As much as I enjoy facing a Hecarim with Skirmisher's Sabre, him using Smite on me shouldn't let him deal physical damage, magic damage, and true damage all at the same time whilst I deal 20% less damage to him.
Take note that I'm simply using Hecarim as an example; Smite yielding egregious power to a select group of champions in a place it shouldn't is the concern.
Trash MammaI5 votesYou could pick Voli/Darius/Garen/Riven/Lissandra/Gnar..See where i'm going with this?
Honestly idk why people are still complaining about hec top. He's so freaking easy to beat it's hilarious.
Dies to Wolves1 votesYou could pick Voli/Darius/Garen/Riven/Lissandra/Gnar..See where i'm going with this?
Honestly idk why people are still complaining about hec top. He's so freaking easy to beat it's hilarious.
he's not complaining about hecarim, he even said in his post he just used him as an example. He's complaining about red smite.
DrathTurtle3145 votesWhy not? It comes at the cost of a sumoner spell slot, 850 gold, and that gold gives +0 combat stats. For that much of a cost, it had better do something. Are you okay with jungle hecarim showing up and doing the exact same thing? If so, why?
LilxPaprika3 votesWhy not? It comes at the cost of a sumoner spell slot, 850 gold, and that gold gives +0 combat stats. For that much of a cost, it had better do something. Are you okay with jungle hecarim showing up and doing the exact same thing? If so, why?
you do have smite, so you can get quite a bit of farm. including jungle in between waves. as well as 1 camp off the bat at the start. its not as bad as it may seem imo. If you play safe nothing enemy can really do to you first few levels. and cinderhulk at 2250 gold is sooner than sunfirecape which helps you clear waves even sooner.
DrathTurtle3144 votesYou don't need smite to take a camp, just going to throw that out there.
What you have said is true, but it doesn't do anything to convince me that we should discourage this strategy.
LilxPaprika1 votesYou don't need smite to take a camp, just going to throw that out there.
What you have said is true, but it doesn't do anything to convince me that we should discourage this strategy.
ya its not op as an item. just obnoxious if the top laner wants to trade but is always turned off because of smite being up so often. at the same time he does have an occasional advantage whenever his ignite summoner is up.
idk what to make of it. it has as much advantage as disadvantage to it. Its mostly a very forgiving item. since its great at clearings /csing and farming up and just playing safe.
T RexHasLongLegs1 votesSo I'm curious if the red smite or cinderhulk is the bigger offender here? Cinderhulk is hands down stronger than sunfire, so if you have a top who would like sunfire then you can go that route, or ask yourself if you think you can survive w/out flash or ghost (which some people can't and you can punish them hard if they try, that's the balance of smite tp) and if you can then you get a better sunfire for less cost and that is so broken. I think making sunfire a more attractive option for top lane and competing with cinderhulk would make the choice of an escape summoner or not a much harder decision.
DrathTurtle3141 votesOr you could ask the question, "can I make an impact without Teleport?"
A lot of solo queue players at lower elos(in my experience(BIII currently)) can't use TP for anything other than returning to lane, so running Smite/Flash or Smite/ghost top lane might work.
Cinderhulk gives no armor and you want to build more health on top of cinderhulk in order to use it completely, sunfire doesn't incentivize building anything else on top of it. There are reasons to build sunfire over cinderhulk.
As far as skirmishers/red smite, I think that in an "island" lane, it is extremely powerful for dueling.
I feel like they both contribute to taking smite top lane and I don't think either one could bring that strategy in alone.
T RexHasLongLegs1 votesI definitely agree that especially in low elo smite/flash or smite/ghost is the way to go. I also think it depends on the champ and probably balances out. If you don't go TP and I'm on Mao or Malph or another strong team fight champ then I deserve to lose to a red smite lane that doesn't take TP if I can't use the fact that I have an amazing kit for team fights and can TP to them while you can't.
I also see what you mean about there being reasons to take sunfire over cinderhulk, but sunfire is a snowball item for the most part and the only champs I ever really bought it on were top lane malph (he pushes well w/ that and ground slam and is more a continuous damage champ than burst), and amumu (building sunfire and abyssal with the AP jungle Item last season was strong) or Vi (AD jungle item, trinity and sunfire is a lot of pain on the back line). Amumu is better w/ cinderhulk now, vi if you're gonna build tank is probably another good cinderhulk option, and malph doesn't really use red smite so not applicable. Other than that I struggle to think of an item combo of Sunfire+X Item that I would rather have on a tanky top lane over Cinderhulk+Randuin's. I'm not building MR till mid game probably and IF I'm building it before that it's a game I'm probably not building sunfire at all (and certainly not as the first item). While I think it is definitely an issue of both the strength of red smite top lane AND the weakness of sunfire in most situations, why should red smite be the spot you look at for balance over looking at cinderhulk or preferably at bringing up the strength of sunfire so there is something you're giving up in more cases than currently by going cinder over sunfire?
DrathTurtle3141 votesI still tend to get warrior enchant on jungle Vi before going for a sunfire cape, but since we are talking about taking smite top lane and that is a preference, I'll put that aside.
I would say that there are a lot of factors to balancing the smite top lane strategy, and I don't want it nerfed to the point where it disappears too quickly. I think focusing on the difference between cinderhulk and sunfire would be a good place to start and do something that differentiates them, maybe not a straight buff or nerf to one or the other, but make it so that you lose something other than stats(armor) when you take cinderhulk over sunfire.
MLDzXnRRR4 votesSo Riot introduced new strategy top and u complain?
LilxPaprika2 votesSo Riot introduced new strategy top and u complain?
pretty sure riot didnt do that. It was devised by players. nothing riot could really do about.
he's not so much complaining about cinderhulk smite as much as just skirmisher. There's nothing comparable to it itemwise. Besides 
and that has such a long cooldown.
while their smite can be used almost every 40 seconds in some cases.
T RexHasLongLegs1 votesI mean point is still that the complaint of "oh no, people developed a new strategy in response to an evolving game" is sort of like NA pro teams QQing season 1 when support meta was created and going "Giving gold to one laner bot and having a jungle so top gets all the gold AND exp is just way to strong. It's killing diversity!"
In the end it's really strong but you gotta let it have a little while at least to see if it can be healthy or not. Maybe people adjust to it, maybe they don't, maybe it takes removal to balance it, but maybe it just needs the numbers tweaked.
Phoenix Kotori 1 votesThis different than him using 
on you how? Besides the -20% dmg for 6 seconds.
T RexHasLongLegs1 votesthe 20% means it can be used as a defensive summoner to give you a bit more chance to escape from a gank w/out dying. Ignite can't do that so if nothing else it's a versatility issue. No punishment in terms of opportunity cost for taking the offensive summoner the way you would have if you took ignite.
Phoenix Kotori 1 votesIt does significantly less damage than ignite and lacks grievous wounds.
Strawberrycocoa1 votesThe mixed damage isn't a big deal to me, but that 6 seconds of -20% damage dealt is probably overkill. I can see it getting toned down to 4 or maybe even 3.
