INTRODUCTION

You build Skirmishers Sabre with Cinderhulk as your first item, take Smite and Teleport as summoner spells, and spend a good amount of time in the enemy jungle. You might think I'm talking about a slightly tanky build for Master Yi, but instead I'm talking about the META's newest evolution: the double Smite composition.

Double Smite compositions have seen a huge rise in popularity since they started showing up at the beginning of the month. Before this month double Smite was used almost exclusively for double jungle, which is NOT a very viable strategy in solo q. Now we see tanky top laners taking Smite and invading the enemy jungle to put pressure on buffs and objectives while also gaining great dueling potential and tank stats.

CINDERHULK

Cinderhulk first joined the league in patch 5.5 and since then the rise of tank junglers has been meteoric. However, there has been another unexpected side effect of this new item. Top lane champions have started taking it with the Skirmisher's Sabre to improve their top lane trade potential, tank stats, and jungle pressure. Cinderhulk specifically is known for its tank stats and its cheap upgrade price. This means that jungle champions who rely on CC instead of damage are making a big comeback.

However, the jungle is not the only place we see Cinderhulk these days. Instead, it is also popping up in the top lane as well. This is mostly on champions who can trade well and keep up on tank stats at the same time. Shyvana, Heciram, and Irelia are champions who can take full advantage of Skirmisher's Sabre/Cinderhulk in the top lane. The extra Smite is used to get extra damage in trades and to secure objectives throughout the game.

SHYVANA

Shyvana is a champion who was very popular last season. She brings immense area of effect damage and lots of tank stats while in dragon form. But she has fallen off this season because she lacks the tankiness of Maokai and Sion and the damage Gnar and Lissandra. Her comeback has been timed with the appearance of Cinderhulk in the top lane because that item is what makes her viable. The tank stats and dueling stats she receives for the price of Cinderhulk is incredibly efficient in today's META.

After taking an early camp and pushing the top lane Shyvana spends most of the game roaming around, taking enemy jungle camps and surprising enemy champions. The new build makes it so she receives double gold for her jungle camps and makes her ganks very powerful (challenging Smite). All of this benefit is gained for a relatively low price and makes it easy to snowball the game after an early lead.

Shyvana is very easy to play in team fights with this build. Middle and late game you can simply ult on top of an enemy team and chase down the enemy carries with your smite and W speed up/area damage burn. Even though you are building exclusively tank stats after the Cinderhulk the damage on a carry with a Challenging smite is immense cannot be ignored by the enemy team.

Here is the official word on Challenging Smite: “Challenging Smite can target enemy champions, marking them for 6 seconds. Marked enemies are revealed (does not reveal stealth), take (54 + 6 x level) true damage over 3 seconds from your basic attacks and deal 20% reduced damage to you”

The combination of true damage, area damage, and a mini exhaust makes you a tank that the enemy team HAS to spend their spells and attacks trying to kill. While this is happening your team is hopefully mopping up the rest of the enemies. This is why Shyvana is making a comeback in professional play. She can do things that other tanks can't in the top lane because of what Cinderhulk and Skirmishers Sabre provides.

CONCLUSION

This evolution is one of the biggest reasons I love league of legends. Riot did not plan to have top lane champions building Cinderhulk, but they went ahead and did it anyway when they realized its strength. Because of this, Riot will probably be nerfing this item on the next patch or two. So I would take advantage of Cinderhulk's strength before this strategy is nerfed into oblivion by Riot.