The infinitely scaling Hypercarry
Smolder is (technically) the ONLY ADC who scales infinitely. This means that he can keep increasing his damage regardless of his items the longer a game lasts. He's a very fun dragon all about stacking, the main skill of Smolder is how well you stack and how well you use your spells in teamfights, he's kind of a mage turned adc as his spells are his primary damage.
However it's still important to have a correct build and Smolder doesn't have the most straight forward builds. Here I will explain what the best items for him are and when to build them.
Abilities
The core part of your kit is the Passive, here is where the infinite scaling happens in the form of Dragon Practice Stacks. All your spells deal bonus Magic Damage based on your stacks. You can get them by hitting a champion with any of your abilities or last hitting using your Q.
Smolder throws a fireball with Q which applies On-Hit effects and lifesteal, pretty much behaving a lot like your Basic Attacks. Depending on your stacks it will also have different effects; it starts out single target, turns AoE at 25, then at 125 fires a cone damaging enemies behind your initial target and at 225 starts dealing bonus True Damage based on the target's Maximum HP and will now let you EXECUTE champions who fall below 6.5% of their Max HP.
With W you launch an AoE projectile with pretty long range which will slow any targets hit. The damage is not good enough to be used as a poking tool against champions but it deals increased damage to minions making it useful for waveclear.
Your E is a very important spell since it's your main form of self peel. Smolder will start flying for 1.25 seconds gaining bonus Movement Speed and can now go through terrain. Whilst you will attack the nearest enemy during the flight that is not the best way of using it.
Smolder's Ultimate Ability will rain down a huge fire AoE with really good range that not only damages everything in its path but will also heal you when it hits.
Summoner Spells
This will be your default go to on Smolder when you don't need anything else. Teleport on Smolder is great as in the early game you play very similarly to a mage, you typically have tough matchups where you just wanna survive until you get either Caullfield's Warhammer or BF Sword (Ideally BF Sword), it also allows you to stack easier as you can then just spam your spells, and once you run oom you can just recall and Teleport back to lane.
Runes
Since you're guaranteed to deal damage as you get more stacks the main goal is to not fall behind. With this in mind we will use runes that make it easier to play the laning phase.
Fleet Footwork & Absorb Life will give you amazing sustain so you can afford to take some damage in order to get almost every last hit or even take some trades to gain even more stacks.
Legend: Bloodline is a great choice here since you won't be able to get Lifesteal until the later stages of the game and your Q is able to heal you.
Cut Down just works the best with your kit.
On our secondary tree we have Biscuit Delivery to avoid running Out Of Mana during lane and Jack of All Trades will give amazing scaling since we will be buying a lot of different stats. You also take the Ability Haste shard over Attack Speed since ideally you want to last hit using your Q and not your Basic Attacks.
Items
Very standard start for any ADC. Doran's Ring has sometimes showed up as a viable start for Smolder but since the AP ratios are quite low that is no longer the case.
Tips & Tricks
- Since you want to get as much stacks of your Passive as possible practice actually delaying getting creeps so you can last hit them with your Q instead of a Basic Attack. As the game goes on you should do this more and more often.
- Once your Q becomes an AoE effect you could also have minions follow you to clump together and kill more of them with a single cast.
- At 25 stacks try and Q minions when champions walk near them to land some poke and maybe even get stacks from both last hits and the poke of the AoE.
- Since Smolder is quite weak in the early game, get used to using your Ultimate Ability as a form of waveclear so you can avoid getting dove under tower or maybe find a recall to get out of a dangerous lane state.
- Your Ultimate actually starts slightly behind Smolder so if you aim it in the opposite direction of where an enemy is standing it could hit them faster than if you aimed it directly at them. You can use this trick if someone is very close or melee range of you so you can deal the damage much faster.
- Q is an Auto Attack reset, meaning you can cancel the animation of your Basic Attack as soon as the projectile goes off by using this spell in order to deal damage faster.
- W has a visual effect whenever it hits something so you can use this to check bushes from far away. Just throw it where you want to check and if the visual effect of the explosion shows up (or you get passive stacks too) then you know there's someone in the bush.
- If you're over a wall with your E when the duration runs out it will push you to the nearest side. You can use this to your advantage by standing near the middle and increase the amount of time you're unreachable or even the distance you can cover.
- If you throw a Q to a minion and it dies before the projectile lands you will still get stacks as if you had killed it.
- If you use either Q or W while flying with your E it will cancel the spell and bring you back down so be careful.
- If you're at 24 stacks of your passive and throw a Q that would get the 25th stack, that cast will actually have the improved AoE effect so make sure to prep minions at that stage.
