Summoner Spells

Summoner Spell Icons

Here I'll provide a list and short description of all summoner spells as well as my personal opinion on effective use.

- Exhaust, reduces target enemy champion's movement speed by 40% and attack damage dealt by 70% and ability and item damage dealt by 35% for 2.5 seconds.
* I find this summoner spell to be my general go to offensive spell, it's amazing when dueling and using on an opponent after they initiate an offensive steroid. Knowing when to and when not to use it when an enemy is fleeing is the mastery behind it. It's not as good as ensuring kills as Ignite is. It's available at Summoner level 1.

- Garrison, dominion only spell, for allied turrets it increases regeneration and attack speed for 8 seconds. For enemy turrets it reduces damage dealt by 80% for 8 seconds.
* I don't play much dominion because my computer specs are fairly low and I can only run it off of Skype or Vent, I find that taking this on any roaming champion in dominion is a plus, but you don't typically need more than one per champion. It makes the difference between attacking an enemy under their turret or protecting your own from minions.

- Ghost, your champion ignores unit collision and has 27% increased movements peed for 10 seconds.
* I love this spell. Depending on the champion, it's either leagues ahead of exhaust or in some cases just better than flash. While Flash will get you out of a bad situation instantly, Ghost allows you to avoid inevitable turret diving by allowing you to blast all the way back to your inner turret in a few seconds.

- Heal, restores 165-590 Health to your champion and 50% of that to your nearby allies.
* Words can't express how much I hate this spell. I hate it with such a passion that I've started to use it in place of Flash on mobile champions. It's bait, through and through and it's support in late game. Use it selfishly in lane and use it graciously in team fight scenarios. Try not to have more than one champion with heal on any team and allow your Ranged ADs to take it before you if their lane doesn't have superior sustain.

- Revive, instantly revives your champion at your summoner platform and icnreases your maximum health by 220-560 for 2 minutes.
* It has one use, when your enemies just barely escape a double ace with a huge amount of minions at your exposed nexus. That's it. Any other time it's potentially wasted and has an excessively long cooldown. If the health gain was permanent and reduced from it's current standpoint with it's 10 minute cooldown and stacking, it might have potential, but it doesn't.

- Smite, deals 445-870 true damage to target enemy minion, pet or neutral minion.
* Only take this if you're jungling. It's not a requirement for a lot of junglers, but it helps safely ensure objectives by getting the last hit with it. As such I feel it a necessity to point out, if your enemies are hovering outside of dragon or baron, slow down DPS so your jungler has a better chance of getting the smite off for the last hit.
- Surge, increases Attack Speed by 35% and Ability Power by 10-78 for 12 seconds.
* I want to like this spell, but it has severe limitations. It's only usefulness is on AP/AS split champions such as Orianna's specialty kit or proper use with Rumble's overheat. Otherwise it's kind of a bad spell.

- Teleport, after casting for 4 seconds, teleports your champion to target allied minion, turret or ward. If you activate the spell again before it finishes, it instantly goes on cooldown for half of it's max cooldown.
* This is a staple for Solo Top champions with low mobility. It allows them to teleport into brush and sneak attack or make it there for Dragon to turn the tides in a fight. This is only available in Classic.

- Cleanse, removes all disables and summoner spell debuffs affecting your champion and lowers the duration of incoming disables by 65% for 3 seconds.
* This is your first spell unlocked according to summoner level at level 2. This is a staple on Ranged AD carries for early game lane dominance but is often overlooked in favor of Heal after it's recent buff. The reason to take Cleanse is that it does remove disables and debuffs but also reduces incoming disables by 65%. Cleanse wont remove the damage portion of ignite just the grievous wounds, where QSS removes absolutely everything.

- Clarity, restores 190-700 mana to your champion and 50% of that to nearby allies.
* This is unlocked at summoner level 6. It's a terrible spell through and through. It's great in a lot of lanes but it loses it's importance in late game. Some champions can profit with it, but at the cost of a more beneficial summoner spell. Take at your own risk.

- Ignite, deals 70-410 true damage over 5 seconds to target enemy unit, it also applies grievous wounds which reduces healing effects on the target for the same duration.
* This is a staple for AP carries since they're very bursty it helps with their overall potential. Just don't go wasting it at level 1 with them being above 1 bar of health. This spell is unlocked at summoner level 7.

- Promote, restores health to a nearby siege minion, additionally it increases it's stats, and causes it's killing blows to give gold to the caster.
* This spell is unlocked at summoner level 8 and is very overrated. The reason why it's overrated is because it requires pressence in the lane due to it's fairly low cooldown, if you leave a promoted siege minion alone in lane it'll take a tower since it greatly increases it's health and stats, and it's passive is to take 50% damage from tower hits. This spell loses effectiveness late game in Summoner's Rift because Super Minions can't be promoted like the picture in the League of Legends client suggests.

- Clairvoyance, reveals a small portion of the map to your team for 4 seconds. Enemy Clairvoyance's eyes will be red while yours will be greenish.
* Great spell for support champions to keep an eye on enemy junglers and help remove pressure and to help steal enemy jungle camps. It's best used in the middle of jungle camps, when you catch a jungler at one camp area you'll want to keep rotating between top and bottom jungle to keep an eye on them. This spell is unlocked at summoner level 10.

- Flash, teleports your champion toward your cursor's location.
* This is the general go to summoner spell for escaping situations. It's the final summoner spell and it's unlocked at summoner level 12. It has a fairly low cooldown and covers about 450~ range instantly. Remember that it goes towards your mouse cursor, so if it's currently on your character you'll waste your flash and you wont flash the full direction that your champion is facing. Furthermore, it's importance in escapes is flashing over walls. This is also why I use the term pseudo-flash often with champions that have low cooldown wall clearing abilities. Not all walls can be flashed over after the nerf and some have sweet spots.

Key Shortcuts you might and probably don't know.

Tilde or `/~ next to your 1 key, this makes your champion not interact with minions while being held. This means you wont mis-ignite a minion if you hold it every time you pop ignite. To a lesser extent this works wonders with supporting other champions and harassing them in minion waves.

Alt or G and clicking the minimap is a blue, general ping. You can also use this to click on champions to target them.

V and clicking the map or mini map is a retreat ping, I don't remember the shortcut but whatever. This is a yellow ping with a different noise.

Ctrl or S is Stop, which makes your character stop in place and not auto attack. Great for holding minion waves just outside of turret range without hitting them (if you're a jungler with the laner coming back to lane) and building waves behind you.

Shift and any regularly used key is smartcast's default setup, I find it a very painful twist of the fingers to use since you have to click to move. That's why I use smartcast as default.

Q W E and R are your general skills, as you should already know. You can rebind then to 1, 2, 3, 4 with 5 and 6 being your summoner spells and rebind your items to f1-f6 if you actively play other MMOs because you'll find your default finger position altering to a QWEF position instead of WASD.

B is recall, I sometimes re-assign it because if you start the cast of recall then you have to wait for the casting portion to finish before you can move, which is about a second. This can mean the difference between misclicking V while running away to alert your comrades to escape.

P is the shop tab if I remember correctly, but I don't typpically use it and instead click on the little bag because you can't press escape to get out of the shop tab (stupid) so pressing p to open it up can block most of your vision.

Y locks/unlocks your camera view. I typically keep it unlocked as is default outside of the tutorial. I know people that keep it locked and constantly want to crack their skulls.

Space Bar, this defaults your camera position to your champion. This is what you use when you press on the minimap to look at others or alternatively;

F1-F5 if not rebound will default your camera view to other champions. They're in a very awkward spot, so I tend to just click the minimap to keep a better view of the situation.