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Summoner Specialist: Pros and Cons

Electro522··41 votes·10,664 views

So, just today, Riot Stashu unveiled what could be the most unique rune they have shown that will be coming in preseason to date; that being Summoner Specialist.

What this rune allows you to do is to be able to switch out summoner spells in game. Each time you cast a summoner, you recieve a shard. Once you have 3 of these shards, you are then able to trade them in for a different summoner spell.

Just at first glance, you can tell that there are A METRIC TON of possibilities with this rune, but there are also plenty of problems that arise with it as well. In this thread, I'd like to do my best to list them all off, and give everyone something to brainstorm off of. I'll be going role by role, explaining what this rune can do in each one.

Shall we begin?

#Top Lane

To be completely honest, I do not see too many top laners taking this rune. While there could be some cases, you have to remember that people taking this rune are trading off offensive and defensive capability for utility. Carry top laners, like Fiora or Riven, would want something more damage orientated. While tank top laners, like Maokai or Cho'gath would want more survivability. However, there are still some things we can list.

##Pros

  • Allows carry top laners to start off with a more lane dominant summoner set up (such as with ignite or exhaust), and the ability to switch to teleport later in the game. This particularly helps split push orientated champs, such as Shen or Nasus.

  • Allows top laners to become something akin to a second jungler. If you're playing a team that has great onjective control, the top laner could switch teleport for smite, and make it nigh impossible for the enemy team to challenge you at objectives.

##Cons

  • The "second jungler" aspect could also be a problem. The top laner could start with smite, and while the bot lane is leashing for the actual jungler, the top laner (and potentially mid laner as well), could invade the enemy jungle, and challenge the first buff, potentially wrecking the enemy junglers game all together.

#Jungle

Unlike top lane, I can actually see several cases where junglers take this rune, especially those junglers that struggle with early clears.

##Pros

  • Allows some junglers to start with a summoner set up that allows them to easily clear their first set of camps. For example, taking heal or clarity, then switching it out for flash or ghost. This could also allow some champs that are not normally junglers to actually succeed in the jungle.

  • Allows junglers who are good at invading, like Nunu or Shaco, to have a variety of options while counter jungling their opponent, while still being able to have more reliable options later in the game.

  • Gives junglers the opportunity to trade out smite for teleport, opening up a very wide range of ganking opportunities. Evelynn and Zac have been notorious for being difficult to track and predict where they would come from for a gank. With this rune, any jungler could have that capability.

  • Gives junglers the option of more useful summoners during the later stages of the game when smite becomes less useful, especially when both Baron and Elder Dragon are down.

##Cons

  • This problem isn't entirely aimed at junglers, per se, but more so jungle items. This rune allows laners to start with smite, and get the cost efficient jungle items, while still being able to switch out Smite and keeping the jungle items. This could lead us into another "Mid Ezeral Smite" meta with things like Devourer Twitch, or Cinderhulk Top Maokai. This is one of the more glaring problems this rune has, and Riot is aware of it. They have yet to figure out a proper solution, though.

  • This rune can allow an entire team to take Smite, and take onjectives ludicrously fast. While this is a more extreme case, it is still possible.

#Mid Lane

Like top lane, I doubt we will see many mid laners take this rune, since there are simply better options. But...

##Pros

  • Allows mid laners to better react to the situation. If tbey are losing lane quite heavily, they can opt into more defensive options, such as heal or barrier. If they are winning, they could opt into ignite or releport.

  • Some mid laners could opt into clarity with this rune, making their laning phase much easier, such as Taliyah or Lux.

##Cons

  • Could make hard matchups in mid lane even harder, due to the number of options your opponent could have in order to counter you, or shut you down even harder.

  • Could make mid lane roams even more impactful than they are now, which would allow mid laners to easily pressure the map in a multitude of ways.

#Bot Lane

Out of any of the roles, I suspect you'll see this rune on marksmen the least. They need the damage, and speccing into utility makes them more of a liability than an asset.

In fact, I suspect that this will be so rare, that I won't even list off any pros or cons. For if you are to see this on a bot lane marksmen, you're either being cheesed, or the person is new, and doesn't know what their doing.

#Support

Out of all of the roles, support is most likely where you will see this rune end up. There are so many things you could do with this rune, its uncanny.

##Pros

  • Allows week laning supports, such as Janna or Nami, to opt into summoners that make the lane easier on them, such as clarity or heal, while still having the option to opt into a more reliable mid to late game such as exhaust or ghost.

  • Allows lane dominant supports, such as Leona or Alistar, to opt out of aggressive options like ignite, and take things like teleport or exhaust once out of lane.

  • Allows high damage supports, like Brand or Zyra, to actually opt into clairvoyance for early vision, that way they can spend their gold on more useful stats in lane.

  • Because of supports, this rune could very well make the 2 least used summoners in the game, clarity and clairvoyance, actually viable early game choices. EDIT: MY BAD!!! Completely forgot clairvoyance doesnt exist anymore, and clarity isn't on SR. Woops.

  • Similar to top laners, supports can also opt into smite, and help with objective control.

##Cons

  • Similar to top laners, supports could also become "second unglers", and challenge, and potentially ruin, the enemy jungler's day.

As you can see, there is ALOT that this rune brings to the table, but it also brings about its own share of problems as well. Remember, that this rune is still in development, and may very well drastically change come preseason.

If you guys have any questions, I will try my best to answer any and all of them. Otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this, and I'd love to hear any thoughts you guys might have.

Electro

57 Comments

RiotMeddler39 votes

Nice write up, your assessment of opportunity cost in particular. That matches pretty well with what we've seen in testing so far, where a lot of the stuff that sounds like it could be overbearing at first glance ends up ok, or even weak, because of how valuable the other runes you're giving up are.

Also worth noting that Clarity's not available on SR and CV's been gone for a while now, so while Summoner Specialist's probably appealing to a number of supports those won't be part of the appeal for them.

Electro5222 votes

{quoted}

Also worth noting that Clarity's not available on SR and CV's been gone for a while now, so while Summoner Specialist's probably appealing to a number of supports those won't be part of the appeal for them.

:\

How did I forget these? Bah.....my bad. Completely forgot.

ShadowParker10 votes

Perhaps Clarity could come back with this rune?

I know I'd personally enjoy skipping the almost mandatory morellonomicon on mages in favor of damage. The problem with Clarity before was that you gave up a Summoner Spell slot for a Summoner Spell that was almost useless late game. If I could swap it out later and use it only during laning I would definately opt into it.

What are your thoughts on this idea Meddler? I'd love to hear it.

NineTailedMystic6 votes

How do you skip Morello in favor of damage when it gives 100 AP?

Mecha Incognito2 votes

Never understood why people think Morello doesnt give much damage. 100 AP is a lot, and 20% cdr could be seen as up to 20% more DPS (though that'd require spamming off cooldown).

ShadowParker1 votes

Although the AP is fine, It's just that I get so much more for my champions with another item.

Let's take Taliyah for example, rylais is a core item on her. I'd love to rush it over morellos for the slow.

Another example is Ziggs who may want to rush a ludens echo with the hope of bursting his lane down.

ChaosThief1 votes

You could take Luden's Echo instead, offering the passive's bonus damage as well as movement speed, replacing the mana and cooldown for a more burst oriented style.

You could also rush gunblade, without needing to worry about mana gunblade would give you lane sustain and the powerful active, albeit the cost of 20 AP.

And some could take Liandry's Torment or rylai's first if it has good synergy with their kit (malzahar, taliyah, etc)

It very much depends on the champion and their capability. Forcing morello's first item may not always be beneficial to them.

ModCaptainMårvelous17 votes

Here's a question: Does it work with smite?

Because smite can be cast quite rapidly compared to other spells, meaning you could start smite, smite 2-ish times and have crystals ready.

PhDs Nuts3 votes

{quoted}

Here's a question: Does it work with smite?

Because smite can be cast quite rapidly compared to other spells, meaning you could start smite, smite 2-ish times and have crystals ready.

This was my immediate question.

RiotMeddler19 votes

We're still figuring out smite interactions, will likely need some degree of special rules for it.

Votable Jester10 votes

What if you made the Summoner Spells give a number of Crystals equal to its cooldown or something?

The only downside I could see is that it would lead to some feel-bad moments where you're just a few crystals off.

Mecha Incognito5 votes

They could try setting a higher amount of shards to switch, and then assigning each summoner spell a certain value when used. Say it's 10 to switch a summoner, Smite gives 1 shard per use, flash gives 4, Heal gives 2 etc.

RiotMeddler5 votes

Something in that line's an option and would give us a tuning lever. Wouldn't necessarily tie it one to one with CD, allowing some degree of taking shorter CD spells to allow more swaps seems like good play provided it doesn't dominate other choices.

Melledoneus3 votes

I recommend preventing smite from being switched out. It will create far too many problems.

The DrBonjigollo1 votes

Agreed, especially if you purchase a jungle item. It'd be unfair to let a KogMaw with item 1416 to run around with flash and ghost kiting everyone and not being killable and giving you less means of escape.

CudyDarkyz1 votes

You can try making them change into baby versions of the summoner spells.

It can even be like if you swap back to a spell you started the game with you still keep the better one just ones you didn't start with are weaker.

Say if you didn't start with flash, and you switch to it later in the game. The flash cool down in something like 6 or 7 mins and not 5.

If you switch to smite it only has 70% of the damage compared to someone who started with it and you can't buy jungle items.

Ignite does magic damage instead of true damage.

Heal only targets a ally. Barrier only shields you for 1 second.

Teleport is only half the map in range.

Cleanse doesn't give 65% cc reduction, and exhaust doesn't slow.

It will also keep your starting summoner spells as important as they are now because no matter how many times you change your spells they will still be the big ones.Losing toplane, switch to barrier or something, then after that, switch back to the full power teleport because you started the lane with Teleport. If you think you need a full power barrier start that then have to deal with the weak teleport later.

TiltyMacTiltFace1 votes

Could you make it similar to how kayn fills his orb for his transformation, but instead base it on percent of CD for that sum spell? That may/may not normalize the value assigned to purchasing a summoner spell based on it's CD and the CD of the spell used to trade it in?

AirKingNeo1 votes

Maybe do +1 Crystal for smite and making it +3 Crystals for other Summoners Spells, costing 9 to change.

MatthewRT22 votes

WIll these runes have aram taken into account, I'd love being able to swap out clarity when i don't need it anymore but at the same time you could just take snowball get early kills then swap to ignite or something after you are ahead on first death.

my point is will there be an exception to snowball where it takes more uses to proc

The Yetii Rider1 votes

What happens if you start the game with Smite and buy a jungle item, then switch Smite out on your first back? You would still be able to buy upgrades for the item as long as you had bought the knife itself with 1000 total gold, right? So junglers could opt out of Smite in the mid to late game without losing their items, and other laners could opt into the item in the early game and then keep a combat summoner?

I think this will lead to an increase in people taking item 3711 so that they can have the enchantment and still trade away Smite, which will artificially increase the amount of vision we have in the game by quite a lot...I don't know. This seems like it's opening up more headaches than it's worth, so I'm almost predicting you're moving to a completely different jungle item system to avoid more laners abusing enchantments again.

Automated Riven1 votes

I can see level 2 cheeses out of toplaners again. Take smite and clear a jungle camp or two and go top with a level advantage.

Hyperiön1 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Yetii Rider,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ELjFwVtj,comment-id=00000005,timestamp=2017-08-24T04:29:02.758+0000)

What happens if you start the game with Smite and buy a jungle item, then switch Smite out on your first back? You would still be able to buy upgrades for the item as long as you had bought the knife itself with 1000 total gold, right? So junglers could opt out of Smite in the mid to late game without losing their items, and other laners could opt into the item in the early game and then keep a combat summoner?

I think this will lead to an increase in people taking item 3711 so that they can have the enchantment and still trade away Smite, which will artificially increase the amount of vision we have in the game by quite a lot...I don't know. This seems like it's opening up more headaches than it's worth, so I'm almost predicting you're moving to a completely different jungle item system to avoid more laners abusing enchantments again.

If you switch off smite. You have 0 objective control. lmao

The Yetii Rider1 votes

Not if you're not the jungler. You can start with Smite as a support for instance, in order to buy Trackers Knife and Cinderhulk. Then you've got a cheap, slot efficient Sightstone + Sunfire Cape AND all your other health items buff you (plus since you have Smite on jungle as well you could go for super early dragons).

Dr Poro1 votes

You've talked about how important it is to have levers on these runes to buff or nerf them when their power level is off. How would that work with this Rune in particular? You could change the number of casts required, but i I don't feel like that would affect the power of it too much since you'd likely only want to switch once or twice during a game anyways.

RiotMeddler3 votes

There'll be some form of passive bonus attached to the rune as well in this case (currently that's summoner CD reduction). That's there both as a tuning lever and because without it the rune's been testing as quite weak. Cost to swap's the other main lever as you mention. I'd expect those to be enough, if not could also do something like give a brief stats bonus on any summoner spell cast. Don't think that'll be necessary though here and it does add extra complexity for likely low value.

TimX24968B1 votes

Meddler, why is it that every single one of these runes I've seen just feels like some kind of gimmick? they are either super situational/conditional, or just have so little impact and use that it just feels like regular old stats would be better.

ahferroin71 votes

First off, I actually like this overall. It's reminiscent of one of the things I love about the game SMITE (you pick your summoner spells in game, not pre-game, and you don't get your second one until mid game).

I also think that most of the options seem pretty balanced even without knowing what most of the other runes are.

I agree with your comment further down about possibly needing special interactions for smite. The option to start smite and invade on the opposite side of mid from where your jungler is starting being at least 'OK' and not overbearing sounds like a serious red flag to me. Factoring in the chance of the enemy jungler being on that side already or the enemy laners on that side intervening, I'd estimate it's a roughly 30% chance of automatic success (that is, maybe 30% of the time there will be nobody contesting you stealing the buff, since you've got a theoretical 50% chance of the jungler starting there and I see people ward about 40% of the time on the side their jungler isn't starting). Even if both sides do this, there's still a significant lane advantage to having the buff going into lane (especially if it's blue buff). If only one side does this, they've got an insane early advantage that can very easily decide the game in the current meta.

Additionally, I think you should be keeping an eye on interactions with mark on ARAM. That has an even lower CD and is very powerful if used right early in the game, and also has the re-cast gimmick to factor in.

Imperial Japan1 votes

If a jungler takes this rune, switches smite to something else, what would happen to his jungle item?

Kaeblen1 votes

they'll probably just rule that if you can't switch out smite unless you sell the jungle item first.

Kaeblen1 votes

what is the chance of, say, you can't trade out smite, unless you sell your jungle item first?

Votable Jester5 votes

The sad thing is the OP thinks that Clarity is available on SR...

I wish they'd put it back on SR (changing it like they did heal would be good too imo).

Electro5222 votes

That was my mistake. I completely forgot that it isn't.

If it were to come back, though, this rune would open it up to mid laners and supports.

warpenguin5554 votes

great post bro. One of the rare times I actually read through an entire thread. Wish we could get more of posts like this

Electro5223 votes

Thanks.

I try to make these kind of posts when I can, but its hard because they never tend to get any attention.

I think I got lucky on this one, cause it drew Meddler's attention. If it didn't, I probably wouldn't even have half the votes I have right now.

Avarist4 votes

A majority of the "Pros" you have listed honestly feel like enormous cons to me in terms of game balance / health. For example,

"Allows top laners to become something akin to a second jungler. If you're playing a team that has great onjective control, the top laner could switch teleport for smite, and make it nigh impossible for the enemy team to challenge you at objectives."

This sounds like an absolute nightmare to play against, and there is very little that can be done about it, it has the potential to cause a lot of really weird smite arms-races in the early game and abuse of jungle xp forcing lane advantages.

"Gives junglers the opportunity to trade out smite for teleport, opening up a very wide range of ganking opportunities. Evelynn and Zac have been notorious for being difficult to track and predict where they would come from for a gank. With this rune, any jungler could have that capability."

Any jungler having that capability is not healthy for the game, junglers are balanced around the very notion of their available gank paths. Characters with strong early game clears / special gank routes usually suffer from weaker lategames or other abusable downsides to prevent them from being OP... If any character could get those special gank routes and still be able to swap back to flash later on we're going to run into some big balance issues.

"Allows lane dominant supports, such as Leona or Alistar, to opt out of aggressive options like ignite, and take things like teleport"

This sounds cool but in reality I could see it being used at higher MMR to outright kill split pushing and characters who rely on applying heavy lane pressure...

I hope this is just a gut reaction, but it feels to me like it is going to cause so many weird balancing issues.

If this keystone is too strong and is used effectively, it's going to cause an arms-race where you can't win your lane without it because the enemy top laner for instance is gonna be running offensive summoners and still have teleport for the lategame.

If the keystone is too weak due to other keystones being better choices, then there is no point in Summoner Specialist to exist, because it falls into being an awkward cheese gimmick that leaves you, and by extension your team, at a disadvantage the rest of the game.

Maybe i'm just being dramatic, I hope I am, but I can't envision this being fun to play against, or good for the game.

It's an interesting quirky thing, but I don't think it has -any- business being in the game, personally.

Respect other peoples opinions on it though, I hope it works out in the end regardless.

Solari Fortune2 votes

I will say the 5 man smite thing will most likely only be done by a 5 man premade that are just wanting to screw around because they all have to give up their keystone and other damage runes for their main tree just to do this

SociopathFriend2 votes

...Nami's a weak laner? Really? I typically dominate or go even in lane with her.

Electro5222 votes

She's not as weak as Janna, but against the likes of a Karma or Brand, she can struggle due to mana costs, and can get easily blown up by either Blitz or Leona.

This is why her mid game is quite strong, because by then, you should have enough mana regen to counter your mana costs, and your heal is strong enough to counteract most forms of burst (if you max heal first.....which you should).

It might be difficult to see, cause Nami is a champ that doesn't have any very obvious high or low points. She's decent to good throughout the entire game. You might be able to dominate in lane, because you understand her weaknesses quite well, even if you don't completely realize it yourself.

RainXBlade1 votes

A lot of your analysis revolved around summoner 11. Although it is understandable since summoner 11 does have a very low cd, allowing people to charge their summoner shards pretty fast and that Smite is a very versatile summoner spell next to summoner 4.

Orkanos1 votes

An element to consider, again with Smite, is that supports will basically save their shards and pick smite when contesting objectives like Baron/Drake.

The jungler should normally be higher level, making their smite better, yet i can see them both diving into the pit together (I would gladly sacrifice my petty life as a support main to be able to have a chance at stealing baron/drake).

This provides an interesting tactic that would be welcomed to the game, while at the same time, a possible frustration from a jungler's perspective. I don't know how I feel about when considering that now everyone can just swap a summoner for smite and my "special" interaction with the jungle camps and the power near neutral objectives is no longer so "unique".

Have you considered internally to apply a rule during champ select stating the following:

-If you pick smite, you are restricted to having Smite the entire game on that summoner spell slot and can never change it. -Players may pick any summoner spell except Smite.

At the same time, since jungle items required Smite, how will this be handled?

Oakleaf Ranger1 votes

your really underestimating the value of CDR on summoner spells. I don't think anyone picks something over insight in the resolve tree. Having flash and other summoner spells up sooner is just too good that the runes competing with it have be pretty good unlike the current ones.

I can definitely see this on mid laners (mages). Most mid laners don't take ghost anymore because of how trash it is in the early to mid game after the nerf. But if I could have ghost later after by passing its garbage phase of the game then I would.

DeathBurst1 votes

Re: Bot lane.

I agree people will probably not use this Rune in SoloQ, but in organized play, when teams take utility ADC like Ashe or Kennen, I think they can make good use of an utility runes set-up.

Noblewind1 votes

I don't see this being that great TBH. Like you will probably want flash most of the time and you can only change it once every 3 casts? That's not much uptime for this mastery, especially since you have to take this over something else pre-game.

Inting Pillow1 votes

Top lane will use this rune. Suppose you play Kled. You want early kills, so you can take summoner 14 except you need teleport, especially in high elo. So you get two kills with ignite, one flash in between, and then you trade ignite in for teleport and abuse your 2-0 Lead

Gasburger1 votes

Who tf has this much time on their hands to write a goddamn essay on league lmao sad life

Electro5221 votes

First off, this only took maybe 30 to 40 minutes to write.

Secondly, I wrote all of this from my phone. If I was on my computer, not only would it have been formatted better, it also may very well have been longer.

You can spend 2 to 3 hours playing just a couple games of League, yet you come here and tell me I have a sad life for just making a thread?

If you really want your mind blown, go take a look in Concepts & Creations, and look at some of the champion concepts those people come up with. You may just lose your mind when you find out that those guys spend days, sometimes even weeks designing their champs. But it's all because their passionate about the game and what they're doing.

There is absolutely no reason to come into a thread like this, and blatantly insult the OP for simply writing it. You're lucky you wrote this when this already lost its traction, and is being forgotten. Othersise, the community would have ripped you apart for this comment.

Gasburger1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Paleo Electro,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ELjFwVtj,comment-id=00100000,timestamp=2017-08-25T09:50:09.127+0000)

First off, this only took maybe 30 to 40 minutes to write.

Secondly, I wrote all of this from my phone. If I was on my computer, not only would it have been formatted better, it also may very well have been longer.

You can spend 2 to 3 hours playing just a couple games of League, yet you come here and tell me I have a sad life for just making a thread?

If you really want your mind blown, go take a look in Concepts & Creations, and look at some of the champion concepts those people come up with. You may just lose your mind when you find out that those guys spend days, sometimes even weeks designing their champs. But it's all because their passionate about the game and what they're doing.

There is absolutely no reason to come into a thread like this, and blatantly insult the OP for simply writing it. You're lucky you wrote this when this already lost its traction, and is being forgotten. Othersise, the community would have ripped you apart for this comment.

"only 30 or 40 minutes" Also No i don't play league anymore, I just check in on boards every now and then. Also I don't think the points about you being on phone help your case...

also i legit couldnt care less about the league community which is full of morons anyway. if i care so much i wouldnt have made such a comment.

you're right, i apologise for the rude comments, but IMO it's the truth.

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