r/SmolderMains

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS PATCH PREVIEW 26.10

Summary:
- Zeri buffs are aimed at improving her late game scaling.
- Lee Sin changes are focused on making his kit more consistent and less frustrating around W usage.
- Doran item buffs and mobility item changes are meant to increase build diversity.
- Riot also wants to avoid massive mid-season shakeups, since most players prefer a more stable meta.
- Cyclosword is gonna get adjusted in future, it’s too strong on Zed and Naafiri
- Cleaver + Deathfire Touch became too strong, so it will receive an internal cooldown in 26.11

Source X/Twitter: https://x.com/riotphroxzon/status/2051882812110942607?s=46

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CHAMPION BUFFS
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Ambessa
- Q1/Q2 percent target max HP damage: 2-6% → 4-6%
- R healing from abilities: 10-15% → 15-20%
- Q1/Q2 bonus monster damage: 125 → 75
- R healing effectiveness vs monsters: 40% → 25%

Galio
- Q mana cost: 70-90 → 60-80
- E damage: 90-250 (+90% AP) → 100-240 (+100% AP)
- R damage now scales with 100% bonus magic resistance

Wukong
- W Clone Damage: 30-50 → 40-60
- W Clone Duration: 3.25 → 4
- E attack speed: 35-55 → 40-60

Zeri
- Q base damage: 21-33 → 22-38
- Excess attack speed to AD conversion: 50% → 60%
- Bugfix: attacks during R extend duration by 1.5s → 2.5s

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CHAMPION NERFS
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Anivia
- Base armor: 21 → 19
- Armor growth: 4.5 → 4.1

Ashe
- Q AD ratio: 110-140% → 110-130%

Naafiri
- Passive monster modifier: 155% → 145%
- W mana cost: 60 → 85/80/75/70/65

Shyvana
- HP per level: 100 → 95
- W cooldown: 13-9 → 13-10

Zed
- E damage: 70-170 (+80% bonus AD) → 70-160 (+70% bonus AD)
- Passive target max HP damage: 6/8/10% → 5/7.5/10%

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CHAMPION ADJUSTMENTS
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Lee Sin

W
- Shield: 70/115/160/205/250 → 60/105/150/195/240
- Cooldown when used on non-champions/champions changed to a flat 7s
- Lee Sin now gains the shield when jumping to wards or minions
(the ward/minion itself does not receive the shield)

E
- AD scaling: 100% AD → 90% AD

R
- Targets still get knocked away even if killed

Quinn
- Passive now deals +50 damage to monsters
- Q now deals 50% increased damage to monsters
- R mana cost: 100/50/0 → 50/25/0

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SYSTEM BUFFS
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Lich Bane
- AP ratio: 40% AP → 45% AP
- Movement speed: 4% → 6%

Stormraider’s Surge
- Movement speed duration: 3s → 4s
- Movement speed amount:
40% melee / 30% ranged → 48% melee / 36% ranged

Doran’s Bow
- AD: 6 → 8

Doran’s Helm
- Health: 110 → 130

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SYSTEM NERFS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Deathfire Touch
- Damage per second:
4-12 → 3-12 (levels 1-18)
Scaling unchanged

Gluttonous Greaves
- Cost: 950g → 1000g
- Omnivamp per stack:
1% up to 6 stacks → 0.6% up to 10 stacks

Cleaver + Deathfire Touch (26.11)
- Will receive an internal cooldown

Hello!

Since Smolder is completely broken and pick/ban in solo queue AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE next patch, I put together this guide on almost everything I know about him!

I think even if you're really experienced at the champ there should be at least something in here that you can learn.

If you're interested, please check it out and let me know if you have any questions :D

so is the dft bc interaction removed? i dont see anything about it in the patch notes lmao

Title, just want to look for Smolder mid players that still play him in S16

he's been getting banned or picked so much more often now this patch and I actually genuinely cannot perform as well on other champs ESPECIALLY adcs, I struggle with kiting and the way smolder is played micro wise is so different from traditional adcs, i've tried mages like veigar but it's still not the same, the targeted q really helps me guarantee damage in team fights and he's so much easier to position with attack move click than champs that have high attack speed, im thinking about maybe sona duo support botlane but does anyone have any suggestions on who to play when smolder is unfortunately unavailable

Smolder right now is totally unpickable, i always pick veigar mid, smolder adc and kayle top. Since Smolder was launched i always said it, its skill set is too strong for a farm champion, it is always easy pretty much for everyone to play smolder, does not require too much lanning mechanics, and whenever he gets a buff or an indirect buff like with Deathfire torch, everyone all of a sudden is a Smolder main and it's impossible to pick it, OR it is always banned, my idea is that nerfing smolder's early and mid game damage won't really affect him and will improve the fact that anyone picks it just to pick it.
Today i wanted to play a single adc game and it got banned 7 times in a row, i can't with it.

Ever since the new deathfire touch / black cleaver interaction and the rune in general came out, Smolder has been perma banned/picked and it's been annoying me since i have nearly 500k points on him and mained him before this came out, but now he's the best adc in the game right S++. Is anyone else in the same boat as me?

I've heard these last weeks that black cleaver + dft instantly giving max stacks is op, so obviously you'd want to have it in your build.

Before this patch i went for crit + shojin 2nd. This felt already good, but i thought since bc is considered op i should swap shojin for bc as my second item. I saw doublelift playing this build as well. I also tried full bruiser build, but i felt like i lacked the damage in the late game.

Now i decided to test it in practice tool finally. aa-q-aa-w-aa-e-aa-q (no q stacks) I didn't see a big difference between er+bc vs er+shojin on a 60 armor target (it was about 40 damage in favor of shojin). On the 90 armor target the difference was in favor of bc, but it was rather small as well (about 60 damage). er+bc+rapid canon vs er+shojin+rc is the same. Here i tested er+bc+shojin as well and it did like 100 more damage, then going crit (i was surprised).

I just started playing 6 months ago, so i might be missing something here. I also apologies for absence of the numbers, i didn't think of taking notes when i were testing. What am i wrong about here? Why doesn't bc seem op? Also, you can't go for ldr if you get bc, and after testing i got the most damage with er+shojin+ie+ldr on 4 items, so it's nice to be able to get ldr, it gives a lot of damage. What's the best build rn in your opinion ? Is it worth going for a bruiser build? At what point of the game does crit become stronger than bruiser items?

When I play support I try to use atlas to get my ADC gold from minions they won’t be able to last hit. I don’t just spam it every time it’s up. I’m new to Smolder ADC but having a blast so far with the new rune/BC interaction. It feels like the only thing stopping me from stacking quickly is supp last hitting minions with atlas. Knowing they have to do this , what is the best way to plan how to stack Smolder and also have supp use atlas well?

Assume you were in comms with supp, how would you do this most effectively to stack and also let supp level supp item fast?

https://preview.redd.it/3tqw2xurnzzg1.png?width=1037&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf7ef5e3dc1b3777d4f38a71432dae3708e59590

600 stack game

I swear I don't feel the omnivamp AT ALL, for comparison, it feels like the lifesteal rune on kai'sa (wich isn't a AD heavy adc) heals twice as much, while omnivamp theoretically should be super good on smolder.

Its also weird that before gluttonous came out, the 5% omnivamp on Endless Hunger DID feel significant, is it just me?

https://lolalytics.com/de/lol/smolder/build/

As you can see when you click the link, with the new patch, smolder became giga thanos.

As far as i understand, thanks to a interaction with DFT, Black cleaver becomes his best second item, and its not even close. 58 percent winrate with two items is absurd, and I think riot will do something against this.

The thing is tho, Smolder generally is just in a weird spot in terms of his itemization. Crit is not very good on him right now, which is why the builds went into those bruiser items with a lot of haste on them. I personally dislike this, because ADCs generally should remain vulnerable in exchange for high damage. Riot Endstep mentioned that because of the strong state of Essence reaver with sheen, a lot of those caster adcs like lucian, gankplank and smolder needed to be nerfed because they just spike too hard on this item, which makes it overall actually a net negative for them in terms of experience.

Now I still think that some form of crit sheen is valuable for those types of champs since if they don't get it, they will naturally resort to other bruiser sheen items like Triforce, which I disapprove. I want those champs to remain squishy. I dont nessesarily think it has to be essence reaver who has the sheen, but some crit sheen should somewhere exist in the system so that smolder has an option that doesnt make him go into off-bruiser territory. Because, lets be real here. The moment an adc can efficiently build overlords bloodnail is the moment when hell freezes over. Please, I want his damage ratios to be higher and those bruiser builds to be gutted. That cant be too much to ask.

I'm mastery 40 on the little shit. If I play him it's an almost instant win if the jg isn't camping me constantly and if I'm vs a smolder I'm fucked regardless of what I play. Death fire is way too op on him and I think I'm just gonna move to perma banning him every match just to offset the potential chance of someone else playing him so we don't instantly lose because my support walks into every smolder Q and W like a toddler into oncoming traffic while my dogshit viego jg one trick is off coddling our 0/5/0 garen because he screamed the loudest.

Rambling aside with that first part, I think this sucks the fun out of the game for me a bit. Unironically there is no more challenge to smolder anymore because now it's just picking the arcane comet preset, switching comet to deathfire, building ER then boots, then cleaver, and then boom. Win the game.
No longer is it the excitement of potentially turning a game around that may have seemed hopeless to carry with a passive elder buff. Now it's just machine gunning Q with deathfire burn and everyone melts before you even GET elder.

Sidenote: I'm sorry for all of the bitching I am quite drunk at the moment.