In recent months, the launches of new champions in League of Legends can be described with the word “disastrous”. First, there was the Painter of Ten Thousand Scenes – Hwei, who had only about a 30% win rate at the time of release. As for Briar, this character also had a very low win rate of 38.17% at launch, and Riot had to continuously buff this character to improve these numbers.
The main reason for these poor launches stems from the fact that the skill sets and playstyles of Hwei and Briar are quite difficult to get accustomed to. Hwei having up to 10 skills or Briar having a self-taunt mechanism are unique and interesting designs. However, they cause League of Legends players to spend a lot of time understanding these characters.
These aforementioned launches led many to believe that the new champion Smolder would also have a “disastrous” launch. Nevertheless, Smolder boasts a relatively decent win rate of 41.99% just a few days after its official release. Although it still ranks at the bottom in win rates among Marksmen, Smolder’s launch stats are clearly much better than Hwei and Briar.
Basically, Smolder’s skill set is not as complex as Hwei’s or does not possess unique effects like Briar. Additionally, the playstyle of a Marksman dealing damage mainly through skills is not new to League of Legends players. Therefore, Marksman players will quickly get familiar with and use Smolder even though this character is newly released.
However, Smolder still has some significant weaknesses that prevent this character from having good stats at the moment. Notably, the Little Fire Dragon is very weak in the early game when it needs to farm a lot and stack its passive to reach its power threshold. If Smolder falls behind too heavily in lane or dies multiple times in the early game, this character will become extremely “useless” due to the disadvantage in both items and passive stacks.
In summary, Smolder’s win rate at an acceptable level is a positive sign for Riot after a series of “disastrous” new champion launches. Of course, to make Smolder stronger in the future, Riot should make reasonable adjustments to this character. Perhaps buffing a bit of basic stats for the Little Fire Dragon will help this little dragon not be too weak and easily bullied in lane.