Oh hey Champion Smite is being abused

Used by more people than the junglers, but it's abused because it allows a team to get an early lead by taking Gromp/small golem, and since they smite Gromp it also gives a huge damage advantage early. Then they get Skrimishers and easily win every laning phase fight because of the bonus true damage they deal while taking less of the opponents damage.

It also makes fighting Dragons pathetically easy.

"The meta changes. This is clearly abuse"

Do you really think coming to lane at level 2 with a free Thornmail for all types of dmg is healthy?

If you gambled by giving up one of your Summoner Spells to try to net an early advantage? Sure, I would say that's healthy.

Then what? Did he replace tp with smite? Then gg you should be in more team fights, did you wait till the small buff ran out? Boom go in and destroy him. Did he replace flash? Gank gank gank. Your missing the point that taking smite as anyone but the jungler is hurting your team, you lose more xp when you have to go to the Jung, and you are vulnerable to champs with ignite. It's a lose lose for a top laner to have a useless in lane summoner.

It's not really that so much as the new smites are pretty amazing. Skirmisher makes you an amazing duelist (true damage on-hit, vision of target, AND 20% damage reduction against the target) and stalker has a nice click slow.

It's less that you can smite champions and more of the fact said smites are extremely good.

While that's true yes, they are great they are changing the way the game is played and making it not only useful for farming to get the killing blow but I like that it's useable for more than just dealing that damage. These give new incentives to the use of multiple smites on the team making it so you can build around the meta.

Now if the enemy team does this and takes 2 smites and your team takes 1, no one's stopping you from not taking 2, remember this is Season 5, a new season, new changes, new metas. Think about it.

At level 18 one smite deals 1000 damage. You can almost kill a Dragon with them alone. Also it discourages the enemy team from ever going Baron.

Of course you are giving up something by taking 5 smite right? Well with increased true damage against the person you smited, vision of the target and damage reduction all on 60 sec cd, not really.

Lies, it does not and again no one is stopping your team from taking more than 1 smite. A lot of people actually been dueling it out with taking smite skirmishers top lane now, which is not really becoming that bad of a thing to do. Some people are doing it on supports. But you know it's all about team comp strategies. Having more than 1 now is not bad because the other person who has smite now can utilize even the jungle buffs from using a smite on the large minions. Jungler smites Raptors and gets the ward clearing buff while your top laner smites Wolves and gets the roaming spirit.

Smite last season at level 18 dealt 1000 true damage to minions/neutral monsters and that didn't change this season, just enhancements to using smite as something else other than that clearing of minions/monsters.

Skirmishers: 6 second target, deals 18-69 on hit true damage, 20% damage reduction from target, and true vision.

Poachers: smite and kill large monster in enemy jungle, smite cd is halved, gain +20 gold, 175% move speed boost decaying over two seconds.

Trailblazer: Smite CD reduced by 15 seconds. Deals half damage to all minions/monsters near targeted minion/monster and stuns for 1.5 seconds. Casting smite on monster restores 15% health and mana.

Stalkers: Can be cast on enemy champions dealing 28-164 true damage, and reducing move speed by 50% for 2 seconds.

Currently the best one to take even in lane probably is Skirmishers for dueling purposes which isn't really bad for like Top lane melee champions or mid lane melee champions.

It's a whole new world right now.

If you kill the camp you take a good deal of damage (assuming it is grump) and arrive to lane late so you end up behind on xp and gold (even more so if your opponent pushes immediately).

Also even if you return with 10k gold you are still 750 gold down on your opponent and a summoner for the entire time you are laning trying to get that gold. In simpler terms let us say that you return with about 1500 gold (this is quite normal as many champs have their first powerspike around there) then your opponent buys against your . I can guarantee that he has the advantage in small trades just by having more health even with slightly less armor. In an offensive ad lane this instead against or in an offensive ap lane this is against again it should be easy to see who has the advantage. This becomes even worse if your opponent can disengage when you smite him since your smite gives no cc.