League of Legends’ newest champion, Smolder, has only been out for about a day, but there are enough games played on the little guy worldwide to have a solid sample size in our back pocket to make the following claim: This champion is struggling off the jump.
The adorable dragon AD carry has the lowest win rate in all of League of Legends across the first 24 hours of his existence. This is relatively par for the course for new champions, though, as most new additions to League’s roster tend to have exceptionally low win rates during the early stages of their lifespans. Smolder’s win rate after 24 hours on the live patch sits just above 40 percent, according to League stats site U.GG.
Comparatively speaking, though, Smolder’s 40.30 percent win rate isn’t that bad as far as new champions go. At the end of last year, Hwei was released to the tune of a win rate that struggled to get out of the 30s. Other new releases from last year like Naafiri and Briar also found trouble getting off the ground in the early stages of their careers on the ranked ladder.
Smolder’s 40 percent win rate at the ADC position is four percentage points lower than the next highest win rate of any champion at any position (Sylas jungle), according to U.GG.
But such is the case with any new League champion. Low win rates are usually due to players not having a full grasp on the champion’s kit, how to use their abilities in their entirety, or what to build on the champion. Smolder is a spellcasting ADC, which makes him stand out as a unique pick with many tools that might be tough to grasp for players who are usually accustomed to picking up a champion and immediately working out the simplicities of their kit.
Although Smolder is definitely simpler than the 10-spell-wielding Hwei, the tiny dragon still has a relatively high skill ceiling to figure out, as emphasized by his abysmally low initial win rate after just one day on the servers. We expect that 40 percent number to go up, though, as more players get used to the champion, regardless of whether or not Riot intervenes with any potential hotfixes.
Smolder has about 35,000 games played since his launch yesterday, which is roughly the median number of games on the current patch for all champions across every position in the game, according to U.GG.
