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About Summoner Spells...

Castanean·5/24/2015, 4:34:48 PM·2 votes·773 views

I've been spending some time thinking. Mainly about reasons to pick summoner 6 over summoner 4 and reasons Ghost may be better in some situations. That lead my train-of-thought on to thinking about other summoner spells and ways to make them more powerful within their niche without breaking them completely, perhaps giving them more reason to be picked as well.

So, here's what I came up with;

summoner 6 grants a burst of 37% extra movespeed, which over 1,5 seconds decays to a 22% MS boost. It would also either give the user slow-resistance or break out of slows like Garen's Q. Distortion would increase the numbers to about 55% Decaying burst into 35% for the rest of the duration.

I made this change to make it so that in some situations, Ghost out-classes Flash by a LOT. In River, for example, using Flash to escape won't help since Ghost will let anyone quickly catch up and and get you regardless. Using Flash to chase wont be as effective either since Ghost has that added extra powerful decaying boost. However, Flash is still a better pick for surprising people from brush or escaping/engaging over walls, since, y'know, Ghost can't do that. Near walls; Flash wins. Open areas, Ghost wins.

summoner 21 gives its shield as per usual, but also increases Armor and Magic Resist by about 20 for the next 5 or so seconds.

summoner 7 heals as per usual, but also gives 10 + (2*Caster's Level) HPper5 for the next 20 seconds. (To clarify, that means if cast at level 1, it heals 48 HP extra over 20 seconds, while at 18, it gives 184 HP over the same duration)

These changes are meant to solidify what their niche is. Barrier gives all of its boost instantly, and is great for surviving tough situations and/or trading or initiating for a bigger fight. Heal, on the other hand, gives lots of sustain throughout the laning phase.

summoner 13 Gives the caster extra mana regen for a while, but if Mana keeps going the way it currently is, this spell is naturally going to become more popular. Might not even need a change. And that's why I haven't given this one any numbers. Because it's actually still pretty good, being able to sustain an entire team's mana.

summoner 1 doesn't need that big a buff, but letting it cleanse all debuffs and CC might make it more used.

{{summoner:2}} Clairvoyance. Oh Clairvoyance. How no one cares about you. Let's try to change that, shall we? In a similar fashion to Smite, I thought having your trinket affect the spell might make for more use. item 3340: Using Clairvoyance reveals the surrounding area, as per usual, but will also allow you to place your trinket wards within the revealed area. (TRINKET Wards. This means no purchased wards or sightstones, as that would be kind of OP.) item 3341:Reveals area, Causes wards and traps to be revealed and disabled. When upgraded, stealthed Units will be revealed too. item 3342: Reveals Champions that come within the revealed area. Lasts for 5 seconds after they leave the area or duration ends, but as with the trinket, will not reveal stealthed champions.

Visual effects to see the difference would of course be there too. SweepVoyance as an example would do that whole Radar thing and have a line circling its radius, ScryVoyance would produce sparkly effects around revealed champions as well as the typical visual effects for being revealed and WardVoyance would only show special effects if you actually see the ward being placed. (An idea in my head would be having a little blue sphere just sort of "Materializes" the ward in it's new home, fitting in with Clairvoyance's look and color. Perhaps make it red for the enemy.)

summoner 4 summoner 14 summoner 3 summoner 12 Are all fine already and need no changes. summoner 32 and summoner 11 are excluded for obvious reasons.

So there are my suggestions. Of course, the numbers can change in the name of balance, but I tried to make them somewhat balanced.

15 Comments

ZeeDrakon5/24/2015, 5:38:30 PM1 votes

can we not buff heal and barrier? theyre not weak at all. theyre both frequently picked, esp heal. maybe barrier but heal shouldnt be buffed right now. same goes for ghost. it might not be a good alternative on most champs, but the reason for that is their kit. this change would make ghost incredibly broken on champs who already run it. (olaf, vlad, udyr etc)

SnazzyTheMister5/24/2015, 8:52:47 PM1 votes

i think the idea of heal being more regen based and barrier being the choice for instant protection is an interesting idea, but it over looks that heal is the superior 2v2 option. also barrier is probably in an alright spot without resists being added to it.

ghost is already superior to flash in open spaces and distors where added to help buff ghost without changing its numbers, as the type of champs that run ghost often want ghost up to be able to make plays so the combo lower cd and better movespeed is worth the gold to them.

clarity and clairvoyance are both in a rough place on account of the stats they offer not being as valuable as often as the other spell choices.

you can use clairvoyance to scout an area big enough to see 2 camps in the enemy jungle every 60 seconds and it still almost never used. i don't see how you can put more power in a vision based spell without making it ridiculous. (something like gives vision and disables wards/sees invis units or gives vision enough to see one whole side of the jungle)

and mana is only important as long as you have mana problems (arguably you could run clarity and then not build an mana item with the intention of using clarity to give you an extra item slot for more damage) and so often you manage your mana in lane until you get your mana item and don't need to worry as much or you reach a level where your base stats cover what you need. i dont think clarity is an awful spell, i often take it in ARAMs because everyone is close together all the time and it allows my team to get a second wind of sorts after both sides spam their mana, its just such an early game spell that does very little later on.

the way to make clarity stronger is to give it something other then just mana. perhaps the cleanse to grievous wounds that heal had a while back for a little bit. its somewhat clunky on account of champs that would like that kind of cleanse don't want mana (think mundo, vlad, trynd) but maybe thats what keeps it in check cus when it was on heal it was brutal. another thing that might help keep it in check would be if it was more like heal where it only effects the caster and one other target so you don't have a whole team being cleansed of wounds and if you had a mundo or a vlad someone else on the team could take clarity for them late game.

that my thoughts on it tho. i don't feel like a summ needs to be picked all the time to be in a good spot so long as it has a niche and fight now i feel like ghost and barrier both have niche spots inside the more common pick ups. clarity and clairvoyance on the other hand don't at the moment.

Hupsis5/24/2015, 9:29:27 PM1 votes

I had a similar idea of {{summoner:2}} where trinkets would affect the effect it has. The ideas include strategic combat benefits instead of being completely vision based. You have been warned.

item 3340 + {{summoner:2}} Places a shielding totem on the ground for 60 seconds that grants allies a rapidly increasing shield of 40 (+10 per level of the user) in a 300-400 unit radius. The shield does not regenerate on champions taking damage. The totem is visible and is destroyed by 3-5 hits from an enemy champions. Grants vision but doesn't count as a ward.

item 3341 + {{summoner:2}} Places a vision denying sandstorm on the target area for 6 seconds. Enemies in the storm will have reduced vision and move 15% slower (similarly to Graves' smoke screen with slightly increased radius). Enemy wards in the storm will also be disabled for the duration.

item 3342 + {{summoner:2}} Activation grants you unrestrained vision for 10 seconds meaning you will see things in the fog of war and over walls in your vision range. Vision range increased by 10%. Recall cast duration will be reduced by 2 seconds during the buff.

NorthernDruid5/25/2015, 1:02:13 AM1 votes

Clarity is pretty decent as is. And is definatively gonna be a good pickup once the easy 3 mana/5 from masteries go.

If it needs any buffs at all, I'd say the CD could stand to be reduced slightly, down to 160 or 150 maybe?

And then hit it in its ability to restore mana to teammates if it needs anything.

It's a pretty interesting pick in ARAM, especially if you get champions who like to spam spells early game, or the like of Kog'Maw who can run out of mana pretty fast.

I like the idea of barrier giving resistances, really gives you a real reason to pick it over heal (or to pick it at all even).

Heal is mostly fine I think, but if barrier gets buffed then heal will need something to not fall behind it.

Cleanse needs an attached utility, and needs to cleanse all CC, maybe play around with it's CD if it's still not viable enough afterwards.

I really like ghost in Dominion, and for melee fighter junglers on Summoner's Rift. It's most significant use is more in getting around easier and reaching stuff in time, rather than the instant repositioning power that flash gives. I dunno if it could use a buff to stand up better as an alternative to flash. I feel like if distortion reduced the CD on my other summoner spell as well I'd pick ghost and combine with the Summoner Spell CDR mastery for quite the uptime.

I really like the idea of giving Ghost a short burst at the beginning.

I figure if Cleanse gave you either a short burst of movement speed (similar to haste) or the ability to ignore unit collision, it would be a hell of a lot better (combined with actually cleansing all CC/debuffs).