Defensive summoner spells and the return of Stifle

AuroraNightengal··2 votes·2,209 views

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the summoner spell "Stifle" here is it's description,

Effect: Silences a target enemy champion for 3 seconds, and removes any beneficial buffs they have.

Cooldown: 150 seconds

I'm a support main myself, and with summoner 3 upcoming removal of atk speed reduction as well as the armor/mr dent, it's (in my opinion) an understatement to say Supports and/or Mages are in serious lack of defensive summoner spells, specifically to aid others. When I say to Aid others, I mean that there is a staggering difference between summoner 3, summoner 21 and summoner 1 I would classify all three of these spells as "Defensive summoner spells" but only one of them can be used to help fellow summoners who are in need.

I'd like to open a healthy discussion to the idea of a new summoner spell that has focus of giving the Support roll more variety other than MS/AS reduction.

Let's get back to that discussion on "Stifle" I believe most of us would agree this is simply a summoner spell that would be game breaking instead of game enhancing, but what if we tweaked the stats a bit? Below I will propose 2 options for a new and Improved Meta friendly "Stifle" using 2 pre-existing summoner Icons to help differentiate them.

summoner 30 Stifle

Effect: Silences a target enemy champion for 1/1.5/2 seconds and reduces Armor/Magic resist by 10/15

Cooldown: 210

Range: 700 Units

summoner 13 Stifle

Effect: Silences a target enemy champion for 1.5 second and depletes 10% of targets current resource pool. ( a pool of 200 mana/Energy/Rage/Fury/Health would result in having 20 removed, a pool of 2000 would likewise see 200 removed)

Range: 700 Units

Cooldown: 210

The silences (at such short duration) seem appropriate for champions that also have similar Team fight swinging abilities within their kit such as

Ashe Kayle Malzahar Zed

Let's discuss healthy options to a team oriented defensive summoner spell.

9 Comments

Diazex4 votes

Do you ever venture a guess as to how assassins will abuse this? There's a reason they removed the silence off of basically every single assassin in the game :')

Ziłean2 votes

I'm always happy to see more variety in any role. At the moment summoner 4 +summoner 3 /summoner 14 is all anyone ever takes so adding some other possibilities would be nice and maybe encourage people to play support more and I know that's something Riot want to do but it's going to be hard to find something you can use defensively that can't be abused by other roles to be offensive. For instance I can see a silencing summoner spell being great down in bot lane stopping the opponent getting their combo off properly/stopping them escaping (maybe working a bit too well) but if, for example, mid laners/assassins started using it like they do with summoner 3 then it's just a free kill whenever you have that summoner up because you could just stop your laner from doing their combo when you want to engage for 1.5 seconds which for an assassin is plenty of time. In short it would need to be something that could only be used effectively for defensive purposes and not give champs abilities they weren't designed to have. Plus from what I've heard Riot balances champs with the existing summoner spells in mind so adding a new spell (especially one as powerful as a silence) would mean they'd have to do balance fixes for every champ.

Lil Lewd Witch1 votes

Well the first one isn't going to go, they removed the MR/Armor reduction because Exhaust was turning more into an offensive summoner than a defensive one. I don't know why they removed the attack speed debuff, though.

packïn shmeat1 votes

Adding "Stifle" on supports would be like a better exaust and would be so hard to balance. This would probably give free ganks for jglers because they cant flash away or do anything. Dont add in tbh

AuroraNightengal2 votes

{quoted}

Adding "Stifle" on supports would be like a better exaust and would be so hard to balance. This would probably give free ganks for jglers because they cant flash away or do anything. Dont add in tbh

How is giving "free ganks" because others can't flash away any different from Malz ultimate, Soraka silence, Sona ult etc ? 1-2 seconds is about as long as most of the duration of these abilities.

packïn shmeat1 votes

people can walk out of soraka silence. Sona ult is a skillshot and is flashable... malzahar has an ult that almost guarantees a kill in laning phase w/ a jgler. Your ability doesnt need to hit and is undodgeable

Yaśuo Main2 votes

soraka silence isnt delayed, sona ult near unflashable and is AOE stun

TacticalToastr1 votes

I think they should FIRST make most of the summoner spells viable to begin with. As it stands, cleanse and barrier are much weaker and taken much less than most of their other summoner spells. That isnt to say they arent strong, but I personally feel that the current summoner spells could be altered so that there is much higher variation for spell effects.

The first thing I think they should do is outright remove the movement speed off of heal. A while ago, they added the feature for heal that would remove GW from both targets. It was insanely strong because it also had the movement speed escape proporites of live. Id rather see the GW removal returning and preventing future applications for 3 seconds. That way it isnt nearly as easy to just back, buy an 800 gold item in executioners calling come back to lane and stomp a soraka, vlad aatrox ect. Even if you arent ad, the core item for most ap mid laners grants GW as it stands. I feel it would be nice for sustain champions to actually have some situational counterplay to the easy to purchase constant reapplication of wounds.

Secondly, I think barrier is fine the way it is. that said, a small touch to it to give its own situational edge over the other defenses. I think that it should be a barrier that gets reduced cooldown based entirely on the shield duration remaining up to 30% Actually giving a summoner that can counter ignite instead of just holding it back in a 1 for 1 trade.

Finally, I feel as though cleanse is a highly situation summoner spell with few instances of successful application through most MMRs. Unless you are against a predicatable or slow moving CC it doesnt really help you. Thats why I think it would be more beneficial for them to actually convert the movement speed from heal into this summoner spell. This would encourage it to be used more reliably, if you need the movement speed to chase or escape like heal gives. or maybe you just got stunned and need to get out of there fast. Basically like a merc scimtar active.

Then you would need to decide if you want healing in bot lane, movement speed/cc clear, or lower cd damage reduction. Depending on your champion top and mid laners might want to take heal for the gw removal, cleanse so they not only ignore and reduce future applications of cc but also can use the summoner to escape. Just giving way more unique feeling to each game and thought into the spells used. Thematically I feel these changes would fit the summoner spells much greater than live.

Shadòw1 votes

just no.

instant point and click silence is just BS and nothing to play around.

More from Gameplay