Talk:Flash/@comment-15667791-20131120214457/@comment-10428734-20140325211239

"Dagger has 12s CD!" "you can just do a 2nd gank early/mid game and Flash won't be ready for every TF in late game."

Congrats. That's exactly the reason why Flash is LESS balanced than Dagger. In DotA (unless you get initiated on first, but then it's your fault), your Dagger should almost always be available when you need it. On the other side, I saw close games that have been won because the Flash of an ADC was on CD, while the other's was available. Guess which ADC died during the last teamfight... Seriously, when it's late game, I now prefer to stay back for 5 minutes rather than risking to throw a teamfight because of a summoner spell.

Plus, Riot had the brilliant idea to create ways to reduce Flash's CD (wtf?), which makes it even more imbalanced since the cooldown is not even the same for everyone.

The problem with Flash is that 90% of the time, it is not used to make plays. It is used to destroy plays. You try to gank mid lane and they flash away. You try to kite a bruiser as an ADC and they just flash to finish you. You manage to pull some sick jukes and they finally get the kill with flash+ignite (I swear, that's the most stupid way to die in this game). "But you can Flash yourself!" That's exactly my point. The guy who has Flash up wins. If both have it, you just Flash-trade and you wait 5 minutes to Flash-trade again. Very funny.

To me, Flash is just a big red "Oh-shit-I-got-outplayed-better-gtfo" button. And honestly, most summoner spells are: you can use Barrier while stunned (wtf?), Cleanse allows you to get stunned and don't care (when you could just be a better player, and not get caught in the first place) and Ignite is probably the dumbest of all (can't get kill, click, get kill, huehuehuehue). Imo the only spells that require "knowledge" are CV (but nobody uses it) and maybe TP (but -almost- nobody uses it to gank, better blow a 5 minute CD just to return to top lane when you b -.-).

The sad thing is, removing/reworking Flash right now would screw the whole game balance even more (yes, it's possible). For example, disabling Flash upon taking damage seems like a fine idea to promote the "best" use of this spell, but then, how would non-mobility champions (Veigar and stuff), who are already in a very bad spot in this meta, be able to escape stuff? No, Flash cannot be removed, and should not be nerfed.

In fact, I like the idea of the post just above me, though I would apply it quite differently. If the cooldown was like 360/300/240/180 (levels 1/6/11/16), this would at least ensure that everyone has Flash (that could also be applied to other summoner spells) for big late game encounters (after level 16), without making ganks impossible in the early game (especially pre-6 ganks who would have a higher reward actually). Yep, that's maybe a buff in the end, but it's not like you aren't forced to take Flash already, this spell is so entrenched in LoL balance that it could be directly implemented like Recall.

And remove those silly summoner spell CD reductions.