League of Legends Smolder: Expected release date, playstyle, and more

League of Legends recently teased their upcoming champion Smolder, with Riot Games deciding to embrace the Year of the Dragon by literally releasing a dragon on the Rift in the Lunar New Year. While Smolder's reveal did see a bit of criticism, the overall response to him has been positive, and many in the community find him to be absolutely adorable.

The champion will be the first to release in season 14, with Riot Games looking to make him available to players in January itself. However, the developers are yet to provide any official details on when they are going to release Smolder or the sort of kit that he will be coming with.

However, there are some community speculations that Smolder’s release date will be sometime towards the end of January 2024.

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League of Legends Smolder expected release date

If Riot Games’ usual trends and community speculations are anything to go by, then you can expect Smolder to drop with League of Legends patch 14.2 after he hits the PBE test servers during the 14.1 cycle.

League of Legends Patch 14.2 is scheduled to go live on January 24, 2024 (Wednesday). Much of the speculation comes from the fact that Smolder is going to be receiving a Heavenscale skin as a part of the Lunar New Year celebrations. Hence, he will be released along with the event.

More information on the upcoming champion will be revealed once season 14 goes live on January 10, 2024.

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League of Legends Smolder expected playstyle

While Riot is yet to provide details on Smolder's kit, the recent 2024 Roadmap video has, however, showcased a small gameplay trailer for the upcoming ADC.

Smolder is going to be a very traditional ADC whose playstyle will heavily revolve around keeping his distance and auto-attacking the enemy. He not going to have any unique mechanics like Zeri or Nilah, and will be based on Tristana's kit to an extent.

Smolder will have a few abilities that will poke at enemies from a distance as well as spread his fire breath. he will also have ways to close the distance on you or escape if he is ganked by the enemy.

As he is a fledgling dragon, he will only be able to glide across the Rift, and not fly. So don't expect him to be zooming around all over the map.

As for his ultimate, Smolder will be able to call upon his mother's aid who will send out a gigantic blast of fire from the sky covering a larger area and dealing massive damage to whoever is inside the circle.