Challenger | Patch 14.21 | How to play Smolder like a Pro - Season 14 Guide

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.

• 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.