2-Charge Smite Threw Off the Balance Between Stalker's Blade and the Other Jungling Items

For the last few days, whenever I played a match, it hasn't mattered who the jungler was, they took as their jungling item.

Not , not , not .

Sure, there are other factors that created this imbalance to begin with, but the recent introduction of 2-Smite Charges is what I believe made Stalker's an even better choice than the others.

The reason is quite clear: There's no longer a disadvantage to using Chilling Smite on Champions.

There is no, "Should I save it in case I need to secure dragon or get a buff, or should I use it to gank top/mid/bot / kill the other jungler?" **Why not both? **

Many of the popular junglers don't even need Smite to keep clearing the jungle; they can save up to 2 Smites at any time, and their clear speeds are fast enough after the first or second clear that using Smite on monsters is unnecessary.

Even if they roam and constantly gank different lanes, the travel time itself with camp clearing makes it so that a significant portion of the next smite is close to being off CD by the time they reach the next lane, such that the total amount of time between 2 ganks using Smite are much smaller than before the 2-Smite patch.

The ganking potential of Chilling Smite was large before, and it's been further amplified by the changes, given that it's a point-and-click movespeed steal that deals a bit of true damage. It can aid in finishing off and preventing the escape of enemies, and as such, is useful even in the late game, unlike the Poacher's and Trailblazer's.

As for Skirmisher's.. well, the damage from it's Challenging Smite is dealt is over 3 seconds. I'd argue that it's still useful, but that's under the assumption that the target stays or is kept in combat range.

Since I haven't seen any threads about this, thought I'd try and start up a discussion about this.

I personally think 's synergy with the 2-Smite system either needs toning down or the others need changes to keep up.

and in particular can't be considered very good in the long run since their effects don't even scale into the late game in the way the other two do.

What do you guys think? Agree, disagree? Any specific changes you guys think would be good?

Please keep off-topic comments out of the conversation.