Plants, Smite buffs, Strategy, and Tactics.

With the impending removal of smite buffs (strategic) to open space for plants (tactical), though I'd personally like to have both, it leaves us in a somewhat interesting scenario.

Although I personally like smite buffs, the system was flawed on some points. For example, every other smite buff is simply better than Gromp's. From a strategic standpoint, that's not good at all. Each and every buff should have its benefits, and in gromp's case, it didn't.

Though it was mainly for tank junglers, there was generally less benefit from it than smiting your own wolves to have it patrol a cleared jungle. Because even with a cleared jungle, the spirit could potentially alert you or your allies to an impending gank.

Gromp's smite buff is inherently inferior to every other buff. The damage is at a level where an enemy won't even notice they took it most of the times, and it offers no resists, damage reduction, or strategic benefit for the amount of damage Gromp does to the jungler.

This is unhealthy in terms of strategy. The other smite buffs should not be superior to Gromp's. They should all have equally potent, strategically beneficial, and varying effects. As it is, I'd say that Riot should rework the smite buffs so that they all have equal strategic value instead of removing them.

Now, for the tactical aspect of things. The introduction of plants is actually a good decision, despite my feeling a bit apprehensive about the RNG factor. It's certainly not the best way to implement variance of tactics, but it's a big step in the right direction. I don't in any way advocate the loss of strategic depth which removal of smite buffs will bring, but I do agree with Riot's standpoint that LoL is lacking in tactical depth.

In a lot of situations, people will simply get stat-checked. And everybody knows how unpleasant it can be when someone wins simply because your stats can't match up against theirs.

Plants, the Blast Cone in particular, offer room for low mobility champions to escape or outplay higher mobility champions, many of us know the resignation of trying to walk away from something like a full HP Ekko or Riven as a low HP and mobility mage or ADC. The blast cone would at least give people the chance to escape.

The addition of Scryer's Bloom would be a nice addition for a lot of junglers, though it looks like it has some kinks that need to be worked out of it.

I honestly don't like the Honeyfruit, due to me liking playing Karthus, though I can see it being beneficial for a lot of players.

In my opinion, the blast cone is easily the best of the three plants due to the amount of tactical play it would provide. The other two don't really provide much in tactics, and I think we'd be better off with smite buffs fulfilling their two roles. But I definitely think that blast cones will be a healthy addition to the jungle, and will make the experience more interactive as well as providing.

Now, let's talk about the_** positives**_ and negatives of removing smite buffs.

Let's first start with the negatives. The removal of smite buffs lesson strategic depth and engagement, and shafts junglers that were reliant on them. It removes a lot of features from the jungle that were helpful, fun, or convenient. It also kills certain off meta jungling choices.

But on the positive side, it makes a lot of champions more easy to balance in the jungle and lets Riot know what champions are under-performing in the jungle much more quickly than before. It also adds room for compensation buffs to be handed out to many junglers due to the removal of the smite buffs.

The positives don't make up for the negatives brought, but they do offset some of the damage taken by the removal of smite buffs.

Please share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below, I'm quite interested to see how you people are feeling about the upcoming changes for the preseason.

[slayer-jinx-catface]

TLDR: Smite buffs should be reworked to achieve healthier strategic gameplay, not removed. Plant RNG factor worries me but it's a good step towards more tactical depth.

~Sincerely, A No Life RTS Player.