Ignite, League of Legends’ damage over time summoner spell, received a much-needed visual effect update in Patch 10.18.
The update, according to League VFX artist Sirhaian, will “improve [the spell’s] visual quality while greatly reducing how noisy it was, but trying to keep its importance level.”
The new and improved Ignite is vastly more vibrant and colorful than its live server version. It’s clearer and easy to see, and in a messy teamfight with spells and visual effects exploding left, right, and center, it’ll almost certainly stand out.
It also clearly communicates when the individual ticks of the debuff occur, pulsating bright orange and yellow each second. This should give players a good idea of the duration of the spell, allowing them to react accordingly, use Cleanse, heal up, or simply disengage.
League lead VFX artist Oliver “Beardilocks” McDonald outlined all the visual updates coming to Patch 10.18. The goal of “these smaller scope updates is to improve the overall gameplay clarity of VFX whilst bringing them up to modern League of Legends standards,” Beardilocks said in a Reddit post.
As well as Ignite, some of League’s oldest champions—Nocturne, Viktor, and Malazhar—were also “spruced” up and “modernized” in Patch 10.18.
Ignite is a common spell which is powerful in duels as it gives you an extra damage spell that scales with levels. It is often used to get first blood because combined with the ignite mastery which gives more AP and AD when it’s on cooldown, it is very powerful. It is also to counter champions with a good amount of self-heal.
This spell’s damage can be increased through spells that increase damage from all sources such as Diplomatic Immunity, Torment, and Cutthroat. Cleanse removes the damage over time component of Ignite, but not the healing reduction. The healing debuff from Ignite does not stack with other abilities that apply a healing debuff, such as Miss Fortune’s Impure Shots.Using two Ignites on a single enemy champion will not stack. Instead they will refresh.Casting ignite does not interrupt channeling spells, such as Malzahar’s ultimate. This spell can not effect enemy minions.
Hopefully Riot will begin delivering more visual updates to long-overdue kits and other summoner spells as well. While receiving nerfs and buffs for multiple champions is important all the time, quality of life buffs are just as important. It’s easier to play a game where everything is clear and concise instead of outdated with old graphics.