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?

Summoner Spells have long been one of the hottest topics of debate, despite the fact that they rarely received significant changes. Back in the AoE and ranged harass meta days, Ghost/Cleanse or Flash/Cleanse was pretty much the gold standard. Flash still has its place these days, but Cleanse was one of few Summoner Spells to get significantly nerfed, to the point that I rarely see anyone take it today.

With the release of Season Two (nope, I don’t know when that will be), Riot will be making significant changes to the current Summoner Spell lineup.

Flash/Clairvoyance Nerfs & Heal/Cleanse Buffs

Here’s the word from Riot’s post today:

Flash will now have both reduced range and an increased cooldown to make summoners feel less obligated to select it. Clairvoyance will also be receiving an increased cooldown and reduced duration to make it require more tactical use and be less punishing to junglers.

Heal and Cleanse, on the other hand, will each be receiving buffs to make them more attractive selections. Heal will now scale much more strongly into late game, while Cleanse will now remove summoner spell effects such as Ignite and Exhaust.

Holy crap, a Flash nerf! I can’t believe it’s actually happening. Though the Flash nerf is long awaited for many players, I have to say, I think it’s actually the least exciting change on the docket. As long as Flash has a long enough range for players to jump over terrain, it’s still going to be a top pick, unless of course that cooldown nerf takes the CD up to something like 5 minutes.

I’m very happy to see a Clairvoyance nerf. I still maintain that jungling encourages passive laning, but jungling + clairvoyance encourages the mind-numbing farm-off we see in games today. I’ll wait to pass more judgement until I see some numbers on this one.

The buffs to Heal and Cleanse look interesting indeed. I couldn’t be happier about the return of Ignite-Cleansing. I think Ignite remains a highly toxic part of the game. Having an option to remove it will be fantastic. That said, the spell vamp situation could spiral quickly out of control without careful consideration from Riot. Certain champions (*AHEM* AKALI *AHEM*) already make devastating use of the spell vamp items available in game. If those same champions can now pack cleanse to avoid heal penalties, well, it’s going to be a scary Field of Justice out there.

I’ll be curious to see how the Heal buffs look. It could produce some sustain issues, but it might be nice to have that bait tool up my sleeve (keep it clean, perverts).

The Return of Promote

Also on the changelist for Season Two is the return of Promote to Summoner’s Rift. Promote is coming back in a form familiar to Dominion players. The spell will only work on cannon minions, so no promote stacking in one lane. That change is so simple I honestly can’t believe it took two years to get put back in the game. I’d like to think this could herald the return of push comps, but I’m honestly not sure if it will be enough.

The Demise of Rally/Fortify

Rally and Fortify are both going the way of the Dodo this season. Neither spell will be available for selection during Season Two. I’m not going to miss Rally a bit – let’s be honest, that spell sucked – but I do think Fortify could still have a place. If push comps do return, why not offer a way to protect and enhance the powers of turrets for a limited time.

Riot’s reasoning is this: “Having a summoner spell that promotes stagnant play by completely shutting down pushes, while also being unpopular, doesn’t mesh with our Season Two goals.” Here’s the thing – Fortify does not promote stagnant gameplay. It just doesn’t. It’s an excellent bait tool and yes, it’s good for stopping pushes, which will be really nice if push comps return. Strategically timed Fortifies can be the saving grace of a team that needs to farm versus a fed opponent.

If anything, I’d say the fragility of turrets promotes stagnant gameplay. There are two reasons the last-hit meta has become so popular. First, pushing a lane gives the enemy jungler an opportunity to gank. We don’t like fed enemy junglers so we try not to push our lanes. Second, dying in the early game is too punishing. Towers are soft enough that one death, even before the five minute mark, often means the end of that lane. In my experience, early downed towers do nothing for aggressive gameplay. They don’t often open new opportunities for ganks. Once a tower is down, players collapse into the jungles, hiding in brush and allowing wards and Clairvoyance to utterly dominate the game. That’s not “aggressive” gameplay. That is snowballing. When towers are up, though, players try to dive one another trading the high risk for the hope of a reward. They overextend in lane because they overestimate the safety a turret provides. They skirmish more in the lane because an early death doesn’t necessarily mean the end of their farming potential. I really hope Riot reconsiders Fortify as a spell and, more importantly, tower strength as a whole.

A New Spell: Surge

In place of Rally, Riot is adding a spell called Surge. Surge basically does the same thing Rally did – increasing the combat effectiveness of nearby teammates – but it does so as an aura on the caster not a flag on the ground. I think we’ll be seeing this one a lot on supports and tanks.

Conclusion

I’m excited about the changes to Summoner Spells. I’ll be curious to see actual hard numbers on some of the changes – especially Flash and Clairvoyance – but until Riot lets us in on the Season Two launch date it looks like we’ll have to wait.

We’re coming up on two months since the end of Season One, Riot. Better give us some indication of a release date for these changes before someone takes my 5-to-1 odds that S2 won’t start until 2012.

One of the first things you guys said on the patch impressions was that you were hoping Flash would get removed. I’m not a fan of Flash, but without implementing another Flash mechanic (like the Flash boots they made some time ago) I don’t think we’ll be seeing Flash disappear any time soon.

The problem is that just too many champions rely on Flash to effectively use their skills. The most obvious example is probably Alistar, a character for which Flash is all but necessary. And what of Fiddlesticks? Often by the time his ultimate is done channeling his targets are gone. The channel is also long enough that he can’t really afford to ult in the middle of a teamfight. The list goes on – basically any champion with an AOE ult could be in regular need of Flash. Think of ulting with Kennen just to see Shaco Deceive, Gragas Body Slam, or Kassadin Rift Walk.

Flash is definitely most frustrating when used as a defensive tool, but as an offensive tool it really improves the pace of the game. Imagine laning as Annie and just waiting for the perfect moment to drop Tibbers. You need an element of surprise, and Flash provides it.

I would love to see them change Flash so that it can’t be used when you’re considered ‘in combat.’ That would eliminate most of the defensive use and encourage players to keep it only for those characters who need it most. Without that kind of change, I don’t see Flash going away any time soon.

On opening my team was two tanks and an Annie. I thought we’d be okay, because Annie can actually do quite well on Treeline with good backup. The problem was, she didn’t take Cleanse. With two tanks and Annie, who do you think the other team will pick first? If I remember correctly, our opponents included a Shen and a Warwick. Every fight went just like you’d imagine. Either Warwick would ult Annie or Shen would taunt and she would die, almost instantly. I even asked her at champion select to consider taking Cleanse, but she called me a noob and told me to “just watch.”

Next time you’re struggling for a win, take a look at your team comp and think about who the first target will be. If you’re running on TT, you should definitely take Cleanse. It’s incredibly rare to have a team without a stun, and you’d probably beat those teams anyway, so making the sacrifice for cleanse won’t seem so bad. On the flip side, take a look at the other team’s skills at the loading screen. Note the players with Cleanse or another escape skill like Flash/Ghost and try to focus the others.

The boots are expensive – 1400 in total – and obviously take the spot of one of those other pairs of sneakers you love. Personally, I think it’s the best option other than removing Flash completely. It forces players to make a choice between the utility of a Flash (on a 240 second CD, by the way) or the functionality of dodge/CC reduction. It also opens up player options for summoner skills, so characters that previously had to rely on Flash can now make some more interesting choices for their two skills.

If you want to see more of the community feedback regarding the boots check this TR thread. It’s worth reading through to see some of the opinions and the response from the devs. I really like the idea behind Phreak’s post. The basic gist comes from an article written by another game designer who says when there’s only one best way to invade France, you start the game after that invasion. I think that’s the problem overlooked most in game design. It’s not interesting when one spell, skill, rule, build, loadout, whatever is ubiquitous. It kills the variety of a game. It’s the difference between Halo 1 and Halo 2. Halo 1 it was pistol or nothing. While 2 still made heavy use of the Battle rifle, you always had the opportunity to take a strategic point with dual-wielding or a well-placed shotgun blast.

The basic problem with Flash as I see it is that there are no real consequences to taking the skill. As a summoner skill it is simply a bonus, and for characters with high durability, killing power, pushing power, tanking power, whatever, summoner skills usually augment or fill gaps in the champion skill list. As a for instance, I was laned today against a Morgana/Twitch combo as Janna (Bumbleclot was in lane with me as Amumu). It was only my second game with Janna so I was trying to be reasonably cautious, but I also knew we could pull an easy FB on Twitch if we tried. Sure enough, we went for it at level three and had him, I mean nailed him to a wall had him, but just as my last auto attack was about to kill him (from approximately 18 HP), he flashes, breaking the projectile. Morgana lands a snare, Twitch turns around and I die.

Over the course of the game, I saw Flash save either Twitch or Morgana from 5 deaths, and save my opponent’s Ashe from at least one. The range has been nerfed to the point that it rarely bothers me as a positioning tool, but when it breaks attacks and spells that have already been cast I swear I could choke a kitten.

Thankfully, Riot’s taking a look, but they haven’t done much yet. There was the opinion thread asking what should be done with the skill, but it’s long gone from the front page and there isn’t much discussion going on. Personally, I think it just needs removed. There are very few toons that truly need a Flash type skill, and even those toons could probably do just as well with Ghost or some movement speed tweaks. I know there was support for a DotA-style Kelen’s Dagger, which would really be fine. If you really have the 1800g or whatever it is to spend on a statless item, by all means.

My hope is whatever is done with Flash is done soon. It’s one of very few mechanics in the game I still find infuriating.

This situation happens frequently enough that Riot is looking at ways to change it. According to a post from Zileas, they’re trying to discourage the 5-man roam that has become so popular. Here’s his post:

Our philosophy on this issue is that individual snowballing is good, and team snowballing is bad. Right now, team snowballing occurs too much — one super carry twitch is a lot easier to handle than 5 guys who are 3 levels higher than each of you.

We are going to make some experience table tweaks to reduce team snowballing without hurting individual snowballing much. We are also going to make a new 3 lane map that is larger, has less cross-map connectivity (so that there is higher cost to 5 man roam, and less shutdown of the farming/laning phase via the first tower being down), etc.

We probably will nerf flash.

We wont be nerfing snowball items. Emotional highs from the game you super carried make this genre sticky. We removed it too much in the beta, and it cost us. Sorry, but being super carry annie or super carry corki once in a while gets a player through the 8 defeat in a row streak they hit the next day.

I’m on the fence about early gold for kills. It’s been something we have been talking about, for the reason you cite. OF course, an early kill is also harder than a late kill.

I can appreciate the thought behind this, though I worry about the pace of the game. The roaming gank squad has already taken its toll on pace. I’ve had a number of games recently where safe play from both sides led to more than 20 minutes without a death. Discouraging ganking seems like it will just make the laning phase that much longer and more painful. There are plenty of games in which I feel like losing my outer turret is the best thing that could happen because it breaks me out of the laning mentality. I realize that this is the point – to keep people from leaving lane – but that’s where the fun of the game is.

If anything, I think the best solution is the 3-lane map with less interconnectivity. That at least gives you the option to farm a lane once the tower is down with some potential for intra-lane ganking so long as there are enough hiding spots.

What do you think? Are there too many games in which snowballing is a serious problem or are you okay with the 5-man roam?