The latest LoL patch included both a range and cooldown nerf to Flash, the game’s most popular Summoner Spell. As a result, I’ve been trying to rely on the skill less, choosing skills like Cleanse and Ghost to pair with my combat spell. It hasn’t been great. In fact, most of the time I’ve just wished that I was using Flash.

It seems most of the pros agree. I watched a little bit of the MLG tournament today and saw 10 Flashes in several of their games. That’s right. Every player in the game took Flash. I can’t imagine Riot is too happy about the change, but it’s also difficult to imagine a Flash nerf that doesn’t completely remove the skill from viability. The big problem, at least as I see it, is that the strength of Flash is binary. It’s either a big enough jump to be useful or it isn’t. There is no middle ground.

So much of LoL is about seizing the moment that Flash will always be strong or completely useless. Even if Flash had a cooldown of eight minutes, the threat of a Flash-stun would probably be enough to keep the skill in play. Positioning is just too important to the game.

I will say this – making the other spells more appealing might be a decent way to compete with Flash. I’ve been using Cleanse a lot but I’ve been disappointed by the cooldown. I’m not saying Cleanse is the spell to fix Flash – I remember the days when every single carry took Cleanse and I don’t want it back – but reducing the cooldowns on and improving the effectiveness of the rest of the Summoner Spells could do a lot for Summoner Spell diversity.

What have you seen? Has the nerf had any effect on how often you see Flash? Are players using any other skills in its place?