Today I logged in all fired up to test Smolder after the patch. Saw some streamers saying he felt weaker but nah, had to check myself first. Opened up practice tool against dummy targets to poke around. Felt like his fireballs didn’t hit as hard early on – kinda like throwing wet matches instead of napalm.
My Testing Setup
Ran like twenty different matches mix of normals and flex queue. Didn’t wanna spam ranked just yet. Went with:
- The usual crit build with Stormrazor rush (felt sluggish)
- Tried Eclipse instead (still meh)
- Dropped into some tankier games to test Black Cleaver (not much better)
Kept track of dmg numbers, KDA, early trades, the whole deal. Noticed I had to hyper focus on farming just to stay relevant. Felt bad man.
What Actually Worked
After banging my head against the wall for hours, finally found something okay-ish:
- Rush Essence Reaver into Navori Quickblades (mana+CDR lets you spam more)
- Got boots earlier than usual
- Played like a huge coward in lane, only going for ultra safe pokes
- Saved W strictly for waveclear instead of harass
Went 5/3/8 last game which… is progress? Still not 1v9 carrying though. Spilled coffee everywhere when I realized early armor counters him hard now.
Honest Stats From My Games
Here’s the ugly truth from my notepad:
- Win rate after changes: 42% over 15 games (pain)
- Average KDA dropped from 7.2/4.1/6.3 to 4.8/5.2/5.1
- First tower taken down 35% later than pre-patch
- Late game damage actually okay if you survive laning phase (big IF)
Honestly feels like they nerfed his early game into the dirt. Maybe pairing him with heavy CC supports is mandatory now. Still gonna grind a few more days before final verdict but yeah… my lizard boy ain’t the king no more. Wins didn’t feel earned, more like enemy threw hard. Rough patch man.
