League of Legends Junglers Are Getting a Helpful Champion Select Change

The issue of League of Legends junglers mistakenly forgetting to take Smite with them will be remedied soon with the Summoner Spell being a default choice if you lock in as a jungler.

League players using the game's Draft modes will likely know the frustration of either forgetting to select Smite when you're a jungler or having a teammate who does the same. The timer ticks down and the rest of the lobby is typing "SMITE" in all caps before the game starts with the wrong Summoner Spell locked in, something that everyone's thinking about right up until the game starts. From there, your two options are either continuing play with a no-Smite "jungler, or more likely, remaking the game.

Riot's looking to make that problem a thing of the past though, or at least make it so that forgetting to take the spell isn't a possibility. Over on the Nexus Blitz mode, Smite is made a mandatory spell in the beginning, though that might not always be the case.

"That's not necessarily something that'll be the case forever, but it's how we want to have for initial testing at least," Riot Meddler said on the League boards. "We believe double jungle's optimal, but that's easy to misunderstand when first trying out the mode. We'd like to avoid early testing at least being distorted by people who aren't aware you'll want two junglers per team, hence the forcing smite."

Outside of Nexus Blitz, Riot's also looking to make this change happen on Summoner's Rift. It won't be a forced jungle pick, so you can change off of Smite if you so choose, but the change will at least take care of accidentally forgetting to take it.

"As a follow up to that we'll also be making it so, if you're put into champ select as a jungler on SR, you'll also have Smite as one of your Summoner Spells when you join the lobby," Riot Meddler continued. "For SR you'll be free to change it should you want to swap positions with someone else, jungle without Smite or whatever (it's a default, not a mandatory thing). Goal there is to remove cases where a player forgets to check Summoners after playing a different position the game beforehand and loads in without Smite unintentionally, putting their team at a significant disadvantage."

There's no release date for when the feature will be added, but it will be "a bit later" after Nexus Blitz goes live for everyone.