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Let's Talk About Smite

Stacona··2 votes·1,024 views

I think the biggest corporate to jungler power being so high are the champion smites on a spell that should have all been about PvE (player vs environment) and securing objectives. By giving them both that and the ability to ignite+exhaust (red smite) or nuke+slow (blue smite) is giving them essentially 3 summoner spells at all times, this is going to have some power creeping issues.

Smite upgrades I do think are a good idea, but I would rather see new ones where they are either about amplifying the PvE game in some way, smite more often or playing around the vision game in some way. Moving upgraded smites in this direction makes it where junglers are not getting excess power, moves them back more towards the supportive role that they were always meant to be, and allows for proper choice and options to choose the upgrade most suited for that game and your own play style.

I will give some example ideas to paint a little bit of a better picture:

Spectral Smite: Your Smite becomes Spectral Smite. Casting it summons a wraith that moves towards the closest enemy champion for the next 8 seconds, revealing the area around it and if it collides with an enemy champion then it applies True Sight against it for 4 seconds and slows it down by 5% - 30% based on distance traveled.

Clairvoyant Smite: Your Smite becomes Clairvoyant Smite. Casting it reveals 2000 - 4500 (based on level) units around you for 2 seconds.

Crow Smite: Your Smite becomes Crow Smite. Casting it summons a crow by your side for 15 seconds, attacking one time and revealing the first ward that it sees for 8 seconds and then flies off. [Range: 1000 unites]

Explosive Smite: Your Smite becomes Explosive Smite. Casting it causes it to explode, dealing 25% of its damage to nearby non-champion targets and stunning all non-champion targets for 3 seconds.

(NOTE: Epic Monsters are immune to crowd control, so this stuns minions, non-epic monsters and other targets in the same classification. This is a help to junglers if you are looking for faster clears or need help with killing chickens and krugs.)

Restoring Smite: Your Smite becomes Restoring Smite. Allowing you to heal from any applicable target rather than only monsters. Additionally, this restores 30% of your missing mana or energy.

Quick Smite: Your Smite becomes Quick Smite. Your Smite's cooldown and recharge time is cut in half.

Executioner's Smite: Your Smite becomes Executioner's Smite. Your Smite deals 15% bonus true damage against targets below 25% health.

(i.e. level 18 Smite deals 1150 true damage instead of 1000 true damage, this is to help with securing objectives like Baron Nashor or Dragons with that tiny bit of extra damage.)

I would rather see Smite go back to being all about PvE combat for the most part, though this adds vision control elements for some of the ideas, rather than granting a combat advantage against other champions. This should tone back jungler power and bring them back to a better state because the supportive roles probably should be supportive roles, not everyone needs to be a carry since that defeats the purpose of having a middle and bottom to funnel gold into so they can carry the game, junglers (and obviously supports) should be the supportive positions for their team that sets up their team to do well rather than solo carry on their own without their team.

For the record, Spectral Smite is a gimped Twin Shadow's ghost pretty much, weaker in every way including the fact that you only get one ghost at a time, granted Smite does come with two charges so the frequency between ghosts is up more often. Also a reminder that you can only get one upgraded smite at a time just like now.

9 Comments

Mcsquzzy1 votes

They use to have a purple smite which had more uptime but it was too op for jungle clear and I miss it since it made more champs viable in jg.

Beerstein1 votes

{quoted}

They use to have a purple smite which had more uptime but it was too op for jungle clear and I miss it since it made more champs viable in jg.

I miss the freaking green ward one...

Mcsquzzy1 votes

sounds like a lee sin main hrmmmm

Beerstein1 votes

{quoted}

sounds like a lee sin main hrmmmm

Never touched Lee Sin, just liked the vision, particularly on Amumu. Lee is fine with the normal wards, just means he can't vision as much if he wants to use it.

Stacona1 votes

I think vision upgrades can work, but the better solution is short, temporary vision like the Spectral Smite or Clairvoyant Smite ideas since it offers vision, but does not overwhelm the map with vision and is more of a skill element about it, since smite has two charges now we can do stuff like this.

PhearBunny1 votes

I miss Jungle Leona. I hate you runes reforged.

Pokemonred2001 votes

Quick Smite was actually a real thing at one point (it was on Poacher's Knife and got renamed to Scavenging Smite before release. It gave you half smite cd and extra gold and movespeed if you smited and killed an enemy jungle camp during an invade)

Stacona1 votes

Poacher's Knife was something else entirely that got removed brought back and removed again, poacher's knife was always a counter jungling mechanic which is a horrible thing to put in the game.

Yes, I know a short cooldown smite was in the game, I liked that smite, but with my ideas I think it can work out better since there is a lot more choice between options to choose from so there should be a lot more variety in smites rather than one dominant upgraded smite. Though, I think pro-play will favour the Crow Smite the highest as it is a one-ward vision denial mechanic, almost a combination of sweeper and the limited time smite buff when you smited the large chicken (one attack as in it acts like one champion basic attack to that ward, so kills blue wards instantly of course).

Pokemonred2001 votes

I know that, I was just pointing out the name of the smite was used for Poacher's Knife on PBE for a while and the effect of the quick smite you listed was used as part of that Smite's effect in the past.

Explosive Smite is something I'd like to see some day too (it's basically Ranger's Trailblazer with less damage and no heal/mana but a longer stun), even if there's a chance it could be strong as balls.

Overall, I do like a lot of these ideas, even if it's not something I could see Riot doing (blah blah 'design clutter' as Patch 5.22 notes said when they removed a bunch of items without real explanation). Spectral Smite seems like something I'd use the most, since I like Twin Shadows but I can't fit it in my builds a lot of the time.

Restoring Smite sounds like it would be a really strong one, even though I do see potential abuse cases in lane by champions who could use Bloodrazor or Cinderhulk (like Kog'Maw, who would appreciate the heal and has synergy with bloodrazor's on-hit).

Hard to give my opinion on the other smites, though.

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