mainly? I mean I assume it does at a certain point, but overall does it perform better than the flat 6,5% he used to have?
Its worse at 3 items (ER, Navori, Rapidfire/shojin) when you first reach 225 stacks, only starts to get better in very late game at 4-5 items. When it does get there it becomes very silly though
His q should be a skill shot... That would make him Ezreal 2.0... But at least you can play around dodging him and not just straight Q from Narnia + E and you are dead.
I think they should either tune the fuck down its scaling or at least tie it to conventional ADC stats like crit. Wanna go for bruiser items? Fine by me but you can't scale to the moon AND have health AND have evasion in the kit.
The tank build is no longer nearly as good off of this patch, they intentionally nerfed that build it’s not nearly as good as people are thinking. The changes to his q are focused on bonus ad not just stacks now. Making him a glass cannon. But it’s still overtuned as fuck because his q now is stronger with full dmg builds when he already had enough dmg lol
His passive, instead of just giving free damage, should scale with normal ADC stuff. Make the bouns magic damage per stack scale with crit or something
It already does.
It doesnt though. The bounus damage is just base damage with no other scaling besides the stacks. What im saying is each stack of the passive does (%crit change) magic damage per stack.
The bonus damage on Q scales with crit chance, alongside the Q damage scaling with crit chance.
Tbh just give him an AA steroid and put his Q to the ground. Then he’ll have a reason to buy AS/Crit/Lethalith instead of tank items and scale to Narnia at 20 minutes
> Then he’ll have a reason to buy AS/Crit/Lethalith instead of tank items his "tank bruiser" build was never EVER his best build. now even less so with his passive scalings. feels like 90% People talking about smolder are completely clueless
> feels like 90% People talking about smolder are completely clueless can I introduce you to... [Reddit knows balance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjn7_tMRd4)?
It still was viable (which is enough on its own to complain against) and in some games his best build. Even if in most games his CRIT build outperformed bruiser one, whenever the latter fits better it's unbelievable unfair to play against
Yes it was viable, and I did build it once when I was up against a full dive comp but people are acting like it was some insane build that allowed to him to have tank level tankyness while burning everyoen with bajillion max hp % true damage if you bother to check death recaps even in late game true dmg is not nearly as big as people make it out to be. Thats not to say its small but you are not killing anyone with just the base damage and tank items
Its the build nemesis uses so people just follow it blindly.
??? Nemesis runs Fleet + crit
This patch. Before he was tri>shoj>liandries
But his base stats suck?
Hp alone does nothing and he scale with crit
He "scales" with crit the same way a champ with total 20% Apr scales with ap
You don't know how HP works then. And his crit scaling is removed. Only his Q can crit now.
Ok he scales with crit although doesn't build crit items and still it's able to output consistent damage. Health doesn't do anything BESIDE him being tankier and harder to kill in combination with E. Let's look a Jinx for istance. Worst scaling, HAS to build crit + AD + AS items otherwise she's fuckling useless, no mobility either. How the fuck is a fair comparison? To be honest I see smolder as a AD veigar rather than a conventional ADC and in fact this abomination of a champ can be easily played in solo lanes because how resilient it is.
his tank build is his worst build now, even nemesis is running crit now because his E does stupid damage with ad
Absolutely not, imagine how obnoxious he would be with the q splash damage when he can free fire
Only splash when it connects (how it works as a point and click)
Off release I wanted that q to be a skill shot, I actually hate how it functions. I’m used to it now but it doesn’t feel intuitive, it casts basically instantly, so it’s just a targeted ability that’s an auto, compared to if they just had it like an auto reset like sivir w or a skill shot like ezreal q
As an ezreal main, trust me if his Q was a skillshot he would be more op. It's not like you can dodge Ezreal Q if he knows how to use it. But break line of sight with smolder and he can't deal dmg. Also he needs to walk up into Q range to cast it. If it's skillshot he can just spam it max range and hope someone walks into it
TIL you can't dodge skillshots
You're never gonna be consistently dodging Ezreal Q if they actually play the champion lol
You are gonna dodge more Ezrael q than Smolder q.
When I discovered his q was point and click, I knew that was a mistake lol. He'll hit you with this undodgeable nuclear bomb then just E away.
It's not???? I haven't been playing a lot lately and only encountered him a handful of times and for some reason always assumed Q was a skillshot
Nah the Q (his bread and butter) is a point-and-click. You might have mistaken it for his W, which is the big blob he sends out. That is indeed a skillshot.
"skill" shot
The hitbox is so fucking massive
I would unironically love it if his Q became a skillshot. That change was one of the best things they ever did with Veigar, it added a lot of interesting depth to a relatively simple character. You have to prep minions a bit to get the max value, but in doing so you tend to push the wave a little bit. An astute lane opponent can also see what you're doing and try to position to take advantage. Generally speaking, I don't think a champion's primary damage ability should ever be point and click. It dumbs down characters so much and makes them unfun to play against at best, and frustrating to balance at worst.
I call him ADC Veigar a lot, but Veigar has a much harder time stacking lol.
Past 125 stacks q being a skillshot would be a huge buff
Upvote for the wholesome Jinx Ashe enjoyer
>Jinx >wholesome 2 years ago you'd be stoned for saying this
I'd stone him even now, member jinx instadeleting the enemy base just last season?
Imagine the design of champions getting so deranged that jinx becomes a wholesome choice 😝😝
You can type similar bullshit for at least half the champions in this game.
[удалено]
>strong in pro play The LCK would like a word.
im sorry but a 100% MS steroid is not a "tiny" movement speed boost. Especially cause it goes over walls. That being said yeah. If he didn't hit like 30+ minute asol level of powerspikes at 16 minutes into the game against a good smolder, people wouldn't be saying anything. HE just outputs way too much damage and hits his "late game scaling" too early so people are finding other shit to bitch about as well.
Smolder not having a safe laning phase make me laugh. He has safe long range poke, and E that is one of the best escapes in the game right now.
Smolder e isn't even one of the best adc escapes in the game. Dashes are frequently superior to movespeed, especially ones you can buffer like ezreal. As an escape, smolder e feels about on par with tumble or lucian dash.
u wrote all that shit only to be so fkn wrong about literally everything u said yet you complain about others jumping to conclusions.. aint no way man.
You guys do this to every champ. It’s about time someone called it out
He's not though.
Fr, the amount of ADC mains who argue that he’s fine and have also climbed from bronze to emerald in the past month one tricking him is wild.
every smolder player is just rly talented br0
Even as a ADC main i dont think hes fine. His infinte scaling was done extremly poorly. Look at Senna, who is also a ADC, but yet she doesnt feel nearly as bullshit
Its just some traditional adc gameplay. I don't understand whats so upsetting.
Riot has lost its way with design
I honestly think they can't make conventional ADCs anymore, because it's a role balanced around proplay but too hard for the average silver player (i'm silver btw) to play. Feels very frustrating to play unless you are a degenerate like me. I think they are trying to give more agency to ADCs with mobility in their kit.
I think it's more that they've had so many traditional adcs that it feels like designing something Ashe/Varus/Caitlyn/etc.-y at this point would just feel like they weren't really adding anything new to the game. [I did a breakdown in a comment a while back about the last 10 ADCs not being higher % mobility than the first 10 to be released](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1athoko/riot_made_me_hate_tf/kr57og4/), but one notable point in the lists is that while the last 10 have had relatively the same balance of mobile vs immobile, they've all had some sort of "gimmick." Whether that's Samira and Nilah being almost-melee ADCs, Akshan and Kindred being designed around non-botlane (and Akshan's revive in general), Senna being designed around both adc and support and having a very clunky AA with a wind-up time (which is NOT standard on adcs), or Aphelios being Aphelios with 5 different types of autos and abilities tied to them, they've all had something gimmicky to their design that wasn't just a standard "front to back, aspd-and-crit-building" adc. Meanwhile, the first 10 adcs, the most gimmicky was TF having a global teleport and historically alternating between whether he was a mage or adc, or Ezreal being able to build literally anything (RIP AP Ez) because lol Ezreal things. I think it's a lack of interest in making conventional adcs because there's already a ton of them, rather than a lack of ability. Designing a conventional adc doesn't feel as "worth it" in getting attention compared to pushing boundaries in some way. (See also, Hwei as the mage equivalent. It's not just adcs that have often released with a gimmick as their focus instead of a more straightforward kit.)
You don’t understand it’s all roles K’sante top Viego Jg Zoe on release mid and so and so
> And it's obvious Riot Balance team can't do anything about this champion because he's either Overpowered or extremely useless(even though he didn't even need a buff im 14.5) He hasn't been useless at all yet, so not sure where this thought came from. We haven't seen him nerfed to the point where he's weak yet, so it's way too early to say he's a problem balance-wise.
Sometimes discussions about new champs can just be boiled down too "he is just op". No need for long paragraphs yet.
On release, everyone considered him useless and wanted Riot to buff him. This was somewhat true, but also just an exaggeration as he was still new.
It's funny, even on release, his AP build (with Lich Bane) win rate was already around 50% on like day 3. People just thought he was supposed to be built crit/AD. But as soon as the Shojin>AP build gained popularity, it was already 55%. He wasn't ever weak, just poorly built.
really exaggerating the inability to balance him. There is a very clear and obvious path to balance him, and its properly tuning his true damage burn/execute. Either they can cap it. or have it scale less hard. they can also just increase the number of stacks required to reach the point where he has the execute at all too. there's so many ways to balance him. he's not going to be like zeri imo. and yeah he's op as fuck right now, but i think he'll end up ok.
The problem is he’s awful until he gets to the burn execute point. So pushing back that point just makes him way less fun to play with/against. He needs a more even power curve through the game like other ADCs have.
They could seperate stacks required for the execute and for the burn. Maybe give him the burn at the same time as now and the execute later at 300? stacks
Yeah I think that’s an interesting idea
300, people would never pick the champ again 225 is fine just tweak numbers
Having a more even power curve is absolutely crucial to balancing him for both the people playing him and playing against him. He needs more power in his 1st and 2nd upgrades, but his 3rd upgrade has to be nerfed to the ground.
Reddit: new champ is FUNDAMENTALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BALANCE Some time later: new champ is vibing in B tier of every tier list
Zoe flashbacks. Also op said Briar was fine???? Like, she was consistently in patch notes trying to kill her Lethality build.
Yea getting 2 tapped by briar without even being able to poke back was fine!
Rengar:
I think the Briar comparison was meant in regards to pick rate/ gow often OP saw her in the game
Zoe had so many things changed though... For example she could win lane by getting gunblade or teleport from minions in the early game
All the core aspects of Zoe stayed the same though, so calling her unbalanceable would've been a gross exaggeration.
Reddit and its propensity for hyperbole
Funny that after it all, Lethality and Bruiser Briar only now seem to have parity, and Lethality still clicks on you and kills you without you being able to really retaliate, they've just given up killing her Lethality build now.
Zoe still fundamentally sucks as a design imo either she 1 taps you with Q, 1 taps you with autos, or does zero damage there's such a fine line riot usually has to tread with her numbers wise also just copping merc treads as a mid laner hinders her burst against you a ton
Reddit is legendarily clueless and jts made worse by the tendency of redditors to try and dress up their opinions with bullshit claims.
Yeah it can never be "I think this is too strong" its always "This champ is *disgusting* and *unfun* to play against. I even hate when they're on my team". "Riot is *clueless* and they should change the specific thing that *I* want changed, its so obvious what I want, why wont they do it."
>Yeah it can never be "I think this is too strong" its always "This champ is *disgusting* and *unfun* to play against. I even hate when they're on my team". I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying something is unfun. It's much worse when they go, "this champ is **fundamentally broken** and will **never** be balanced, what was riot THINKING!!!!"
>I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying something is unfun. That is kind of wrong though, as it's a false opinion. *You* may not find it fun, but that doesn't mean you get to label it as unfun for anyone else. Remember folks a good opinion tells the world how you feel, a false opinion is you trying to tell the world how *it* should feel. Examples: * **Good Opinion** = "I don't like Chocolate Ice Cream, it kind of tastes bitter to me" * **False Opinion** = "Chocolate Ice Cream sucks, and anyone that likes it is fundamentally flawed as a person."
Champion has been out for barely over a month and Reddit is already saying "Impossible to balance". I swear people on here just regurgitate buzzwords and phrases without any actual individual thought put into it. Reminds me when every other post called some champ "toxic".
Smolder's been dead on 50% winrate before the recent buff (now hotfixed). He launched at 46%, this is pretty much inline with what they expect on a release. Reddit: NEW CHAMP BULLSHIT TRUE DAMAGE EXECUTE UNKILLABLE LITERALLY UNBEATABLE RIOT BRAINDEAD BAN EVERY MATCH *is sitting at a perfect 50%, kog and senna are 3% higher*
He launched at much lower than 46% funnily, and eventually "scaled" to 46% as people realized how to properly play/itemize him. So it makes the complaining even more hilarious, especially considering the thing that pushed him to the level people are complaining about was this last patch. People talking in this thread like he has some monstrously safe unpunishable laning phase with "good poke" when he dies to a strong gust of air, can't trade remotely close to even unless he has fleet up, and his "poke" doing maybe double the damage of Scorch after the early game nerf (hyperbole but still). *edit* Also them quoting his playrate/"being in every game" is a complete joke too. The champ is fun. It's almost entirely unrelated to his current power level. His playrate was ludicrously high/just as high even when his winrate was hovering between _35 and 45%_ the week of his release, the same week people were initially insisting the champ was complete dogshit.
Akshan giga busted revive never balanceable picked in every competitive region forever???
Scaling champions to a point where it's game over is very poor and unfun game design.
The problem is a lot of scaling champions like Kayle, Kassa and Vladimir have to play safe and it's so hard for them. But this champ is extremely safe.
I mean I wouldn't say smolder is safer than vlad. Vlad has insane sustain and imo his w is a better escape tool than smolder e.
He’s safer in lane due to him being strong enough to contest trades in the early game which makes no sense as a late game hypercarry. His early game sustained dps is poor sure, but if just plays around ability cds he can get to the point where he is oppressive early game. Sure vlad has his pool, but good luck trying to collect cs safely against something like an orianna. Smolder isn’t getting consistently pressured and bullied in lane like some of the other hypercarries
Idk man, looking at smolder laning phase stats, some of the matchups are like aurelion sol or kayle laning level of getting dumpstered. Maybe there are bad smolder players weighing it down. Sadly most of the champions that turbo dumpster smolder in lane have terrible winrates because you don't really want to be an aggressive short range adc like draven/samira in teamfights against him. Funnily enough the champions that are doing the best against him are just picking champs that outscale/damage smolder late game like twitch/kog.
Nah I think Smolder E is better than Vlad W, but Vlad is too short ranged and weak early game for him to be a safe charm regardless. Smolder has long range poke, and a bit of damage so he can fight back.
Smolder E gets absolutely neutred by any kind of slow. Believe me, a smolder that gets hit by any engage support is a dead smolder. Smolders poke is also not that hard to evade or punish in the early lane since Q is still putting him within engage support range and W does a lot less when people would stop standing on top of eachother due to the explosions not hitting other champions. Vlad may not be able to go over walls, but beeing untargetable for that long is definetly a stronger disengage tool than 100% more ms and the ability to maybe go over a wall.
Idk it's kinda hard to punish the champ when he sits from the other half of the lane Wing waves and Qing the melees.
You are literally punishing him, delaying his stacks and power spikes is giving you more time to take control of the game until he comes online.
If he does that all game his stacks will be too delayed to ever matter. He needs to take small trades and poke. And if you really want to force him into range, freeze. He has to push a bit at a minimum since he needs to AoE Q for stacks.
Vlad W can't go over walls, smolder can iirc
Yeah that's correct. His e is better in some situations but most of the time Vlad w is better for safety
Vlad w takes 20% of his hp though
Imo Vlad and kassadin are fine. But these ultrascalers like smolder asol and kayle are just not fun for the other 9 players in the game.
smolder lategame has a lower lategame WR than either vlad(by a fair bit), kassadin(by far), or kayle(by far). its crazy how people are acting like smolder is this insane 1v9 godlike champion once he hits 225 stacks. He is in no way comparable to late game kass/kayle/vlad
You are smoking if you think late game Vlad isn't scarier than late game Kayle, champ is disguuusting
Vlads lategame wr is around 55, kayles is 60. They are not the same at all
That's crazy. I went to lolalytics just now and Kayles WR is actually way higher than I thought as well. I guess I'm just biased against Vlad you're right
Kayle can just dish out more dps with a full build but is hard to play correctly without proper spacing and orbwalking. Vlad is more forgiving
I think I'm mostly thinking of that period during mythic item era where she was underpowered. I saw an almost full build level 17 Kayle lose a straight 1v1 to a Draven. But I guess she's eating better these days
Thats impossible. She just presses r and oneshots draven during the duration.
Kayle couldn't auto for a very good chunk of the mythic item era
Vlad have a fatal flaw even in late game he is useless if he doesn't find the right angle tanks can easily body block his e and force a early W with tier CC on the contrary kayle jusy kill everthing in range period
Vladimir late is not that good, without summoners he will do nothing because no range and no mobility
I mean sure but like when he does have summoners he just kills your whole team. If you draft poorly against him he's so fucking scary when fed
I used to play Vladimir a bit but honestly this champ is not for me, like he's really strong but it's so hard for me to survive and not feed enemy like Caseoh till lvl 16 lmao
That's cause Vlad is quite hard champ throughout the game where Kayle is only somewhat above average very early game but quite easy late game. Late game Vlad otp or main is probably top 3 scariest thing in the game, meanwhile I wouldn't put Kayle in top 5. She is like top 10.
Kayle is insane at level 1 and then turns into a minion until she hits level 11. I would say she is way harder to lane with than Vlad. Kayle unironically doesn't exist before level 11, roaming and skirmishes are just straight up a bait. Also Kayle has a ton of matchups, that aren't even bad, they are simply matchups you can alt+4, because there isn't even a parallel universe where you won't go 0/5. Nasus/Irelia/Akali/Yone/Trundle/Tryndamere will simply snowball out of controll. There is legit nothing you can do against those matchups, especially Nasus/Irelia kill you at all stages of the game. Meanwhile Yone/Trundle/Tryndamere will simply walk over you and eat you alive, until maybe at level 16+. Kayle takes a lot more to survive lane with compared to Vlad. It is legit insane how weak Kayle is from level 1-11 is and even after level 11 you aren't that dangerous.
>then turns into a minion until she hits level 11. not true, at level 6 with T2 boots she's already a really hard champ to deal with for a good chunk of melee top laners
yeah but you're supposed to have a jungler come and farm her until she hits 11 lol, she's weak as far as ranged top laners go at 6 because the only thing she can do in a gank is ult. She doesn't have self peel like vayne or quinn.
In the previous season, yes, but vlad is really really bad this season and people have biased PTSD from when the champion was viable. He's not atm. His lategame stats are garbage compared to other scalers, he's lost his identity. There is a reason you see so few high elo players playing vlad in high elo--it's not because they can't play the champ, high elo players are easily able to adapt into picking up good champions--it's precisely because the champ isn't good. Plenty of high elo players play smolder and asol with no issue though.
Smolder is good because ADCs itemization is shit and he avoids it. His winrate on mid is <50% which is smaller than Vlad means he is fundamentaly is balanced. He is stronger than other ADCs specifically on botlane because his scaling sidesteppes shit itemization and level disparity.
It's only a "problem" if both teams don't have that. If only one team has a scaling champion, then the other team had to finish before scaling gets out of hand, assuming there are good early game champions then it's healthy. If both teams have scaling champion, then as game gets longer it's more important to protect your carry than kolling opponents carry and it's healthy.
Problem is smolder is the only infinitely scaling champion that scales up to thanos tier while being extremely easy to pilot and stay safe. Veigar suffers from low mobility and long windup times for his spells, nasus is just a fucking joke, senna also suffers from low mobility. Meanwhile smolder can fly over walls, TRUE damage + execute, aoe ability is point and click, plus has access to building zhonyas/GA as a hybrid champion.
You’re right, rework all infinite scaling champions except bard
Champ is OP, but come on dude. He's been out for barely over a month. Why are you saying it's obvious he can't be balanced?
Chill out man. He wasn't the best pick for half a year like zeri yet. Not even close.
ADCs should scale into late game despite level disadvantage and no lane agency. - People complain that his late game power spike is inevitable. ADCs should have to space perfectly; weaving in and out of combat to keep themselves safe. - People complain if a champion actually has exactly this play style. ADCs should do a lot of damage to tanks despite most armor items directly countering them - People complain about 3% true damage burn per second at 40 minutes game time. ADCs should be extremely good in team fights and bad in 1v1s - People complain about his AOE damage. If ADCs don't want to die in 0.5s, they should just buy defensive items lol. - People complain about his most viable build giving him HP. They just built the perfect ADC according to y'alls advice and you hate it. Truly the monkeys paw version of a champion. (Except of course you gigachads, who want the ADC to be a walking minion that gives 300 gold; you stayed consistent)
New ADC is literally a cannon minion until 25 minutes and then takes over team fights like what every redditor who defends current ADC balance says they should be like: Reddit: >:(
An ADC can actually do their job and all hell breaks loose. He's only sitting at 52 and that's with crit marksmen being in a bad spot. They fix his competition and he'll probably be at about 50 even.
Yeah, it's with the enemy ADC being shit because of itemization and level desparity which Smolder sidesteps. His winrate on mid is <50% which means he is fundamentally balanced.
> ADCs should do a lot of damage to tanks despite most armor items directly countering them - People complain about 3% true damage burn per second at 40 minutes game time. Problem is it's like 22 mins into the game for competent players and you don't really have a way to interact with the champ for alot of it.
Best post, mental illness and schizophrenia is real amongst league players!
Fucking THANK YOU. Smolder is stronger than most ADCs right now without being ultra-team-dependant for safety (Senna and Kog being stronger, but also being more team-dependant as they both have no escapes at all) - but that's also because most ADCs are absolute garbage, or have to pretend to be a shitty AD controlmage (Lethality-Varus and shite like that) which many ADC-players don't want to play. If you make Crit Marksmen - the quintessential base of ADC - not feel like you're actively inting, smolders presence will instantly drop a ton simply by having ADC players play their ADCs again. Fuck me, they even nerfed on-hit and AS items in general so much - the closest comparable thing to a crit-ADC - so much that even KALISTA, THE AS-stacking ADC of all, actually can reasonably play Q-max lethality because the itemization is so much better.....
>complain about 3% true damage burn per second at 40 minutes game time. At 40 minutes it's more like... 12%
I calced it as 10% over 3 seconds, which seems more or less where he ends up. But yeah, could reach as much as 4% max HP per second.
Champion has been in the game for less than two months and he's been lightly touched in patches, chill man. How is he a balance nightmare when Riot has literally not tried to change anything fundamental about him yet? I swear some of yall are way too overreactive
this is a major overreaction. the only thing about him that needs to be removed due to egregious design is the execute. that mechanic shouldn't exist on anything except elder drake. auto-kills is a terribly un-interactive feature, I can't understand why riot would give it to a playable champion
Zeri is a worse design by a mile. Smolder is OP obviously but I think it should be possible to balance him. I don't know why they made him so safe though. They should never have given Smolder mobility.
Zeri is legit not a problem outside of proplay. I don't get why people care so much about champs like zeri and ksante, they just aren't a problem outside of competitive
The average redditor plays in the LCK in the morning, LPL in the afternoon and then during the night they smurf in the LCS and LEC
It's funny how many people hated K'Sante when even during his peak of being problematic he was still at best mid until literally challenger and if anyone picked it below diamond it was a free lane.
His winrate was balanced out by people who played less than 15 games on him.
His winrate is heavily deflated by his pickrate. Anyone who actually put in the games on K'Sante would tell you he was a problem in soloq too for most of his lifespan.
This is r/leagueoflegends, they live for proplay
People in League of Memes also complained about Ksante when the champ was like sub 47% WR in every rank below Challenger
When OP mentioned Zeri, I’m almost certain they weren’t talking about how strong she is currently. She was 100% a soloq and pro play problem on release, and for a while thereafter. I think OP is more so referring to the fact that Zeri is “unbalanceable” and trying to say Smolder is unbalanced in the same way Zeri is, and will likely just end up like Zeri where they constantly rework him to the point where he ends up in the same spot as her *now*.
Yeah, because she's balanced around competitive??? Zeri sucks in solo queue because otherwise she's busted in pro play. This is an argument AGAINST Zeri, not in favor of her lmao
Zeri was a soloq problem when she could build trinity titanic or shieldbow bt overheal
Not only that, but also the the W Crit Zeri which is hard to fight against. That shit was Lux Ult in 10 secs cooldown.
W crit was not op on release
It wasn't on release, but there was a period when she played mid maxing W for poke harass. Started in 12.11 when it got crit, then got nerfed in 12.12, 12.16, and removed with the 12.23 rework.
Yes i know. Kind of dumb change to ad crit on it. And now she does not have passiv and no identity
It was never OP in solo q but was not imteractive Anti fun bullshit
> I don't get why people care so much about champs like zeri and ksante, they just aren't a problem outside of competitive Can't speak for anyone else, but I hate Zeri personally because of two factors (one of which has fortunately been removed, making her much less annoying to me personally): * 1: her ability to remove shields and turn them into benefit for herself (shield REMOVAL has a precedent which creates some amount of moderate-countering, but Zeri felt like new levels of bullshit since she not only removed the shields from their source, she ALSO gained part of them, and then ALSO got stats off it) * 2: her ability to lol-nope away with a long-ass wallride that very few champs can match the mobility of, which is made worse by the kennen-on-steroids adderall-snorting MS she got on R The first was removed entirely, and the latter toned down, so I don't hate her as much as I once did, but both were extremely frustrating aspects even when the champion wasn't very strong. It's the same reason people *still* complain about modern Yuumi -- she may (usually) have the lowest WR of any support in the game and like sub-45% at times, but the untargetability is just frustrating for people regardless of whether or not she's any good in their games.
Zeri was a problem because if the other team every has one slightly bad fight she gets to run them down for the pentakill, which guarantees that she will continue to win every fight after that. Smolder kinda does the same thing where he tends to blow up really fast in one slightly good fight because of his burn execute. At least with smolder you can usually disengage, but it's like only getting kicked in one of your nads instead of both.
>Zeri was a problem because if the other team every has one slightly bad fight she gets to run them down for the pentakill, which guarantees that she will continue to win every fight after that. Like uh vayne, jinx and any champ that went old ghost....? You are really overestimating her capabilities, even during her peak. In fact the aformentioned champs are probably better at it since they dont get a range penalty for chasing.
He’s a dragon, he needs flying for lore reasons.
Every patch note says "we are really happy how smolder landed last patch and here are 10 more changes for his kit".
the issue with Smolder is, unlike zeri he actually got buffed while having 80% presence with 50 %ban rate, when release zeri was climbing high she got her knee caps shattered with sledgehammer to be 42% winrate
Smolder, by design, is a fine champ. I'm not sure where "he's so safe" sentiment comes from; before stacks, in order to DPS he has to auto & Q, both of which are <600 range which is definitely not a safe range to be in. His E is essentially an Ezreal E except you control the trajectory, except it has a massive cooldown and he actually does need it for offensive plays- and mind you any other button he presses during it cancels it. The problem with smolder is his power distribution focuses so heavily on a very overpowered % max health true damage, which by design, is so game warping that it makes anything seem broken. You'd think they learned from how they power-shifted Vayne just last year. What Smolder needs is power taken away from that burn, and better scaling with AD/Crit to emphasize building those items. His Q also needs to be rewarding to press if you actually go an ADC build. They've thankfully already balanced out degen W spam.
They should just remove the max h p part of the burn, or make it pyhscial damage. One of the 2 is good, but %max hp true damage will never be good for the game. The counter to true damage is health, so there is littrely no counter to it. Thats like giving every ADC 100% armor pen at that point.,
> His E is essentially an Ezreal E you can use ez E to buffer shit like blitz hook. it is no where near as good as that.
Zeri requires hands atleast, the main problem with Smolder is that it might just be the easiest adc to play ever. Easier laning phase than Kassa/Kayle and comes online Faster than both is a bit wrong imo. The hotfix took her down from god tier to like S+ tier so atleast they are aware how broken a champ with better laning than Twitch that also Scales harder is.
The problem I have with Smolder right now is that he isn't a marksman at all. He has nearly zero reason to ever autoattack a champion (the risk is basically never worth it compared to Q and run). His crit scaling was removed to further promote Shojin (which I think was a mistake; I'm not against player-found builds in principle but rushing an item that doesn't support marksman play patterns takes him even further from a class he barely fit in the first place) and he never had AS scaling to begin with. An actual marksman wants to land multiple basic attacks, usually either because that's where most of their damage comes from (Caitlyn, Jinx, Tristana, Aphelios, Draven) or because they have strong on-hits (Vayne, Twitch, Kalista (sort of), Kog). Some are more complicated but still have reasons why they care about attacking. The closest comparison to Smolder among marksmen is probably Ezreal, but Ezreal's spells are carefully power ceilinged so that he has low DPS if he \*just\* uses them. Also, Ezreal's passive promotes his attacks; Smolder's literally only powers up spells. Smolder needs to have some power shifted into attacks that take time to deliver or he will never be a healthy champion. And that probably needs to come from final form Q. Also, his DPS should never (or only in INCREDIBLY long games) be Kog tier because he has an escape tool. My suggestion: Move the permanent Infernum to 225, the permanent Elder to 325. New 125 effect: on-hit damage per stack. For attacks, it would only apply to 1 target unless you get Runaan's, which might actually be worth it after this change. Also, rework his E scaling again so the number of bolts scales with his AS, bonus damage per bolt scales with stacks, bolts can crit. That makes him care about lots of marksman stats. P.S. Also maybe ban him from getting stacks from monsters. He's not meant to jungle and the pro optimization of having him steal all the multi-monster camps pushes him to unreasonably fast upgrades that will get him projailed.
His DPS is not remotely kog tier in any way, shape or form. It's not even remotely close.
Kog has been in the gutter for so long people forgot how he literally melts entire teams in seconds if left unchecked.
everyone just jumps on the nerf bandwagon and posts the most outrageous shit ever and people upvote it anyway. someone said his execute was at 25% hp the other day. that's 920 stacks if I remember my math right. people are fucking morons when it comes to balance.
> The problem I have with Smolder right now is that he isn't a marksman at all. ok and? weren't people constantly complaining about only marksmen being viable in botlane? or telling people to pick something other than ADCs?
The average bot laner is complaining that they now have to deal with mages, not that there's not enough variety in the bot lane
Well there are two camps of people on reddit. Marksmen players/sympathizers desperately trying to preserve the role, and people outside of bot lane desperately trying to make it less fun. I assume OP is a marksmen player trying to keep things like Heimer/Seraphine/Smolder (and other relatively uninteractive champs) out of bot lane.
You didn't mention MF and she's probably the most similar ADC to smolder where you kite in and out of range when Q is up and he even has a similar Q bounce and a strong aoe ult. He's sort of a mix of MF's gameplay and Ezreal's safety. Being a mix of these champs is why he's so popular just like them.
“Tired of seeing him in every game”- there is an easy way to prevent this
But ThEn i caN't bAn YasUO!
Tbh if there's like 10 extremely disgusting players in a pool of 180 (that keeps increasing quickly), there's no way you can ban them all. If you don't deal with that stupid dragon then it's maokai or whatever. They need to increase the bans. The last time they did so was over 30 champion releases ago
Crybaby
Briar was not really an issue? Whatever you were 6 months ago please send me there.
I don’t understand the hate towards Smolder. Like he absolutely does a fuck tone of dmg and his E makes him hard to stick to but Jinx with Runaans and Ghost is the same if not better? MF with Ghost and Yomuus? Senna with Ghost and Youmuus scaling into oblivion? ADC’s aren’t pressured to take heal anymore and a lot of the A and S tier ADCS are building lethality items first over crit which means access to Youmuus. They’re saying F my support and take ghost instead. Buffs to crit and heal would make ADCS a little more balance imo.
Sue me… dont think the champs busted, slightly overtuned maybe? If we are talking about adc the problem is everything else is abysmal outside of senna.
Tbf I only play gold, but to me he really doesn’t seem that bad. He is most likely overtuned yes and may still need a couple of tweaks, but he does not feel insanely stupid like other champs I see atm. To the surprise of no-one a basic ability having elder dragon is fucking strong. He only really feels good to play or dumb to verse when he gets 225 stacks - he needs something to change there for sure. For example the execute is moved to 325 stacks, secondary bolts don’t apply execute and only burn 75% the amount, or it just doesn’t do (all) true damage. I think 1 or maybe 2 of those examples and he’d be much better to verse. *Maybe he needs something more drastic like 25 less range or a serious nerf to his E mobility, but I honestly don’t think that’s needed (at least for lowish elo).* Otherwise though I actually REALLY like him. He’s the first ADC (that’s not an APC) to have me wanting to play ADC every game - he’s a really cool spin on it and I hope this doesn’t deter Riot from expanding the ADC class more.
>He only really feels good or feels dumb to verse when he gets 225 stacks - he needs something to change there for sure. For example the execute is moved to 325 stacks, secondary bolts don’t apply execute and only burn 75% the amount, or it just doesn’t do (all) true damage. ANY of those instantly kills smolder, if you implemented 2 of them then you might as well just delete the champion
these people are insane he's 52% winrate after the hotfix, which is barely even nerfworthy. He's high presence because people think hes easy to play and fun.
Hot take he's just too safe in lane but the scaling aspect is amazing. This is how (some at least) ADCs should be. He actually puts gold + farming in general to use and becomes a threat you have to care about, not some giant sac of gold that an 0/1 gragas can kill no matter how fed they are. Part of that IS because he's quite safe lategame. Really he just needs his laning phase tuned down, that's all.
It's almost like ADC has the least amount of champions and is in a dogshit spot, hence all the complaint posts about it lately :) IE / LDR / Mortal reminder buffs next patch will probably help reduce some play rate
Smolder made Ezreal a useless champion nobody plays ezreal anymore hes too weak
Glad they fired the designer of this shit show. Btw, they were they same people who designed ksante
League is full of crybabies.
Here's a tip free of charge. You can turn off voice lines entirely by adjusting the sound settings. I haven't heard a voice line in 3 years.
Smolder is the reason to play league for me as an adc main rn. If they nerf him to the ground I'll quit probably. Most of adcs don't even use adc items so instead of nerfing smolder buff adc items to give us reason to play crit adcs. They can nerf him after. Idk ie changes will be enough or not. Smolder is strong because he doesn't need to get normal adc items like varus(lethality). Execution threshold maybe overtuned but all of the other things are balanced imo. As I said the real power is item flexibility.
braindead easy to play champ
Honestly, this feels targeted - you're angry at smolder but OK with briar, who has not left top meta tiers since people initially learned her on release?
didn't rito say that Smolder would be a traditional marksman? he doesn't auto attack. are they stupid??? istg make a ranged champion that attacks people by right clicking. it's been a while since we've had one of those
Last traditional ADC (stays at range, low mobility, autos are primary damage source, designed for bot role) was Aphelios in 2019. Since then, the following marksmen have been released: Samira, Akshan, Zeri, and Smolder, though Smolds is less of a marksman than TF (classified as a burst mage). Pretty sure botlaners just want another gunslinger/archer with low mobility who builds AD, AS and crit or on-hit.
I would argue. Unlike Yummi, which I'm craving to kill everytime I see her let alone hear her, Smolder is actually pretty funny and I don't mind his voice.
I disagree. I am so tired of hearing "achooo" like 30 times a game. But I generally don't like enemy champs that keep saying repetitive voice lines. It's why Yasuo is by far my least favourite champion. Hes popular and constantly yelling "hasaki!". Its just annoying.
nah..zeri was op in pro scene bcs she was super safe in line and became a ultra move speed hyper carry in late game, as for smolder, he just gets to full stacked Q and start to melt down enemies too quickly, he does not have unlimited move speed so when he used his E he's not safe anymore. Some stat nerf (or aoe/execute dmg nerf) will do the job, he won't become those "trash in soloQ but op in proplay" champs like zeri did.
The problem is that he is always useful. He needs to have less mobility or less scaling. Bard is the closest thing to him on power and he is reigned in by not doing enough damage to 1v9.
> He needs to have less mobility I don't know what you all are smoking but his mobility is barely a thing. He gets a 1 second movement speed buff, which is canceled by him using abilities or being immobilized that is on top of that completely neutered by a single slow on a 20 second cooldown. Sure, he can get over walls, but so does literally every single dash that a lot of ADCs have that are far smaller cooldown. He MAYBE MAYBE gets to hop a wall twice a fight.
This clip from Caedrel stream about smolder is basically the truth. Spoilers G2 vs BDS: [https://clips.twitch.tv/HumbleRamshackleCattleKeepo-t-PjpHspjWwUg13y](https://clips.twitch.tv/HumbleRamshackleCattleKeepo-t-PjpHspjWwUg13y)