League of Legends: Jungle Items on Midlane Mages

Ever since the preseason patches of League of Legends were pushed to live, mainly the professionals have experimented a lot with using Smite on champions that don’t dwell in the jungle. And it’s mainly because of this that I decided to do so myself, and as such, have begun to brainstorm as to what champions would fare well with Smite instead of their secondary summoner spell. This will mainly be focused on mid lane mages because of the itemization slot being so incredibly gold efficient if you get the Magus Enchantment. Without further ado, let’s break into it.

Katarina, the Sinister Blade: At first, I didn’t believe it to be a great choice. I’ve been experimenting with capped CDR builds on Katarina because of her ultimate and her immense increase in laning power when having Bouncing Blades on a sub-5 second cooldown. And that’s when it hit me. The Magus Enchant enchants a jungle item with 80AP and 20% CDR – the same statistics you find on a Morellonomicon. But where the mana regen on the Morellonomicon is essentially wasted money because Katarina doesn’t utilize mana, being able to Smite champions and slow them with a Magus Enchanted Stalker’s Blade is another securing tool for objectives such as Dragon and Baron; it’s additional laning pressure due to it having a mere 54s cooldown, and it’s an amazing slow that makes sure that enemies don’t walk out of your ult unless they have an additional escape mech beyond their Flash. And we all know a Katarina ultimate deals a ridiculous amount of damage when left uninterrupted.

Akali, the Fist of Shadow: You’d think Akali doesn’t need another sticking tool. You’d be right, because she (most of the time) has three stacks on her Shadow Dance. But let’s be frank. If we can just stay in range of an enemy instead of having to use a charge of Shadow Dance every time we can’t autoattack them, what would that mean for us? And in all fairness, a Hextech Gunblade is pretty vital for any Akali. But 80AP is more than the 65AP the Gunblade gives, and while the Magus Enchantment doesn’t provide AD, it does provide CDR which allows an Akali to keep tagging those Marks of the Assassin for insane amounts of damage. And especially around level 6 it gets better, because of her stickiness with the Chilling Smite and Shadow Dance combination. Increased stickiness and increased damage potential through lowered cooldowns. Win-win situation.

Twisted Fate, the Card Master: If there’s anything a Twisted Fate has issues with, it’s firing a Gold Card without using Flash. Recently, the preferred summoner spell has been Ghost over Ignite, but if we look at it from a different perspective, there’s a few things wrong with that choice. Using Ghost to catch up to someone isn’t going to help, because if you needed Ghost to begin with, they had a significant lead over you, and if you need it to keep up with someone… why not have a summoner spell on a lower cooldown that allows you to do the same thing, and adds a little bit of damage? Pairing Smite in your ability rotation makes a lot of work happen, because if you smite them after your Gold Card wears off, they’ll be crowd controlled just about until the next card’s about to hit. And with the 20% CDR from the Magus Enchantment, your cards (and Gate/Destiny) will be on a significantly lower cooldown. Bonuses for everyone. And by ‘everyone’, I mean Twisted Fate.

Yorick, the Gravedigger: One doesn’t often play Yorick. I’ve recently been playing with Yorick quite a bit (though vastly more before the jungle itemization rework) and I’ve come to realize that Yorick lacks one thing and one thing only: the ability to engage suddenly, similar to how champions with gap closers do that. And because Yorick doesn’t have a blink, it would be incredibly beneficial for him to have a slow on a longer range and a bigger percentage than his slowing ability would. And if it’s a rather immobile champion (like a Karthus or something of the sorts), you have an immense advantage if you slow them with a Chilling Smite, then follow up with an Omen of Pestilence (for which you are now in range) and proceed to maul their face with Ghouls and abilities. Not to mention the Warrior Enchantment gives Yorick some nice AD, CDR and Armor Pen which are all beneficial to his kit.

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Mordekaiser, the Master of Metal: While it is definitely gimmicky, there has been a time where Mordekaiser was dreaded for his ability to quickly shove the lanes and then proceed to clear both junglers’ wraith camps. So why not take that idea, and combine that with a Poacher’s Knife. Not only does this make clearing the enemy Razorbeak camp that much more rewarding – while it’s up at least – but you also happen to get a nifty buff that allows you to sweep for enemy wards. While there are no wards around, the buff will only time out after the 60 second duration, but when you spot something (actively or not), you will get True Vision à la Oracle’s Elixir for 6 seconds, allowing you to sweep a part of the lane. And the best part is that you don’t even need to upgrade the Poacher’s Knife fully until later in the game, when you’ve already collected your much needed Spell Vamp. Build your Poacher’s Knife into Hextech Revolver, after which you purchase the Magus Enchantment for the Poacher’s Knife and finish off either the Gunblade or the Will of the Ancients. Takes up an item slot, but it might very well provide you with plentiful amounts of cash.

Chilling Smite is generally the best option, because the other options are incredibly gimmicky and lose their power as the game progresses. The Skirmisher’s Sabre is focused on auto attacking duelists such as Master Yi, and while he could go into the mid lane, he’s better suited for the jungle due to his Alpha Strike dealing bonus damage to monsters. The Trailblazer is literally only good for junglers because you get next to nothing from it if you use it on lane creeps. Sure you could use it on mid lane champs that have trouble pushing waves into the enemy tower, but in all fairness, their power should lie somewhere else, where Smite won’t amplify that power if it were a Blasting Smite. And lastly, the Scavenging Smite is only useful on champions that have the power and speed to quickly take down creep waves in order to make it work and be a worthwhile investment. Then again, I’d like to hear from you if you could prove me wrong and make especially the Blasting Smite work on a lane champion.