If you’ve played League of Legends at all lately, you should’ve realized quickly that no other champions play like the game’s newest addition, Smolder.
Smolder was designed with the AD carry position in mind. However, the champion does not play like a traditional ADC. He was originally intended to be a champion with which players could weave auto-attacks and spells together with, but as he’s earned his place in the meta over the course of the last few weeks, it’s become evident that the dragon is more of a spellcaster than anything else.
League players are finding out that it’s more than optimal to leave auto-attacking behind altogether when playing the champion, and in a thread posted to the official League subreddit earlier today, members of the game’s community voiced their displeasure with the way Smolder fits into a role that his kit doesn’t traditionally represent.
“This guy plays like a Mage and even used to build AP,” one commenter in the thread said. “I know there’s already enough of those in the botlane (roughly 14 – 16) but we could really use a traditional Marksman again. One that is NOT an already existing champion repurposed and buffed to God Tier.”
Most League champions who have been released in the past few years have had flexibility in terms of the roles they can play, and Smolder is no exception. His high-damage kit makes him a formidable force in solo lanes, as well as the ADC position, with which he’s found the most success by far in his short career. Although his sample sizes are much smaller as a solo laner, Smolder does have positive win rates in both top and mid lane on the current patch, according to League stats site U.gg.
The last two AD carries before Smolder’s release—Nilah and Zeri—both play extremely differently from the way traditional ADCs operate, too. Zeri’s Burst Fire (Q) being her primary damage source makes her have a higher ceiling than most champions at the role, while Nilah’s prominence as a melee champion at the ADC position is an outlier, to say the least. In the thread, players also argued that you’d have to go as far back as Kai’sa’s release in 2018 to find the last, real, “traditional” ADC, as Akshan, Samira, Senna, and even Aphelios all had unique pieces of their kit that made them inarguably different from what AD carries used to look like.
And now, with Smolder being able to circumvent the need to auto-attack—which has essentially always been the keystone mechanic of the ADC position—players are realizing just how far the champion fits outside of the mold.
“But yes, he is basically a mage, and I think that’s fine,” said one player on Reddit. “Riot finally tricked ADC players into being ok with playing a mage bot lane,” another player replied.
Smolder recently received a hotfix this past week, with the cooldown of his ultimate being increased by 20 seconds at all ranks. If he continues to dominate the meta and find serious success in the bottom lane, it’s likely he’ll receive some much-needed nerfs when Patch 14.6 arrives later this month.
