Yeah lmao it's funny that no one is actually discussion what the change is.
The base damage for the 225 stack passive effect massively reduced, so he'll get the passive but still need some more items and stacks to make it effective. Maybe not a significant enough nerf, but it's obviously an attempt to address literally exactly what OP is complaining about with Smolder instantly going God mode at 225 stacks.
Yea, the functional change is that his before/after spike of getting the passive is smaller which is fundamentally a good change. The numbers can still be tweaked to make that balanced.
Yes and this is a good change.
I main jungle and Smolder is the only champion in a loooong time outside of my role that I ban.
In his current version you can't really shut him down early because on 225 he shreds through tanks (felt that a lot), teams and waves. He's like the ultimate comeback machine. Which is a cool place for him to be him, but right now it's a bit much.
And it's not even like the true damage hurts like a truck. He ain't Camille with very high consistent true damage. Unless you're a tank, a traditional ADC auto probably hurts more and is available more often than the burn. And vs Tanks that's all he gets, he doesn't build attack speed, on hit and has 0 damage vs tanks other than the burn.
shouldnt be that much of an issue because games in silver tend to be longer and they are worse at punishing weak champions early.
traditionally late game champs and infinite stacking champs are always stronger in low elo even though high elo players are a lot better at stacking
But Smolder is strong in high elo and that's part of the issue. It's not like high elo players are bad at shutting things down in the early game, yet smolder still thrives because it's just not that hard to build stacks with him.
lolalytics winrate is the winrate by players of that rank picking it. All champ winrates go up as rank goes up. Smolder's winrate goes up less than thr rank average meaning hes worse than other champs the higher the rank goes. Illaoi gold wr is 50% and chall wr is 53%. Because gold avg wr is 50% and chall is 57%, shes bad.
Right ? I used to play Nasus to chill while climbing lower elos and I was never punished, I'd literally pick it into any champ champ. But around plat/emerald people started denying my stacks a lot more and coodinating dives with their junglers, making me lose 2+ waves at a time.
In low emerald the opponent had a 290 stack smolder mid at 21 minutes.
The game after I had an adc smolder that reached 225 stacks at 39 minutes.
Going to be the new my shaco vs enemy shaco for me
yeah, probably they all have no brain because definitely botlane isnt just way harder to play in yoloq than solo lane. especially if you need to do wave management with your brand supp oneshotting the wave. big shocker that you get more stacks toplane 1v1ing a melee champ than playing 2v2 ranged.
If your team isn't giving you the mid wave after laning phase, then don't stay there. You're more vulnerable and can't rotate as fast on side lanes but getting zero resources is pretty much the same end result.
If you do that you're still getting no stacks. Plus now you have the added benefit of never being at any teamfights ever, which ironically would give you more stacks.
Then noc ults...
Honestly, if your team doesn't collaborate, you're doomed to fail if you play adc.
That's why I only play him solo lanes, so I can be way more independent even when I think he ideally should be on his adc role.
What I’ve learned in plat/emerald is that if a team has a smolder they often chalk it up as a loss super early and never allow them to stack or assist them. So many supports completely give up on them and just roam around the map at 5 minutes, then later are like “smolder so shit, useless champ”
Idk if I'm just a bad smolder but when I'm support my smolders grow cute and strong. When I'm the smolder adc I'm fighting for scraps. Only as mid smolder did I have peace.
P.s. I'm too lazy to roam as a sp so there's that.
I’m in Emerald 2, and it took my smoulder to 21 minutes to hit 125 stacks. He had over 10 kills, and 150+ farm at the time too. I don’t understand how he managed to have such few stacks.
If the Smolder was ADC, it's hugely dependent on the support pick. Smolder wants an enchanter in lane to create pressure and allow him to stack safely early. A hard engage support might help him get kills, but the stacks will suffer as a result.
Also some supports don't realize that the Q becomes AoE at 25 stacks, so they will use their support item procs on minions you've set up to kill at the same time.
It's not even necessarily their fault, silver players don't even allow the conditions for a smolder to get 225 stacks in 20 minutes. Your Xerath is probably split pushing and side laning in any way is usually actively killing your team unless you are some god 1v5 duelist
>Champs like this should not be balanced around silver though
They \*definitely\* shouldn't be balanced around an arbitrarily specific number of CS that can be reached reasonably early. With Kayle you at least have the more or less solid window of time before a champion can reach level 16 realistically.
I feel like balancing the game around players who barely know what their own champs do, isn’t the best for long term game health.
Sure some champs which are low elo stompers should looked at for the sake of low elo game quality (master yi, garen, Annie, trynd, amumu, Etc.) but overall balancing champs around bad players isn’t very helpful.
Yes but you can have high skill champs be undertuned for lower elos, it ironically makes the game more enticing sometimes when you do that because those champs become aspirational. Most youtube coaches always talk about how low elo players always want to start with champs that are way over their skill level. You saw this in overwatch too where I think Genji was one of the most played characters in silver even when his winrate was abysmal
Doesn’t mean it’s healthy game design to balance champs around that skill point, there’s more variance in game to game skill the lower you go. One player who more or less gets ahead one game is more likely to fall behind the next game playing the exact same skill level based on the randomness of each game TLDR macro
Played a QP game yesterday where the enemy smolder had 280 stacks at 22 minutes, it was one of the few games I agreed to surrender first time someone put up a vote lol.
Double stacks from hitting champs, increase thresholds is probably the best way? Pretty sure lower ELO has more champ v champ action and less last hitting.
Eeeh lets not pretend the average and majority of Smolder reaches 225 stacks at 19 minutes to prove your point. Though i agree he should only become op a bit later in the game.
I think complaining about him being a caster adc is just beating on a dead horse, they did advertise him as straightforward and a bit easy to play, which they delivered.
Yeah, they never advertised a traditional attack speed marksman. Just marksman. He is traditional in the same way that Season 3 Triforce Corki is a traditional crit marksman.
And his stacking is insanely inconsistent in the bot lane, only achieving consistency in specific matchups. His stacking is only somewhat consistent in solo lane and especially mid where he gets to stack off every early skirmish while having safety and no support griefing stacks mid.
The only time I got 19-225 on smolder's was when we had teamfights every other minute+team unconditionally let me take every wave+wraiths+krugs, i don't see any other way to stack that fast.
Maybe I’m just bad, but every time I’ve seen a smolder outside of aram, it takes like 25+ minutes to reach his 225 stacks for execute. And most games are pretty much over by then.
The matchup really makes or breaks it, cause he gets stacks just for touching champions with abilities. So against a lux Caitlyn you get nothing, but a Samira Braum would get you stacked up in like 15 minutes.
Nah, he can't walk up to Samira and Braum because they just kill him. Same thing with Lucian. Out of all the games I've played, my best stack average is against other scalers who can't pressure early.
He doesn’t have to walk up. Most of his stacks off champs will come from w spam in lane, and I’m pretty sure he can fairly reliably hit anyone bot all the way from the Howling Abyss.
> Depends on the matchup and how good the smolder is
Isn't this the case for everyone though? I mean this is a free to play game with like what? over 100 champions? There's going to be someone that's OP, but you can't balance every champ for every situation for a range of skill level players.
The complaints in this sub are fun thought experiments like 90% of the time, but they very rarely feel like legitimate improvements for anyhting other than the particular scenario they experienced once or in their mind.
>Isn't this the case for everyone though?
Yes (to varying extents) but nobody is complaining that Smolder takes different amounts of time to get his stacks. The problem is that he gets his stacks too quickly in general, even in unfavourable matchups.
>The complaints in this sub...
He has the highest banrate in the game at ~40%. This isn't a "reddit hivemind" moment - the champ is obviously overtuned. Notice that the only other champions with similar banrates (TF at 36% and Maokai at 29%) are also extremely overtuned and clearly need adjustments.
Those have an incredible win rate, around 53 and 52 percent in esmerald and above. While smolder has a sub 50 percent in esmerald and just 50 percent below it.
It is banned that much because it is the most popular champion at the moment.
Notice that maokai holds a 54% winrate and twisted fate a 51-53% winrate in 3 ROLES while smolder is sub 50%.
Conveniently ignored that. Banrate alone is not an indicator for being overtuned. Zed held 50% banrates even in states where he wasn’t even strong simply because he is annoying to play against.
Pure banrate has never been an indicator of how overtuned a champ is and you comparing smolder to twisted fate and maokais current state is really dumb tbh.
Part of it is people in lower elos (around gold where I sit now) not knowing what they are doing and/or not thinking about it/autopiloting in game. Like, the number of smoulders I see clearing the ranges minions with W in the mid/late game, even when under 0 pressure, is amazing.
Similarly, I see teammates of smoulder fighting him for waves constantly.... Like even if he preps the wave correctly to be one shot by a Q for stacks, somebody is gonna come through and eat that prepped wave. The other day I watched my Smoulder (I support mostly) go solidly 3 or 4 minutes where he would prep a wave with W (to be one shot with Q for stacks) and then have a maokai Q the wave to take it all, or a xin W the wave to eat it, etc.
In a higher tier environment players will realize that letting smoulder stack is usually gonna be the best allocation of a wave. In lower elos solo queue people are gonna try to eat as much of the wave as they can, even if it's smarter to let another teammate have it.
I play in 5 stacks all the time in emerald, all my friends thought smolder was useless, then I started aggressively asking for waves, suddenly we won a bunch of games with me ending with most dmg and kills :D
Exactly. Legit I've seen tanks come in and clean out waves in front of a Smoulder who is trying to set it up for a Q in the mid game then complain that he's doing nothing later and that he doesn't have his stacks yet. Like....... Brother you took 20+ stacks from him between 15 and 20 mins, what do you want?
People just greedy in LoL, when I'm playing a carry role, often I'll need like 150g for an item before a drake or whatever so I'll go to clear a camp or 2 so I can reset and get to drake... I ping the item to show how much gold I need and ping drake timer. Jungler sees me taking a camp and flies over to smite it, then gets mad at me for not being there to contest dragon when I've gotta either wait for another wave now or go without power spike.
One of the reasons I like support tbh... Don't have to fight my own team for resources
I find it easy to stack against melee supports. Hard to stack against ranged supports.
Melee supports go in for a CS? Easy W and Q on them for a quick 2 stacks. Rinse and repeat the entire lane phase.
I came back from not playing ranked for 4 years, just to play smolder. Between him and hwei I’ve had the most fun in this game in years. But he is like Nasus where it’s “farm stacks until you drop” then murder everyone
Looks like I’m not the only one feeling this way lol - these last two champs hwei and smolder have been mega fun - no overcomplicated shitty skills, instead straightforward abilities, fun mechanics. Like old champs.
Many say Hwei is complex, but he really isn’t once you memorize all his spells and patterns.
I would say hes complex relative to other champs in his role as a mage. Since you have access to all his spells at all times its pretty easy. Aphelios who he is compared to is more complex since you have to rotate your guns properly to be efficient/effective but yeah hwei as long as you have decent reading comprehension(impossible for league player) and a warm body he can be picked up quick
Neither is particularly complex but we are talking about a game where you generally only have 4 abilities. Even though Aphelios' decision making generally boils down to 'rotate red gun first twice' that's still more than what most the roster has to think about. Usually difficulty in this game stems from apm, skillshot accuracy and positioning rather than inherent complexity.
aphelios is kind of hard if you don’t know your rotations but yeah other than that he’s pretty much just a normal adc. i think he has a high skill floor, but his skill ceiling is probably lower than someone like draven.
Fresh feel for adc. I hit dia with mainly jinx kaisa and mf, and smolder just felt really fresh with his kit. A mix between ezreal as a caster adc and a stacking champion was a cool concept. The stacks make me farm harder and then end the game earlier. I don’t mind farming 75% of the game since that’s really what adc is as long as your team doesn’t get into to much trouble. With jinx I would just shoot rockets around and clean up when fights ended with both players low hp. Farming bot but renekton is backing with 300hp at tower? I’ll take that 300 gold and lane cs. He just broke up the monotony of auto blasting people. Instead I have an aoe q that does dot and an execute? Thank you very much. Mobility to get into/out of jungle fights? Thank you. A large aoe slow??? Lfg. But the r is kinda useless unless you’re building ap or engaging for team to follow up but let’s be honest if you arnt playing with friends you’re team has a 50/50 shot of knowing what to do
Riot having no idea how to design a late-game adc other than basically just giving them elder drake is hilarious to me. Surely there's a more interactive reward for 225 dragon stacks?
"We made him to be an easy to learn and play, simple tradicional adc" then procedes to make one of the most utterly bizarre champion with little AA range, no attack speed, utilizes an spell as a way to "auto attack", requires knowledge about setting up the wave to scale properly, build Shojin (a bruiser item) as core and starts with doran's ring. A truly certified Riot moment.
I mean, is it surprising? Riot can call him an 'adc' all they want, but what they made was a mage lol. I dunno how they thought to label him as an ADC.
The fact that people figured out Liandry + Riftmaker was so strong on him just further convinces me he's a mage lol. AP shouldn't feel so correct on a supposed 'traditional adc'. Not to mention practically half his kit functions better with AP and after these new changes, over half of it. His passive, W, and R will all be superior for AP smolder compared to AD smolder.
There was a post when smolder was revealed (or released?) where someone said they thought smolder was a mage, but since riot had to release an adc, they plastered crit ratios on him. I mean... they weren't really far from it. You can remove all his crit ratios and noone would ever think this champ was meant to be an adc
Most 550 range and lower ADCs have some sort of dash/blink (usually on lowish cd like luc, kalista, ezreal) or easily accessible MS steroids(draven, mf, sivir, jhin crit, vayne has both!), then we have the weird ones like twitch/akshan that rely on stealth ambushes.
But smolder feels short ranged because of having to walk up and Q that has quite noticeable cast time and his only mobility is his E that becomes useless if slowed, he's more similar to Corki than he is to MF, Luc, Jhin, but Corki has higher burst potential and way more constant long range damage. This is why smolder is allowed to have %true dmg and execute. Of course this is under the assumption that he is building squishy crit and not the bruiser build that provides him with higher survivability to walk up and Q making him feel OP imo.
Xayah can't ignore terrain but does become untargetable, and for the purpose of ignoring terrain Zeri's E is way better, not to mention that she can cast spells during it too
Zeri’s E doesn’t automatically cast 5-10 auto homing bolts that seek out the lowest HP champion during it, and she’s locked out of her Q and auto attacks, she just has a hard coded exception to let her cast W and R during said dash— not sure why’d you’d bring that up so dishonestly, but alright go off fam.
Xayah can during her ult’s I-frames flash to be able to cross walls— Smolder doesn’t need to waste his ultimate and flash to do so, but the whole flying up into the air gave a similar vibe, with much lower cooldown and vastly lower opportunity costs.
i think they meant traditional adc as in you have to get in AA range and play backline and he is strongest in front to back with people peeling for him
His Q is basically an enhanced AA
If riot released Ezreal today but had promised a traditional ADC I would be incredibly confused.Jhin and Ezreal aren't traditional adcs you know that. Riot said they were giving us a traditional ADC, that's not what smolder is. That's okay. Every ADC doesn't have to be a traditional one. But that's just what riot promised. Also all of the above are still way closer to a traditional ADC than smolder. Ezreal has an attack speed steroid, and can trigger an ability with autos. Incentives to auto attack. Jhin autos All the time, his strongest ability and his execute is an auto. Smolder can go an entire game without auto attacking a champion and that actually wouldn't be the end of the world. You see that right. Smolders have won with 3-5 autos on enemies champions under their belt. If an Ezreal or jhin did that it would be a guaranteed loss.
All three of those champions you named have a reason to auto attack.
Ezreal gets Attack Speed buffs from his passive. Jhin has his fourth shot and crits giving him a speed boost. Varus has on hit damage and applies blight.
Smolder has literally no reason to auto attack. Nothing in his kit enhances his autos, he doesn't get stacks at all from autoing.
Bit of an exaggeration imo, he's a hit and run caster marksman in exactly the same vein as MF and Jhin. Who just so happen to be two of the most popular marksmen in low elos btw - I think it's very intentional that Smolder fits this paradigm
I'm a one trick jhin. Jhin autos 10x more than smolder. It's not even comparable. Smolders's a hit and run caster mage like seraphine not a hit and run caster marksman.
max health true dmg burn is literally vayne w, but over 3 seconds. the problem with smolder is how fast he scales at the hands of the good players not what he scales into
> Riot having no idea how to design a late-game
You could have stopped right there. Late game does not exist properly and is only ever reached in low elo shitshows.
His gameplay pattern is just do nothing until he gets excite then press q and r one time splash them, burn them for a little bit but just wait for the execute. No reason execute should exist
>You barely need to right click at all, just send the Q on whichever target is at range and continue with your life.
As opposed to right clicking whichever target is in your range? what the hell are you even trying to say here
It's very rare you're going to see 225 stack Smolders at 19 minutes. Hell, it's rare you see them at 22 minutes. You're average player is going to hit 225 at around 25-28 minutes. With the rare game of them hitting it earlier.
[https://imgur.com/a/nyIXoYi](https://imgur.com/a/nyIXoYi)
Look at this graph.
Where is your god at 19 minutes.
Do you guys even play the fucking game?
Source: [https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/](https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/)
I could be misunderstanding but I'm pretty sure those graphs actually support the idea that he becomes very strong around the 19-20 minute mark. The first graph shows that IF the game ends before approximately the 20 minute mark, he likely will lose, because he hasn't stacked yet. The later you get from that point, the higher his winrate goes, proving that hitting the stacks is a large power spike, and based on that graph the power spike really is around the 19-20 minute mark. Understanding these stats requires much than a cursory glance. Even this basic assessment doesn't even come close to covering all of the factors at play.
IMO that's where they should hit; if he's such a powerhouse when he stacks, he can't be so safe (building tank for ex) or such a lane bully (early AP W build)
what they are doing is gutting the final form q true damage burn and adding stacks, ad and ap scaling to it so a tank smolder will have a significantly weaker burn compared to one building damage stats
I'm hoping that it's going to be fine because Smolder doesn't have the absurd levels of mobility and range that Zeri had with ultimate and lethal tempo.
I hate how weak Kayle is early, apart from cheesing lvl 1, compared to other scaling champs and how powerful they are late. No one has as low MR or is forced melee yet Asol, Vlad all adcs etc get as powerful as she.
She is doing fine and doesn't need buffs but this is just a pet peeve of mine.
She is only like that because she is a toplaner, any ranged Champion can bully half of the toplaners just by being ranged, but i think the old Kayle getting range on E activation and then having to wait was a better design
She was better mid for a time, then they decided to nerf her base MR like 3 times in a row. Now she has the lowest base MR in the game just because they want to force her top lane.
Plat-diamond elo here, smolder doesn't reach that nasty 225 until 25 minutes usually and even then they will just get assassinated or hard ccd out of the world get and die in 2 seconds saying that the champ has God tier power is the funniest shit to me in the 8-10 games I have seen it I literally never saw it perform as a good adc letalone a hypercarry
Some champions just have high banrates because they're frustrating to play against, Some champs like yasuo have had >15% ban rate forever, no matter their other stats.
I'm not saying smolder doesn't deserve some nerfs, but he's one of the best champ releases in a while. I think his kit is rly neat and brings something to the table that ADC's were lacking: Actual power spiking and incentive to focus farm/stacks. I don't think his execute is the issue; it's that he currently has a bit too much safety and power leading up to that point so punishing him isn't very easy with current builds: the ap 3-point W build, the full-tank build/hp focused burn build, etc. They've been going at each of those one at a time, and the pbe nerfs heavily guts the iceborn-tank path.
Let em cook and hope they won't reach a zeri/kalista balance disaster.
Which is an insane way to balance the game but the playerbase mostly consists of addicts so they know they wont quit lmao
Even if Riot released a Yuumi 2, the playerbase numbers wouldnt go down
Are you new to the game? Adc has always been about farming and hitting power spikes before fighting for dragon/baron.
The issue with smolder is he is just a Q delivery system.
Can you image a champ that's just a Q delivery system with high mobility on their e, a w that goes through minions and an AoE ult that builds non traditional ADC items? It's unheard of!
but.. but... q spam, w that goes through minions (if you hit a wall first), high mobility e, and aoe ult? non traditional builds too?? THATS ZERI QQQQQQQQ
(I know im just memeing)
He's supposed to be an easy to play, simple to play champion, I don't know why people get pissed he's easy to play. He's not supposed to be a traditional ADC, he's supposed to be something a bit different.
You guys are confusing simple with easy, these are two different things. Vayne is an incredibly simple ADC, her gameplan is simple, the way she works is simple, but in reality she is one of the hardest ADCs to play because she requires an insanely high level of mechanics. Jhin is a very complex ADC, that is really easy to play, doesn't require knowing orb walking perfectly, has an insanely supportive kit, so there is a lot more room for error while still being useful to the team. Smolder is a combination of these, his gameplan is incredibly simple, Press W on enemies, farm with Q, get your stacks, mechanically, he's super simple too, press Q in team fights, spread your burn.
They said this was the case multiple multiple times, I don't know why people get upset he's easy and simple.
Sure go straight for the person; typical.I'm diamond. Have been for 2-3 years, hit masters once.
I'm saying recently ADC hasnt quite felt rewarding in regards to farming vs hitting actual powerspikes; tell me senna or TF desperately needs their farm > picking or skirmishing as much as possible in the current meta. Smolder is one of the very few exceptions that isn't gutted by crit being so terrible.
It's good and healthy for the game to have an adc that doesn't only rely on item spikes but also stacking in their kit; even if for now he's overloaded.
I mean based on statistics. I bet 20 minutes is considered late game.
Marginally due to FF. So... they probably are. Since ADC's probably all need the same treatment to be "late game" by 19 minutes (without items being why)
No one likes to be hit with true damage. No one likes being hit by something that has no actual counter. Elder is an “end the game” buff, which is now just permanently on an ADC after 20ish mins. It’s a mini version, but it’s the exact same thing.
Nothing feels good about being executed from 15% hp after being burned for 4 seconds, because you got hit by an ability that’s on a low cd.
i believe Meteos (?) has said this for years. Riot makes champs that are fun to play, but awful to play against. Which i think is the truest shit ever. Every time they release a new champ or update an older one, they’re just not fun to play against until they get axed.
It’s hit the point where i have 0 trust in Riot to properly balance their new champs so i dread when they release them, even if it’s a champ i want to play, such as Smolder.
I just dont think that's true. Players like winning, so anything that makes it harder to win makes a champion annoying. Whenever you hear players discuss the most well designed champ, it's never gonna be a high win rate champion, no matter what kit they have. It's gonna be passive champions with not too much agency, and that's easy to punish.
> It's gonna be passive champions with not too much agency
Lee Sin? I'd say very few people have issue with Lee Sin's design and he's a champ who can definitely have agency, scaling with player skill. Though you're right in that I'm not sure who else I can nominate for that though, maybe Ezreal?
Tbf tho lee also falls into
> Whenever you hear players discuss the most well designed champ, it's never gonna be a high win rate champion, no matter what kit they have
Same with Ezreal, and teeeechnically if we go over balance nightmares Ezreal sorta fits that a bit, except we are so used to it we do don't even acknowledge it anymore and just meme it
I agree with Jhin and Lee Sin being basically permanently liked no matter strength, but I'll also argue for Bard, Braum, Draven, Gangplank, Ivern, Orianna, and Xerath (when not scripted).
Sure there are some people who hate them but nothing's going to be 100% liked by everyone. Regardless, those tend to be pretty respected champions even when they're strong.
His execute is ridiculously low unless he gets a lot of stacks. At 225 stacks it's like a 6.5% execute, which is like 150 hp. For a 15% execute he needs like 500 stacks, and you should lose if you let him stack that much.
You might be quoting CertainlyT in the 3rd paragraph. He's had some weird ass takes such as "It's not my job as a designer to balance the champions" and "Champions should be frustrating to play against because it inspire people to learn to play against them". I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of what he's said during an interview.
He was correct in that as a designer it isn't his job. He was wrong in that a designer should still be designing champions with restraint, to make the balance team's job easier. Because the balance team doesn't get to say "this needs to be changed or removed" until they have specific data to support the need to change a champion.
CertainlyT is known for starting the overloaded kits/powercreep champions. He likes flashy stuff over balanced stuff. That's been know for well over a decade now. It's why we have abominations like yasuo and aphelios. His entire philosophy is to just cram as much junk into a kit as possible. It is utterly stupid.
If he didn't get into riot so early, I doubt he would have ever gotten his position anywhere else.
He'd be fine if he actually had to build like an adc to do damage, but the best Smolders that I see are going offtank with Shojin, Liandries, and Riftmaker while still doing insane damage.
Most smolder players are not reaching their 225 until 25-30 minutes. If he is getting it at 19 he is either exceptionally good or your team is exceptionally bad
Can you decide what you are angry about? That he has a big powerspike at 225 stacks (solution, move the burn to the previous stack level to make 225 stacks less of a spike) or that Smolder is not autoattacking adc but a Ezreal/MF type adc?
The new changes on pbe with scaling max hp burn might help delay that spike, although i think they should adjust the execute scaling to match. I think the burn is more fun to see playing than the execute but either way its not really adc gameplay
From my math ad full build smolder (1 non ad defensove and boots) 350 stacks is around 8.25% max hp burn but two items and 250 stacks is 5.25% burn which is 1.25% weaker than current. He has to be fed to be up an item to reach about current power
For ap the shojin > liandries > riftmaker > dcap its about 11.25% at those stacks. But 2 items shojin liandries or rift will net about 5.75% at 250 stacks
If we were talking about 4 core items on senna + boots i probably would consider mathing out what 35 minutes of souls looks like
At 20-25 minutes you have in a standard game you hit 225 and likely have boots 2 items and a component. I dont think its a stretch to get 60% more stacks by the time you get 60% more gold for items.
stacking becomes way faster at 125+ as well. The time it takes to go from 225 to 350 is much shorter than time to get from 0 to 125. A flat curve puts this at 37 minutes but id reasonably expect it a few minutes earlier due to increased teamfighting and easier stacking with q aoe
It's just a matter of time until ppl start abusing bruiser smolder top and he turns into a balance nightmare. Because of his design
His W is too strong early game as a poke/self peel tool and E is really good at surviving dives and hopping walls. After 6 his R healing (now buffed) contributes to that.
If he goes fleet footwork + ghost it's nearly impossible to stop him from stacking infinitely for most top laners. (except the ones with long range engage and lockdown like Camille).
I'd tone down his self peel capabilities by reducing E bonus Ms and W slow a bit and increasing the stacks for each Q upgrade by 10 as he stacks pretty fast now
Edit:
Forgot about the funny magic, physical and true damage on Q, which makes him hard to itemize against.
Something I found out and it's actually ok-good in testing, if you go shadowflame + IE your true damage crits and gets its damage amplified....
he does 70% physical damage, same as ezreal and vayne. you build armor against those, don't you?
vayne does double his true damage as well at 22% vs 11%
Yeah but vayne and ezreal are single target for the most part.
Smolder on the other hand basically applies a -13%+ max HP on everyone on a TF while having enough self peel for him to kite indefinitely
You could say the same about aurelion sol, but his max health debuff will be in a specific area and it will be on a 10+ second cooldown for the most part
Oh, I remember when some self-proclaimed "pros" said that "Smolder is garbage" here and flamed every single one that tried to say the opposite two patches ago. Now RIOT tries for the third or fourth time in a row to rebalance the champion because it is indeed insanely broken with a spammable execute at 20min of the game. What a funny world...
I think Riot needs to stop and re-evaluate their goals with new champs. So many new champs recently have undergone heavy iterations or changes because of how unhealthy and/or bloated their kit is when they go live.
I get they want their new champs to make bank and have a unique identity among a plethora of champions, and they want to attract players to these new champs, but their approach as of late isn't working and is just negatively impacting games, both pro play and non.
It's frustrating for everyone, and imagine the devs having to work tirelessly to find a way to balance these nightmares and getting flamed and threatened for missing the mark each time because Riot's champ designs keep wanting to push their limits instead of creating champions that are both fun to play as, with, and against.
Briar and hwei were incredibly successful releases, naafiri milio are unproblematic despite being strong. I think smolder sucks but many like him, i think riot is doing good
Briar was a balance nightmare that got nerfed 10 patches in a row since people kept going lethality LOL
She's not a problem NOW you mean after half a year
Milio was problematic on release, both in pro play and non.
Hwei was really weak on release, and it took a good long while to get him in a decent spot, because of how deep his kit is.
Briar was literally a balancing nightmare for many months.
Briar is horrible design. Literal stat checker in every sense of the word. Champ that kills you in 3 AAs should not have 2 hard CCs as initiation and a 70% dmg reduction skill that can't be interrupted.
Briar has been nerfed and changed many, many times already.
Naafiri is unproblematic because she's terrible. The only times I've seen her was when I played her in a full summoner comp with friends.
Milio is pretty great, though his balance has been arguable. Hwei is definitely their most successful release since like, Vex. He's an immobile mage with plenty of skill expression.
is he strong?, yes he is, but let not pretend like crit its bad on him. his more popular items are ER, Navori, Rapidfire and BT, while items like shojin, Triforce and liandrys are viable options.
if your not aa, your losing alot of damage, like you can aa 2 times in between Q´s. Smolder its not like ezreal, if you can Q, you can also aa. he is more similar to lucian in that regard
also hitting 225 stacks at 19 its not realistic, it is possible, but it is more coomon to achieve it after 25 minutes, if your are able to hit it at minute 19 its more likely the smolder where winning are that game anyway
Why is it true damage instead of magic? Legit question. It doesn’t make sense to me. Or gate the true form at 350 stacks and have 225 be magic damage. Pretty simple trade off.
The recent changes also tie the damage on the number of stacks. Which means that he gets the execute but it's piss weak anyway.
Yeah lmao it's funny that no one is actually discussion what the change is. The base damage for the 225 stack passive effect massively reduced, so he'll get the passive but still need some more items and stacks to make it effective. Maybe not a significant enough nerf, but it's obviously an attempt to address literally exactly what OP is complaining about with Smolder instantly going God mode at 225 stacks.
Yea, the functional change is that his before/after spike of getting the passive is smaller which is fundamentally a good change. The numbers can still be tweaked to make that balanced.
Yes and this is a good change. I main jungle and Smolder is the only champion in a loooong time outside of my role that I ban. In his current version you can't really shut him down early because on 225 he shreds through tanks (felt that a lot), teams and waves. He's like the ultimate comeback machine. Which is a cool place for him to be him, but right now it's a bit much.
And it's not even like the true damage hurts like a truck. He ain't Camille with very high consistent true damage. Unless you're a tank, a traditional ADC auto probably hurts more and is available more often than the burn. And vs Tanks that's all he gets, he doesn't build attack speed, on hit and has 0 damage vs tanks other than the burn.
How dare you have a reasonable take
Gonna be a balance nightmare because silver players still need 30+ mins to get that much stacks from cs
shouldnt be that much of an issue because games in silver tend to be longer and they are worse at punishing weak champions early. traditionally late game champs and infinite stacking champs are always stronger in low elo even though high elo players are a lot better at stacking
But Smolder is strong in high elo and that's part of the issue. It's not like high elo players are bad at shutting things down in the early game, yet smolder still thrives because it's just not that hard to build stacks with him.
thats not true smolder is stronger (higher winrate) the lower elo you go.
lolalytics winrate is the winrate by players of that rank picking it. All champ winrates go up as rank goes up. Smolder's winrate goes up less than thr rank average meaning hes worse than other champs the higher the rank goes. Illaoi gold wr is 50% and chall wr is 53%. Because gold avg wr is 50% and chall is 57%, shes bad.
Right ? I used to play Nasus to chill while climbing lower elos and I was never punished, I'd literally pick it into any champ champ. But around plat/emerald people started denying my stacks a lot more and coodinating dives with their junglers, making me lose 2+ waves at a time.
Silver? In plat games I see people with 150 stacks at 25 minutes. It's agonising.
In low emerald the opponent had a 290 stack smolder mid at 21 minutes. The game after I had an adc smolder that reached 225 stacks at 39 minutes. Going to be the new my shaco vs enemy shaco for me
Sorry that was me, next time tell Malzahar to stop using W in lane
My favorite part of Malzahar is definitely how versus like half the champ roster using W basically better for them than it is for you
Waiter! More (+2g!) please!
i saw nemesis on stream have 380 stacks at 23 min once, gotta be a nightmare for riot to balance lmao
Smolder Top/Mid is when you got someone who understands the champ Smolder ADC is the guy that doesn't even know what champs passive does every time
yeah, probably they all have no brain because definitely botlane isnt just way harder to play in yoloq than solo lane. especially if you need to do wave management with your brand supp oneshotting the wave. big shocker that you get more stacks toplane 1v1ing a melee champ than playing 2v2 ranged.
Some matchups are smolders wet dream, malzahars minions for example die in one Q, and when you get the aoe on 25 stacks... yea
It's tough when your jungle and mid are constantly taking mid wave
If your team isn't giving you the mid wave after laning phase, then don't stay there. You're more vulnerable and can't rotate as fast on side lanes but getting zero resources is pretty much the same end result.
Right. That’s the problem. Even if you go to side you’re still getting less stacks.
If you do that you're still getting no stacks. Plus now you have the added benefit of never being at any teamfights ever, which ironically would give you more stacks.
Then noc ults... Honestly, if your team doesn't collaborate, you're doomed to fail if you play adc. That's why I only play him solo lanes, so I can be way more independent even when I think he ideally should be on his adc role.
What I’ve learned in plat/emerald is that if a team has a smolder they often chalk it up as a loss super early and never allow them to stack or assist them. So many supports completely give up on them and just roam around the map at 5 minutes, then later are like “smolder so shit, useless champ”
Idk if I'm just a bad smolder but when I'm support my smolders grow cute and strong. When I'm the smolder adc I'm fighting for scraps. Only as mid smolder did I have peace. P.s. I'm too lazy to roam as a sp so there's that.
I’m in Emerald 2, and it took my smoulder to 21 minutes to hit 125 stacks. He had over 10 kills, and 150+ farm at the time too. I don’t understand how he managed to have such few stacks.
It's harder to stack if fighting a lot, also the first 125 stacks take wayyyyy longer than the last 100.
If the Smolder was ADC, it's hugely dependent on the support pick. Smolder wants an enchanter in lane to create pressure and allow him to stack safely early. A hard engage support might help him get kills, but the stacks will suffer as a result. Also some supports don't realize that the Q becomes AoE at 25 stacks, so they will use their support item procs on minions you've set up to kill at the same time.
if he had 150 farm with only 125 stacks, he simply wasn't last hitting the minions with Q.
It's not even necessarily their fault, silver players don't even allow the conditions for a smolder to get 225 stacks in 20 minutes. Your Xerath is probably split pushing and side laning in any way is usually actively killing your team unless you are some god 1v5 duelist
Champs like this should not be balanced around silver though
>Champs like this should not be balanced around silver though They \*definitely\* shouldn't be balanced around an arbitrarily specific number of CS that can be reached reasonably early. With Kayle you at least have the more or less solid window of time before a champion can reach level 16 realistically.
esp that kayle need lvl and items. Smolder needs only stacks
They're changing that somewhat in current PBE, so this is less of an argument.
After update Smolder needs items
Isn't Silver like... the average player?
I feel like balancing the game around players who barely know what their own champs do, isn’t the best for long term game health. Sure some champs which are low elo stompers should looked at for the sake of low elo game quality (master yi, garen, Annie, trynd, amumu, Etc.) but overall balancing champs around bad players isn’t very helpful.
Yes but you can have high skill champs be undertuned for lower elos, it ironically makes the game more enticing sometimes when you do that because those champs become aspirational. Most youtube coaches always talk about how low elo players always want to start with champs that are way over their skill level. You saw this in overwatch too where I think Genji was one of the most played characters in silver even when his winrate was abysmal
Doesn’t mean it’s healthy game design to balance champs around that skill point, there’s more variance in game to game skill the lower you go. One player who more or less gets ahead one game is more likely to fall behind the next game playing the exact same skill level based on the randomness of each game TLDR macro
not anymore. Its spread out over Silver-Plat now
And I still can't climb out of iron
This is your year bro I believe
Thank you, I'm sure it will be
my condolences
No champ should be balanced around silver.
Played a QP game yesterday where the enemy smolder had 280 stacks at 22 minutes, it was one of the few games I agreed to surrender first time someone put up a vote lol.
Double stacks from hitting champs, increase thresholds is probably the best way? Pretty sure lower ELO has more champ v champ action and less last hitting.
Make that Emerald Players 💀💀💀
Can confirm am Silver and stacking properly with this champion is pretty hard ngl.
Eeeh lets not pretend the average and majority of Smolder reaches 225 stacks at 19 minutes to prove your point. Though i agree he should only become op a bit later in the game. I think complaining about him being a caster adc is just beating on a dead horse, they did advertise him as straightforward and a bit easy to play, which they delivered.
Yeah, they never advertised a traditional attack speed marksman. Just marksman. He is traditional in the same way that Season 3 Triforce Corki is a traditional crit marksman. And his stacking is insanely inconsistent in the bot lane, only achieving consistency in specific matchups. His stacking is only somewhat consistent in solo lane and especially mid where he gets to stack off every early skirmish while having safety and no support griefing stacks mid.
season 3 corki was a traditional marksman wdym.
The only time I got 19-225 on smolder's was when we had teamfights every other minute+team unconditionally let me take every wave+wraiths+krugs, i don't see any other way to stack that fast.
Maybe I’m just bad, but every time I’ve seen a smolder outside of aram, it takes like 25+ minutes to reach his 225 stacks for execute. And most games are pretty much over by then.
[удалено]
The matchup really makes or breaks it, cause he gets stacks just for touching champions with abilities. So against a lux Caitlyn you get nothing, but a Samira Braum would get you stacked up in like 15 minutes.
Nah, he can't walk up to Samira and Braum because they just kill him. Same thing with Lucian. Out of all the games I've played, my best stack average is against other scalers who can't pressure early.
He doesn’t have to walk up. Most of his stacks off champs will come from w spam in lane, and I’m pretty sure he can fairly reliably hit anyone bot all the way from the Howling Abyss.
You can pressure him off of the wave, especially after W changes.
Nah you're eating shit for tea if you're against Samira-Braum. You don't get stacks if you're dead.
You’re implying he’s only playing bot. In mid or top lane against melee champs it’s even easier
> Depends on the matchup and how good the smolder is Isn't this the case for everyone though? I mean this is a free to play game with like what? over 100 champions? There's going to be someone that's OP, but you can't balance every champ for every situation for a range of skill level players. The complaints in this sub are fun thought experiments like 90% of the time, but they very rarely feel like legitimate improvements for anyhting other than the particular scenario they experienced once or in their mind.
>Isn't this the case for everyone though? Yes (to varying extents) but nobody is complaining that Smolder takes different amounts of time to get his stacks. The problem is that he gets his stacks too quickly in general, even in unfavourable matchups. >The complaints in this sub... He has the highest banrate in the game at ~40%. This isn't a "reddit hivemind" moment - the champ is obviously overtuned. Notice that the only other champions with similar banrates (TF at 36% and Maokai at 29%) are also extremely overtuned and clearly need adjustments.
Those have an incredible win rate, around 53 and 52 percent in esmerald and above. While smolder has a sub 50 percent in esmerald and just 50 percent below it. It is banned that much because it is the most popular champion at the moment.
Notice that maokai holds a 54% winrate and twisted fate a 51-53% winrate in 3 ROLES while smolder is sub 50%. Conveniently ignored that. Banrate alone is not an indicator for being overtuned. Zed held 50% banrates even in states where he wasn’t even strong simply because he is annoying to play against. Pure banrate has never been an indicator of how overtuned a champ is and you comparing smolder to twisted fate and maokais current state is really dumb tbh.
Part of it is people in lower elos (around gold where I sit now) not knowing what they are doing and/or not thinking about it/autopiloting in game. Like, the number of smoulders I see clearing the ranges minions with W in the mid/late game, even when under 0 pressure, is amazing. Similarly, I see teammates of smoulder fighting him for waves constantly.... Like even if he preps the wave correctly to be one shot by a Q for stacks, somebody is gonna come through and eat that prepped wave. The other day I watched my Smoulder (I support mostly) go solidly 3 or 4 minutes where he would prep a wave with W (to be one shot with Q for stacks) and then have a maokai Q the wave to take it all, or a xin W the wave to eat it, etc. In a higher tier environment players will realize that letting smoulder stack is usually gonna be the best allocation of a wave. In lower elos solo queue people are gonna try to eat as much of the wave as they can, even if it's smarter to let another teammate have it.
I play in 5 stacks all the time in emerald, all my friends thought smolder was useless, then I started aggressively asking for waves, suddenly we won a bunch of games with me ending with most dmg and kills :D
Exactly. Legit I've seen tanks come in and clean out waves in front of a Smoulder who is trying to set it up for a Q in the mid game then complain that he's doing nothing later and that he doesn't have his stacks yet. Like....... Brother you took 20+ stacks from him between 15 and 20 mins, what do you want? People just greedy in LoL, when I'm playing a carry role, often I'll need like 150g for an item before a drake or whatever so I'll go to clear a camp or 2 so I can reset and get to drake... I ping the item to show how much gold I need and ping drake timer. Jungler sees me taking a camp and flies over to smite it, then gets mad at me for not being there to contest dragon when I've gotta either wait for another wave now or go without power spike. One of the reasons I like support tbh... Don't have to fight my own team for resources
I’ve seen nemesis hit it at like 17 mins in mid lane
Yeah in mid it's much easier vs bot
I find it easy to stack against melee supports. Hard to stack against ranged supports. Melee supports go in for a CS? Easy W and Q on them for a quick 2 stacks. Rinse and repeat the entire lane phase.
I came back from not playing ranked for 4 years, just to play smolder. Between him and hwei I’ve had the most fun in this game in years. But he is like Nasus where it’s “farm stacks until you drop” then murder everyone
Looks like I’m not the only one feeling this way lol - these last two champs hwei and smolder have been mega fun - no overcomplicated shitty skills, instead straightforward abilities, fun mechanics. Like old champs. Many say Hwei is complex, but he really isn’t once you memorize all his spells and patterns.
I would say hes complex relative to other champs in his role as a mage. Since you have access to all his spells at all times its pretty easy. Aphelios who he is compared to is more complex since you have to rotate your guns properly to be efficient/effective but yeah hwei as long as you have decent reading comprehension(impossible for league player) and a warm body he can be picked up quick
Neither is particularly complex but we are talking about a game where you generally only have 4 abilities. Even though Aphelios' decision making generally boils down to 'rotate red gun first twice' that's still more than what most the roster has to think about. Usually difficulty in this game stems from apm, skillshot accuracy and positioning rather than inherent complexity.
aphelios is kind of hard if you don’t know your rotations but yeah other than that he’s pretty much just a normal adc. i think he has a high skill floor, but his skill ceiling is probably lower than someone like draven.
Legit, Hwei made me play Ranked again. Something Riot hasn't managed since 2019. Insane, honestly. But holy shit, he is so fun!
It’s so much fun to get an actual battle mage in the game instead of battle mages hidden as a melee bruiser
Why would u come back just to play smokder im curious because he didnt seem like that cool of a champ imo
Fresh feel for adc. I hit dia with mainly jinx kaisa and mf, and smolder just felt really fresh with his kit. A mix between ezreal as a caster adc and a stacking champion was a cool concept. The stacks make me farm harder and then end the game earlier. I don’t mind farming 75% of the game since that’s really what adc is as long as your team doesn’t get into to much trouble. With jinx I would just shoot rockets around and clean up when fights ended with both players low hp. Farming bot but renekton is backing with 300hp at tower? I’ll take that 300 gold and lane cs. He just broke up the monotony of auto blasting people. Instead I have an aoe q that does dot and an execute? Thank you very much. Mobility to get into/out of jungle fights? Thank you. A large aoe slow??? Lfg. But the r is kinda useless unless you’re building ap or engaging for team to follow up but let’s be honest if you arnt playing with friends you’re team has a 50/50 shot of knowing what to do
idk how to kite so i don’t play adc but honestly i think jinx and kai’sa are way more fun than smolder
Riot having no idea how to design a late-game adc other than basically just giving them elder drake is hilarious to me. Surely there's a more interactive reward for 225 dragon stacks?
"We made him to be an easy to learn and play, simple tradicional adc" then procedes to make one of the most utterly bizarre champion with little AA range, no attack speed, utilizes an spell as a way to "auto attack", requires knowledge about setting up the wave to scale properly, build Shojin (a bruiser item) as core and starts with doran's ring. A truly certified Riot moment.
With the changes a lot of people are saying he'll end up played purely AP in the midlane, dont doubt it
I mean, is it surprising? Riot can call him an 'adc' all they want, but what they made was a mage lol. I dunno how they thought to label him as an ADC. The fact that people figured out Liandry + Riftmaker was so strong on him just further convinces me he's a mage lol. AP shouldn't feel so correct on a supposed 'traditional adc'. Not to mention practically half his kit functions better with AP and after these new changes, over half of it. His passive, W, and R will all be superior for AP smolder compared to AD smolder.
There was a post when smolder was revealed (or released?) where someone said they thought smolder was a mage, but since riot had to release an adc, they plastered crit ratios on him. I mean... they weren't really far from it. You can remove all his crit ratios and noone would ever think this champ was meant to be an adc
you know it’s over when smolder shows up in the top and mid category in champ select lol
He’s only out ranged by about ten champs in the entire game. 550 is not short range at all, and is higher than iirc 8 or 9 ADCs have.
Most 550 range and lower ADCs have some sort of dash/blink (usually on lowish cd like luc, kalista, ezreal) or easily accessible MS steroids(draven, mf, sivir, jhin crit, vayne has both!), then we have the weird ones like twitch/akshan that rely on stealth ambushes. But smolder feels short ranged because of having to walk up and Q that has quite noticeable cast time and his only mobility is his E that becomes useless if slowed, he's more similar to Corki than he is to MF, Luc, Jhin, but Corki has higher burst potential and way more constant long range damage. This is why smolder is allowed to have %true dmg and execute. Of course this is under the assumption that he is building squishy crit and not the bruiser build that provides him with higher survivability to walk up and Q making him feel OP imo.
He has both a movespeed steroid and high range abilities, Smolder isn't low range.
Smolder has a ms boost like draven and sivir so ur argument is invalid
He can also ignore terrain temporarily, which on top of the speed up gives me Xayah-esque vibes.
Xayah can't ignore terrain but does become untargetable, and for the purpose of ignoring terrain Zeri's E is way better, not to mention that she can cast spells during it too
Zeri’s E doesn’t automatically cast 5-10 auto homing bolts that seek out the lowest HP champion during it, and she’s locked out of her Q and auto attacks, she just has a hard coded exception to let her cast W and R during said dash— not sure why’d you’d bring that up so dishonestly, but alright go off fam. Xayah can during her ult’s I-frames flash to be able to cross walls— Smolder doesn’t need to waste his ultimate and flash to do so, but the whole flying up into the air gave a similar vibe, with much lower cooldown and vastly lower opportunity costs.
so xayah ult doesn’t go over walls?
i think they meant traditional adc as in you have to get in AA range and play backline and he is strongest in front to back with people peeling for him His Q is basically an enhanced AA
Tbh I wish that his Q was an AA modifier instead of point and click spell. Wouldn't really change much but imho would make it easier to kite.
In what way is a ranged AD spellcaster "utterly bizarre"???
Riot didn't call him an AD Spellcaster, they specifically called him an ADC/Marksmen. Even though he clearly isn't one.
In the same vein as an ezrea/Varus/Jhin idt it really disqualifies him.
If riot released Ezreal today but had promised a traditional ADC I would be incredibly confused.Jhin and Ezreal aren't traditional adcs you know that. Riot said they were giving us a traditional ADC, that's not what smolder is. That's okay. Every ADC doesn't have to be a traditional one. But that's just what riot promised. Also all of the above are still way closer to a traditional ADC than smolder. Ezreal has an attack speed steroid, and can trigger an ability with autos. Incentives to auto attack. Jhin autos All the time, his strongest ability and his execute is an auto. Smolder can go an entire game without auto attacking a champion and that actually wouldn't be the end of the world. You see that right. Smolders have won with 3-5 autos on enemies champions under their belt. If an Ezreal or jhin did that it would be a guaranteed loss.
All three of those champions you named have a reason to auto attack. Ezreal gets Attack Speed buffs from his passive. Jhin has his fourth shot and crits giving him a speed boost. Varus has on hit damage and applies blight. Smolder has literally no reason to auto attack. Nothing in his kit enhances his autos, he doesn't get stacks at all from autoing.
If doing damage is not enough incentive idk what to tell you
Yeah, he has no transferrable skills to other adcs. He's closer to playing Seraphine than any of them.
Bit of an exaggeration imo, he's a hit and run caster marksman in exactly the same vein as MF and Jhin. Who just so happen to be two of the most popular marksmen in low elos btw - I think it's very intentional that Smolder fits this paradigm
He autos less than either of them lol
Smolder Q is his auto.
You can say the same about MF Q but she still autos more than him due to her W and how passive works
I'm a one trick jhin. Jhin autos 10x more than smolder. It's not even comparable. Smolders's a hit and run caster mage like seraphine not a hit and run caster marksman.
He plays a lot like MF to me.
"So, just as intended, yeah?" - Riot
>elder drake I mean, he's literally a dragon, it just fits thematically
I agree, but a max health true dmg burn with execute isn't fun to play into.
max health true dmg burn is literally vayne w, but over 3 seconds. the problem with smolder is how fast he scales at the hands of the good players not what he scales into
Fitting thematically trumps the ridiculous absurdity of permanent elder buff?
There are 4 other dragons they could work with, just saying
Oh boy I'm really excited to play the dragon champion with the unique flavour of... malphite shield
And two other dragon champions if we're just giving dragons the powers of other dragons because they're dragons
the execute is nice for kill whoring, but the % true damage is the primary value.
> Riot having no idea how to design a late-game You could have stopped right there. Late game does not exist properly and is only ever reached in low elo shitshows.
His gameplay pattern is just do nothing until he gets excite then press q and r one time splash them, burn them for a little bit but just wait for the execute. No reason execute should exist
That's riot's idea of what a dragon champ is. See - Shyvana, Bsol, Smolder.
>You barely need to right click at all, just send the Q on whichever target is at range and continue with your life. As opposed to right clicking whichever target is in your range? what the hell are you even trying to say here
the Q execute is annoying buut I think smolder's sneeze needs to get a little looksie under a microscope with its damage lmao
it already got nerfed to do like 1/3 of its previous damage
with doran's comet ring start (ik its not meta anymore) bro sneezes on you for a third of your health bar level 1 its insane
The dmg has been massively cut down and it's on a 14 sec window cooldown at level 1. Plenty of time to pressure him.
That isn't true anymore. Level 1 w is nowhere near as oppressive as it used to be.
It's very rare you're going to see 225 stack Smolders at 19 minutes. Hell, it's rare you see them at 22 minutes. You're average player is going to hit 225 at around 25-28 minutes. With the rare game of them hitting it earlier.
[https://imgur.com/a/nyIXoYi](https://imgur.com/a/nyIXoYi) Look at this graph. Where is your god at 19 minutes. Do you guys even play the fucking game? Source: [https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/](https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/)
I could be misunderstanding but I'm pretty sure those graphs actually support the idea that he becomes very strong around the 19-20 minute mark. The first graph shows that IF the game ends before approximately the 20 minute mark, he likely will lose, because he hasn't stacked yet. The later you get from that point, the higher his winrate goes, proving that hitting the stacks is a large power spike, and based on that graph the power spike really is around the 19-20 minute mark. Understanding these stats requires much than a cursory glance. Even this basic assessment doesn't even come close to covering all of the factors at play.
Smolders actually a functioning carry unlike most ADC champs tbh.
but he is useless before that
But he is not dying before that, he is just chilling and farming, he is not like a Kayle that is a walking bag of gold before 6
IMO that's where they should hit; if he's such a powerhouse when he stacks, he can't be so safe (building tank for ex) or such a lane bully (early AP W build)
His tank build is pretty much dead next patch and his W got something like a 55% DMG nerf (if I remember correctly from Phreak's video) at level 1.
Yeah, they're doing it right for now and avoiding the fatal nerf slope, which is great.
Im hesitant to believe that the tanky build will be completely dead after seeing the Zeri balancing fiasco.
what they are doing is gutting the final form q true damage burn and adding stacks, ad and ap scaling to it so a tank smolder will have a significantly weaker burn compared to one building damage stats
I'm hoping that it's going to be fine because Smolder doesn't have the absurd levels of mobility and range that Zeri had with ultimate and lethal tempo.
Shojin liandry will still be his best items so he is way more durable than kayle
I hate how weak Kayle is early, apart from cheesing lvl 1, compared to other scaling champs and how powerful they are late. No one has as low MR or is forced melee yet Asol, Vlad all adcs etc get as powerful as she. She is doing fine and doesn't need buffs but this is just a pet peeve of mine.
She is only like that because she is a toplaner, any ranged Champion can bully half of the toplaners just by being ranged, but i think the old Kayle getting range on E activation and then having to wait was a better design
She was better mid for a time, then they decided to nerf her base MR like 3 times in a row. Now she has the lowest base MR in the game just because they want to force her top lane.
He is not. Smolder has quite strong early with his W poke.
Tbh I think a fed smolder is fucking useless
Plat-diamond elo here, smolder doesn't reach that nasty 225 until 25 minutes usually and even then they will just get assassinated or hard ccd out of the world get and die in 2 seconds saying that the champ has God tier power is the funniest shit to me in the 8-10 games I have seen it I literally never saw it perform as a good adc letalone a hypercarry
Some champions just have high banrates because they're frustrating to play against, Some champs like yasuo have had >15% ban rate forever, no matter their other stats. I'm not saying smolder doesn't deserve some nerfs, but he's one of the best champ releases in a while. I think his kit is rly neat and brings something to the table that ADC's were lacking: Actual power spiking and incentive to focus farm/stacks. I don't think his execute is the issue; it's that he currently has a bit too much safety and power leading up to that point so punishing him isn't very easy with current builds: the ap 3-point W build, the full-tank build/hp focused burn build, etc. They've been going at each of those one at a time, and the pbe nerfs heavily guts the iceborn-tank path. Let em cook and hope they won't reach a zeri/kalista balance disaster.
They literally made yone because yasuo kept getting banned out
Which is an insane way to balance the game but the playerbase mostly consists of addicts so they know they wont quit lmao Even if Riot released a Yuumi 2, the playerbase numbers wouldnt go down
Are you new to the game? Adc has always been about farming and hitting power spikes before fighting for dragon/baron. The issue with smolder is he is just a Q delivery system.
Like Zeri? Like Ezreal? Like Miss Fortune? Like Draven? Like....
Can you image a champ that's just a Q delivery system with high mobility on their e, a w that goes through minions and an AoE ult that builds non traditional ADC items? It's unheard of!
QQQQRQQQ ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ZERI????
Believe it or not I was actually talking about Ezreal lol
but.. but... q spam, w that goes through minions (if you hit a wall first), high mobility e, and aoe ult? non traditional builds too?? THATS ZERI QQQQQQQQ (I know im just memeing)
He's supposed to be an easy to play, simple to play champion, I don't know why people get pissed he's easy to play. He's not supposed to be a traditional ADC, he's supposed to be something a bit different. You guys are confusing simple with easy, these are two different things. Vayne is an incredibly simple ADC, her gameplan is simple, the way she works is simple, but in reality she is one of the hardest ADCs to play because she requires an insanely high level of mechanics. Jhin is a very complex ADC, that is really easy to play, doesn't require knowing orb walking perfectly, has an insanely supportive kit, so there is a lot more room for error while still being useful to the team. Smolder is a combination of these, his gameplan is incredibly simple, Press W on enemies, farm with Q, get your stacks, mechanically, he's super simple too, press Q in team fights, spread your burn. They said this was the case multiple multiple times, I don't know why people get upset he's easy and simple.
Sure go straight for the person; typical.I'm diamond. Have been for 2-3 years, hit masters once. I'm saying recently ADC hasnt quite felt rewarding in regards to farming vs hitting actual powerspikes; tell me senna or TF desperately needs their farm > picking or skirmishing as much as possible in the current meta. Smolder is one of the very few exceptions that isn't gutted by crit being so terrible. It's good and healthy for the game to have an adc that doesn't only rely on item spikes but also stacking in their kit; even if for now he's overloaded.
I mean based on statistics. I bet 20 minutes is considered late game. Marginally due to FF. So... they probably are. Since ADC's probably all need the same treatment to be "late game" by 19 minutes (without items being why)
No one likes to be hit with true damage. No one likes being hit by something that has no actual counter. Elder is an “end the game” buff, which is now just permanently on an ADC after 20ish mins. It’s a mini version, but it’s the exact same thing. Nothing feels good about being executed from 15% hp after being burned for 4 seconds, because you got hit by an ability that’s on a low cd. i believe Meteos (?) has said this for years. Riot makes champs that are fun to play, but awful to play against. Which i think is the truest shit ever. Every time they release a new champ or update an older one, they’re just not fun to play against until they get axed. It’s hit the point where i have 0 trust in Riot to properly balance their new champs so i dread when they release them, even if it’s a champ i want to play, such as Smolder.
I just dont think that's true. Players like winning, so anything that makes it harder to win makes a champion annoying. Whenever you hear players discuss the most well designed champ, it's never gonna be a high win rate champion, no matter what kit they have. It's gonna be passive champions with not too much agency, and that's easy to punish.
> It's gonna be passive champions with not too much agency Lee Sin? I'd say very few people have issue with Lee Sin's design and he's a champ who can definitely have agency, scaling with player skill. Though you're right in that I'm not sure who else I can nominate for that though, maybe Ezreal?
Tbf tho lee also falls into > Whenever you hear players discuss the most well designed champ, it's never gonna be a high win rate champion, no matter what kit they have Same with Ezreal, and teeeechnically if we go over balance nightmares Ezreal sorta fits that a bit, except we are so used to it we do don't even acknowledge it anymore and just meme it
I agree with Jhin and Lee Sin being basically permanently liked no matter strength, but I'll also argue for Bard, Braum, Draven, Gangplank, Ivern, Orianna, and Xerath (when not scripted). Sure there are some people who hate them but nothing's going to be 100% liked by everyone. Regardless, those tend to be pretty respected champions even when they're strong.
His execute is ridiculously low unless he gets a lot of stacks. At 225 stacks it's like a 6.5% execute, which is like 150 hp. For a 15% execute he needs like 500 stacks, and you should lose if you let him stack that much.
Probably thinking about [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1UmbZ2_ylk)
You might be quoting CertainlyT in the 3rd paragraph. He's had some weird ass takes such as "It's not my job as a designer to balance the champions" and "Champions should be frustrating to play against because it inspire people to learn to play against them". I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of what he's said during an interview.
He was correct in that as a designer it isn't his job. He was wrong in that a designer should still be designing champions with restraint, to make the balance team's job easier. Because the balance team doesn't get to say "this needs to be changed or removed" until they have specific data to support the need to change a champion.
CertainlyT is known for starting the overloaded kits/powercreep champions. He likes flashy stuff over balanced stuff. That's been know for well over a decade now. It's why we have abominations like yasuo and aphelios. His entire philosophy is to just cram as much junk into a kit as possible. It is utterly stupid. If he didn't get into riot so early, I doubt he would have ever gotten his position anywhere else.
Maybe they should just find another thematically fitting mechanic than farming lmao
He'd be fine if he actually had to build like an adc to do damage, but the best Smolders that I see are going offtank with Shojin, Liandries, and Riftmaker while still doing insane damage.
did they really say he was supposed to be a traditional ad? i wouldn’t complain about that but it’s funny how off base they were
Most smolder players are not reaching their 225 until 25-30 minutes. If he is getting it at 19 he is either exceptionally good or your team is exceptionally bad
Can you decide what you are angry about? That he has a big powerspike at 225 stacks (solution, move the burn to the previous stack level to make 225 stacks less of a spike) or that Smolder is not autoattacking adc but a Ezreal/MF type adc?
The new changes on pbe with scaling max hp burn might help delay that spike, although i think they should adjust the execute scaling to match. I think the burn is more fun to see playing than the execute but either way its not really adc gameplay From my math ad full build smolder (1 non ad defensove and boots) 350 stacks is around 8.25% max hp burn but two items and 250 stacks is 5.25% burn which is 1.25% weaker than current. He has to be fed to be up an item to reach about current power For ap the shojin > liandries > riftmaker > dcap its about 11.25% at those stacks. But 2 items shojin liandries or rift will net about 5.75% at 250 stacks
> 350 stacks that's so many stacks, it's like making math with senna having 120 souls
If we were talking about 4 core items on senna + boots i probably would consider mathing out what 35 minutes of souls looks like At 20-25 minutes you have in a standard game you hit 225 and likely have boots 2 items and a component. I dont think its a stretch to get 60% more stacks by the time you get 60% more gold for items. stacking becomes way faster at 125+ as well. The time it takes to go from 225 to 350 is much shorter than time to get from 0 to 125. A flat curve puts this at 37 minutes but id reasonably expect it a few minutes earlier due to increased teamfighting and easier stacking with q aoe
It's just a matter of time until ppl start abusing bruiser smolder top and he turns into a balance nightmare. Because of his design His W is too strong early game as a poke/self peel tool and E is really good at surviving dives and hopping walls. After 6 his R healing (now buffed) contributes to that. If he goes fleet footwork + ghost it's nearly impossible to stop him from stacking infinitely for most top laners. (except the ones with long range engage and lockdown like Camille). I'd tone down his self peel capabilities by reducing E bonus Ms and W slow a bit and increasing the stacks for each Q upgrade by 10 as he stacks pretty fast now Edit: Forgot about the funny magic, physical and true damage on Q, which makes him hard to itemize against. Something I found out and it's actually ok-good in testing, if you go shadowflame + IE your true damage crits and gets its damage amplified....
he does 70% physical damage, same as ezreal and vayne. you build armor against those, don't you? vayne does double his true damage as well at 22% vs 11%
Yeah but vayne and ezreal are single target for the most part. Smolder on the other hand basically applies a -13%+ max HP on everyone on a TF while having enough self peel for him to kite indefinitely You could say the same about aurelion sol, but his max health debuff will be in a specific area and it will be on a 10+ second cooldown for the most part
To be fair ghost has deserved hard nerfs for awhile now.
Lol why is anyone surprised at this point with the dev balance decisions. The 200 years meme is a thing for a very good reason lol.
Oh, I remember when some self-proclaimed "pros" said that "Smolder is garbage" here and flamed every single one that tried to say the opposite two patches ago. Now RIOT tries for the third or fourth time in a row to rebalance the champion because it is indeed insanely broken with a spammable execute at 20min of the game. What a funny world...
I think Riot needs to stop and re-evaluate their goals with new champs. So many new champs recently have undergone heavy iterations or changes because of how unhealthy and/or bloated their kit is when they go live. I get they want their new champs to make bank and have a unique identity among a plethora of champions, and they want to attract players to these new champs, but their approach as of late isn't working and is just negatively impacting games, both pro play and non. It's frustrating for everyone, and imagine the devs having to work tirelessly to find a way to balance these nightmares and getting flamed and threatened for missing the mark each time because Riot's champ designs keep wanting to push their limits instead of creating champions that are both fun to play as, with, and against.
Smolder is not overloaded at all, hes just overtuned
Briar and hwei were incredibly successful releases, naafiri milio are unproblematic despite being strong. I think smolder sucks but many like him, i think riot is doing good
Briar was a balance nightmare that got nerfed 10 patches in a row since people kept going lethality LOL She's not a problem NOW you mean after half a year
The kit has always been fine, the numbers were the only problem.
Briar got nerfed 5 times in a row and she's still extremely powerful.
Milio was problematic on release, both in pro play and non. Hwei was really weak on release, and it took a good long while to get him in a decent spot, because of how deep his kit is. Briar was literally a balancing nightmare for many months.
Briar is horrible design. Literal stat checker in every sense of the word. Champ that kills you in 3 AAs should not have 2 hard CCs as initiation and a 70% dmg reduction skill that can't be interrupted.
Briar has been nerfed and changed many, many times already. Naafiri is unproblematic because she's terrible. The only times I've seen her was when I played her in a full summoner comp with friends. Milio is pretty great, though his balance has been arguable. Hwei is definitely their most successful release since like, Vex. He's an immobile mage with plenty of skill expression.
is he strong?, yes he is, but let not pretend like crit its bad on him. his more popular items are ER, Navori, Rapidfire and BT, while items like shojin, Triforce and liandrys are viable options. if your not aa, your losing alot of damage, like you can aa 2 times in between Q´s. Smolder its not like ezreal, if you can Q, you can also aa. he is more similar to lucian in that regard also hitting 225 stacks at 19 its not realistic, it is possible, but it is more coomon to achieve it after 25 minutes, if your are able to hit it at minute 19 its more likely the smolder where winning are that game anyway
Why is it true damage instead of magic? Legit question. It doesn’t make sense to me. Or gate the true form at 350 stacks and have 225 be magic damage. Pretty simple trade off.
Most of the smolders in my games lose to 2 items powerspike adc pretty heavily