As expected Smolder has become much more powerful with the new Essence Reaver and increased minion counts. We want to make sure Smolder’s strong late-game damage has durability tradeoffs, even when buying the occasional HP item.
Smolder, like Gangplank, stands to gain a lot of power from Essence Reaver's changes in this patch so we're taking a swing at how strongly his Q scales with critical strike purchases.