LoL Summoner Spells Guide: Which to Take by Role

The best LoL summoner spells decision is simpler than it looks: you take Flash, and then you pick one more spell based on your role and matchup. Flash goes on nearly every champion in the game. Slot two is Teleport or Ignite for top and mid, Smite for jungle (non-negotiable), Heal or Cleanse for ADC, and Ignite or Exhaust for support. Everything else is a matchup swap on top of that. The per-champion trackers show you spell win rates but never explain the actual decision, so this is the role-first version that tells you which two summoner spells to run and, more importantly, when to change the second one.

Below you’ll get every summoner spell and its cooldown in one table, the go-to pair for each role, a plain-language breakdown of when to swap Ignite for Teleport, and the one honest caveat about how much the choice really matters. Spells are locked in champion select alongside your champion, so if you want the full pre-game picture, read this next to our draft phase guide.

How summoner spells work

You bring two summoner spells per game, you pick them in champion select, and you cannot change them once the game starts. Each spell sits on a long cooldown measured in minutes, not seconds, which is why using one is a real commitment and tracking the enemy’s cooldowns is a genuine skill. The Cosmic Insight rune and a few items shave time off those cooldowns, but the base numbers below are what you’re working with by default.

Here are all nine spells and their approximate base cooldowns, checked against the LoL Wiki this patch. Riot tweaks these values more often than you’d think, so treat them as current-patch reference, not gospel.

Notice the spread: Flash on 300 seconds is the longest of the common picks, which is exactly why baiting or tracking an enemy Flash swings so many fights. If you know their Flash is down for five minutes, that’s a five-minute window where every all-in is in your favor.

Best summoner spells by role

Every role has one default pair and one or two swaps, and picking the wrong second spell is one of the most common quiet mistakes in low elo. Flash is a given almost everywhere (jungle is the one place people sometimes drop it, and even then most junglers keep it). The role table below is the fast answer; the sections after it explain the swaps.

If you only remember one thing: your role has a default, and you deviate for a reason. Taking Flash plus your comfort spell into every matchup is fine at first, but the players who climb learn the two or three situations that justify a swap and take it without thinking.

Why Flash is non-negotiable

Flash is the strongest summoner spell in the game and it belongs in one of your two slots on almost every champion, full stop. A 300-second blink does three jobs at once: it saves you from a gank you didn’t see, it dodges the skillshot that would have started your death, and it closes the last 400 units to a kill you otherwise can’t reach. No other spell touches that flexibility.

The handful of exceptions are true outliers. A few immobile mages or specialists occasionally run Ghost or double-non-Flash setups in pro play, but for solo queue and anyone reading a spells guide, the rule is simple: take Flash, then decide the other slot. The skill isn’t whether to take it, it’s when to use it and how to track the enemy’s. Baiting a Flash and then killing into the cooldown window is one of the cleanest ways to win a lane, and it’s a habit you can build starting today.

The second spell is the real decision

Slot two is where the actual choice lives, and it breaks down cleanly by what your champion needs to do in the game. Do you win the lane, survive it, show up on the map, or peel for someone else? Each spell answers one of those questions.

• Ignite – you have kill pressure and want to snowball. It adds burst-window damage and cuts enemy healing, so it turns “almost got them” into a kill and shuts down sustain champions.
• Teleport – you want map presence and safe recovery. It gets you back to lane without losing minions and lets you swing bot lane fights and objectives from across the map.
• Exhaust – you need to blunt one threat. It’s the best peel and anti-carry tool in the game, slowing and weakening whoever’s about to delete your backline.
• Heal – the ADC default. Heals you and your support and gives a move-speed burst that wins the run-it-down fights bot lane loves.
• Cleanse – the answer to lockdown. When one hook, stun, or suppression is the whole enemy game plan, Cleanse is your out.
• Ghost – sticking power. Juggernauts that live and die on staying in melee range (Darius, Garen, Volibear) turn Ghost into a kill button.
• Barrier – the anti-burst pick. A shield you can pre-empt beats a heal against damage you can see coming, like an assassin all-in.

Match the spell to the job and the decision stops being guesswork. A scaling control mage that never has a kill window shouldn’t run Ignite; a lane bully that dominates level 1 to 6 shouldn’t run Teleport just because it’s “safe.” Read your win condition first, then pick the spell that serves it, the same way you’d read a matchup in the lane counter-pick guide.

When to swap Ignite for Teleport

This is the single most-debated summoner spell decision in the game, and the answer is about lane state and map priority, not personal preference. Ignite wins lane. Teleport wins the map. You take the one that matches the game you expect to play.

Take Ignite when you have a kill lane, a strong early-to-mid power spike, and a realistic plan to snowball an advantage before the map opens up. Assassins and lane-bully mids, early-game top laners into a squishy matchup, and aggressive kill supports all want the extra damage and the healing cut. Ignite says “I’m going to win my lane and make it everyone’s problem.”

Take Teleport when the matchup is even or losing, when your champion scales into the later game, or when your team needs you to show up for bot lane and objectives. Teleport lets you recover from a rough back, join a fight two lanes over, and keep your minion waves from bleeding CS while you do it. It’s the default in top lane precisely because top is the most isolated lane and map presence is scarce there.

The mistake we see constantly on top-lane accounts is Ignite into every matchup. One top main we watched ran Ignite into losing lanes for a whole stretch, kept getting collapsed on with no map presence and nothing to show for the aggression, and stalled out. He switched to Teleport in even and losing lanes, kept Ignite only for the kill matchups, and stopped feeding the map. The community has argued this exact call for years – an r/summonerschool thread on Ignite vs Teleport lands in the same place: Ignite for kill lanes, Teleport when you need to be a team resource.

If your spell choices are already dialed and the climb still isn’t moving, the bottleneck usually isn’t theory, it’s games at your MMR. If the grind is the problem rather than the knowledge, our League of Legends rank boost team plays the right spells on your account at honest MMR, same profile, no shared sessions. It’s a shortcut for the player whose climb has stalled on time, not on know-how.

Role-by-role spell notes

Beyond the default pairs, each role has a couple of situational calls worth knowing before you lock in. These are the swaps that separate a comfort pick from a matchup pick.

Jungle and Smite

Smite is mandatory for jungle and there’s no debate: it’s how you secure Dragon, Baron, and the Rift objectives against an enemy jungler contesting them, and the jungle item requires it. Your second slot is almost always Flash. Ghost over Flash shows up on a few gap-closing fighters that want permanent chase speed, and Exhaust over Flash appears on junglers built to peel or lock down a single carry, but Flash plus Smite is the standard for a reason.

ADC survival spells

Heal is the default second spell for most marksmen because it heals both you and your support and adds a move-speed burst that wins bot lane scraps. Swap to Cleanse when the enemy lane is built around one piece of hard lockdown you need to survive (a Blitzcrank hook, a Leona chain, a suppression). Swap to Barrier into a poke or burst lane where a shield you time yourself beats a heal you might not live to use.

Support aggression versus peel

Ignite is the aggressive support default – it turns your kill lanes into actual kills and shuts off enemy sustain. Exhaust is the peel-and-control alternative: run it when your job is keeping your carry alive against a diving assassin, or when blunting one enemy threat matters more than adding damage. Enchanters into a dive comp lean Exhaust; kill-lane supports lean Ignite.

Counter-argument: the choice matters less than the usage

The honest caveat the tracker pages won’t tell you: your second summoner spell is a small edge next to how well you use Flash. A perfectly-chosen Teleport that you burn on a lazy recall loses to a “worse” Ignite in the hands of someone who tracks the enemy Flash and times their all-ins. The choice is worth a little; the usage is worth a lot.

So get the second spell roughly right, then spend your real attention on the things that compound: not wasting Flash on panic, tracking when the enemy’s is down, and holding Teleport for a play instead of a recall. Below Diamond, the player who uses two decent spells well beats the player who agonizes over the “optimal” pick and then flashes into a wall. Pick the pair that fits your role and matchup, confirm the current cooldowns against the summoner spell reference on the LoL Wiki, and double-check any recent changes in the official patch notes, since Riot adjusts these values more than players expect.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best summoner spells in LoL?

Flash is the best spell in the game and goes on almost every champion. Your second spell depends on role and matchup: Teleport or Ignite top, Ignite or Teleport mid, Smite jungle (mandatory), Heal or Cleanse ADC, and Ignite or Exhaust support.

Should I take Ignite or Teleport top lane?

Take Ignite when you have a kill lane and want to snowball an early lead. Take Teleport when the matchup is even or losing, when you scale, or when your team needs map presence for bot lane and objectives. Ignite wins lane, Teleport wins the map.

What’s the cooldown on Flash?

Flash is 300 seconds by default, the longest of the common summoner spells. The Cosmic Insight rune and certain items reduce it, and knowing when an enemy’s Flash is down for five minutes is one of the biggest tempo edges in the game.

Do ADCs take Heal or Cleanse?

Heal is the default because it heals you and your support and adds a move-speed burst. Take Cleanse instead into a lane built around hard lockdown you need to survive, like a hook or a suppression, and Barrier into heavy burst.

What does Cleanse actually remove?

Cleanse removes most crowd control and summoner-spell debuffs on you and shortens the duration of some remaining effects. It does not remove everything (suppression and knock-ups behave differently), so check the specific matchup before you rely on it.

Why is Smite mandatory for jungle?

Smite secures the major neutral objectives (Dragon, Baron, Rift) against an enemy jungler contesting them, and the jungle item requires it to function. Without Smite you can’t reliably clear camps early or win objective smite-offs, so it’s non-negotiable for the role.

The short version: take Flash, then pick your second spell for the job your champion needs to do. Teleport or Ignite top, Ignite or Teleport mid, Smite jungle, Heal or Cleanse ADC, Ignite or Exhaust support. Learn the two or three matchups that justify a swap, and put the rest of your energy into using Flash well and tracking the enemy’s. If the spells are dialed and the climb still isn’t moving, that’s a games-played problem, not a knowledge problem, and you can hand the climb to our boost team on your schedule while the account climbs at honest MMR.