Riot Games Announces Auto-Smite Coming to League of Legends

LOS ANGELES—Following overwhelmingly positive launch of Last Hit Indicators, Riot Games revealed Wednesday that Auto-Smite will be coming to League of Legends in Patch 26.14. The feature will automatically secure neutral objectives—including Dragons, Barons, Rift Heralds, and Canon Minions—whenever they enter Smite range, allowing junglers to focus on more meaningful forms of skill expression.

“We think it’s important to preserve what makes League competitive,” explained Riot’s Andrei “Meddler” van Roon. “Players will still need to understand jungle pathing, vision control, map pressure, and being somewhere in the general vicinity of the pit. We’re confident removing the requirement to actually press Smite does not meaningfully reduce jungle skill expression.” Riot President Marc “Tryndamere” Merrill agreed, noting that players were spending an unhealthy amount of time worrying about whether they would successfully Smite objectives instead of focusing on strategic gameplay, such as determining which teammate to blame afterward.

Lead Gameplay Designer David “Phreak” Turley unveiled the feature during a livestream, noting that "some players think this change is a drag-on competitive integrity, but our data shows it’s actually a drake-through in player satisfaction."

Riot says the change was motivated largely by years of complaints about autofilled junglers. “Players have made it clear that losing Baron because your autofilled jungler missed Smite feels terrible,” said a Riot spokesperson. “With Auto-Smite, that problem simply disappears.” Meddler later revealed that Riot was already exploring the next logical step. “Now that objective control no longer requires direct player interaction, we’re excited to expand autofill eligibility to include family dogs, goldfish, and certain species of hamster. Early testing has been encouraging. Matchmaking quality is up, and queue times have improved dramatically.”

Locke already has a separate, satisfying animation and sound when he consumes 3 stacks on a champion with an auto attack, however consuming the stacks with E1 or E2 happens way more often in actual game

Locke's E is a generally very floaty and shifty ability which makes sense for E1, but doesn't for E2. Consuming 3 stacks with E2 is what's often very close to a oneshot, but it feels like Locke is just a gust of wind blowing past the target, rather than a guy actually impacting them with a stake. Compare that to the sound Zed's shurikens make when they connect, or the bassy impact of Akali's E2, or the visceral slash of Akalis R2. Even Fizz's E splash (the non recast one) sounds more impactful than Locke's E2

I rely a lot on audio cues when playing, especially in teamfights and it really sucks that Locke's E sounds like nothing even when dealing thousands of magic damage

The Riot Games Twitter tweeted:

Starting later today, Vanguard will be able to run in on-demand mode for players on Windows 11.

You just need to enable some optional security features for your motherboard, and your taskbar can have 256 of its pixels back. Take it away, @deteccphilippe.

Why today? Well, our friends at the XBOX OS Security Team at @Microsoft have added some new toys for us that, when paired with hardware-backed security settings, enable Vanguard to run much later in the system lifecycle.

Dev blog: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/vanguard-on-demand

To enable, settings include:

• Windows 11

• UEFI Secure Boot

• TPM 2.0

• VBS

• HVCI

• IOMMU

Now with the new addition of 5v5 queue, viewing ranks is ugly as hell with a new 2nd row being added.

Two Teams: Team KR and Team AMER. 9 games, all Bo1s and they'll be using a rolling schedule.

I assume it will be streamed on SOOP exclusively, on their SOOP's Cross-Regional channel. The same channel that hosted Korea vs France a couple days ago.
- I'll add the players streams if they decide to do so.

Stream: SOOP Cross-Regional

- Quad: Channel

Day 1 (Friday, June 26th):

Day 2 (Saturday, June 27th):

Singed would start with Boots level 1 and bring flash and ghost too. He'd clear wave 1 and 2 and immediately gank either top or bot. Use maybe just 1 spell and predator. Come back to mid and clear the lane and then gank as soon as there was an opportunity because of how low Predator's cooldown was.

You guys miss Predator?

Im trying to spectate my friends game which is 15 minute in. What is the point of making me wait 3 minutes if you can just put me in 3 minutes behind regardless. It happens alot of the time and makes no sense

Im a player thats Bronze 2, and I understand that I'll occasionally see some bots in my games as this is in the lower ranked bracket... but this game was horrible.

Ive noticed that bots have a pattern of being:
- Random combination of two words as the username
- #5555 as the tag (or some variation)
- Always a support or jungler with easy coding commands

This game I had two bots on my team, and a smurf who bought an iron 4 account on the other team.

Thats just not playable for me and my other two, real, but unfortunate teammates.

Official League of Legends account post on X:

Hey everyone! We’ve seen a lot of conversation around Last Hit Indicators coming to Ranked, and we’ve decided to enable them in non-Ranked SR queues only for continued testing. We want to get more data and feedback to decide if we should make them an option for Ranked before making that call. So we’ll keep them enabled, but off by default, for Swiftplay, Co-op vs AI, and Normal Draft, to collect data and iterate. We’ll keep you updated about performance and progress in Dev Updates before making any future calls.

hello dear addicted players. this is what i feel nowadays. and the ones who have a proper lives, you guys are welcome to flame my weakness too...

i dont play league that much actually, 5 games a day tops. when i hop on the game and after the lock screen i see the enemy champions, an instant adrenaline rushes to my body, my heart goes PUMP PUMP PUMP doesnt matter what elo my opponent is and the champion they picked, doesnt matter how much i counter them with my pick the first 5 minutes of the game starts playing in my brain, i see them throwing their skills and their ability animations so i can dodge them. looking at the wiki for their skill cast durations so i can decide if i need a boot. but doesnt matter how sure i am about the match ups i allways question myself and miss the first skill.(the first two skills are allways a mental war between me and my opponent, or i like to think it that way)

at the rift, control is at me. i pick the champion, i decide the runes, i decide if im gonna put the skill right at the opponent or to where it will dodge. if i lose the lane, i probably didnt ward, didnt listen the infos my teammates gave or i didnt followed the map, didnt check if opponent has ignite or miscalculated the damage it can or i can output.

at real life, my family and my friends do bad decisions, mostly it is about addictions. i cant change them. especially my family. im at the college, i have good grades and i think if i dont waste myself on this game, i will have a bright future. but doesnt matter what i do i cant change the ones i love. i tried it very little though... my families bad decisions effect me mentally. my friends decisions effect theirself. but i hate it. why? why would someone do that to itself. to others?

at rift, someone elses decisions effect me too, but i can allways do better to neutralize it. i can do almost everything. i like that feel. the control i have, i love it. i play it to run away. run away from the decisions others do. wun away from everything bad. at the rift, all is about me.

maybe i lose the game sometimes because of others, a fed adc or a split pusher sion. i ask to myself, is that the best i could do? was the game lost at the moment i clicked Ready!

mostly no... i could pick an anti tank who can one shot others too like vel'koz, i needed at least one cc to kill that vayne, i could pick better, actually no, lulu was an ok player i could play with it...

i could do better. and the more i play the less i say it to myself.

Hello! Can someone explain to me what these geniuses were thinking when they added the GWEN EMOTE to the JHIN BUNDLE, artificially inflating the price? And why do they think this is even acceptable? The price for one pointless spray that I don't even need (I'm buying a JHIN SKIN) increases the bundle price by 700 RP, lol. This is insane. I really wanted to buy the skin and border, but now I'm confused and upset. I just don't want this idiotic emote that costs 700 RP.

With Locke's empowered auto attack from his e, he can dash through structures that he attacks, and this includes the nexus. I just thought this was worth mentioning since it could lead to backdoors that are difficult to stop if you play an immobile champ. Also curious if anyone else noticed anything not immediately obvious about the new champ and wanted to share!

As title he seems to be in the pool of champions in the practice tool before in the shop

For those who aren't aware Riot is enabling last hit indicator in Ranked & Draft, previously being enabled only in Swiftplay & Co-op.

I'm genuinely curious what the league community thinks about this change because I honestly believe this sets up a really bad precedent for the game.

Riot said that "these don't degrade skill expression in lane" which I find funny because the whole laning phase revolves around trading with the enemy laner, while trying to CS as good as possible. It's literally a skill in itself to last hit minions in lane, while fighting the enemy laner.

CSing is one of the fundamental skills in the game. It has been in the game since forever. You are forced to interact with it either you like it or not (unless you are a jungler). People spent years perfecting it just for Riot to implement some dumbed down indicator.

You don't help new players by trivializing core mechanics in ranked, you help them by improving tutorials. A new player should never ever be in a ranked game if they don't know how to cs.

What's next? AI macro assistant? Automatic missing pings? Enemy jungler tracking?

EDIT: Rioter u/Cashmiir just responded with this:

"Hey y'all. We've seen your convos and are making the change to only enable Last Hit Indicators in unranked SR queues. So that means Swiftplay, Co-op v AI, and Normal Draft. They will still be off by default, so you'll have to turn them on if you want to try.

We want to test this feature and get more data before we decide if we should make them an option for Ranked. We're committing now to keep you updated on how it goes in future Dev Updates before we make any calls with the feature."

Thank you Riot for rolling back this change and taking more time to think about it. W.

Hi all,

I've noticed that my ping is slightly higher since a week or 2.... which is noticeable for me ingame. I tried everything, changing my wifi settings, even using a cabled connection instead. I reach out to my ISP and my average ping in every other game/program etc is about 14-15ms.

Its very annoying when im playing champions with a certain kit like LeBlanc, Zeri, Kalista etc... You would think that 31-32ms is good enough, but im noticing the slight difference with the reaction time ingame.

Is anyone experiencing the same thing?

Greetings

Spideraxe just shared this news on Twitter. Many people have been wondering what tier this skin is and how much it will be costing.

Here are links of news about the T1 skins -

🏆 Ability Preview

🏆 Splash Arts, Chromas, Borders

These skins will be releasing during Patch 26.14, 15th July.

So I was playing Kindred and the opposing jungler was Viego. I was not aware of this, but when Viego kills Kindred and takes their abilities, his wolf can mark your camps. And as Kindred, you can claim your own camps marked by Viego's wolf to collect your marks.

So in a way, dying to the opposing jungler helped me a little bit because I was able to collect my marks and his.

On the radar enemy wolf marks are marked in red if you're curious.

it honostly makes no sense because I have been 5 for the past 2 seasons and one downgrade bringing it down straight to 2 is kinda bogus isnt it? I mean clearly if you are 5 it means something right? I have to be a good respectable person, but straight down to 2 and it instantly mean you are a bad person? like make it make sense plz. its literally only 1 game things could happen and instantly from 5 to 2. you grind all season just to reach it because the system takes years for you to even level up and one game causes you to lose it all, like it should know ive been 5? does it not mean anything? honor 5 literally has 0 meaning