belo im bluwunk and im a Smolder OTP :3 i hit Challenger playing mostly Smolder.

I started maining smolder in early 2025 and I became obsessed with his stacking gameplay and late game carrying capabilities. I think he's really fun and he has a lot of cool things he can do. I have a:

Twitch where I stream most of my games,

Discord server where you can be a part of a community and ask me questions.

Youtube channel where I upload stream highlights (and lowlights).


Follow my guide and I'll show you how to do more damage :'3

PASSIVE

Dragon Practice ✦ Whenever Smolder hits an enemy with an ability or last hit a minion with q you will get 1 stack of Dragon Practice. These stacks improve the damage of and upgrade your abilities, so you always want to maximize getting them.

Q

Super Scorcher Breath ✦ Super Scorcher Breath is Smolder's main damage ability. It works kind of like an auto attack, applying on-hit effects and scaling with crit. Super Scorcher Breath has 4 different thresholds depending on how many Dragon Practice stacks Smolder has: At 0 stacks it's basically a glorified auto attack and does about the same damage as one. At 25 stacks the fireball explodes and does the same damage in a small area around its target. At 125 stacks it splashes in a small area behind the target. At 225 stacks it burns anyone hit for a percent of their health as true damage, as well as allowing Smolder to execute anyone below 6.5% health.

W

Achooo! ✦ Achooo! is a pretty standard ability. It's just a fireball shot in a straight line. Whenever it hits someone it does an aoe splash which can also hit another person giving Smolder multiple stacks of Dragon Practice.

E

Flap, Flap, Flap ✦ Flap, Flap, Flap is Smolder'smain movement ability which lets him fly over walls for a short period while giving him vision in the area and shooting 5 bolts at the lowest nearby enemy. Every 100 stacks of Dragon Practice adds another bolt to this attack.

R

MMOOOMMMM! ✦ MMOOOMMMM! calls down Smolder's mom. Her attack has a wide range and anyone who gets hit in the middle takes more damage and gets slowed. It also heals Smolder slightly. This is also Smolder's only ability that doesn't scale with Dragon Practice.

Smolder has a lot of build options for an ADC so it can be hard to figure out what build is best for him. Currently I think there are 2 main builds that I go depending on the enemy team comp. In this section I'll explain the builds, the small variations, and when and why I take them.





The Hubris build gives you great burst potential as well as the range and mobility of Rapid Firecannon. Most champs in the game are squishy enough to be bursted down in one rotation by this game so I usually end up going with this build.

Arcane Comet ✦ Arcane Comet is a decent poke rune on Smolder. It has some good synergy with a high lethality/ad/haste build kind of like Arcane Comet Varus. Late game once you get enough Dragon Practice stacks you can even get 2 comet procs on 1 Flap, Flap, Flap. Also you can take Phase Rush against teams that are slow-heavy with champs like like Zilean Olaf.

Nimbus Cloak ✦ Nimbus Cloak was buffed towards the end of last season and has reall good synergy with Barrier due to its low cooldown. Try to not Flash and Barrier at the same time since the movement speed wont stack.

Celerity ✦ Celerity has great synergy with all the other movement speed runes i like to take like Nimbus Cloak and the movement speed shard. It also helps you get your entire Flap, Flap, Flap damage. The other two runes in this slot, Transcendence and Absolute Focus are ok too though if you prefer them, there's not too much of a difference but I prefer Celerity.

Gathering Storm ✦ Gathering Storm is the only rune I'd suggest in this slot since Smolder can't really take advantage of Scorch.

Magical Footwear ✦ Magical Footwear is just a really good rune, giving you 300 free gold and 10 free movement speed which is very valuable.

Jack of all Trades ✦ Jack of all Trades is probably the best rune in the game if you're able to take advantage of it. When it's procced you get like 10 haste and 15 AD, which is the value of like 2 runes. With this build you'll typically proc all 10 jack stacks after you finish Rapid Firecannon and then build either Last Whisper or Vampiric Scepter.

Stat shard 1

• Adaptive Force is best for when you want to start Achooo! in a rough lane
• Attack Speed is the best general option for help with last hitting, shoving, and early all-ins
• Ability Haste is the best for scaling into late game

Stat shard 2

• Adaptive Force is a good option for early game.
• Movement Speed is the best option right now because they buffed it and if you combine it with Celerity you move really fast.

Stat shard 3

• Flat health is good if you're worried about early lane being rough
• Scaling health is better in general since you want to play passive early most of the time

Get these every game

Essence Reaver ✦ Essence Reaver is Smolder's best item now after they added Sheen back to it. Honestly it's probably getting nerfed soon if I had to guess, all the adcs that build this item look OP right now.

Hubris ✦ Hubris is pretty much a replacement for Infinity Edge this season. Smolder's crit scaling on his Q got nearly cut in half so critical strike chance and critical strike damage are just not as useful on him as before, which is all Infinity Edge is good for really. Hubris lets you scale harder into the late game cause Attack Damage is his mosst generally useful stat.

Rapid Firecannon ✦ Rapid Firecannon has really good synergy with Super Scorcher Breath. You're able to shoot an auto attack and a Q from one Rapid Firecannon proc. Use it to poke teams down before teamfights start.

Buy these in whatever order you want

Bloodthirster ✦ Bloodthirster is the item that gives the most Attack Damage in the whole game while also giving you Lifesteal. This can be your first End Game Item if you're against a poke champs like Xerath Zyra Vel'Koz.

Edge of Night ✦ Edge of Night helps you finish your Jack of all Trades and helps you walk up and poke a lot better. It's especially good into high importance abilities like Unstoppable Force, Scatter the Weak and Cease and Desist that can catch you out if you try to poke.

Lord Dominik's Regards ✦ Lord Dominik's Regards got it's giant slayer passive back (deal more dmg to champs that have bonus hp so it's a really good buy into hp stackers or even mages or supports that get like 2 items that have some HP. ALSO IF YOU'RE BEHIND you probably have to get this item 4th since once champs get to high levels like 15-18 they get a lot of base armor so you're gonna need your last whisper item to actually do dmg.

Replace an end game item with one of these if you think you need one

Mortal Reminder ✦ Mortal Reminder has 5% less armor penetration than Lord Dominik's Regards but since Smolder does so much mixed damage, he can afford to give up that 5% for anti heal most of the time. However keep in mind you're also losing the Giant Slayer passive on Lord Dominik's Regards and Mortal Reminder is 300g cheaper so make the decision based on all of that VS having anti heal.

Guardian Angel ✦ Guardian Angel is good against undodgeable assassins like Rengar or Talon. Make sure you try to play forward and pressure the enemy team with this item. If you die last in a teamfight there's no point in buying this.

Mercurial Scimitar ✦ Mercurial Scimitar is a fantastic item since it's recent buff. Build this against annoying CC like Skarner or Lissandra or Malzahar. It has enough lifesteal to keep you healthy between fights and the magic resist and Movement Speed on the active are really useful.

Smolder's boot choice doesn't really matter too much, just get what you think is best or default to Boots of Swiftness.

Boots of Swiftness ✦ Boots of Swiftness are the best general use boots for Smolder. You can also go Mercury's Treads if the other team is heavy on ability power or Plated Steelcaps if the other team is heavy on attack damage

Ionian boots of Lucidity ✦ Ionian Boots of Lucidity are a lot worse this season than last. Their main advantage in season 15 was upgrading them to Crimson Lucidity, which were OP. Honestly I think current Ionian Boots of Lucidity in their current form are bait. The 10 Movement Speed from Boots of Swiftness is better than the 10 Ability Haste that this item gives.

The Bruiser Build is going to be better at taking down tanky teams (think Sion Ornn Tahm Kench) and keeping you alive against assassins that are guaranteed to close the gap (think Zed Talon Fiddlesticks). The point of this build is to keep you alive longer with the hp stacking early, and farm as many Dragon Practice stacks as possible on fat tanks with the huge amount of Ability Haste in the build.

THIS IS THE BETTER FULL BUILD. You'll be slightly weaker in the early mid game compared to the Hubris build but your insane Ability Haste and health and attack damage late game will make you unkillable and do a billion damage.

Fleet Footwork ✦ Fleet Footwork procs on Super Scorcher Breath and gives you Movement Speed and a little bit of healing which can help you kite. You can also go Press the Attack if you're fighting extremely tanky teams and want a little extra damage.

Triumph ✦ Triumph gives you gold and Health for each takedown. You don't need Presence of Mind because you'll already have enough Mana from Essence Reaver.

Legend: Haste ✦ Legend: Haste is the best rune in this slot for Smolder because this entire build is built around having a lot of Ability Haste to spam your skills to stack your passive Dragon Practice.

Cut down ✦ Cut Down and Coup de Grace are about the same thing but it's better to take Cut Down because you already have an execute which means the bonus damage while they're low doesn't help as much.

Celerity ✦ Celerity gives you much-needed Movement Speed in this build. It also synergizes well with Flap, Flap, Flap, Fleet Footwork, the movement speed shard, and the Movement Speed bonus on Black Cleaver. You can also go Transcendence here if you want but I think the Movement Speed on Celerity is better.

Gathering Storm ✦ Gathering Storm is the only rune I'd suggest in this slot since Smolder can't really take advantage of Scorch

Get these every game

Essence Reaver ✦ Essence Reaver is Smolder's best item now after they added Sheen back to it. Honestly it's probably getting nerfed soon if I had to guess, all the adcs that build this item look OP right now.

Black Cleaver ✦ Black Cleaver gives you Ability Haste which is the main point of this build while also giving you Movement Speed which helps you kite, and Armor shred which will help you and your team kill tanks faster. Having more Ability Haste means spamming more abilites.

Spear of Shojin ✦ Spear of Shojin is a really good item to build against tanks because it gives you percentage damage on all your skills based on how many stacks you maintain. It's especially good with Essence Reaver because you'll be spamming a lot of abilites as both of these items give you Ability Haste

Endless Hunger ✦ Endless Hunger is the new bruiser Ability Haste item. You should end up with like 25-40 Ability Haste from this item by the end of the game. It also gives you a little bit of omnivamp which should be enough to heal up after a little random damage, and some tenacity which should help you not get CC'd to death.

Buy these in whatever order you want

Death's Dance ✦ Death's Dance is a good item because it gives you Ability Haste and Armor along with it's passive which helps you survive dives. Its 50 armor goes a long way with all the health you're building.

Overlord's Bloodmail ✦ Overlord's Bloodmail has good synergy with your 2 health items, which give you a bunch of bonus attack damage, and then you get even more haste from Endless Hunger because of all the attack damage Overlord's Bloodmail gives you.

Maw of Malmortius ✦ Maw of Malmortius is a good replacement for Death's Dance if you're against a heavy ability power team.

Maw of Malmortius ✦ Chempunk Chainsword can be built along with Overlord's Bloodmail if you need antiheal.

Smolder's boot choice doesn't really matter too much, just get what you think is best or default to Boots of Swiftness. But for this build keep in mind that a defensive boot will be slightly better cause you will have a lot of health.

Plated Steelcaps ✦ Plated Steelcaps will make you tankier against heavy attack damage teams or a lot of auto attackers.

Mercury's Treads ✦ Mercury's Treads will make you tankier against ability power damage and give you some tenacity to not get CC'd to death.

Boots of Swiftness ✦ Boots of Swiftness are fine if you can't see much value in either Mercury's Treads or Plated Steelcaps or if you want the slow reduction from Boots of Swiftness.

Ionian boots of Lucidity ✦ Ionian Boots of Lucidity are a lot worse this season than last. Their main advantage in season 15 was upgrading them to Crimson Lucidity, which were OP. Honestly I think current Ionian Boots of Lucidity in their current form are bait. The 10 Movement Speed from Boots of Swiftness is better than the 10 Ability Haste that this item gives.

Here's a tier list showing my initial thoughts on which build to go based on seeing each champion on the enemy team. Experiment with the builds so you can decide which one to go for yourself :D.

I'll probably make a new one of these soon but I need to play a bunch of games on the new season to get a feel on which build to go and when. PRETEND THE BLUE TIER SAYS BRUISER BUILD AND NOT ESSENCE REAVER for now.

Here's what I do level 1 pretty much every game as long as im not being lazy



The ward stops you from getting cheesed level 1 which Smolder is really weak to and then standing in that spot next to tier 2 tower will safely spot anyone trying to invade thru there so your jungler wont complain at you :D


Starting in season 16, getting back to lane is really fast due to the buffed homeguards. Because of this, I no longer take Teleport since the homeguards get you back to lane so fast anyways. If you have Barrier try to use it as often as possible in short trades since it's a low cooldown. In a hard lane where you get poked out really hard early (think Caitlyn Karma), I usually back when I'm low and buy Cull.
Level 1-3 is pretty simple, your main goal is to try and farm with Super Scorcher Breath and hit the enemy laners with achoo! as much as possible to hit 25 stacks. Before getting 25 stacks, try to not commit to long fights and focus on short trades/getting stacks because Smolder is super weak before 25 stacks. When trading level 1, do not trade without Super Scorcher Breath up. Most of the time you should have the lane shoved towards you so it's safer. After 25 stacks you can start to put a little more pressure onto the enemy team as you can now push faster and do more damage through minions with AOE. Try and look for scenarios to land Super Scorcher Breath on minions or so you can splash damage onto their ADC while they're CS'ing. You should also try to time Achooo! to hit them while they try to last hit.


Here's an example of a quick trade pattern for early game. This trade is almost always going to be in your favor if you don't eat any huge skillshots (think Kai'Sa Void Seeker) or get all-inned afterwards (like getting hit by Draven Stand Aside or Thresh Death Sentence'd).



Here's an example of good farming with Super Scorcher Breath at 25 stacks (ignore the minion minions)


Smolder's mid game is pretty strong as long as you don't get absolutely demolished in laning phase. After rotating to mid lane, I try to take raptors on repeat as this camp gives a lot of stacks. In fights you should be looking to splash your q onto their backlines whether it's through Super Scorcher Breath'ing the minions or objectives. Your goal mid game is just to push mid wave on repeat and rotate to fights that are happening on the map. At this point you should be able to get 4-6 Dragon Practice stacks per wave. Position yourself to Super Scorcher Breath the backline minions to hit the enemy if they are also hitting the wave that you are. Other than that, your mid game is pretty similar to every other ADC.


Here's a clip of me poking people and being annoying with Super Scorcher Breath in the mid game. Do this as much as possible to get extra stacks and poke people down.


I wouldn't have gotten this Super Scorcher Breath to land without Rapid Firecannon it's really good :D



Once you've finished your Rapid Firecannon (Ideally you have 225 at 3 items), what you should be doing is poking enemies with Super Scorcher Breath from afar to set up fights. Being able to chunk people before team fights is pivotal, as it can set your team up for success. Your goal is to do as much damage as you can while not dying, use your Flap, Flap, Flap intelligently as it can help you play aggressive without being caught. It's important that you use your Flap, Flap, Flap to fly over walls and disengage especially against champions can't follow ( Flap, Flap, Flap over a wall after Nocturne uses Paranoia on you). Try to look for opportunities to hit enemies with the center of your MMOOOMMMM!, don't just use it whenever you feel like it. A good time to use it would be when someone gets CC'd or in the middle of a team fight because not a lot of people would be paying attention to your ult because it usually isnt very highly impactful. A bad time to use it is at the beginning of a team fight to engage. Because MMOOOMMMM! is really slow, it won't hit them most of the time.


Here's what your MMOOOMMMM! can look like if you're patient with them. They're usually so much better if you wait for someone to get CC'd first.

Super Scorcher Breath-
One really cool thing you can do with Super Scorcher Breath is use and auto attack and a Super Scorcher Breath with the same Rapid Firecannon proc.

Here's me using Super Scorcher Breath and an auto attack with the same Rapid Firecannon proc on a target dummy cause i was too lazy to find a real clip c:

Achooo!-
You can start Achooo! as a first ability if you're going against long ranged bot lanes that don't allow you to walk up and auto the wave. This lets you trade with them while staying a safe distance.
Also I usually start Achooo! if I see 5 people invading for free 5 stacks and better AOE damage. You should only use this ability if you know you're going to hit it, hold onto it if you don't think you can as this ability uses a lot of mana. When you don't have w, your skirmishes and trades are going to be significantly weaker.
One more thing you can do is a Achooo! + Flash combo. You can start to buffer Achooo! and then use Flash into the rest of your combo to get some quick unexpected damage on someone.

Flap, Flap, Flap -
Most people don't use this ability to deal damage and only use it as an escape tool. Flap, Flap, Flap actually does a lot more damage than you would expect it to, especially with the Hubris build. A cool thing you can do with E is if you're getting tower doved, you can fly into the wall on the bottom side and this will make it hard for the enemies to hit you. You can still get CC'd so try to do it before you get cc'd and try to dodge cc while in the wall.

Since Smolder's execute only works on damage HE applies, a cool thing you can do once you hit 225 stacks is you can use Flap, Flap, Flap to execute enemies after you apply your burn on them at low health. Flap, Flap, Flap does a lot of burst damage which can guarantee you an execute.

Here's a clip of me showing a great way to survive dives using Flap, Flap, Flap. If you've ever seen a Kayn use Shadow Step outside the map to get away, this is kind of the same idea.

Here's a clip showing what I mean with finishing off someone with Flap, Flap, Flap. It's a great way to confirm a kill once you hit 225 Dragon Practice stacks.

If you press Super Scorcher Breath or any ability while flying with Flap, Flap, Flap, it'll end the ability early. You can use this to your advantage to decide which side of a wall to land on while also using your Super Scorcher Breath or Achooo! on somebody like I did in this clip.

You can also bait out abilities by faking out flying to one side of a wall then going to another like in this clip.


MMOOOMMMM! -
MMOOOMMMM! is an extremely slow moving ability. In a 1v1 try to combo it off of your Achooo! to make it easier to land the center. One cool thing you can do is you can ult backwards to make it easier to get a Center hit. It's a very situational but it can make or break your fight. Usually you should use it in a 1v1 against the other ADC to ensure that you do enough damage to kill them. This can also work against a Braum Unbreakable since it only blocks skillshots from the front.

The backwards MMOOOMMMM! (right) hits way faster

16.1
- entire build overhaul and added a couple clips to the tips & tricks

15.21
- lifesteal on Doran's Blade removed so Jack of all Trades is a bit nerfed but it was OP enough that my builds aren't changing. You just hit the 5/10 jack stacks a bit later.

15.22
- Going Movement Speed stat shard with Magical Footwear now because the Movement Speed stat shard got buffed so it's really good with Magical Footwear. Can also go Celerity if you feel like it's a good game for it.