Riot Games is continuing to closely monitor the health of the jungle position in League of Legends, one that has fluctuated between blatantly overpowered to yearning for attention—and a recent change is stirring up even more debate about the role’s impact.
League Patch 13.15, which was released yesterday, introduced a variety of changes aimed at balancing the power of champions, items, and overall systems only a few weeks into the second split of the 2023 season. But an adjustment to the Smite summoner spell, a pivotal tool for those aiming to brave the jungle of Summoner’s Rift, and how it impacts champion summons has many players confused why this interaction wasn’t simply outright removed rather than heavily nerfed.
While Smite has long been a way for junglers to secure pivotal objectives like the elemental drakes, Rift Herald, and Baron Nashor, it can also be used on smaller jungle monsters, lane minions, and even champions themselves with additional debuffs. Should a pesky champion summon like Annie’s Tibbers or Ivern’s Daisy be in the way, Smite can also be used, but it would clear that non-playable character from the map almost instantaneously—removing a big part of certain champions’ kits without any counterplay.
Thus, alongside Patch 13.15, Riot introduced changes that greatly decrease the amount of damage that Smite can do to these summons, now dealing less damage than it would to a lane minion in all iterations and upgrades. Coupled with a handful of buffs to certain summons’ resistances, this has resulted in massive unrest among much of the League community, with many wondering why it’s possible to Smite these summons at all anymore.
But others have pointed out that the intent of these changes was to specifically deal with smaller, more spammable summons like Zyra’s plants and Malzahar’s voidlings, rather than to seemingly increase the power of the stronger, ultimate-tied summons. These specific summons are central to these champions’ playstyles, but they do not boast the same long cooldowns as summons like Tibbers and Daisy, and thus can simply appear anew within a few seconds after being defeated.
Should these Smite changes continue to serve as hot topics of controversy, it’s likely that Riot will either step in with an explanation as to why the changes were implemented or test further adjustments in the coming patches.
