Riot Games is making a drastic change to the early League of Legends experience, changing the Summoner level required to unlock Smite from nine to three in a mid to make learning how to jungle easier for fresh players.
When bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new League players hit the Summoner’s Rift for the first time, it can be a daunting yet exciting experience. However, they don’t have to worry so much about learning how to jungle right away because Smite, the jungle Summoner Spell that deals true damage to enemy minions and monsters, unlocks when a player’s Summoner level hits level nine.
That’s set to change, with Riot changing the unlock level to three on the League PBE testing realms today in preparation for it to land on live servers soon.
Instead of Smite unlocking when your Summoner level is nine, it will unlock when a player’s Summoner level is three,
Many agree not only is this a massive change to early League gameplay but it’s also very long overdue; players have asked for something along these lines for nearly a decade.
The purpose of unlocking Smite earlier for new League players is so they can begin learning to jungle almost as soon as they hit the Rift. Many new players might find the jungle role daunting and will avoid this at all costs, especially if their friends or other players have said jungling is hard to learn when you’re new to League.
But, not everyone wants to play support or mid lane. Some players want to dive into the jungle as soon as possible to begin learning jungle camp timers, how Smite works, jungle pathing, and everything there is to know about this role.
So, for these people, the Smite changes will be incredibly beneficial.
The only problem that may arise is it also gives ‘smurfs’ access earlier, meaning new players could be pitted against experienced junglers more often than before.
This shouldn’t be too impactful for lower-ranked players who face smurfs more because an account still has to be level 30 before it can join ranked League games. We’re not expecting this change to do much more than make the role more accessible.
Now all we need is every Summoner Spell available from earlier levels.
