User blog comment:Elphrihaim/Clarivoyance...?/@comment-9048637-20130806162226/@comment-8506165-20130808213820

"I've heard about removing flash countless times. And you know what? No. Never. This spell is not a problem. Somebody flashed out of your gank? Gank again in next minute, flash has 5 minutes of cooldown. Or instead of whining all the time, consider using goddamn Ghost/Exhaust."

Have you... ever played a jungler? I mostly run jungle champs on whom ghost or exhaust are the only spells I'll consider running alongside Smite, and the second they flash my gank's usually still failed. It's only a success insofar as "they've blown their flash". Which is a problem CREATED by the presence of Flash in the first place. Even in the cases where the other Summoners will let me catch them, I've one spell to cover three lanes and four laners, most of whom will be running Flash. And if I can use mine to catch them, my laner has to catch up too or I've just overextended with my teammate too far away. There are so many problems Flash creates early game when it comes to ganks.

It's an eternally irritating spell. It punishes good plays, like figuring out when a ward's expired and ganking before they put their next down... NOPE, they flashed, your window's gone and their next ward's down when you come back a minute later. And it just continues in late game. Coordinated with your team to block an enemy's escape at the end of the jungle corridor they're going down? NOPE, flash means that what should have been a guaranteed kill was just a waste of time.

Do you genuinely think that Flash is secretly trash tier and everyone's just taking it because they're deluded and they're actually fools for not taking Ghost? Right from low-levels of play where there's low meta awareness and at the highest levels of tournament play? A "get out of fail free" card every five minutes -is- just too good to pass up, and the fact that its only true counter is itself means that even the high cooldown itself isn't all that bad - it means the enemy's flash is less likely to be up when you use yours for any of a dozen unoriginal plays that still let you get away with messing up horribly or falling into a well-organised play by the enemy team. And if it is secretly trash tier, why're you so vehement that it not be removed, when I doubt you'd give a damn if they were going to take Clarity or Clairvoyance or other rarely seen spells out?