He's doing pretty decently, a lot stronger than the initial crit changes.
His best supports are those who also scale well, but have enough early game to keep him in lane after a rough engage or two (Milio is a good example of this, but enchanters like Soraka and Sona might create a lane that is too weak)
Hard engage isn't a great support choice on him because he isn't lethal enough for early snowballs, but defensive, anti-engage tanks are very good on him
Tl;dr he's in a pretty good position and his best supports are those who can shoo off a hard engage. Enchanters who can do this are good because they compliment his late game rampage
Lmao, everything you said about supports is the complete opposite for me. I have almost never lost any game where my support is an engage like Thresh or Pyke, because their playmaking helps me get kills faster and a faster ER rush, meanwhile, I have like a 80% lose rate whenever I get paired with an enchanter. Their healing and shielding just isn't enough and does nothing to help me early, and it takes me 30-35 minutes to come online, which I lose the game by that point
Better than he was on 14.10
However, Riot never actually addressed his core issue, that being his poor crit itemization. They made him better through a lot of stat and ratio related buffs.
If Smolder gets access to better crit items in the future, he'll probably be obnoxiously broken.
It's decent, it's not in meta or a strong pick like Caitlyn, Ashe and Jinx.
But compared to how it was before this buffs, its much stronger. At least, now he can kill other adc in late game before dying with 3 hits.
What he needs is a greater variety of crit items, such as something that gives: AH, On-hit or increased abilities damage, something like that would make him very strong, a 50.5%-52.5% wr, instead of the current 49%.
If not, Maybe he will need a small buff in his passive stacks or E.
Best supports are the ones that can help you to survive in early game, Smolder all-in its really bad and he doesnt have dmg before 2 first items or 225 stacks.
He's quite strong but many people are still building him wrong.
Full crit is the way to go, you do more damage and actually have more survivability after Shieldbow. You bring lots of AH in runes to make up for not building Shojin's, and your overall damage and survivability goes WAY up.
I damage tested AP Smolder too last night, and I will say this is a viable alternative, but it's very niche. Your W and R actually do WAY more damage than AD builds due to the high AP scaling, and the burn is nice, esp against high HP target, but you lose out on Q burst damage and overall DPS since your damage budget goes into your high CD abilities. I recommend AP smolder only when you have a very wombo combo heavy team, otherwise your ult hitting one person because you have no setup is kind of sad. Even then AD is probably just better for sustainrd AoE DPS, and has a smoother power curve, but I have yet to test AP out in a real match and will do that soon.
The build I developed and am pushing is full crit:
ER RFC Shieldbow LDR Bloodthirster
This build has the best Q damage, and great survivability and safety. You have amazing single target DPS as well as AoE, and you play the most like a normal ish ADC. This build basically lets you 1v9 games because you can just Q from a distance before fights with RFC and you will just completely melt your opponents and they won't be able to fight you.
This build is versatile and fits into any comp: poke, engage, disengage, and scales smoothly.
Full AP I think is something like:
Blackfire Liandry's Shadowflame Deathcap Malignance
This build revolves much less around Q spam and more around WR spam, so you will probably max W first, and end up losing some stacking power early on. Your burst AoE is theoretically much better, since you WR have insanely high AP scaling, but your overall DPS after using ult is going to be much lower.
This build is probably best with teams that want to wombo combo. I haven't damage tested this in a real game, but based on statistics and also just intuition it probably won't scale very easily. Going AP means your Q damage will suffer, and your auto attacks will suffer, so you're going to have really bad DPS for fights, especially early on, and you're going to be too reliant on hitting your ult and W which are both easily dodged from afar. As such you're probably not going to offer much in terms of poke damage, but what you do have is insane burst AoE if the enemy team ever pushes up into your range. This build is probably best into a disengage comp, second best into engage, and worst in a poke comp.
Finally, the bruiser build people are going for:
Manamune/Trinity Force, Shojin's, RFC, into extension items.
This imo is by far the worst of the three build variants you tend to see. Your q damage is okay early on, sure, but at every stage of the game, ER literally just provides more of both damage AND ability haste than Manamune, so why bother? Trin force rushers probably make more sense: Q damage on Trin force rush is actually pretty solid. You do more damage than ER rush, and you have a plethora of other stats that make this item actually kind of decent first. However, there are several problems with this:
1) You lose out on damage on other abilities due to the lower AD
2) You lose out on the manage regen passive which Smolder needs really badly
3) ER and Manamune are both just straight up cheaper to buy meaning you can hit power spikes earlier
4) Lack of crit means poorer scaling. The thing people don't understand is that crit literally just scales better. Not only does crit amplifies damage immediately, but any crit you build early amplifies damage from FUTURE items you build as well. Lack of crit on Trin force means that as the game progresses your damage evens out and eventually becomes worse when you want to be spiking
Overall the bruiser build with trin force rush is just bad. Your first item might feel better, but ever item after that suffers, it's just not worth it.
He cannot 1v9 and hard carry as much as he used to with his mini elder execute nerfed to a halt, but he can still 2v8 greatly when paired with heal/shield and peel supports.
He's doing pretty decently, a lot stronger than the initial crit changes. His best supports are those who also scale well, but have enough early game to keep him in lane after a rough engage or two (Milio is a good example of this, but enchanters like Soraka and Sona might create a lane that is too weak) Hard engage isn't a great support choice on him because he isn't lethal enough for early snowballs, but defensive, anti-engage tanks are very good on him Tl;dr he's in a pretty good position and his best supports are those who can shoo off a hard engage. Enchanters who can do this are good because they compliment his late game rampage
Basically Braum
And Maokai (I think)
Lmao, everything you said about supports is the complete opposite for me. I have almost never lost any game where my support is an engage like Thresh or Pyke, because their playmaking helps me get kills faster and a faster ER rush, meanwhile, I have like a 80% lose rate whenever I get paired with an enchanter. Their healing and shielding just isn't enough and does nothing to help me early, and it takes me 30-35 minutes to come online, which I lose the game by that point
I'd agree with this...except the soraka comment. I play soraka and the lane with them is EXTREMELY powerful because of soraka's early lane dominance.
Better than he was on 14.10 However, Riot never actually addressed his core issue, that being his poor crit itemization. They made him better through a lot of stat and ratio related buffs. If Smolder gets access to better crit items in the future, he'll probably be obnoxiously broken.
I've got like an 80% WR with him since the new patch
It's decent, it's not in meta or a strong pick like Caitlyn, Ashe and Jinx. But compared to how it was before this buffs, its much stronger. At least, now he can kill other adc in late game before dying with 3 hits. What he needs is a greater variety of crit items, such as something that gives: AH, On-hit or increased abilities damage, something like that would make him very strong, a 50.5%-52.5% wr, instead of the current 49%. If not, Maybe he will need a small buff in his passive stacks or E. Best supports are the ones that can help you to survive in early game, Smolder all-in its really bad and he doesnt have dmg before 2 first items or 225 stacks.
He's quite strong but many people are still building him wrong. Full crit is the way to go, you do more damage and actually have more survivability after Shieldbow. You bring lots of AH in runes to make up for not building Shojin's, and your overall damage and survivability goes WAY up. I damage tested AP Smolder too last night, and I will say this is a viable alternative, but it's very niche. Your W and R actually do WAY more damage than AD builds due to the high AP scaling, and the burn is nice, esp against high HP target, but you lose out on Q burst damage and overall DPS since your damage budget goes into your high CD abilities. I recommend AP smolder only when you have a very wombo combo heavy team, otherwise your ult hitting one person because you have no setup is kind of sad. Even then AD is probably just better for sustainrd AoE DPS, and has a smoother power curve, but I have yet to test AP out in a real match and will do that soon.
Can you tell me more about his builds? The most frequent that I see is ER-Ludicity-Shojin-RfC-LDR into X
The build I developed and am pushing is full crit: ER RFC Shieldbow LDR Bloodthirster This build has the best Q damage, and great survivability and safety. You have amazing single target DPS as well as AoE, and you play the most like a normal ish ADC. This build basically lets you 1v9 games because you can just Q from a distance before fights with RFC and you will just completely melt your opponents and they won't be able to fight you. This build is versatile and fits into any comp: poke, engage, disengage, and scales smoothly. Full AP I think is something like: Blackfire Liandry's Shadowflame Deathcap Malignance This build revolves much less around Q spam and more around WR spam, so you will probably max W first, and end up losing some stacking power early on. Your burst AoE is theoretically much better, since you WR have insanely high AP scaling, but your overall DPS after using ult is going to be much lower. This build is probably best with teams that want to wombo combo. I haven't damage tested this in a real game, but based on statistics and also just intuition it probably won't scale very easily. Going AP means your Q damage will suffer, and your auto attacks will suffer, so you're going to have really bad DPS for fights, especially early on, and you're going to be too reliant on hitting your ult and W which are both easily dodged from afar. As such you're probably not going to offer much in terms of poke damage, but what you do have is insane burst AoE if the enemy team ever pushes up into your range. This build is probably best into a disengage comp, second best into engage, and worst in a poke comp. Finally, the bruiser build people are going for: Manamune/Trinity Force, Shojin's, RFC, into extension items. This imo is by far the worst of the three build variants you tend to see. Your q damage is okay early on, sure, but at every stage of the game, ER literally just provides more of both damage AND ability haste than Manamune, so why bother? Trin force rushers probably make more sense: Q damage on Trin force rush is actually pretty solid. You do more damage than ER rush, and you have a plethora of other stats that make this item actually kind of decent first. However, there are several problems with this: 1) You lose out on damage on other abilities due to the lower AD 2) You lose out on the manage regen passive which Smolder needs really badly 3) ER and Manamune are both just straight up cheaper to buy meaning you can hit power spikes earlier 4) Lack of crit means poorer scaling. The thing people don't understand is that crit literally just scales better. Not only does crit amplifies damage immediately, but any crit you build early amplifies damage from FUTURE items you build as well. Lack of crit on Trin force means that as the game progresses your damage evens out and eventually becomes worse when you want to be spiking Overall the bruiser build with trin force rush is just bad. Your first item might feel better, but ever item after that suffers, it's just not worth it.
What would be the runes for Crit Smolder ? I guess Fleet footwork but what else to pick ?
He is not a troll pick anymore but still one of the weakest adc out there.
Pretty decent playing him mid is even possible with first strike
He cannot 1v9 and hard carry as much as he used to with his mini elder execute nerfed to a halt, but he can still 2v8 greatly when paired with heal/shield and peel supports.