Everyone has been complaining about smolder and how his late game scaling is unnattainable. While its a learning curve its all league fundamentals and thats farming. He makes it extremely easy to farm with his Q stacking and the use of dematerializer.

At the start of the game, I like to get a cull. Youre gonna go for mid/late game so you want to rush for a 3 item spike. Youll begin by Qing every minion you can and poking as much as you can to hit your 25 stack buff. You can trade before 2 minutes since this buff is big to building more stacks. Once you have 25 stacks you want to make sure you have your dematerializers used on only caster minions. This allows you to clear the wave easier and kill the minions in the back with a single combo. As the minions are aligned you can easily W the wave chunking all the minions and then you can eventually 1 shot the back minions with a single Q. This guarantees 3 stacks minimum per wave. If done properly you can get the front ones in time with your Q having a low cooldown totaling up to 6 stacks per wave. In between waves spam Q on your opponent if your trading is fairly even to rush the 225 mark. If you do this properly you should reach 225 stacks anywhere from 20-23 minutes depending how well your game is going. By then youre in late game mode. On first back, you can grab a tear and sheen if possible but tear and mote at least to try and have mana sustain for more Q spam. The more stacks you have the easier itll get to farm as well so youll also be cashing in on some good amounts of gold from having pro level farm with no effort from Q spam.

For your build, you want to buy trinity force into completing muramana then navori. If needed you can rush a last whisper item instead of muramana for a 3rd item. These 3 items will give good bonus damage on Q and mana sustain. Reaver is a good alternative but muramana already gives you mana and trinity has better scaling plus movement speed when you Q people which fits the playstyle.

For mid game you can go for crazy positioning as your E makes your untouchable if youre good at dodging to begin with. You want to just go front to back as your Q will splash and hit everyone in the vacinity with the 125 stack buff. Your combo will be a variation of W>R>AA>Q>AA or W>R>>AA>Q>E(if you need to chase or get away. The ult is in that placement as it has a slow cast(which sucks cuz it feels kinda weak) and W helps slow for it to hit. If you hit the entire combo you can usually burst any carry.

For late game, youll have 225+ stacks to burn everyone for % HP damage and execute without elder. This is why I didnt put collector as an alternative item. As you get more stacks, your splash also increases so you can more easily hit the enemy without getting hit especially if you have rapidfire. You can simply Q the frontline and itll burn the backline or hit a minion to hurt whoever is behind and not get hit. You continue with the same combos but play for extended teamfights with Q poke/burn and execute. Ive gotten aces by myself doing this.

Its a fun champ and helps you practice good fundamentals such as farming. He also has much more to offer than what people give him credit for, but its only for those who arent quite good at farming it seems. Anyways, thank you for reading if you did and GLHF.