r/SmolderMains

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After Changes to Q I decided to buy crit items but still remain tanky. We benefit from crit way more now than before, and crit scales great on our Q the more AD we have. Shojin is still in my view the BIS item for smolder, no doubt about it.

Shieldbow instead of BC, due to BC being much weaker now compared to LDR.

LDR/IE/MR is a must as 3 or 4.

Boots for MID I always choose as usually Omnivamp if can, but if enemy team heavy AA then Steelcaps, or Mercs vs Heavy CC with AP.

2 items for defense:

ARMOR: Death dance is great armor item + heavy ad bonus buff and AH. Can go GA but I find it hard to use it well, usually I die even with GA or GA doesn't get procced, that way I get less value if It procced and I survived.

MR: Kaenic is my still favorite item, a perfect counter to Long range poke mages or assassins.

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Since our items lack AH I try to get the most AH from runes, and this runes page felt great to play with.

After how many stacks I should hook?

This season I decided to fully switch to adc from mid because I liked smolder and it’s his best role. I’m definitely still struggling to learn adc but I am significantly better than when I first switched.

Now that smolder is either getting first picked or banned, I’ve now realized that I don’t really know how to play anyone else in bot, so now I am sort of lost and don’t know what to play. I can’t play more traditional aa marksman as I’m used to smolders spell casting play-style.

Even when I was able to consistently play smolder, I realized the skill gap whenever I watch videos of people playing him. I’m typically very behind on stacks and my mechanics were not good in general when comparing my gameplay to the videos.

Now that I have essentially tilt que from Plat 1 - Gold 1 in a somewhat short time frame, I’ve now realized I can’t play smolder because 1. He’s banned or getting first picked and 2. I lowkey am dog at him. If you look at my recent match history most of the time smolder was banned so that’s why I was playing all sorts of champs even reverting back to mid lane for a bit.

I initially played him because I liked the character, and I still do, but it is not fun when I can’t play him. There’s also a noticeable skill drop when I play other adcs which is also not fun because then I know I’m holding back the team.

At this point I don’t know who I should play or what to do. I was extremely close to emerald and now I am so far that it almost feels like it is going to take an actual year of playing just to recover what I lost. At this point I would love to hear any thoughts on what I could do.

I've been taking Doran's helm for the past few weeks playing smolder and I just feel like it's better than Dblade. The omnivamp from Dblade just doesn't do anything when you do so little damage. I feel like the resistances from Helm really matter more especially if the enemy support deals magic damage. What are your guys thoughts? Do I just need to go back to Dblade?

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I'll be the first to point out how comically broken Smolder is. But let's not pretend Brand isn't next up in power level. I won't even mention the other plethora of mages on this list. Brand's pick rate is extremely high for a mage "Marksman," and yet he hasn't been touched. Next patch, when DFT's vile interaction with BC is gutted, where will smolder be, considering the nerf to both DFT and Smolder himself?

I've seen the upcoming changes for Smolder, pushing him toward Crit. And while once ER + IE core is complete, you technically have more damage, the nerf to his early game is extreme. Not to mention any non crit item is actively punished. This means no way of obtaining bulk in a meta filled with assassins like we've rarely seen before. Of course, you can go shieldbow, and the Talon/Zed/Etc can just go Serpents.

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Below are the three item winrates. Notice how the last one, without cleaver, sits at 52.6%? It may seem high, but please note that this is the WR when three items are achieved, which, in 99% of cases, means smolder has stacked completely. It also contains Hubris, which is built when one has a lead.

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As an advocate for playing scalers in Soloq, and staying as far away as possible from "beat down" picks, I don't see a reason to pick Smolder over Jinx, Aphelios, Zeri, or even Vayne (in some scenarios) next patch. Which sucks, because he's my favorite adc these days.

Of course, we won't know how things will end up until we see the whole patch, but I'm not hopeful.

Let me here your thoughts, if you would.

sorry, I just returned to league and last time I was playing league, I remember liandry's smolder was a thing and people never built armor pen on him.

now I'm seeing builds where LDR is almost a staple, so I'm guessing things have changed quite a lot. can anyone tell me how I should swap out my build in the late game when I have excess gold to simply make my burn more effective?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for high elo Smolder players to learn from.

Do you know any Diamond+ / Master+ Smolder mains who regularly stream or upload content on YouTube/Twitch?

Ideally, I’m looking for players who:

• Main or play Smolder very often
• Are at least Diamond, preferably Master+
• Speak English or Spanish or French
• Post content regularly, not just one Smolder video guide every couple of months

Also, if you know any good ways to find high elo content creators who specialize in a specific champion, like I’m trying to do now with Smolder, I’d really appreciate any advice.

Thanks.

I'm still working on the background of Gargoyle Smolder, but I had a few ideas and was wondering if you guys had some ideas of your own!

I may be drawing these btw!

Battle Boss/Arcade Smolder:

Was thinking of a Spyro/Koopa inspired skin, maybe with his q having the same colorful gems Spyro picks up in his little fireballs that are pixelly. The ideas that came to mind for appearance was a more first gen bowser color pallet of mostly green with a yellow underbelly, but I'm open to other ideas. I didn't want to copy Spyro beat for beat, y'know? I also was thinking of feathered wings but that's up for debate.

"Prince" Smolder:

This idea was more inspired by the King Viego skin.

Smolder, aside from his mother, is the last imperial dragon I'm pretty sure. And his mom was alive before the ruination, so maybe with this one he looks more regal and acts more spoiled.

Another idea with this one would to be giving smolder female voice lines and imply that the dragon we are playing is his mother before the ruination.

Really there's not too much of an idea for this one.

Elemental Smolder:

I've drawn some art of this idea already, but it's what it sounds like. Smolder can have the cosmetics of the elemental drakes and even elder dragon.

Cafe Cuties Smolder:

He's an adorable little dragon and to me it kind of makes sense. His autos and Q could be him spitting coffee at you, his W could have a floating cup of coffee like a latte, etc.

Dragon Prince Smolder:

I feel like this one would be simultaneously the easiest and hardest to nail because he's already a dragon, but with this you'd have to really amp it up. It'd be really easy to make it seem like a recolor or make someone say "why is this is a thing he's already a dragon"

Fables Wyrm Smolder

I think it would really suit him because of all the other fable skins like leprechaun veigar, loch ness chogath, etc. but perhaps the gargoyle smolder idea already fits that.

So, now that papa Rito is enabling crit on our little boy again, what do we build ?

Same as before, ER -> pene%/IE -> pene%/IE/RFC ? With maybe a Shojin at some point ?

I think now that we have been broken for a patch, everyone will focus us, so RFC will be even more mandatory than before, so is there a world where we build Statik to get back the energized faster for RFC ?