A way to make Flash less mandatory - buff the other summoner spells if you don't use Flash!

remainsofeden··2 votes·447 views

Hi there!

TL;DR: if you DO NOT choose Flash as any of your summoner spells, the others should get buffs and additional functionalities.

We all know that Flash has been a staple summoner spell for over half a decade now with only around 4% of people not using it at the moment and we all know why. It adds play-making ability both defensively and offensively, enables champs without gap closers to get away from divers, enables the repositioning of spell hitboxes (looking at you, Alistar, Lee Sin, Riven, etc.) and many more things.

Now, let's see what Riot has done in the past to systems that are available to every summoner and champion that had a clear best choice: Masteries (Keystones). Most people still remember the League of Thunderlord's when everyone and their grandma took it just because it was superior to all others. So what did Riot do? First, they slightly nerfed TLD, then they strongly buffed the other choices - and even though most champion subclasses use one single Keystone per class now, other choices are at least compelling enough to pick up.

The first part of that has already been dealt with by Riot: Flash has had its range and cooldown nerfed multiple times, but that didn't stop anyone from pretty much always taking it anyway. So how do we make people use the other summoner spells? I think the answer is simple: We buff the other ones IF you are not using Flash at all. Hear me out on this one.

We know the technology is already there (™) to detect if a summoner chose Smite to allow him to get the jungle items. So there is probably also a way to detect if none of your chosen summoner spells is Flash. The buffs/additional functionalities I'd propose for the enhanced summoner spells would be the following:

  • Ghost: total duration still 10 seconds, grants +75% movement speed when moving towards enemy champions for the first 3 seconds which then decays to 50% (at all levels) towards champions, otherwise identical
  • Exhaust (drop the resist shred on base Exhaust): grounds the target for the entire duration
  • Ignite: reduces target resistances by 30%
  • Heal: increases the movement speed duration to 3 seconds
  • Barrier: grants 20% damage reduction for the duration
  • Cleanse: renders the target immune to all crowd control for 1.5 seconds
  • Smite: recharge time reduced by 10 seconds
  • Teleport: grants a two second +50% movement speed boost after usage
  • Clarity: for 10 seconds, the next three spell casts will not cost any mana and will return their mana cost to your mana pool - 120 second cooldown

Tell me what you think (especially Rioters, if you guys are reading this)! ^-^

4 Comments

venomous frost1 votes

I think you just broke all the summoner spells.

Swiftstrike41 votes

They just need to raise the cooldown of flash if they want people taking other summoner spells. That's it. They don't need to buff the other spells which are all in pretty good spots.

Sightless661 votes

I'm not particularly happy with the idea of summoner spells being any stronger than they currently are. If there's a problem with flash, I'm perfectly content with the strategy of nerfing it over and over again.

Zaryelle1 votes

I think the main reason flash is too good is because it maintains its usefulness at all levels. Some of the other ones like heal,ignite, barrier become less useful, sometimes even useless late game.

How they are now: Heal - 90-345 health 30% movementspeed for 1 second Ignite - 70-410 true damage over 5 seconds, grant vision, reduced healing effects Barrier - 115 - 455 shield for 2 seconds

Heal needs slightly more health and duration at higher levels Ignite needs only a slight damage buff at higher levels (around level 18, 410 true damage is not much at all) Barrier is fine I think but needs either longer duration or lower cooldown or both, the 2 seconds is just too easy to work around

I think they need to make them scale better into late game or increase flash cooldown, otherwise flash will still always be chosen.

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