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Flash should not be a summoner spell.

oO Hawke Oo·9/24/2016, 7:38:54 AM·3 votes·984 views

Hear me out.

Flash should not be a summoner spell. It should be a built in ability. Everyone should have 2 summoner spells AND flash (Or the choice between flash and ghost).

In every game of 10 people I play with, 80-90% of them are running flash. 99% of them are running some combination of flash/ghost.

In the design world, that is referred to as a dominant strategy. It means that there is no actual choice. Unless you play with flash (or ghost) you are deliberately nerfing yourself. Of course there are some weird situations that you might not take either of them, but those situations are so rare we will not even worry about them.

The reality is that everyone takes flash or ghost. So why not give it to everyone. It's a false choice. If you gave everyone the choice of Flash or ghost and then allowed them 2 actual summoners to choose between then you will have protected the new players from making a bad choice and introduced some diversity into summoner spell selection.

Discuss:

-Hawke

17 Comments

Gary B Enkelis9/24/2016, 7:47:37 AM1 votes

Interesting....

Instead changing the game to allow 2 Summoner Spells + summoner 4 / summoner 6 could we say the current game is really 1 Summoner Spell + / ?

I mean why do we need or want 2 Summoner Spells + summoner 4 / summoner 6 instead of 1?

Like take your idea and subtract 1 from the choice of Summoner Spells and we have the current system basically? With the exception of like Shaco with summoner 11 summoner 14 ...

I dunno. Your post is interesting though.

Eternal 7 9/24/2016, 7:58:16 AM1 votes

I dont take flash anyways o3o , so ... it doesnt effect meh , Exhaust / ignite is all i use

[slayer-jinx-catface]

Pierce The Veal9/24/2016, 7:58:18 AM1 votes

Let's not make it ghost vs flash. Just take flash and make it a permanent third summoner spell. Ghost is actually a choice more often than not, and usually doesn't end up being nearly as toxic as flash.

Wh1teWu1f9/24/2016, 8:22:42 AM1 votes

Interesting idea, would be cool to maybe play around with and maybe even try in season 7 (probably season 8 since they need to make up for this season). The difficulty with this becomes that you have to slightly rebalance all the other summoner spells since you'd be allowed to take summoner 1 summoner 7 which could be ridiculously safe for ADCs imo. Combine that with the fact that their supports will probably be bringing summoner 3 (obviously you could take summoner 14 instead of , but that's the same variance you have now). The other roles would have some interesting combinations, but I'm sure someone could think of something that would be pretty good and become standard.

Like I said, it's a good idea, but would definitely take some tweaking to work out all the qwerks it could lead to.

Woodakoodashooda9/24/2016, 8:36:27 AM1 votes

But the "dominant strategy" as you put it is applicable to every role in the game.

Jungle cannot jungle without smite.

Most mid take ignite.

Most support take exhaust.

Most adc take heal.

Most top take either ignite or teleport.

The variety of what spells are used is generally dictated by role.

Cleanse is rarely if ever used anymore and Barrier is a niche spell.

Flash is almost always needed. And providing a third free spell simply because of one spell's popularity is the wrong direction. The "dominant strategy" or meta would not disappear, it would simply change.

oO Hawke Oo9/24/2016, 6:50:48 PM1 votes

Kid Kanji: I laud you. I too used to avoid flash (because everyone told me I had to have it and I wanted to prove them wrong). Ultimately it just made me have to compensate for being weaker.

Bimclunk: Our current system is, for all intents and purposes, exactly as you describe it: summoner 4 / summoner 6 + one summner spell. Doing anything else is sub-optimal. I suggested / + 2 because I assumed that the original game design offered two summoners to allow some diversity in summoner choices, something we don't really see right now. Adding a little more complexity and using more of the summoner spells could potentially make the game more interesting.

While it would make early engages harder, keep in mind that if bot had: summoner 4 summoner 7 summoner 3 on the support and summoner 21 on the adc, it's possible that the jungle would be running summoner 11 summoner 14 or to make the gank more likely to succeed. Or 5 summoner 12 comps are now viable, so if the enemy started barron, suddenly everyone is TPing to the hidden ward that the enemies tried to clear but didn't see. Maybe mid runs summoner 13 as well as , so Galio can be a little more aggressive in-lane without the worries of running out of mana quite so much. Now you have meaningful choices.

Chocolate Frost: The difference between the jungler requiring smite and everyone requiring flash is that the designers deliberately chose to have smite be required to jungle. The sacrifice to jungling is losing one of your summoners to gain the extra experience and gold from the jungle camps. While most times people take summoners by role, there are meaningful choices that can be made at each spot. Mid could just as easily take barrier (Veigar, Vel-Koz), or Teleport (for those tele-ganks). ADC could take ignite instead of heal if partnered with a support who has healing.

Flash doesn't allow a meaningful choice. You either take it or you are significantly less powerful than everyone else.

Flash (or ghost) being mandatory is not a design choice, it's how the game has evolved. It's not that everyone can take it, it's that everyone SHOULD take it. It's disguised as a meaningful choice, but it isn't. Failure to take it is a competitive disadvantage for you.

It's like the homeguard augment on boots. They were taken so frequently that the designers simply decided to add their functionality at the 20-minute mark whether you have boots or not, so now everyone has homeguards.

If an item or ability is so dominant that everyone needs to take it to be competitive, it is not balanced and should either brought into line power-wise with the other choices that you are given for that resource, or simply given to everyone by default. Since nerfing flash will never actually bring it in line with the other summoners without making it nigh-useless, it makes more sense to simply add it as part of the default summoner abilities.

-Hawke

ChickenMaster259/26/2016, 8:03:34 AM1 votes

This is the thing, if Riot ever change something so major like this (changing from 2 summoner spells to 3), the community will go absolutely crazy. Remember when mana potions were still here and they removed it? Damn, visited Boards that day and holy crap, so many people are quitting because of that and complaining and all those stuff.

Riot isn't powerful. The community is.

EDIT: Anyways, its just a discussion. I think I like having just two summoner spells :)

Astôlfo9/26/2016, 6:40:48 PM1 votes

lol fuck no.