[2023] Why is smiting pets getting gutted instead of just removed?

Originally posted by Caenen_

I'm not sure if Smite should always only deal a fraction of the health bar of even "small" pets like Heimer's Q turret or Shaco's box, though. I think at that level of damage it'll just feel dissatisfying for the caster (the anti-pattern here is that you're associating to use the spell that instantly bursts minions, but it does very little instead). If you can't combine it with ~an attack or spell to finish the unit off, what's the point of using the powerful cooldown?

What is the argument against giving it the exclusion for targeting minion_summons?

Originally posted by killtasticfever

You didn't really answer the question.

Why didn't you make them unsmiteable? smiting a pet for 100 dmg is a joke. Not to mention a ton of players don't thoroughly scan patch notes and will end up smiting them and being frustrated.

Originally posted by B3ER

Will the tooltip communicate that smite doesn't do full damage against pets? Because exhausting Soraka is a fine analogy up until the point where the summoner spell is consistent with the description given along all units it can target.

This game has too many things that are the way they are without anything that communicates it. Don't add more. And no, patch notes don't count. They only suffice as communication for the small percentage of players that bother reading them.

Originally posted by TetBoyzzz

I'm a huge fan of the transparency that you and the Riot balance team have with the playerbase, but one thing that's always irked me was the use of words like "should" and "shouldn't" when talking about a competitive game.

The decisions made are completely based on the design choices of the person(s) in charge, which is fine (and unavoidable); but claiming that the decisions are made because that's how they should be comes across pretty poorly.

Smite should not do full damage nor intermediate damage to players’ minions

Why not? I'm guessing cause it's a one button way to cut down minion champions' damage that costs basically nothing and is limited to one player on each team - could be way off but that seems like the most likely thought process.

But then why shouldn't the minion player have to account for this? Knowing that a jungle gank is more effective on them since their damage (and therefore ability to 1v2 or 2v2) is more limited. It becomes a weakness that offsets their (usually) good ability to 1v1 their lane opponent.

Minion champions are going to be inherently frustrating to deal with since you usually have to commit resources into killing the minions while they are free to use cooldowns on you. That or attempt to use cooldowns on them but risk massive damage from the minions. Having one champion on the team that has one extremely easy way to cut a portion of that damage doesn't seem like an issue they needed solving.

Trying not to come across bitter or hostile but its hard over text. I don't envy anyone that has to make balance decisions and also interact with the LoL community so what you do is super appreciated. There's a lot of balance philosophies and decisions I personally disagree with but the game isn't tailor made for me, and the transparency is something a LOT of other games are missing.

Originally posted by ADeadMansName

If that is the case, just remove smite from being used on pets all together to prevent misclicks there. You could also remove smite from minions except canons and super minions, because you never smite a melee/caster minion.

And you could even remove smite from minions all together, because it is an old interaction and mostly used to defend against baron buffed minions or super minions. It would lower the influence of junglers in a way that most players don't really care about.

One last question: Is the summoned RH a pet or a monster? And is the intention to keep smite working on it or not?

Originally posted by TetBoyzzz

Yeah, I get that. This was more to do with the language used and the way some information is presented.

I went into detail about the minion champs as an example of how many responses someone might have to a statement like "Smite should not do full damage to players minions". I don't think I made that clear enough though so that's on me.

One of the big reasons statements like "this should xxxxx" or "xxxxx is never correct" are super off putting for me is that it sounds a lot like the balance whiners (for lack of a better term) that just complain about everything they lose to. A lot of the poorly informed player base with no knowledge on game balance will often say stuff like "xxxxx champion shouldn't be able to do that" or something similar.

I completely get not being able to discuss every change in detail (especially when you make patch rundowns that do exactly that already), but I think you can't throw out statements like "this interaction shouldn't happen" unless you're prepared to explain why.