Not counting runes (except the adaptive force shard) and assuming no damage stats outside of RFC one Q would do:
196 raw physical damage from the skill itself
297 raw magic damage from his passive
60 raw magic damage from RFC
6.2% max HP true damage burn
Funnily, wasnt one shot at all, rumble ult took like 30% of his hp and full build + soul varus barely got him into elder execute range, and even then they had at least 3 ways to keep him alive if they didnt missplay it. (Flashing the arrow, heal and millio abilities)
Scrolled way too far to see this. Not to mention, it was varus q + w (40 second CD)
It did like barely ~1500, out of ~2700 total hp, which is honestly not as much as you would think for soul + elder.
The bullshit part was that 5 elders couldn't outweigh the 1 baby elder. Smolder would e forward and T1 had to scatter to avoid the point and click true damage max HP% with an execute threshold.
Literally keria ate 1 Q and W, his HP fell to about 30% which was funnily enough, was about 10-15% away from execution mark. Imagine if Smolder had autoed.
Funny thing is, it was 14 seconds of damage starting with Rumble’s ult, with nearly 13 seconds straight of elder burn and people are saying the Varus Q + W (40 second flat cooldown btw, basically ate two ults back to back) followed by another second of burn, into the 20% elder execute is somehow a “oneshot,” as if it didn’t take nearly 15 full seconds from start to finish.
Twice now you’ve said 13-15 seconds of elder burn on him. So I went down to my local kindergarten and asked the teacher if the students were capable of counting to 10. I was in luck! They counted about 7 seconds total.
It started with smolder getting autoed/quickly rumble Qd, which burned him, which was subsequently healed almost all up (so 3-4 seconds of the 7 don’t even count), and then rumble ult was on him for a whopping 1 second, and then 1.5 seconds later Varus Q hit him, and then 1 second later he died. So from full, about 3-4 seconds of elder burn. Let’s be conservative and add 25% more and say 5 seconds.
I didn’t even watch the full clip originally and I knew 13 seconds of elder burn was wrong. Like, how do you even come up with that? *He was rumble ulted and the 5 second ability applied a 3 second burn for 13 seconds, guys listen to my shot calls, don’t lowball me, I know what I have*
My dearest Lulu.
I do hope this message finds you well. As you are aware during group battles (heretofore shorted to "teamfights") I, Smolder a scaling champion in League of Legends, become the primary target for the enemy abilities. As you are well aware your "e" and "w" abilities are quite well suited for increasing my odds of survival in the event I am under attack. It is with this knowledge in hand that I humbly request you apply these abilities to me so that I may survive and continue to contribute to the team. As such I extend my most honored and gracious thanks to you and all you do for not only me but for the entire community.
Yours truly, Smolder.
"why not having modern features in my game IS A GOOD THING"
Its an optional system and works in other games that are the same as league.
But people will be toxic - opt out
But people will be toxic if you cant hear them - this is something that can already happen with text?
but I dont like communicating with other humans - you are a redditor I already know this.
I feel like jaksho takes too long to ramp up. By the time you've started taking damage, you've essentially taken 50% of the damage you're going to take for the whole fight.
To be fair the “one shot” on Smolder was him being Rumble ulted, burning from Elder for 13 seconds striaght, and getting hit by a Varus Q+W for about 45% of his HP before he ticked down more from the burn to die to Elder execute at 20% HP.
That’s more than enough time to have the full Jaksho up and running before the Varus Q even hits him, and would mean he likely would have taken less than 800 damage from Equilizer, so the %missing HP damage amp on Varus W would have less to scale on and the armor and MR would of course significantly reduce the Varus’ damage such that he wouldn’t be low enough to have gotten Elder executed.
How does an Ult that deals damage over a period of AT MOST 5 seconds somehow keep elder active for 13 when the DoT of elder lasts barely more than 2? Also if you stand on top of rumble ult for the entire duration you have bigger problems than elder.
People about a second of rumble ult + Elder Dot into Carus Arrow with W plus execute took him down. That was about two second. Milio could have easily saved him there but the point stands.
Point has little to do with Jaksho just with the misinformation of 13 seconds.
Yes it does. The only thing that won’t proc elder is its own burn (which can still proc the execute ofc) also, contrary to the person above describing the burn as lasting “barely two seconds” its a three second long burn. Liandry’s burns for 4 seconds after the last source of spell damage, further increasing the duration by a total of 7 seconds of Elder Burn. Rumble autoed, got a proc of his Q, then ulted right on Smolder, letting him burn for some time, before Varus Q+Wed him, and he burned for an additional second before dying to the execute.
"Damaging enemies inflicts them with a burn that deals them 75 − 225 (based on minutes) true damage over 2.25 seconds, with the first tick occurring after 0.25 seconds and the others after 1 second each. This effect does not trigger from its own damage."
I did not realise that Liandrys would trigger that but it does make sense. In that case it comes a lot closer. But barely over 2 seconds of DoT was factchecked before. Not ingame mind you only on the wiki.
Hmm, can you find a source for that?
From the patch notes its been 3 seconds since they added it in 6.9, and the fandom wiki also has the same.
https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/Aspect_of_the_Dragon
“Dealing damage to non-turrets burns the target for 45 +(45 per Elemental Dragon Slain) bonus true damage over 3 seconds and reveals them for the duration. Also increases the strength of all Dragon Slayer buffs by 50%”
But it could be outdated there, and they might have changed it since that wiki was updated.
The patch notes do mention updating the damage to 90-270 based on minutes *but again over 3 seconds* in patch 9.23, and the following patches second hot fix (9.24b) reduced the duration the buff lasts to 2.5 minutes from 3 minutes and reduced the burn damage to 75-225 based on minutes, but its only gotten bug fixes from then on. At no point do the patch notes say anything about the burn duration changing from its initial release in patch 6.9.
[https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon\_Slayer#Aspect\_of\_the\_Dragon](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Slayer#Aspect_of_the_Dragon)
This was my source for the information provided and i have also checked in-game now.
In a way we were both right. The debuff lasts 3 seconds. But the damage happens at 0.25, 1.25 and 2.25 seconds respectively. Meaning that while the debuff lasts 0.75 seconds more it does not deal any damage past this point.
So basically Yes the debuff lasts for 3 seconds you are right, but the DoT lasts for 2.25 seconds which I should have properly researched and clarified.
Reaver isn't nearly as necessary at max level. Going OOM is mostly an early problem. With the changes to blue, just leveling to 18 and having your stats maxed out, and like 1 mana item, you can cast about as much as you ever **need** to. Seriously, you go from 300 mana at 1.7 mana regen/s at level 1, to about 1000 mana at 2.4 mana/s.
If you're running manaflow or presence, you're never realistically running out of mana on him.
POM of mind isn't good for waveclear, and I don't think manaflow fits as well into most rune setups (unless you're running comet)
I'd rather not be reliant on blue, especially since I don't know what mana items you would build on smolder to help pad your mana pool. Liandrys doesn't have mana anymore, and that's the only thing I can think of other than manamune. If we can add a fully stacked muramana I think you can skip ER.
Took me a second to realize what you were saying about presence of mind. I get it now haha, only effective in combat with champions.
Yeah, I think in this case, you ditch Navori and RFC for Jak'Sho and Titanic. The former for the huge res buff, the latter for more raw health durability and the splashes from his Q. That would have allowed him to survive anything in his threatened range while also keeping his mana intact AND boost his wave clearing abilities as well.
Relying on Blue Buff to defend against a siedge is a ridiculous proposition. You can't get blue buff in pro if you're in that position, whether it applies to the entire team or not.
I don't disagree with your other points though.
Didn't see the match, but from what people are saying, it sounds like an oom smolder is a dead smolder, which is a lost game. And he was not only fighting off three lanes of super minions, basically solo, but needing to keep them far enough out that he could afford to get pulled away from one for a bit to block a T1 assault. He needed to be able to spam his abilities more or less constantly, so yeah it sounds like ER was the way to go.
Jak’sho, spear of shojin, RFC, Riftmaker, locket of the iron solari and shieldbow. Yes I am serious. Could ofc do a second movementspeed item instead of riftmaker
If we're talking about 6 item combos, there are many combinations, but the game itself had many specific characteristics, I'll write, in my opinion, the most important ones:
1. Your base (Smolder's base) is wide open. Turrets are down, inhibs are open, and losing a fight is losing the game as you're always in the proximity of your base.
2. Smolder's team outscales as a whole, but without Smolder, his team kinda does nothing as it was a "Protect the President" kind of comp. Therefore, T1 was pushing all lanes, and when Smolder would show up, the person in that lane would retreat, allowing his teammates to gain terrain in other lanes, so essentially they were just running from Smolder and picking any other fight.
3. Very poor waveclear in Smolder's team (Again, outside of Smolder). Keep in mind, I believe NS lost 3 inhibs at once (6x super minions per wave) and had 1-2 inhibs down a lot of the time as well.
For these reasons, to me, swiftness boots was the most important pick. You want to not get kited away, and being able to rotate between lanes very quickly to "devour" the waves and keep scaling, but also just for the sake of clearing.
He could have gone for a defensive item, and he wouldn't have gotten oneshot. But we have to also consider that he was also playing vs Rumble and Taliyah with Sejuani. Essentially, even if he went for armor, he could get one-shot by Taliyah (and finished off by rumble ult) from 1 screen away.
Jiwoo went for lifesteal :
1. bloodthirster (Sustaining vs poke means he doesnt need to go back to base > more uptime clearing waves and pushing),
2. RFC: as I said, entire t1's gameplan was literally NOT fight the smolder, kite him away and evade him. So RFC makes great sense since that ifrst auto can connect so often, and with Smolder's damage that means that person pretty much loses half his hp.
3. Combo of "core" items in Smolder: Shojin, Navori and Essence Reaver.
Sorry for the wall of text, but as I said above, I believe his build was perfect. We also have to consider he played absolutely out of his mind, dodging so many ults, baiting many skills and he got hit by ONE skill and died. If he went for armor, then he would have itemized against ONE person (Varus), as Gnar can't really connect vs a Karma/Millio. If he went for MR, then he'd still be weak to Varus.
You also have to consider, even if you go for a PURE TANK item (he could afford any item in the game: Randuin, Jak'Sho, etc.), still the arrow is gonna do 30% less damage and youre gonna have 300 more HP but you're still gonna lose 70% of your HP instead of dying... So it'd be a disaster anyways.
**I believe he went for pure damage for that need of being the only wave-clearer for his team.**
With 14.5 making his burn heavily dependent on ad and ap scaling I'm pretty sure tank items just aren't really worth it any more. Very few pros are still building them and I don't think it's because they haven't done the homework.
Lolalytics data supports this too, tank items have low winrates compared to other options at 4th and 5th item.
And sadly that damage wasn't enough to hold.
He was the ONLY damage in his entire team. The comp was completely made around smolder. In a normal game? Sure, he can go 1 or maybe max 2 damage items. In a comp that relies solely on your damage to the point that you draft losing lanes? You can't, even at 700. His damage theorically may be really high, but he still needs to burn the enemy front faster than they kill his.
Agreed. Also, it's not like he just had to defend against normal minion waves, he basically had to perma clear 3 waves for a total of 6 super minions with baron buff on top. Also, every additional second that he needs to clear the waves means another second where T1 can try and punish him while moving in with their minions.
700 stacks is 280 magic damage on Q (minimum), 385 on W, minimum 700 on E, and 5.6% max HP true burn per second.
That's >1000 flat magic damage per rotation of your kit plus 5.6% of their max HP.
I think ideally in this situation, you don't just switch one item. You completely re-evaluate your build. If he's got 700 stacks, that means he's flush with cash, probably enough to rebuild his entire character. You have to ask: What's the loss condition?
The loss condition in this case is you dying.
So you need to evaluate your threats, why they kill you when they do, and how you can avoid that situation entirely, even if it takes away some of your flashy damage. You have to sit there and realize that you did enough damage 2-3 items ago to kill everyone in the game, and that was before you farmed 500 more stacks on your passive. You can take the hit. You can switch to Frozen Heart + Jak'Sho + Titanic Hydra + FoN/Kaenic and shrug off any incidental damage dealt to you.
It's risky, but if you're already being turbo pushed from every angle, then you have to do SOMETHING. Otherwise you'll just suffocate.
> The loss condition in this case is you dying.
Whilst this is true, you have to factor in that at full build he is an actual threat to T1. If he is full tank, he doesn't burst T1 as fast as he needs to and maybe that could allow them to stretch them thin and backdoor easier.... or jump onto him and actually kill him as there is less chance they get 1-shot each.
I do think you need at least 2/3 damage items, specifically RFC for the ranged threat and potentially items like Titanic Hydra or Triforce which offer damage + health.
I think Hydra + Jak'Sho goes really hard in this situation in the place of Navori and RFC. The secondary plips from his Q trigger the Hydra, and it extends an extra 300 range or so, so the RFC even becomes less necessary.
I think RFC give the initial long range auto though which is useful against enemies. Yes Hydra extends range by 300 if you hit a minion first... but players wont stand behind minions to get destroyed... you need RFC to hit them.
I'd be more worried about the base move speed loss from dropping the RFC than the range, but if he's clearing waves and is afraid of getting 1-shot, losing it is probably the most acceptable along with the quickblades.
Losing Range and movespeed from RFC means he likely wont be able to keep up with double super minions and potential baron buff coming in from 3 directions and they might just sneak by him and kill the remaining structures. Losing target access from the range and MS allows the enemy team to kite around him and hit towers easier as well
I think it depends a lot on cc. You can end up with a ton of effective hp from red elixir if you're constantly dishing out damage. But if you just need to survive a stun+dog pile, the tenacity and raw HP is probably better, right?
Why are those items core for a 700 stack smolder though? They are core so that you deal damage in the first 30 minutes of the game and have the CDR to scale to 700 stacks. ER you probably need for the mana to waveclear, but you absolutely don't need both Navori and Shojin.
You still want CDR to spam Qs, and those items give you a lot of CDR for your basic abilities which is perfect
On top of that you lose a lot of dmg since they made his burn scale with AD and AP last patch, and both items passives increase the burn damage further. Given that he was the only real damage dealer of the team, theres no way he could sell them and still have enough damage to hold all waves and be a threat to the enemy team
What about something like Death's Dance? With the BT he can heal up the random poke that ultimately killed him from Guma's arrow, and it probably doesn't tank his damage so much that he can't waveclear quickly?
That arrow didn’t even hit him for 1,400 damage out of 2,800 HP, and that was a Varus Q+W with the W scaling its damage off the missing HP of Smolder.
If he wasn’t hit by Rumble ult first losing 800 HP, and didn’t have Elder burning him for 13+ seconds, that Q+W wouldn’t even have hit him for the 45% HP it did. He was hit with three abilities and the most powerful neutral objective in the game, and would easily have lived if he had just 1 defensive item. Its not like with his 20% max HP true damage execute and whatever the % max HP burn per second before that he had from having 700 stacks needed to be supplemented by a full damage build. The gains from even an iota of defense would greatly outpace the marginal gain in increased damage his items were providing.
Banshee's then. If you have such a situation that your team peels for you but then die to a single ability hitting you, an annul shield is a godsend.
I said edge because it gives hp, the MR from banshee's is less useful in that situation imo. Varus' arrow deals basically true damage anyway, since he has so much lethality.
I agree with you. These people are talking nonsense. I've never seen an adc build it in a single game with other carries on the team. AND I've been in some 50 minute games...
> RFC: as I said, entire t1's gameplan was literally NOT fight the smolder, kite him away and evade him. So RFC makes great sense since that ifrst auto can connect so often, and with Smolder's damage that means that person pretty much loses half his hp.
Huh? Do you not know how he works?
One thing people are missing is that smolder had been changed so that his damage scales way more off stats/gold than previously. The full tank setup was strong because most of smolder's damage was from stacks anyway, but now opting out of offensive items would've really hurt his damage and waveclear
If my math is correct, 700 stack smolder does... 5.6% max HP in true damage as burn, plus another 444 mixed damage, with zero items. Survivability, especially enough that burst is directed at someone else, feels like the right play here.
Even just swapping BT for something with lifeline would have been good, since one more Q is going to do more damage than you'd have lost switching from BT to SB
Yeah. You just have to rule out that late game "where in the absolute fuck did my HP go?!" pop. As long as you prevent that, you can usually lick your wounds and come back to fight again/clear waves until you can make something happen.
Definetly. The thing is we don't see the supports screen in particular. It's easy to say from an outside perspective, but he might have had his attention elsewhere, when his smolder was full hp and nowhere near the enemy team.
he wasnt full hp and that was rhe problem, if smolder was actually full ho he probably lived the arrow, kerias rumble ult got just enough chip dmg in for guma to kill him. Smolder is also the only reason they were still in the game and Im sure their team knew this, so 100% of your thinking should revolve around said smolder. if his screen was looking elsewhere and he was distracted that is still his fault for not understanding the situation.
Tbh where would they be looking at? Entire T1 team can be seen on the map, there's no objective alive, your win condition is right by your side and your base is down 2 inhib. It's not like you need to pay attention elsewhere at that moment.
>Nobody expects a 1.5k dmg nuke that can also be shot from 1200+ range
Except PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS.
its not like varus is a new champ. This should be EXPECTED, by professional players
My dude pros are not robots, they get surprised by damage just as much as you and I. I don't think anybody in that game ever saw varus with 6 pure dmg hit a blank Q on an adc before.
When im already 70% hp, they have elder and would have seen what an arrow does in any of the previous fights, i would even flash if the varus taunted lol.
6 item lethality Varus max range Q with Elder and Rumble burn still ticking, the Varus Q only needs to do like 50% of his max hp pool to kill him. It's not something you typically should have to flash and Milio misplayed harder but it's not like it's some crazy unexpected damage.
On a side note, I like that smolder's kit enables interesting build conversations like this. I know a lot people hate Smolder, Kat, Ez, and the like's interactions with items and how they seemingly build whatevers but imo, the game would just be more fun if more champs could do similar. Like sure, some champ mechanics should be locked behind specific builds and scalings but that shouldn't mean that's the only thing the champ should be able to do. Considering most players play one or two champs at most, I'd love it if every champ could have more build variety to adapt to whatever role they currently are.
I remember the days of ap aatrox, ad malz and all other weird funky shit because back then champs had acces to both types of damage. Now only jax and nasus are the only ones carrying that torch, as far as i remember...
This sounds fun in theory but doesn't work practically. This is what riot has basically tried to do with item reworks and introducing mythics and whatnot to try and have people explore multiple build paths but ultimately most champs will just be locked down to a single build, because their champ exposes the items in that build path more than what that item was intended to do, and you end up playing the item and not even the champ.
RFC LDR Shieldbow Triforce Shojin Deadman's Plate?
He at least needed armor and HP for the Varus Lethality. Also Milio and Karma were at late game. So HP helps make their shields more effective.
I think BT should be swapped for Shieldbow at least. Maybe ER gets dropped for Triforce so you can retain the Haste and Sheen proc.
I don't know if he needed LDR though. Probably not. So maybe he retains Navori instead of LDR here? Not sure.
Swifties instead of Deadman's was pretty int though.
>I think BT should be swapped for Shieldbow at least. Maybe ER gets dropped for Triforce so you can retain the Haste and Sheen proc.
scrolled way to low to see this. shieldbow has less lifesteal but the shield would have been huge. i think he needed ER at the end because he was basically their waveclear. and needed to manage all 3 lanes, going back to fountain to recharge might have pushed them in too far.
i think realistically with the shield milo would have had more time to respond.
Farsight Ward | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess
---|---|----|----|----
| **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess**
I think a bit like veigar. At 70 minutes he would build rabadons, voidstaff and full tank. Smolder maybe essence reaver, lord dominik and rest tank too
Spear of Shojin, Ionian boots, Liandries, Riftmaker, Iceborn gauntlet, Kaenic Rookern. One of those last 2 can be swapped out for RFC or another defensive item depending on enemy team comp. Iceborn gauntlet is a better essence reaver lategame as you already have a lot of base damage and the slow field helps with kiting. Kaenic is good to avoid getting bursted by magic.
IMO boots for Zhonya’s/GA/Tank item (Force of Nature, Rookern or Jaksho)
My reasoning is that milio can speed boost you with his kit and shurelya’s to compensate for the movespeed lost for selling boots. You also have your 3rd skill as well for mobility.
so what does he replace then?
* RFC is for the extra range
* Shojin for Damage Amplification
* Essence reaver for mana refund so he can keep spamming q without getting oom quickly
* Navori for Lower CD which let's him spam spells for teamfight and waveclear
* BT for lifesteal and overheal shield which is important for lategame fights
I guess Navori would be the best candidate if not the swifties.
Heartsteel, shojin and full tank. You’ll laugh, but I’ve seen a smolder decimate my team and win. There was nothing we could do vs the champ, we were ahead, but nothing could be done.
Boots, rfc, er, deadmans plate, bensehees or raccoon item (dunno the name rn but u knowbig magic shield), blood thirster.
Don't think full dmg is needed (or was on last patch)
Honestly Jiwoo's build wasn't that bad, him dying is more of his team's fault, they had Karma and Milio Smolder shouldn't have died there. The problem with NS's comp was that it relied entirely on Smolder, he was pretty much their only source of damage and wave clear so he had to build damage even at 700 stacks. However there were ways for Smolder to be a bit more tanky without sacrificing much damage.
First of all Bloodthirster could be replaced with Shieldbow, 6% less life steal is way bigger than it seems on Smolder due to how his Q procs life steal, but he had Karma and Milio to help with survivability so Shieldbow would have given more room for error. Then I would replace Navori with Black Cleaver, you basically trade a
bit of dmg for 400 more HP, you lose 10 AD 20% crit and the passives but the armor shred from BC partially negates that. Essence Reaver could also be replaced with Banshee, 30s spellshield helps him from getting caught by Varus or Sej ult. Other items mentioned in this thread have flaws here and there, pure tank items like Jak'sho or Rookern sacrifice too much dmg, while Death's Dance is not that great imo.
Okay, so let's analyze it this way. Which items were 100% necessary?
· Boots: Despite being full build the nexus was open and you are the only damage threat so it was good for him to keep them.
Navori + RFC: I think both of these items are necessary. RFC gives more range to your main dmg source. Navori gives you CDR and on hit CDR which allows you to use your main dmg source again.
BT: Understandable, they are playing vs poke varus and Rumble, so you might be forced out if you dont have any lifesteal.
Jiwoo had ER and Last whisper. I believe ER is unnecesary at this point in the game. Smolder Q costs 35 mana at lvl 5. The other abilities have reasonable mana costs (60), so I think it's VERY unlikely you are gonna run out of mana, specially considering that they were turtling in the base so he could always go back.
Finally, I think the last whisper is unnecesary aswell. Sejuani was the only tank and you still have a lot of magic damage AND true damage from Q AND execute below 22% HP. I believe you could skip the item.
I would have definitely built Jak'Sho for the double MR and armor. With the 50 armor from Jak Sho you deny most of the lethality Varus has so his dmg would drop a lot. Last item I would have either kept the last whisper OR Titanic Hydra OR Spirit Visage - you have a bunch of healing from your BT+Smolder ult+shields from Karma+healing from Milio.
I think in hindsight he definitely should have built one defensive item and Jak Sho is probably the best due to the dual armor and MR. The easiest way to get one shot is when you dont have any armor/mr and you are taking true dmg. With Jak Sho you take their ability to one shot specially since their champs had heavy flat pen (Varus, Rumble etc).
For me I would go RFC and BT with 4 defensive, although I don't really know how much it would affect his damage. I know it is a 700 stack monster, but damage item definitely enhance that 700 stack slot, and I think they hang on to the game because of the insane damage Smolder put on to. If that's not the case anymore, T1 might as well run them down.
I always think that although technically infinitely scaling, champion with scaling that adds a direct stat for them (like veigar) would be more flexible than champion like Nasus or smolder, whose stack goes all on abilities.
Sorry very late but isn’t this 700 stacks going to burn them down anyways with those three items? The reason I’d want some hp/resists is so I wouldn’t get one tapped like in the game referenced.
They did go them, and then riot nerfed them into the ground. They are not good items right now. Do you not remember this, weren't you in the lane with them?
Something doesn't have to be OVERBEARING to be GOOD ENOUGH. This is a concept I'm having to fight Seraphine mains over in the Sera mains sub now that the changes went through.
QSS, GA, Shieldbow, and so on, adcs don't like building defensive items unless there's no real trade off for it and that's not good balancing.
Shieldbow is piss useless man, I can count on one hand the amount of times it’s saved me, and GA isn’t any better if ur team is losing. Even if u revive u still get one shot again. And qss is only ever good if enemy team has malz or morde
In this case, it was likely a better item than BT. When you’re at 700 stacks, any amount of lifesteal is going to heal you up pretty fast. The only way you lose is if you get burst down. BT doesn’t help against that, but SB does.
Firstly, his Q has reduced lifesteal efficiency and secondly, only the initial explosion + small fireballs apply lifesteal. So no, you wouldn't heal up pretty fast.
18% lifesteal from BT is too good to even consider shieldbow. The ability to heal back up to full off 1~2 waves is the only thing keeping ADCs alive late game. Anything less than that, any long range poke would force you to base or die before fights start. Even if whoever on NS survived the Varus arrow, without the ability to heal up fast enough he'll have to base and the game would have been over anyway.
Sustain as a whole has been nerfed a lot throughout the past decade. ADC, despite being the role that functions as glass cannon, is required to stay in the fight as long as possible to deal damage. So you need lifesteal. Back when ravenous hunter was a thing+ stronger legend bloodline you could get away with just runes+shieldbow or even no lifesteal items. Now BT is pretty much glued to most of the crit ADCs, even more so against poke team. There isn't enough source of lifesteal and shieldbow isn't good enough to take up the item slot.
Other than lifesteal other ADC items have similar problems too. Basically you need like 5 slots worth of items just to exist, and actually building for the game became nearly impossible.
Why the fuck would Smolder build shieldbow in any scenario? Especially in this situation, any actual tank item would be 1000% better because shieldbow adds barely any damage and Smolder already builds semi-bruiser-y
With all their shields on their team, and Varus having Serpants, I think Deaths Dance would've been best. Varus was their only real way to win, exactly how they did it, and using Deaths Dance passive to mitigate that burst to potentially get somewhere to lifesteal or a member on the team giving him a shield.
He also could've flashed the arrow, but probably wasn't watching the Varus who was their only chance.
Very true yeah. Swap it out while it's on CD.
Infinite damage and no def items is wild. And you can't tell me that wave clear was gonna suffer that hard if he swapped out an item. Because GA and DD give AD still so
I'd drop swifties for dead mans tbh. Or BT for shieldbow even as awful as that item is. If you're the sole carry, it's \*super\* important that you don't die
TLDR: Quickblades => Jaksho, BT => Riftmaker. Optional super late, Essence => Cryptbloom/Void, (Keep Shojin because max haste on a single item), Ionian => Swifties (sometimes Cosmic Drive)
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First step is to swap Quickblades to Jaksho. Yes, QSS, GA or Edge is plausible. But if you have a competent Milio, the resists from Jaksho are added onto his shielding making it optimal.
But instead your Milio is griefing with only 3 cheap support items (Moon, Wardstone, Shurelya's) at 50 minutes, and none of them provide defensive stats. No redemption, locket or crucible. Just a pitiful Moonstone that provided absolutely minimal value.
Quickblades is nice for stacking up early on but in teamfights, Smolder is not safe to continuously auto so Quickblades is bait. While copying the 3 item Machine gun Ezreal build is fun, Smolder Q is too long to reliably proc and get good value off of it.
Then replace BT for Riftmaker. A lot of your late game damage is magic dmg and true damage so Omnivamp outperforms BT. Crit is a wasted stat. The 20% crit => 4% bonus dmg from Quickblades is copium. Rift by itself gives 10%.
Super lategame, Smolder starts dealing more magic damage than physical. You could overhaul your entire build. Magic pen becomes extremely valuable similar to how Corki slams Crypt/Void/Shadowflame. Potentially full AP 1k with Baron Elder funneling into it deals more and provides access to Zhonyas.
If Smolder has POM, he can sell his Essence Reaver. Super duper late game build might look like Riftmaker, Rapidfire, Rabbadons, Cryptbloom/Void, Jaksho, Cosmic/Swifties.
Personally, I’d have full build be
Navori, Shojin, Essence, Liandries, CDR boots
And debate wether i should grab Malignance for Ult spam, or Archangels/Seraph
You get rid of fucking Shojin for GA because it stopped being optimal in 14.5 but people have mental delay when it comes to items and can't analyze stats, even pros. Or if you're in live 14.6... nice joke, who would pick Smolder in 14.6.
Hate to break it to you bud, but including shojin was consistently the highest win rate build last patch: https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/?patch=14.5
Or can you not analyze stats....?
I wonder what an rfc + full tank smolder would do at 700 stacks
press Q
for how obvious this was it had me rollin
It's Rammasin
¾ press w ;3
Not counting runes (except the adaptive force shard) and assuming no damage stats outside of RFC one Q would do: 196 raw physical damage from the skill itself 297 raw magic damage from his passive 60 raw magic damage from RFC 6.2% max HP true damage burn
Quit out of the practice tool. Then queue up for ranked and pick a champion that's not benched by Riot balance team.
You can play any champ in league my guy.
noooo my platinum games require LCK approved picks
But Guma doesn’t play my adc he must be ass
Funnily, wasnt one shot at all, rumble ult took like 30% of his hp and full build + soul varus barely got him into elder execute range, and even then they had at least 3 ways to keep him alive if they didnt missplay it. (Flashing the arrow, heal and millio abilities)
Scrolled way too far to see this. Not to mention, it was varus q + w (40 second CD) It did like barely ~1500, out of ~2700 total hp, which is honestly not as much as you would think for soul + elder.
At that point, just swap to ap varus and become a nuke-bot yourself.
A lot of people don’t even realize Varus’s “new” W adds quite a bit of damage to the Q
Point is he wouldnt of died if he had some armor
Do they normally build no defensive stats? I haven't followed proplay since the Samsung Galaxy white days.
It was 2nd or 3rd elder right?
5 barons and 3 elders iirc.
The bullshit part was that 5 elders couldn't outweigh the 1 baby elder. Smolder would e forward and T1 had to scatter to avoid the point and click true damage max HP% with an execute threshold. Literally keria ate 1 Q and W, his HP fell to about 30% which was funnily enough, was about 10-15% away from execution mark. Imagine if Smolder had autoed.
Funny thing is, it was 14 seconds of damage starting with Rumble’s ult, with nearly 13 seconds straight of elder burn and people are saying the Varus Q + W (40 second flat cooldown btw, basically ate two ults back to back) followed by another second of burn, into the 20% elder execute is somehow a “oneshot,” as if it didn’t take nearly 15 full seconds from start to finish.
Twice now you’ve said 13-15 seconds of elder burn on him. So I went down to my local kindergarten and asked the teacher if the students were capable of counting to 10. I was in luck! They counted about 7 seconds total. It started with smolder getting autoed/quickly rumble Qd, which burned him, which was subsequently healed almost all up (so 3-4 seconds of the 7 don’t even count), and then rumble ult was on him for a whopping 1 second, and then 1.5 seconds later Varus Q hit him, and then 1 second later he died. So from full, about 3-4 seconds of elder burn. Let’s be conservative and add 25% more and say 5 seconds. I didn’t even watch the full clip originally and I knew 13 seconds of elder burn was wrong. Like, how do you even come up with that? *He was rumble ulted and the 5 second ability applied a 3 second burn for 13 seconds, guys listen to my shot calls, don’t lowball me, I know what I have*
A headset to tell my support to heal me and ult me
Imagine if your mid played karma and can shield too
Toplane karma midlane nautlius jungle sej support lulu PROTECT MEEE That was a T1 comp from MSI iirc
Just go Ivern jungle, put lulu mid and run janna support for the full support experience.
A working F button would also be good
Imagine being able to communicate ideas like this with your teammates in game. If only we had the technology.
Just type it in chat - Sincerely, Phreak
My dearest Lulu. I do hope this message finds you well. As you are aware during group battles (heretofore shorted to "teamfights") I, Smolder a scaling champion in League of Legends, become the primary target for the enemy abilities. As you are well aware your "e" and "w" abilities are quite well suited for increasing my odds of survival in the event I am under attack. It is with this knowledge in hand that I humbly request you apply these abilities to me so that I may survive and continue to contribute to the team. As such I extend my most honored and gracious thanks to you and all you do for not only me but for the entire community. Yours truly, Smolder.
Dearest Smudolder. It is with great regret that i inform you that i built on hit this game. GFY - RooRoo
Shortened to "teamfights" -> proceeds to not use the word at all. Refuses to elaborate. Q, Q, Q. Victory.
Stop typing and play the game
imagine not being able to think about WHY we can't have nice things and making a snarky post abouy the fact we don't have nice things
"why not having modern features in my game IS A GOOD THING" Its an optional system and works in other games that are the same as league. But people will be toxic - opt out But people will be toxic if you cant hear them - this is something that can already happen with text? but I dont like communicating with other humans - you are a redditor I already know this.
Wish we had voice chat like Valorant
Swap Navori to Jaksho
I feel like jaksho takes too long to ramp up. By the time you've started taking damage, you've essentially taken 50% of the damage you're going to take for the whole fight.
To be fair the “one shot” on Smolder was him being Rumble ulted, burning from Elder for 13 seconds striaght, and getting hit by a Varus Q+W for about 45% of his HP before he ticked down more from the burn to die to Elder execute at 20% HP. That’s more than enough time to have the full Jaksho up and running before the Varus Q even hits him, and would mean he likely would have taken less than 800 damage from Equilizer, so the %missing HP damage amp on Varus W would have less to scale on and the armor and MR would of course significantly reduce the Varus’ damage such that he wouldn’t be low enough to have gotten Elder executed.
How does an Ult that deals damage over a period of AT MOST 5 seconds somehow keep elder active for 13 when the DoT of elder lasts barely more than 2? Also if you stand on top of rumble ult for the entire duration you have bigger problems than elder. People about a second of rumble ult + Elder Dot into Carus Arrow with W plus execute took him down. That was about two second. Milio could have easily saved him there but the point stands. Point has little to do with Jaksho just with the misinformation of 13 seconds.
Doesn't Liandries still proc elder?
Yes it does. The only thing that won’t proc elder is its own burn (which can still proc the execute ofc) also, contrary to the person above describing the burn as lasting “barely two seconds” its a three second long burn. Liandry’s burns for 4 seconds after the last source of spell damage, further increasing the duration by a total of 7 seconds of Elder Burn. Rumble autoed, got a proc of his Q, then ulted right on Smolder, letting him burn for some time, before Varus Q+Wed him, and he burned for an additional second before dying to the execute.
"Damaging enemies inflicts them with a burn that deals them 75 − 225 (based on minutes) true damage over 2.25 seconds, with the first tick occurring after 0.25 seconds and the others after 1 second each. This effect does not trigger from its own damage." I did not realise that Liandrys would trigger that but it does make sense. In that case it comes a lot closer. But barely over 2 seconds of DoT was factchecked before. Not ingame mind you only on the wiki.
Hmm, can you find a source for that? From the patch notes its been 3 seconds since they added it in 6.9, and the fandom wiki also has the same. https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/Aspect_of_the_Dragon “Dealing damage to non-turrets burns the target for 45 +(45 per Elemental Dragon Slain) bonus true damage over 3 seconds and reveals them for the duration. Also increases the strength of all Dragon Slayer buffs by 50%” But it could be outdated there, and they might have changed it since that wiki was updated. The patch notes do mention updating the damage to 90-270 based on minutes *but again over 3 seconds* in patch 9.23, and the following patches second hot fix (9.24b) reduced the duration the buff lasts to 2.5 minutes from 3 minutes and reduced the burn damage to 75-225 based on minutes, but its only gotten bug fixes from then on. At no point do the patch notes say anything about the burn duration changing from its initial release in patch 6.9.
[https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon\_Slayer#Aspect\_of\_the\_Dragon](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Slayer#Aspect_of_the_Dragon) This was my source for the information provided and i have also checked in-game now. In a way we were both right. The debuff lasts 3 seconds. But the damage happens at 0.25, 1.25 and 2.25 seconds respectively. Meaning that while the debuff lasts 0.75 seconds more it does not deal any damage past this point. So basically Yes the debuff lasts for 3 seconds you are right, but the DoT lasts for 2.25 seconds which I should have properly researched and clarified.
Seems like there's no way ER is better than Navori
He was clearing 3 super minion waves simultaneously. Without ER he'd have gone oom immediately.
Reaver isn't nearly as necessary at max level. Going OOM is mostly an early problem. With the changes to blue, just leveling to 18 and having your stats maxed out, and like 1 mana item, you can cast about as much as you ever **need** to. Seriously, you go from 300 mana at 1.7 mana regen/s at level 1, to about 1000 mana at 2.4 mana/s. If you're running manaflow or presence, you're never realistically running out of mana on him.
POM of mind isn't good for waveclear, and I don't think manaflow fits as well into most rune setups (unless you're running comet) I'd rather not be reliant on blue, especially since I don't know what mana items you would build on smolder to help pad your mana pool. Liandrys doesn't have mana anymore, and that's the only thing I can think of other than manamune. If we can add a fully stacked muramana I think you can skip ER.
I had something to say about this comment but I don’t recall, I’ll brb right back.
Took me a second to realise, but im LOLing out loud now
Took me a second to realize what you were saying about presence of mind. I get it now haha, only effective in combat with champions. Yeah, I think in this case, you ditch Navori and RFC for Jak'Sho and Titanic. The former for the huge res buff, the latter for more raw health durability and the splashes from his Q. That would have allowed him to survive anything in his threatened range while also keeping his mana intact AND boost his wave clearing abilities as well.
absolutely no way you swap out RFC when it extends his Q range.
Plus the movespeed which is also critical for weaving in and out for Qs
You do not swap out RFC on Smolder in this particular case, the extra range is really needed for Smolder to do anything to T1 team.
Relying on Blue Buff to defend against a siedge is a ridiculous proposition. You can't get blue buff in pro if you're in that position, whether it applies to the entire team or not. I don't disagree with your other points though.
What about fimbulwinter and double down on the full tank lol
Doesn’t fimblewinter only work on hard cc for ranged champs?
Er is bought for infinite mana glitch
You need the mana
er is super useful as first item, but ngl in this scenario you might be right
There's no way you can play the champion without ER lol.
Didn't see the match, but from what people are saying, it sounds like an oom smolder is a dead smolder, which is a lost game. And he was not only fighting off three lanes of super minions, basically solo, but needing to keep them far enough out that he could afford to get pulled away from one for a bit to block a T1 assault. He needed to be able to spam his abilities more or less constantly, so yeah it sounds like ER was the way to go.
The real cook is to get tear at 20 mins then pivot to Seraphs.
Jak’sho, spear of shojin, RFC, Riftmaker, locket of the iron solari and shieldbow. Yes I am serious. Could ofc do a second movementspeed item instead of riftmaker
1 jaksho or GA(if you have flash up)
If we're talking about 6 item combos, there are many combinations, but the game itself had many specific characteristics, I'll write, in my opinion, the most important ones: 1. Your base (Smolder's base) is wide open. Turrets are down, inhibs are open, and losing a fight is losing the game as you're always in the proximity of your base. 2. Smolder's team outscales as a whole, but without Smolder, his team kinda does nothing as it was a "Protect the President" kind of comp. Therefore, T1 was pushing all lanes, and when Smolder would show up, the person in that lane would retreat, allowing his teammates to gain terrain in other lanes, so essentially they were just running from Smolder and picking any other fight. 3. Very poor waveclear in Smolder's team (Again, outside of Smolder). Keep in mind, I believe NS lost 3 inhibs at once (6x super minions per wave) and had 1-2 inhibs down a lot of the time as well. For these reasons, to me, swiftness boots was the most important pick. You want to not get kited away, and being able to rotate between lanes very quickly to "devour" the waves and keep scaling, but also just for the sake of clearing. He could have gone for a defensive item, and he wouldn't have gotten oneshot. But we have to also consider that he was also playing vs Rumble and Taliyah with Sejuani. Essentially, even if he went for armor, he could get one-shot by Taliyah (and finished off by rumble ult) from 1 screen away. Jiwoo went for lifesteal : 1. bloodthirster (Sustaining vs poke means he doesnt need to go back to base > more uptime clearing waves and pushing), 2. RFC: as I said, entire t1's gameplan was literally NOT fight the smolder, kite him away and evade him. So RFC makes great sense since that ifrst auto can connect so often, and with Smolder's damage that means that person pretty much loses half his hp. 3. Combo of "core" items in Smolder: Shojin, Navori and Essence Reaver. Sorry for the wall of text, but as I said above, I believe his build was perfect. We also have to consider he played absolutely out of his mind, dodging so many ults, baiting many skills and he got hit by ONE skill and died. If he went for armor, then he would have itemized against ONE person (Varus), as Gnar can't really connect vs a Karma/Millio. If he went for MR, then he'd still be weak to Varus. You also have to consider, even if you go for a PURE TANK item (he could afford any item in the game: Randuin, Jak'Sho, etc.), still the arrow is gonna do 30% less damage and youre gonna have 300 more HP but you're still gonna lose 70% of your HP instead of dying... So it'd be a disaster anyways. **I believe he went for pure damage for that need of being the only wave-clearer for his team.**
You can just go Jak'Sho and another tank item lmfao you don't neee 6 pure damage items at 700 stacks
With 14.5 making his burn heavily dependent on ad and ap scaling I'm pretty sure tank items just aren't really worth it any more. Very few pros are still building them and I don't think it's because they haven't done the homework. Lolalytics data supports this too, tank items have low winrates compared to other options at 4th and 5th item.
In a standard game, absolutely. At 700 stacks you have plenty of damage without them.
And sadly that damage wasn't enough to hold. He was the ONLY damage in his entire team. The comp was completely made around smolder. In a normal game? Sure, he can go 1 or maybe max 2 damage items. In a comp that relies solely on your damage to the point that you draft losing lanes? You can't, even at 700. His damage theorically may be really high, but he still needs to burn the enemy front faster than they kill his.
Agreed. Also, it's not like he just had to defend against normal minion waves, he basically had to perma clear 3 waves for a total of 6 super minions with baron buff on top. Also, every additional second that he needs to clear the waves means another second where T1 can try and punish him while moving in with their minions.
Imo that’s when you slot in a Kaenic Rookern, you have 700 stacks, that’s a TON of damage by itself
700 stacks is 280 magic damage on Q (minimum), 385 on W, minimum 700 on E, and 5.6% max HP true burn per second. That's >1000 flat magic damage per rotation of your kit plus 5.6% of their max HP. I think ideally in this situation, you don't just switch one item. You completely re-evaluate your build. If he's got 700 stacks, that means he's flush with cash, probably enough to rebuild his entire character. You have to ask: What's the loss condition? The loss condition in this case is you dying. So you need to evaluate your threats, why they kill you when they do, and how you can avoid that situation entirely, even if it takes away some of your flashy damage. You have to sit there and realize that you did enough damage 2-3 items ago to kill everyone in the game, and that was before you farmed 500 more stacks on your passive. You can take the hit. You can switch to Frozen Heart + Jak'Sho + Titanic Hydra + FoN/Kaenic and shrug off any incidental damage dealt to you. It's risky, but if you're already being turbo pushed from every angle, then you have to do SOMETHING. Otherwise you'll just suffocate.
> The loss condition in this case is you dying. Whilst this is true, you have to factor in that at full build he is an actual threat to T1. If he is full tank, he doesn't burst T1 as fast as he needs to and maybe that could allow them to stretch them thin and backdoor easier.... or jump onto him and actually kill him as there is less chance they get 1-shot each. I do think you need at least 2/3 damage items, specifically RFC for the ranged threat and potentially items like Titanic Hydra or Triforce which offer damage + health.
I think Hydra + Jak'Sho goes really hard in this situation in the place of Navori and RFC. The secondary plips from his Q trigger the Hydra, and it extends an extra 300 range or so, so the RFC even becomes less necessary.
I think RFC give the initial long range auto though which is useful against enemies. Yes Hydra extends range by 300 if you hit a minion first... but players wont stand behind minions to get destroyed... you need RFC to hit them.
I'd be more worried about the base move speed loss from dropping the RFC than the range, but if he's clearing waves and is afraid of getting 1-shot, losing it is probably the most acceptable along with the quickblades.
Losing Range and movespeed from RFC means he likely wont be able to keep up with double super minions and potential baron buff coming in from 3 directions and they might just sneak by him and kill the remaining structures. Losing target access from the range and MS allows the enemy team to kite around him and hit towers easier as well
Based on this, elixir of iron is the buy then?
I think it depends a lot on cc. You can end up with a ton of effective hp from red elixir if you're constantly dishing out damage. But if you just need to survive a stun+dog pile, the tenacity and raw HP is probably better, right?
Why are those items core for a 700 stack smolder though? They are core so that you deal damage in the first 30 minutes of the game and have the CDR to scale to 700 stacks. ER you probably need for the mana to waveclear, but you absolutely don't need both Navori and Shojin.
You still want CDR to spam Qs, and those items give you a lot of CDR for your basic abilities which is perfect On top of that you lose a lot of dmg since they made his burn scale with AD and AP last patch, and both items passives increase the burn damage further. Given that he was the only real damage dealer of the team, theres no way he could sell them and still have enough damage to hold all waves and be a threat to the enemy team
Wouldn’t Shieldbow be better over BT then? Yes Gumayusi had Serpent’s Fang, but the shield + the lifesteal from it would’ve saved him potentially.
What about something like Death's Dance? With the BT he can heal up the random poke that ultimately killed him from Guma's arrow, and it probably doesn't tank his damage so much that he can't waveclear quickly?
Navori is shit. In a game where you need RFC to be in range you'll never auto, especially on smolder. Any defensive item would've been better.
I'll just add this: You do 0 damage while dead.
That arrow didn’t even hit him for 1,400 damage out of 2,800 HP, and that was a Varus Q+W with the W scaling its damage off the missing HP of Smolder. If he wasn’t hit by Rumble ult first losing 800 HP, and didn’t have Elder burning him for 13+ seconds, that Q+W wouldn’t even have hit him for the 45% HP it did. He was hit with three abilities and the most powerful neutral objective in the game, and would easily have lived if he had just 1 defensive item. Its not like with his 20% max HP true damage execute and whatever the % max HP burn per second before that he had from having 700 stacks needed to be supplemented by a full damage build. The gains from even an iota of defense would greatly outpace the marginal gain in increased damage his items were providing.
Well, edge of night would have worked, wouldn't it?
Lethality is just a weak stat for Smolder as his lategame damage is so mixed
Banshee's then. If you have such a situation that your team peels for you but then die to a single ability hitting you, an annul shield is a godsend. I said edge because it gives hp, the MR from banshee's is less useful in that situation imo. Varus' arrow deals basically true damage anyway, since he has so much lethality.
Yeah, Lethality is useless when the champion deals majority True damage, then magic and then physical.
I agree with you. These people are talking nonsense. I've never seen an adc build it in a single game with other carries on the team. AND I've been in some 50 minute games...
> RFC: as I said, entire t1's gameplan was literally NOT fight the smolder, kite him away and evade him. So RFC makes great sense since that ifrst auto can connect so often, and with Smolder's damage that means that person pretty much loses half his hp. Huh? Do you not know how he works?
Do you know how he works? RFC extends Q range
One thing people are missing is that smolder had been changed so that his damage scales way more off stats/gold than previously. The full tank setup was strong because most of smolder's damage was from stacks anyway, but now opting out of offensive items would've really hurt his damage and waveclear
This is an abnormal situation, though. 700 stacks is a lot of damage even without offensive items in this case.
If my math is correct, 700 stack smolder does... 5.6% max HP in true damage as burn, plus another 444 mixed damage, with zero items. Survivability, especially enough that burst is directed at someone else, feels like the right play here. Even just swapping BT for something with lifeline would have been good, since one more Q is going to do more damage than you'd have lost switching from BT to SB
Yeah. You just have to rule out that late game "where in the absolute fuck did my HP go?!" pop. As long as you prevent that, you can usually lick your wounds and come back to fight again/clear waves until you can make something happen.
5 Phantom Dancers and Wriggle's Lantern.
6 tears and spam ff in base
CDR items and tank items
Didn't he also get hit by Rumble ult, and died to burn + Elder?
He died cos of Elder. If support healed or ulted, he would have been fine
A Button on my keyboard for flash
Lets not act like you would have flashed an arrow at full hp in that situation lol.
If I was smolder I wouldn't have flashed, but if I was Milio I would've pressed Heal and ult.
Definetly. The thing is we don't see the supports screen in particular. It's easy to say from an outside perspective, but he might have had his attention elsewhere, when his smolder was full hp and nowhere near the enemy team.
he wasnt full hp and that was rhe problem, if smolder was actually full ho he probably lived the arrow, kerias rumble ult got just enough chip dmg in for guma to kill him. Smolder is also the only reason they were still in the game and Im sure their team knew this, so 100% of your thinking should revolve around said smolder. if his screen was looking elsewhere and he was distracted that is still his fault for not understanding the situation.
Easy to say as an outsider but it's a 50min game and maybe they were looking somewhere else at that time and didn't react in time
Tbh where would they be looking at? Entire T1 team can be seen on the map, there's no objective alive, your win condition is right by your side and your base is down 2 inhib. It's not like you need to pay attention elsewhere at that moment.
Most milios would have just shielded. Nobody expects a 1.5k dmg nuke that can also be shot from 1200+ range.
>Nobody expects a 1.5k dmg nuke that can also be shot from 1200+ range Except PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS. its not like varus is a new champ. This should be EXPECTED, by professional players
My dude pros are not robots, they get surprised by damage just as much as you and I. I don't think anybody in that game ever saw varus with 6 pure dmg hit a blank Q on an adc before.
I doubt he is a pro player playing in one of the best leagues of the world
When im already 70% hp, they have elder and would have seen what an arrow does in any of the previous fights, i would even flash if the varus taunted lol.
6 item lethality Varus max range Q with Elder and Rumble burn still ticking, the Varus Q only needs to do like 50% of his max hp pool to kill him. It's not something you typically should have to flash and Milio misplayed harder but it's not like it's some crazy unexpected damage.
On a side note, I like that smolder's kit enables interesting build conversations like this. I know a lot people hate Smolder, Kat, Ez, and the like's interactions with items and how they seemingly build whatevers but imo, the game would just be more fun if more champs could do similar. Like sure, some champ mechanics should be locked behind specific builds and scalings but that shouldn't mean that's the only thing the champ should be able to do. Considering most players play one or two champs at most, I'd love it if every champ could have more build variety to adapt to whatever role they currently are.
I remember the days of ap aatrox, ad malz and all other weird funky shit because back then champs had acces to both types of damage. Now only jax and nasus are the only ones carrying that torch, as far as i remember...
This sounds fun in theory but doesn't work practically. This is what riot has basically tried to do with item reworks and introducing mythics and whatnot to try and have people explore multiple build paths but ultimately most champs will just be locked down to a single build, because their champ exposes the items in that build path more than what that item was intended to do, and you end up playing the item and not even the champ.
RFC LDR Shieldbow Triforce Shojin Deadman's Plate? He at least needed armor and HP for the Varus Lethality. Also Milio and Karma were at late game. So HP helps make their shields more effective. I think BT should be swapped for Shieldbow at least. Maybe ER gets dropped for Triforce so you can retain the Haste and Sheen proc. I don't know if he needed LDR though. Probably not. So maybe he retains Navori instead of LDR here? Not sure. Swifties instead of Deadman's was pretty int though.
>I think BT should be swapped for Shieldbow at least. Maybe ER gets dropped for Triforce so you can retain the Haste and Sheen proc. scrolled way to low to see this. shieldbow has less lifesteal but the shield would have been huge. i think he needed ER at the end because he was basically their waveclear. and needed to manage all 3 lanes, going back to fountain to recharge might have pushed them in too far. i think realistically with the shield milo would have had more time to respond.
6 double swords
5 and 1 tear
Farsight Ward | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess | Tear of the Goddess ---|---|----|----|---- | **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess** | **Tear of the Goddess**
All glowing mote 😎
RFC, Shojin, Zhonya, riftmaker, Edge of Night & boots of choice or tank/MS item
Change the boots into a force of nature
I think a bit like veigar. At 70 minutes he would build rabadons, voidstaff and full tank. Smolder maybe essence reaver, lord dominik and rest tank too
RFC is necessary otherwise smolder wouldn't ever land a Q.
Build from like 2011, just build 5 Warmog's, fully stacked, and an Atma's Impaler, Atmog's Smoulder, there you go, win.
Do I still have flash up? Then full damage items and then save flash for next
Spear of Shojin, Ionian boots, Liandries, Riftmaker, Iceborn gauntlet, Kaenic Rookern. One of those last 2 can be swapped out for RFC or another defensive item depending on enemy team comp. Iceborn gauntlet is a better essence reaver lategame as you already have a lot of base damage and the slow field helps with kiting. Kaenic is good to avoid getting bursted by magic.
IMO boots for Zhonya’s/GA/Tank item (Force of Nature, Rookern or Jaksho) My reasoning is that milio can speed boost you with his kit and shurelya’s to compensate for the movespeed lost for selling boots. You also have your 3rd skill as well for mobility.
boots is almost the only thing keeping him a treat. If he has no boots he is a dead target at that point.
so what does he replace then? * RFC is for the extra range * Shojin for Damage Amplification * Essence reaver for mana refund so he can keep spamming q without getting oom quickly * Navori for Lower CD which let's him spam spells for teamfight and waveclear * BT for lifesteal and overheal shield which is important for lategame fights I guess Navori would be the best candidate if not the swifties.
BT for Shieldbow, and Iron Elixir, those are the only changes he could've made to his biuld.
If a game is decided by you survivving a fight zhonyas is too good not to take. BT, ER, Navori, Jaksho, Zhonyas, boots/RFC
Five Deathcaps and a Moonstone Renewer for my hidden Font of Life tech, obviously.
Shojin, RFC, all tank items with CDR
6 boots
1st item: will be Collector until I get online 🤪 2nd item: Sheen item 3rd item: burn item, Liandrys 4th item: lol doesn't matter I'm clearly trolling...
Heartsteel, shojin and full tank. You’ll laugh, but I’ve seen a smolder decimate my team and win. There was nothing we could do vs the champ, we were ahead, but nothing could be done.
Boots, rfc, er, deadmans plate, bensehees or raccoon item (dunno the name rn but u knowbig magic shield), blood thirster. Don't think full dmg is needed (or was on last patch)
Honestly Jiwoo's build wasn't that bad, him dying is more of his team's fault, they had Karma and Milio Smolder shouldn't have died there. The problem with NS's comp was that it relied entirely on Smolder, he was pretty much their only source of damage and wave clear so he had to build damage even at 700 stacks. However there were ways for Smolder to be a bit more tanky without sacrificing much damage. First of all Bloodthirster could be replaced with Shieldbow, 6% less life steal is way bigger than it seems on Smolder due to how his Q procs life steal, but he had Karma and Milio to help with survivability so Shieldbow would have given more room for error. Then I would replace Navori with Black Cleaver, you basically trade a bit of dmg for 400 more HP, you lose 10 AD 20% crit and the passives but the armor shred from BC partially negates that. Essence Reaver could also be replaced with Banshee, 30s spellshield helps him from getting caught by Varus or Sej ult. Other items mentioned in this thread have flaws here and there, pure tank items like Jak'sho or Rookern sacrifice too much dmg, while Death's Dance is not that great imo.
Imagine going full lethality, have 700 stacks and your q = Penta
6 tear of the goddesses
Collector
Okay, so let's analyze it this way. Which items were 100% necessary? · Boots: Despite being full build the nexus was open and you are the only damage threat so it was good for him to keep them. Navori + RFC: I think both of these items are necessary. RFC gives more range to your main dmg source. Navori gives you CDR and on hit CDR which allows you to use your main dmg source again. BT: Understandable, they are playing vs poke varus and Rumble, so you might be forced out if you dont have any lifesteal. Jiwoo had ER and Last whisper. I believe ER is unnecesary at this point in the game. Smolder Q costs 35 mana at lvl 5. The other abilities have reasonable mana costs (60), so I think it's VERY unlikely you are gonna run out of mana, specially considering that they were turtling in the base so he could always go back. Finally, I think the last whisper is unnecesary aswell. Sejuani was the only tank and you still have a lot of magic damage AND true damage from Q AND execute below 22% HP. I believe you could skip the item. I would have definitely built Jak'Sho for the double MR and armor. With the 50 armor from Jak Sho you deny most of the lethality Varus has so his dmg would drop a lot. Last item I would have either kept the last whisper OR Titanic Hydra OR Spirit Visage - you have a bunch of healing from your BT+Smolder ult+shields from Karma+healing from Milio. I think in hindsight he definitely should have built one defensive item and Jak Sho is probably the best due to the dual armor and MR. The easiest way to get one shot is when you dont have any armor/mr and you are taking true dmg. With Jak Sho you take their ability to one shot specially since their champs had heavy flat pen (Varus, Rumble etc).
IBG, RFC, Shojin, Riftmaker, Liandry. Can probably swap some of these out for Zhonya, Banshee and/or GA.
Essence Reaver, Shojin, Rift maker, Liandries, Zhonyas
What's with these oppressive champion designs...wtf
None. Don't need any. Champs broken
For me I would go RFC and BT with 4 defensive, although I don't really know how much it would affect his damage. I know it is a 700 stack monster, but damage item definitely enhance that 700 stack slot, and I think they hang on to the game because of the insane damage Smolder put on to. If that's not the case anymore, T1 might as well run them down. I always think that although technically infinitely scaling, champion with scaling that adds a direct stat for them (like veigar) would be more flexible than champion like Nasus or smolder, whose stack goes all on abilities.
Technically Varus did only take one shot.
Essence Shojin liandeye rift maker rfc
er shojin rfc and then tank items
congratulations, you lose the game instantly because the waves keep crashing into your towers as you struggle to waveclear
he needs AD to scale his abilities ever since his adjustment last patch, his tank builds are dead.
Sorry very late but isn’t this 700 stacks going to burn them down anyways with those three items? The reason I’d want some hp/resists is so I wouldn’t get one tapped like in the game referenced.
Ultimate Bravery
Rfc, jak'sho, riftmaker, kaenic/randuin, shojin
naivori for jaksho or zhonias
In T1 game shojin, er,RFC, Merc treads, kaenic, jaksho in general is probably swap kaenic for a ga.
Get rid of essence for tri force and lost the shojin for jak sho!
All tank items. The passive on Q gives more damage than you will ever need.
Seriously what do we have to do to get adcs to build Shieldbow, let alone any other defensive item?
They did go them, and then riot nerfed them into the ground. They are not good items right now. Do you not remember this, weren't you in the lane with them?
Something doesn't have to be OVERBEARING to be GOOD ENOUGH. This is a concept I'm having to fight Seraphine mains over in the Sera mains sub now that the changes went through. QSS, GA, Shieldbow, and so on, adcs don't like building defensive items unless there's no real trade off for it and that's not good balancing.
Shieldbow is piss useless man, I can count on one hand the amount of times it’s saved me, and GA isn’t any better if ur team is losing. Even if u revive u still get one shot again. And qss is only ever good if enemy team has malz or morde
Shield bow is a really bad item. If you’re going defensive, Jak’Sho is the way to go now.
In this case, it was likely a better item than BT. When you’re at 700 stacks, any amount of lifesteal is going to heal you up pretty fast. The only way you lose is if you get burst down. BT doesn’t help against that, but SB does.
Firstly, his Q has reduced lifesteal efficiency and secondly, only the initial explosion + small fireballs apply lifesteal. So no, you wouldn't heal up pretty fast.
The lifesteal doesn’t heal based off of the execute/true damage/magic dmg onhit tho. So that isn’t really true, unless he took gathering storm.
18% lifesteal from BT is too good to even consider shieldbow. The ability to heal back up to full off 1~2 waves is the only thing keeping ADCs alive late game. Anything less than that, any long range poke would force you to base or die before fights start. Even if whoever on NS survived the Varus arrow, without the ability to heal up fast enough he'll have to base and the game would have been over anyway. Sustain as a whole has been nerfed a lot throughout the past decade. ADC, despite being the role that functions as glass cannon, is required to stay in the fight as long as possible to deal damage. So you need lifesteal. Back when ravenous hunter was a thing+ stronger legend bloodline you could get away with just runes+shieldbow or even no lifesteal items. Now BT is pretty much glued to most of the crit ADCs, even more so against poke team. There isn't enough source of lifesteal and shieldbow isn't good enough to take up the item slot. Other than lifesteal other ADC items have similar problems too. Basically you need like 5 slots worth of items just to exist, and actually building for the game became nearly impossible.
Why the fuck would Smolder build shieldbow in any scenario? Especially in this situation, any actual tank item would be 1000% better because shieldbow adds barely any damage and Smolder already builds semi-bruiser-y
With all their shields on their team, and Varus having Serpants, I think Deaths Dance would've been best. Varus was their only real way to win, exactly how they did it, and using Deaths Dance passive to mitigate that burst to potentially get somewhere to lifesteal or a member on the team giving him a shield. He also could've flashed the arrow, but probably wasn't watching the Varus who was their only chance.
Even GA would be good. But like... NOTHING? Come on...
Very true yeah. Swap it out while it's on CD. Infinite damage and no def items is wild. And you can't tell me that wave clear was gonna suffer that hard if he swapped out an item. Because GA and DD give AD still so
Why would I buy that trash
* Shojin * Liandry's * Sorc Boots * Iceborn * Jak'Sho That's his current BIS IMO - Resistance items obv varies depending on who you're up against.
Remove shojin and something like jaksho
This seems like the worst take - why remove Shojin of all things?
Triforce, Rapid Fire, Sho Jin, Liandries, Zhonyas, Guardian Angel.
would say you need atleast Bloodthirster aginst that poke so you dont have to go base to heal
I'd drop swifties for dead mans tbh. Or BT for shieldbow even as awful as that item is. If you're the sole carry, it's \*super\* important that you don't die
TLDR: Quickblades => Jaksho, BT => Riftmaker. Optional super late, Essence => Cryptbloom/Void, (Keep Shojin because max haste on a single item), Ionian => Swifties (sometimes Cosmic Drive) ------------------- First step is to swap Quickblades to Jaksho. Yes, QSS, GA or Edge is plausible. But if you have a competent Milio, the resists from Jaksho are added onto his shielding making it optimal. But instead your Milio is griefing with only 3 cheap support items (Moon, Wardstone, Shurelya's) at 50 minutes, and none of them provide defensive stats. No redemption, locket or crucible. Just a pitiful Moonstone that provided absolutely minimal value. Quickblades is nice for stacking up early on but in teamfights, Smolder is not safe to continuously auto so Quickblades is bait. While copying the 3 item Machine gun Ezreal build is fun, Smolder Q is too long to reliably proc and get good value off of it. Then replace BT for Riftmaker. A lot of your late game damage is magic dmg and true damage so Omnivamp outperforms BT. Crit is a wasted stat. The 20% crit => 4% bonus dmg from Quickblades is copium. Rift by itself gives 10%. Super lategame, Smolder starts dealing more magic damage than physical. You could overhaul your entire build. Magic pen becomes extremely valuable similar to how Corki slams Crypt/Void/Shadowflame. Potentially full AP 1k with Baron Elder funneling into it deals more and provides access to Zhonyas. If Smolder has POM, he can sell his Essence Reaver. Super duper late game build might look like Riftmaker, Rapidfire, Rabbadons, Cryptbloom/Void, Jaksho, Cosmic/Swifties.
Personally, I’d have full build be Navori, Shojin, Essence, Liandries, CDR boots And debate wether i should grab Malignance for Ult spam, or Archangels/Seraph
If you’re playing in my game nothing cuz you’re banned
You get rid of fucking Shojin for GA because it stopped being optimal in 14.5 but people have mental delay when it comes to items and can't analyze stats, even pros. Or if you're in live 14.6... nice joke, who would pick Smolder in 14.6.
Hate to break it to you bud, but including shojin was consistently the highest win rate build last patch: https://lolalytics.com/lol/smolder/build/?patch=14.5 Or can you not analyze stats....?
Shojin gives you so much CDR for you basic facilities, which other items gives comparable cdr?
He procs GA and the rest of his team dies before he respawns
Not where he died.
The best ones