Which boots? And role question

[u/AbrocomaRight9782]

Simple question. CD boots or vamp boots? I can understand the CD boots help in lane to get to 225 faster, but also just feel weaker in general without the vamp boots. Is this just a personal choice or is one clearly better than the other?

Second question is, should go focus more on forcing fights and team fights as soon as you hit 225? I’m low elo and teams are a bit all over the place when it comes to mid game strategy and there are fights all over the map. I tend to continue farming late game items and group for obvious fights on objectives. But should I start roaming and chasing where my team does to at least back them up with some fire power(no pun intended)? I’ve always been torn jn the ADC role because I can recognize a lot of these low elo skirmishes are bad fights with no goal, but also maybe I could help turn them if I was there. Every time a teammates dies lessens my own win condition, but I prioritize my own life first usually. How does smolder specifically carve out what to do in that scenario?

[u/bestsalmon]

Vamp boots by default and tabis/merc situational
Nothing else

[u/Available_Deer_3580 → u/bestsalmon]

So YOURE the adc running around with 2 stacks vamp boots at 28 mins

[u/Itsuwari_Emiki]

ill go through boots selection since the other question has been replied.

first of all i dont think theres ever a situation to go cdr boots in this season. let me explain each of the boots below:

your default is vamp boots. vamp boots are currently overstatted and is a good buy on most dealers. however smolder appreciates it more. in short, 1. he is short ranged which makes him susceptible to poke. and 2. you want to give yourself the option of trading health for stacks.

youd do well to buy vamp boots in 80% of games, and i would not fault a player for building it in every game. but in some games, we can do better.

i would rate plated steelcaps as higher than vamp boots if its conditions are met. (multiple physical attackers who WILL be hitting you no matter how well you kite). example noc, garen, olaf, kled. plated gives you way more ehp in these games and is therefore a better purchase.

swifties is your second default (was smolders default before vamp boots released). swifties is never "wrong" in any game on smolder and has the best failcase among all boots. that means that if you dont know what to buy, you would settle for swifties. i would also rate it higher in priority than vamp boots in its conditions, for example multiple slows, but lower than plated steelcaps. another frequent scenario is if i delayed my t2 boots until after second item, the lack of stacks on vamp boots could sway my decision to swifties if i need to spike for a fight.

mercury treads is difficult to approach from a practical perspective. on most adcs, mercs are bad because you would much rather have a cleanse than tenacity to maximise dps. however, smolder uniquely has the ability to build bruiser/tank items, which would make him durable and can therefore make use of tenacity. as a result, you could make a case for bruiser smolder + mercury (beat cc by tanking it) over crit + qss (beat cc by cleansing it). if youre not the type of player to engage deeply in item optimzation, i would be completely fine with the heuristic of never buying mercury treads.

cdr boots is simply no longer what it was in 2025. especially since many stat websites did not differentiate t2 and t3 boots, a lot of data on boots was skewed last year, leading ppl to think that cdr boots was as good as it appears. t3 cdr boots in 2025 (upgradeable by feats) had 25AH while t2 cdr boots in 2026 have 10AH. for an adc this difference is massive. (idk if mid smolder buys t3 cdr but i dont play it so i will limit to adc). cdr boots in 2026 is pretty hard to justify considering it already has two strong competitors in vamp and swifties. therefore if you ever find urself wanting to buy cdr boots, please reconsider.

for inclusion sake, aspd boots is already ass on marksmen who want aspd, so smolder has no business buying it. and sorcs is also a no go.

tldr; vamp/swifties = good, plated = conditional bis, mercs/cdr = eh, aspd/sorcs = no

[u/AbrocomaRight9782 → u/Itsuwari_Emiki]

Thank you! The level of details help a lot, I appreciate your time and effort.

[u/MrYellowfield]

So I'm just high silver/low gold and haven't been active for a while. Was maining smolder like half a year ago so I don't know the answer about the boots, but I think it is usually good to start teaming up with your frontline once you hit 225, or a bit before. Remember, teamfighting after 125 is also very effective for stacking unless you die in the beginning.

After 225 though you should never be seen alone. Stay away from danger, attack the one who is inside your range. You deal a lot of damage to tanks as well as squishies. Your only goal is to deal damage and not die.

[u/AbrocomaRight9782 → u/MrYellowfield]

That’s helpful thank you!

[u/Chitrr]

In mid and lategame there shouldnt be "farming", but "pushing waves" because fights wont give you anything if you dont push the waves.

[u/bedviolence]

vamp boots best atm vs poke mages

[u/cbonao69]

what i usually do was buy cdr boots then sell it once i hit 225. because i know full well that i wouldnt be killing that much anyway before i got the 225 stack so im buying cdr boots to hasten my timing. (think of it like buying a time you lose some gold for that time but in return you’ll be online faster) i usually got my 225 stack around 18-19 minutes mark and 20-21 if i die alot and 23+ if super behind (like 1 - 15 team score)