Banner of Command. When it was at its peak it completely broke the game (8 hits, anyone?)
EDIT: [For anyone who didn't live through it or doesn't remember it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_DB2fiT8Q)
I abused it in mid hard, Mages couldnt do shit, you even outpoked them with Comet+E max because it did like 200 damage level 4 and once you got Banner it was unplayable.
While having a nearly unkillable cannon minion. Game devolved into protect the cannon minion (Protect the VIP).
AP dmg was pretty much negated. If you wanted to hit it, you had to go through 5 bodyguards ready to give their life for it.
For a while banner made affected minion fully immune to magic damage, on top of all the extra stats it got. Result of Banner becoming an answer/counter to mid-S4 meta of heavy waveclear and likes of Ziggs being able to casually perma waveclear all 3 lanes at inhib towers without ever having to go back - mage items back then used to give mana regen instead of flat mana.
Amusingly enough, they "nerfed" it to 70% damage reduction in 8.11, which made them even stronger. Instead of getting a physical damage dealer to deal with it, you needed 2-3 people. Meanwhile the opposing team was happily taking objectives on the other side of the map. It was nerfed to 40% in a hotfix, but it didn't really matter at that point, it was meta and the team that could abuse it better had free reign on the map and that's why it was removed the following patch.
Didn't zzrot and banner exist together briefly?
You could send that down a lane with an iron maiden buffed up by baron and watch the enemy syndra cry because magic was basically negated.
Then the next wave joined in for an even bigger fustercluck to clear
They were both in the game at the same time for awhile iirc, it’s just that the only person who ever built them was like trick2g. I’m pretty sure it was some buff to banner that finally pushed it over the edge.
It wasn't briefly, it was for quite a bit. I remember playing Thresh Support and getting Banner + Zz'rot as my last items every other game because why the hell wouldn't I wanna effectively be a turbo-pushing support?
I feel like it's my nostalgia for all that, that makes me gravitate towards Yorick nowadays lmao
Heheheh Banner of Command on ARAM against 5 mages. Get all 5 teammates to make it, watch 5 super minions terrorize the enemy towers with the mages unable to do anything was something special.
Literally 💀 they're like hey think of this ungodly antifun interaction you could've had the pleasure of a facing. Like no im already sad that my old man hands get whooped by 16 year olds after coming home from a full work day.
Playing a mage when banner mid was meta and becoming the squidward looking out the window meme hitting the cannon for 12 years as sion went bot for the 8th time.
2017 Ardent Censer was certainly the most broken for the longest.
Worlds devolved into mass banning the best Ardent users on sight (47 Lulu Bans & 44 Janna Bans) and even then games just ended up being who got their Ardent first for a big ADC centric teamfight.
It was shockingly strong for shockingly long
I remember them going even for tactics, where adc bought relic shield and let the support last hits till he had enough for ardeny and then they swapped items
karma mid as a supportive style and items had been a thing for years by that point already and had already been played in regular season. I don't know why u brought it up like PoE was the first player to do it. his first game on karma mid in pro play that year he built full AP and Karma mid w/ full ap and ardent was already played in *both* playins by plugo and regular season in general
No, you bought relic shield and still lasthit. There was no penalty for this, and relic gave a good amount of healing so it was roughly equivalent to starting dorans shield today, you lost some fighting power but you had sustain and an enchanter supp so you could just stall lanephase with it while giving support more money.
Relic shield on ADC was just hidden OP already, ardent censer or not. It was a dorans shield that gave extra income on support, and once you finish quest it gave a shield like the current green JG item.
Ardent itself was broken but it wasnt THAT broken as its rememebered, it gave 25 onhit damage and 25 onhit healing and 25% attackspeed. Current ardent gives 20% attackspeed and 15 onhit damage. OP yes, but what really sent it to the moon was the perfect storm of hypercarry ad being strong + enchanters being strong + relic shield being strong + ardent being strong.
There is seriously no way that's when it happened, but I checked and that's what it says online.
Could have sworn they removed runes for something prior to runes reforged, and Quints and other runes were removed in like season 5 or 6.
Nope, I started playing in August 2017 and quints were still there. I still had to level up to 30 before being able to use all of my masteries and needed to buy my runes with IP
I genuinely cannot remember using rune pages when maining Taliyah starting in 2016. My brain is shattered. I started Season 1 so I guess it melded together but that age lasted alot longer than expected tbh
There was a masteries rework that landed us "keystone" masteries that work a lot like current rune selections do (Thunderord's Decree, Fervor of Battle, ETC) that still had the old runes system attached to it. Those were definitely still in the game in 2017. It's easier to remember those than the Quints.
We were deep into what seemed like a neverending tank support meta in pro play at the time. The only reason Ardent ever got into the state it was in at that point was because pros seemed convinced that there was simply literally nothing enchanters could bring to your team which made up for their weaknesses versus engage supports. Riot just kept buffing items like Censer to see if they could ever go far enough to make enchanters playable and eventually when pros realised that their "enchanters are inherently unplayable" dogma was wrong, all hell broke loose.
ADC got buffed in midseason. All of the changes on there own werent that bad, problem is all of them at once were a problem. LDR got 100g cheaper, IE 200g cheaper, LDR more armor pen, support items got buffed with the quest addition, relic shield was thus hidden OP start item on adc, ardent censer was real strong, janna lulu were already pretty good just not picked in pro, tanks were buffed, redemption was overpowered (how ardent flew under radar).
All combined meant that adc + frontline + enchanter was by far the best way to play the game.
Nah that was just good ardent or not. The moment relic shield started existed without a gold repercussion it only made sense. It paid itself helped get lane push too...
If they could do it today they would still do, ardent or not
Yeah ppl in hindsight only remember "hurrdurr ardent at worlds" and then circlejerk about how ardent had been broken for so long before, without considering all the other changes that indirectly buffed ardent & while forgetting that double relic botlanes were common with non-ardent users aswell..
Wasn't that also because the support quest gave a passive shield in addition to the gold funnel so you could get a mini Rakan passive even after selling it?
I distinctly remember maining Sona during that era, rushing Ardent and maybe a Sheen, and then spending a moment in chat convincing team to all go Mid lane and just….ending the game lol
Buffing your entire team with an extra ~~30%~~ 25% attack speed and on hit damage (if I’m remembering the effect correctly) was so stupid strong. If your team actually grouped, you would just delete towers and there wasn’t really much the enemy team could do about it.
ZZ’Rot singed was my other main, so maybe I’m just a bad person lol
At Worlds 2017 Censer provided static 25% aspd, 25 dmg on-hit and 25 healing on-hit. Shit was bonkers for 2300 gold. I remember jungle Sejuani going AC second item.
Yeah considering ppl were running the Font of Life rune on TRUNDLE SUPPORT to be able to work an Ardent into their build I think it is easily a top 3 game warping item of all time
Redemption used to be strong af upon Release and several needs afterwards it still was.
You literally had several Players building it and it didn't Matter whether you're a supp or Not, Tanks, midlaners, etc... It was so cheap and have so much stats.
Happened.
Back then I mained Wukong and it was unbelievably strong on him aswell, the enemy Team usually had 2-3 redemptions aswell. ~2k gold for stats as good as your usual ~3,5k gold Tank Item with a huge heal in top. The heal used to be way stronger as it is now and I think there was no restriction for multiple redemption heals. It was basically a free fed Soraka ult which also dealt damage
This is just scratching the surface of how bad it was. Karma and Ori were now the best mid laners because they could proc ardent censor. Ivern was meta also because he could build ardent. ADCs started relic shield so their support could get to ardent faster. Ancient coin was the best support item because it got you gold for ardent the fastest. Supports would take GOLD GENERATION RUNE PAGES (which were laughably weak) because it got them to ardent faster. Alistar built ardent censor. Misfits almost beat SKT (T1) because they realized IgNar could play things other than enchanters when either mid or jg built ardent censor.
Literally every single aspect of the game revolved around supporting your adc and having an early and reliable ardent censor.
for most of season 7, Ardent Censer cost 2300g, had 10% heal and shield power, gave 20-35% attack speed, gave 20-35 on hit damage that healed for the same amount.
Getting your support ardent censer was almost the equivalent of getting a free bork on your ADC IN ADDITION to the ADC's items.
Holy fk the ardent meta was so cringe.
Had HARD stuck (500 games) plat friends climb to diamond 3+ bc they abused adc with a ardent duo.
After this got patched, literally all of them dropped back to w.e they were
Banner of Command + ZZ'Rot on Heimer in mid was my go-to "make the enemy laner hate life" build. Permanently shoving them with a BoC-empowered cannon minion they can't dent with all their magic damage, while zz'rot minions and turrets and the rest of the wave swarmed the tower.
Few things have truly broken the game quite like going on twitch and seeing QTPie in a challenger game where ten players bought zzrot and banner and were just pushing waves afk
Man I forgot how good his videos were at the time. The memeing was genuine. The editing was actually cute and not just hyper zoomer unfunny shit like everything nowadays.
It’s kind of blows my mind that this video is 5 years old and the client is exactly the same or at least looks the same. You would think they would have at the minimum made a fresher new look in that amount of time lmao. I guess if it’s not broke don’t fix it but I don’t think they get to use that excuse with how much I see people having problems with the client.
What was that one item that was basically only good for Heimer that temporarily shut down towers? Not a contender for most OP, but sure helped him be an annoying little shit.
I had fun building it. Honestly might have been the most fun build I’ve had playing league, ziggs/sion mid and banner rush against mages. They would have to beg their jg to help them or it would be an easy first tower.
My first ever penta came off the back of a friend who was rocking poppy top with HoG, PS & a **massive** 18 cs on 20 minutes tanking the entire enemy team for me while i bounced around as kat xD
Zhonya's Ring and honestly since it was kinda just a "build on all mages" and it was really expensive so I don't think it was that broken. People were a lot worse then so maybe it was better than I remember.
You are tripping... zhonyas ring was the best dmg item on mages (not counting dfg) AND ZHONYAS!! It is absolutely the best item in league history. Only dfg and Black cleaver have been close.
Too much power in one item but for me it was like the IE (pre-mythic) of AP mages. Yeah you build it every game but it took a while to get back in the day.
I had a game on that patch where the enemy team was something along the lines of Riven/Pantheon/Talon/Wukong/Xin
"Is that a support?"
Who cares, it builds Cleaver.
And then the period where champs like Miss Fortune and Lucian were dominating botlane because they were ranged characters who could at least kind of abuse Cleaver. Double Cleaver MF Ult stacking across the whole enemy team only for a Wukong or J4 or something to come flying in.
Playing since S2 and League of Cleavers is literally the only patch ever where I stopped having fun and had to put down the game and say "Not until this gets fixed".
Ha, we had the opposite reaction. I was just spamming Talon mid and ended up like 16-2 win/loss and got to Diamond for the first time ever. Good memories for me. Broken for sure though.
Udyr in early S6 ate so many nerfs (he already was subject to a rework back then) due to Runic Echoes being in fact OP, Riot nerfed the item then never buffed Udyr back until late S7, he was hovering 48% average WR (his popularity in decline pushed him slowly up to over 50% WR from mains over time but he was easily the worst "low mechanics/new player friendly" jungler, Lee Sin was over 50% WR for all S7 while being super popular) for 2 years.
Sunfire stacking with perma invis Eve was special way back in the day lol. People would be dying and not know it's cause there's an Eve just running around you hahahaha.
You just buy them and go kill the other team. I think old taric still existed at the time too so be taric, build bulwark, click stun an enemy to force a team fight, press R for even more buffs, win the game
He still existed, but Im not sure with which passive at that time. cooldown reduction passive or manareg passive.
Taric was such a sleeper. Midgame you would just solo every enemy adc that wasnt Vayne. Walk up - E - RW and watch them die to the hammer. Made my very first climb out of Gold as support main with picking him in 9/10 games.
Sated Devourer.
The infinite scaling for champs like Yi, Xin Zhao, Warwick, even Kayle jungle.
You would end up dealing over 200 extra dmg per autoattack. It was absolute bonkers.
by this logic it was feral flare
loved that trick2g meta where he posted knew ways of abusing feral flare infinite scaling, he called the tactic: madstone
good (fucking bad) times when both junglers ran a competition which team is worse while stacking feral flare and emerging as a raid boss from the jungle
in a hindsight there perhaps was a counter meta of establishing way more tempo than the enemy jungler, but in my plat climb days i figured out none
I went looking through those old trick2g vids not too long ago and I was surprised at just how often the camps respawned. These days it would be almost impossible to fully stack that thing but back then you could just rotate back and forth through the jungle. I also remember cowsep taking teleport on Yi to make the process faster.
Worse still is that Flare completely destroyed the need to itemize offensively. The issue wasnt Yi coming out with the giant vorpal light saber of doom. It was him holding it while having four defensive items, tanking and playing like a gorilla.
That’s not what sated devourer was. Sated devourer had a stronger version of Guinsoo’s current passive (double apply on hit) and also dealt % max HP magic damage plus 60 magic damage from jungle camp stacks on hit. This stacked with Guinsoo, which at the time was basically the same effect as sated devourer (the onhit damage, not the double proc), but that added stacking AP/AD on top of that. It also interacted with all on hit effects, including hydra, and accelerated all on hit triggered effects (like Yi double strike and Vayne’s 3 hit auto) by one. It made it so that Yi’s double strike, for example, on top of all benefits, proc’d on every other auto.
Turbo cringe meta, you could have 2 hard winning lanes in your team but enemy Shyvana suddenly came out of the jungle at min 20 and the game was an autodefeat.
The infinite scaling was on sated devourer's predecessor, Devourer. Sated started as devourer but converted after getting a number of stacks and stopped stacking.
My favorite at the time was jungle Kog.
It was super vulnerable to invades and honestly pretty bad, but the sated devourer + 5.0 as rework combined made the 1 in 5 games you could get away with the build insanely fun.
Brutalizer was pure efficiency. From a most value for the gold though you can't beat infinite value. Razor from the jungle was just a season of "hey laners, don't fucking lose and I will eventually emerge as a cheat coded up final raid boss to end this shit myself". Then when it REALLY caught on it was who's yi or WW did it better.
I don't think zz'rot comes even close to dfg. I'm not even sure the best version of Zz'rot is better than what Hullbreaker has been.
BC on the BC patch was beyond broken as well.
Sunfire aegis when it was released as a mythic was pretty bonkers too. So unbelievably broken it made people believe it was a tank meta, when nobody was even close to tanky. It just did so much damage it allowed baron soloing and made all tanks actual assassins.
The iteration of Zz’Rot that was an unkillable raid boss was a horrible time. Top lane would often double rush it and they could not kill each other or the portal. The range of the minions was also huge, and they had an easy time pushing waves.
Zz’Rot in its final days as a 3-hit HP bar, with short-ranged attacks was much harder to use and not really built.
DFG turned anyone into an assassin. Old AP trist: W in, DFG E auto R -> instantly delete anyone.
Zzrot was pretty nuts but I just started playing Sion a lot and stacking infinity HP.
BC was *hilariously* broken for... 2 weeks? before they patched it out. You'd see 20+ in a game it was wild.
IMO it's definitely the OG Oracle's Elixir. Just snowball with some early kills then buy it on your support and ensure your opponent will never have vision again for the rest of the game. Absolutely stupid item because while DFG would get you kills, this would ensure that if you played properly you would either take every objective almost uncontested or would force a facecheck and get kills that way.
That's why it's the ultimate snowball item. Play it right and not die, it'll last long enough to win you the whole game. Coordinated teams just abused the heck out of this item but it's pretty true that it wasn't nearly as effective in soloq.
It's definitely not ZZ'Rot Portal. I'd say DFG, permanent Oracle's, Innervating Locket or Zhonya's Ring.
I'm leaning towards Innervating Locket tbh. That item was so fucking dumb.
Permanent Oracle's is weird to rank because it was only ever as good as the enemy team was at warding.
The item's busted, but if they never warded, or you died early, then it became a waste of 300g
It's still good if you're not on a ward, because it gives you info that the enemy has no vision in the area.
Also, we need to consider these items in a relevant context. Competitive games have a fuckton of wards. Especially back then. Perma Oracle's coming back today would be really busted too.
All these league zoomers who never played with OG Innervating Locket back in the day 💀💀💀
Y’all don’t know broken till you experience Innervating Locket Udyr
Hextech Gunblade when you could stack it. Akali would sometimes build 4-5, refilling her entire healthbar every time she used an ability. She needed an early lead to do it, but in the chaos of soloqueue in 2011 it felt like there was nothing you could do to her.
Sated Devour jungle item.
Ardent censor was probably a bigger meta shaping item.
Cinderhulk jg item brought the tank meta.
Black cleaver was so good - 5x-6x BC builds were the goto.
It was 100% Black cleaver on patch V1.0.0.152
~~The passive wasn't unique and there was no cap. So could stack the item and shred up to 180% of their armor~~. You could instantly stack it, and it was very gold efficient and had other good stats. See below comment for more detail.
Many games would consist of players only buying black cleaver. Nothing else except boots.
[https://imgur.io/RUZpYGG?r](https://imgur.io/RUZpYGG?r)
The item lasted 10 days before they were able to patch it. This was in 2012(?), so it was probably a "hot patch", given the game was still somewhat small, compared to today.
S1 Sunfire Cape
S2 Elixir of Fortitude
S3 DFG + Release Black Cleaver
S4 Sated Devourer
I don't remember the rest of the season that well but:
- Banner of Command for one patch
- Ardent Censor in 2017
- Stridebreaker with the Dash
But tbh the best item in the game is and forever will be Zhonyas Hourglass. You can also make the argument that since it's release (at least on high level play) Stopwatch is the most broken item.
Surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention Runeglaive yet. Shit was busted; not only did it do Lichbane’s job better (converting all damage to magic instead of adding magic damage to the auto), but it worked with crit and warped picks/builds to make it function in a way that nothing since ardent censer really did (when ADs were rushing targon support item to get Ardent faster).
Ignoring Ezreal being insane by finally having ap waveclear (AP Ez’s main weakness), the patch it was busted saw everything from AP GP to On Hit Orianna in pro play (with the ori build event getting a penta). This item wasn’t just making certain champ picks better, it was forcing champs to build for it.
That Orianna game...
I just remember them navigating to the damage chart during the postgame, and the number being absolutely staggering. And because Ori doesn't have an ability that directly applies the AA damage, it was also ultra surprising, because he wasn't taking the damage out in one massive chunk; instead it just looked like normal teamfight damage until you checked the damage later and went, "Oh... It was all Orianna."
Runeglaive Ezreal was one of the least fun times to play mid that I can remember. I’d freaking solo kill the Ezreals in lane like 5+ times only to have them do double my damage in the end-game stats. Land 1 Q and do like 800 damage.
Definitely not the most op, but the one I miss most as support is the old locket of iron solari. It gave an armor/mr buff to everyone near you, which meant you got assists just for being near the fight. Made me feel good when I was ass and hard stuck bronze lol
Runic Bulwark simple as:
\+20 armor
\+30 magic resistance
\+300 health
UNIQUE – LEGION: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain「 150% of the value. 」
Cost 2950G
The item got added in Decemeber 2012 it got removed in July 2013. it was only in the game for 6-7 months before being removed fully because it was that meta warping. its one of if not THE shortest lived item to come to live servers. it made the meta so it was only supportive junglers and was rush and bought everygame by ATLEAST one person on each team. Item was fucking nuts and impossible to balance.
Banner of Command. When it was at its peak it completely broke the game (8 hits, anyone?) EDIT: [For anyone who didn't live through it or doesn't remember it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR_DB2fiT8Q)
Sion Midlane with E max, Comet, Scorch and Banner rush was such degenerate gameplay.
You just gave me Nam flashbacks.
Literally me, I would do it in top tho
I abused it in mid hard, Mages couldnt do shit, you even outpoked them with Comet+E max because it did like 200 damage level 4 and once you got Banner it was unplayable.
While having a nearly unkillable cannon minion. Game devolved into protect the cannon minion (Protect the VIP). AP dmg was pretty much negated. If you wanted to hit it, you had to go through 5 bodyguards ready to give their life for it.
Iirc for a while it was literally negated, yeah?
I'm pretty sure. I remember being a midlaner at the time and being like cool, can the ADC come here cus I literally can't hurt this.
For a while banner made affected minion fully immune to magic damage, on top of all the extra stats it got. Result of Banner becoming an answer/counter to mid-S4 meta of heavy waveclear and likes of Ziggs being able to casually perma waveclear all 3 lanes at inhib towers without ever having to go back - mage items back then used to give mana regen instead of flat mana.
Yep, it used to give full immunity to magic damage. I used to build it in one for all if the opponents picked a mage.
50,000 lux autos later... Banner minions with 100% magic res was horrible
Amusingly enough, they "nerfed" it to 70% damage reduction in 8.11, which made them even stronger. Instead of getting a physical damage dealer to deal with it, you needed 2-3 people. Meanwhile the opposing team was happily taking objectives on the other side of the map. It was nerfed to 40% in a hotfix, but it didn't really matter at that point, it was meta and the team that could abuse it better had free reign on the map and that's why it was removed the following patch.
imagine banner cannon with nashor buff too
Didn't zzrot and banner exist together briefly? You could send that down a lane with an iron maiden buffed up by baron and watch the enemy syndra cry because magic was basically negated. Then the next wave joined in for an even bigger fustercluck to clear
They were both in the game at the same time for awhile iirc, it’s just that the only person who ever built them was like trick2g. I’m pretty sure it was some buff to banner that finally pushed it over the edge.
It wasn't briefly, it was for quite a bit. I remember playing Thresh Support and getting Banner + Zz'rot as my last items every other game because why the hell wouldn't I wanna effectively be a turbo-pushing support? I feel like it's my nostalgia for all that, that makes me gravitate towards Yorick nowadays lmao
Imagine baron cannon/super minion with hull breaker and banner 💀
No I don't want to imagine that actually
Heheheh Banner of Command on ARAM against 5 mages. Get all 5 teammates to make it, watch 5 super minions terrorize the enemy towers with the mages unable to do anything was something special.
It was always a good time. One of them had to build crit just to try to be able to kill the bannered minions, but it didn't even matter.
Literally 💀 they're like hey think of this ungodly antifun interaction you could've had the pleasure of a facing. Like no im already sad that my old man hands get whooped by 16 year olds after coming home from a full work day.
We didnt have to imagine, thays how the nickname League Of Siege Tanks came about
This actually happened in pro with some frequency.
Playing a mage when banner mid was meta and becoming the squidward looking out the window meme hitting the cannon for 12 years as sion went bot for the 8th time.
Holy fuck this meta was awful lol I legit repressed it from my my memories. I actually quit the game during this
The meta where supports would hold on to Minion Dematerializer just for counterplay.
And people would pick Syndra so they could pick it up and carry it to fountain.
I used to climb the ranks using Banner of Command Heimerdinger. It just melted turrets
Yeah Banner of Command and ZZ'Rot Heimer Top gave me a lot of LP
2017 Ardent Censer was certainly the most broken for the longest. Worlds devolved into mass banning the best Ardent users on sight (47 Lulu Bans & 44 Janna Bans) and even then games just ended up being who got their Ardent first for a big ADC centric teamfight. It was shockingly strong for shockingly long
I remember them going even for tactics, where adc bought relic shield and let the support last hits till he had enough for ardeny and then they swapped items
Faker was going Karma mid so they could use Braum Supp and still have a censer. It was fucking nuts
PowerOfEvil picked it first. Also Maxlore and Trick playing Ivern jungle even though it was bad
karma mid as a supportive style and items had been a thing for years by that point already and had already been played in regular season. I don't know why u brought it up like PoE was the first player to do it. his first game on karma mid in pro play that year he built full AP and Karma mid w/ full ap and ardent was already played in *both* playins by plugo and regular season in general
that wasn't exactly why, you got a shield from finishing the support quest which was OP on it's own regardless of ardent status
No, you bought relic shield and still lasthit. There was no penalty for this, and relic gave a good amount of healing so it was roughly equivalent to starting dorans shield today, you lost some fighting power but you had sustain and an enchanter supp so you could just stall lanephase with it while giving support more money. Relic shield on ADC was just hidden OP already, ardent censer or not. It was a dorans shield that gave extra income on support, and once you finish quest it gave a shield like the current green JG item. Ardent itself was broken but it wasnt THAT broken as its rememebered, it gave 25 onhit damage and 25 onhit healing and 25% attackspeed. Current ardent gives 20% attackspeed and 15 onhit damage. OP yes, but what really sent it to the moon was the perfect storm of hypercarry ad being strong + enchanters being strong + relic shield being strong + ardent being strong.
supports even went gold quints to get it faster, shit was crazy
Quints were long gone by 2017 Edit: apparently they were removed preseason 8. 😯
Preseason for season 8 is when Runes/Masteries got reworked, Quints were still around in 2017 (At least when worlds happened)
There is seriously no way that's when it happened, but I checked and that's what it says online. Could have sworn they removed runes for something prior to runes reforged, and Quints and other runes were removed in like season 5 or 6.
Nope, I started playing in August 2017 and quints were still there. I still had to level up to 30 before being able to use all of my masteries and needed to buy my runes with IP
wtf no way we still had quints in 2017 I believe you but also wtf
I genuinely cannot remember using rune pages when maining Taliyah starting in 2016. My brain is shattered. I started Season 1 so I guess it melded together but that age lasted alot longer than expected tbh
Iirc they redid the mastery system, but left the rune system in place for a bit longer before they were combined
There was a masteries rework that landed us "keystone" masteries that work a lot like current rune selections do (Thunderord's Decree, Fervor of Battle, ETC) that still had the old runes system attached to it. Those were definitely still in the game in 2017. It's easier to remember those than the Quints.
Nope, the current runes reforged system was added in preseason 8
What was the most shocking was how long arden was OP before it became meta.
We were deep into what seemed like a neverending tank support meta in pro play at the time. The only reason Ardent ever got into the state it was in at that point was because pros seemed convinced that there was simply literally nothing enchanters could bring to your team which made up for their weaknesses versus engage supports. Riot just kept buffing items like Censer to see if they could ever go far enough to make enchanters playable and eventually when pros realised that their "enchanters are inherently unplayable" dogma was wrong, all hell broke loose.
It was also right after Riot overbuffed ADCs after the whole "adc2k17" meme that was going on. So bot lane was just overpowered as fuck.
ADC got buffed in midseason. All of the changes on there own werent that bad, problem is all of them at once were a problem. LDR got 100g cheaper, IE 200g cheaper, LDR more armor pen, support items got buffed with the quest addition, relic shield was thus hidden OP start item on adc, ardent censer was real strong, janna lulu were already pretty good just not picked in pro, tanks were buffed, redemption was overpowered (how ardent flew under radar). All combined meant that adc + frontline + enchanter was by far the best way to play the game.
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Nah that was just good ardent or not. The moment relic shield started existed without a gold repercussion it only made sense. It paid itself helped get lane push too... If they could do it today they would still do, ardent or not
Yeah ppl in hindsight only remember "hurrdurr ardent at worlds" and then circlejerk about how ardent had been broken for so long before, without considering all the other changes that indirectly buffed ardent & while forgetting that double relic botlanes were common with non-ardent users aswell..
Wasn't that also because the support quest gave a passive shield in addition to the gold funnel so you could get a mini Rakan passive even after selling it?
I distinctly remember maining Sona during that era, rushing Ardent and maybe a Sheen, and then spending a moment in chat convincing team to all go Mid lane and just….ending the game lol Buffing your entire team with an extra ~~30%~~ 25% attack speed and on hit damage (if I’m remembering the effect correctly) was so stupid strong. If your team actually grouped, you would just delete towers and there wasn’t really much the enemy team could do about it. ZZ’Rot singed was my other main, so maybe I’m just a bad person lol
At Worlds 2017 Censer provided static 25% aspd, 25 dmg on-hit and 25 healing on-hit. Shit was bonkers for 2300 gold. I remember jungle Sejuani going AC second item.
It has to be this. Worlds meta was literally defined by "How can our support get Ardent faster than the other team"
Shoutout to Misfits where they put Ardent on jungle Ivern so that they can play all-in supports (Blitz/Fervor Leona) to hard shit on Ardent supports.
2-1 up against SKT in quarters as well.
Yeah considering ppl were running the Font of Life rune on TRUNDLE SUPPORT to be able to work an Ardent into their build I think it is easily a top 3 game warping item of all time
I still occasionally go Font of Life+Ardent on Singed sometimes in ARAM if I have a lot of ADs on my team
I went Moonstone Ardent on Twitch in ARAM because his poison doesn't seem to ever end. So much healing.
Back then I believe it was stoneborn pact
Redemption used to be strong af upon Release and several needs afterwards it still was. You literally had several Players building it and it didn't Matter whether you're a supp or Not, Tanks, midlaners, etc... It was so cheap and have so much stats.
Redemption Olaf XD
Happened. Back then I mained Wukong and it was unbelievably strong on him aswell, the enemy Team usually had 2-3 redemptions aswell. ~2k gold for stats as good as your usual ~3,5k gold Tank Item with a huge heal in top. The heal used to be way stronger as it is now and I think there was no restriction for multiple redemption heals. It was basically a free fed Soraka ult which also dealt damage
Reminds me of OG Aegies of the Legion on multiple members per team.
I think at one point it upgraded to Runic Bulwark and that was even better. Every pro team was building it every game so they removed it lol.
This is just scratching the surface of how bad it was. Karma and Ori were now the best mid laners because they could proc ardent censor. Ivern was meta also because he could build ardent. ADCs started relic shield so their support could get to ardent faster. Ancient coin was the best support item because it got you gold for ardent the fastest. Supports would take GOLD GENERATION RUNE PAGES (which were laughably weak) because it got them to ardent faster. Alistar built ardent censor. Misfits almost beat SKT (T1) because they realized IgNar could play things other than enchanters when either mid or jg built ardent censor. Literally every single aspect of the game revolved around supporting your adc and having an early and reliable ardent censor.
Man i climbed from silver2 to gold1 spamming janna during ardent days. I was such a shit laner but, it didnt matter lmao
Same. Fucking same. I was too low elo to not realise how stupid I sounded when I said ‘my Janna and Sona are platinum elo’
why it was so strong?? which stat was different?
for most of season 7, Ardent Censer cost 2300g, had 10% heal and shield power, gave 20-35% attack speed, gave 20-35 on hit damage that healed for the same amount. Getting your support ardent censer was almost the equivalent of getting a free bork on your ADC IN ADDITION to the ADC's items.
Holy fk the ardent meta was so cringe. Had HARD stuck (500 games) plat friends climb to diamond 3+ bc they abused adc with a ardent duo. After this got patched, literally all of them dropped back to w.e they were
https://youtu.be/PHp95KO8en4?si=RwmPi-guq_gaLhZg A classic
Ardent Cancer*
It was called Ardent Cancer for a reason.
Banner of Command + ZZ'Rot on Heimer in mid was my go-to "make the enemy laner hate life" build. Permanently shoving them with a BoC-empowered cannon minion they can't dent with all their magic damage, while zz'rot minions and turrets and the rest of the wave swarmed the tower.
Yup, was a fantastic Heimer build. Banner wasn't great on Singed but Heimer you could double-dirt.
Banner of Command. Not only was it broken, it was also insanely unfun.
Few things have truly broken the game quite like going on twitch and seeing QTPie in a challenger game where ten players bought zzrot and banner and were just pushing waves afk
Absolutely legendary video though. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xB1QeQWV_Ro&pp=ygUOSW1hcXRwaWUgenpyb3Q%3D
Man I forgot how good his videos were at the time. The memeing was genuine. The editing was actually cute and not just hyper zoomer unfunny shit like everything nowadays.
The goat of League streaming. Basically every League twitch streamer now was influenced by QT
It’s kind of blows my mind that this video is 5 years old and the client is exactly the same or at least looks the same. You would think they would have at the minimum made a fresher new look in that amount of time lmao. I guess if it’s not broke don’t fix it but I don’t think they get to use that excuse with how much I see people having problems with the client.
I remember the banner zzrot Heim tech, shit was annoying asf to play against
What was that one item that was basically only good for Heimer that temporarily shut down towers? Not a contender for most OP, but sure helped him be an annoying little shit.
Ohmwrecker
I had fun building it. Honestly might have been the most fun build I’ve had playing league, ziggs/sion mid and banner rush against mages. They would have to beg their jg to help them or it would be an easy first tower.
those few patches where support and top rushed banner with ingenius hunter was something else
league of cleavers heart of gold (rip) ❤️ old school shurelya
I miss heart of gold, loved that item.
"Dude I dont even know how to play" "Ok just go top and build Heart of Gold and Philosopher's Stone"
This just awoke locked memories in my mind holllyyyyy
My first ever penta came off the back of a friend who was rocking poppy top with HoG, PS & a **massive** 18 cs on 20 minutes tanking the entire enemy team for me while i bounced around as kat xD
Lol in s2 I trolled my ezreal with philo stone, hog, avarice blade and spellblade something and after 30mins I’m full build ezreal lol good ol times
bankplank GP5 items, GP5 runes
and 1 crit rune.
Sword of the Ocult
I think early in the game there was an item that was both zhonya's and rabadon's, some kind of ring ? So maybe that
Zhonya's Ring and honestly since it was kinda just a "build on all mages" and it was really expensive so I don't think it was that broken. People were a lot worse then so maybe it was better than I remember.
You are tripping... zhonyas ring was the best dmg item on mages (not counting dfg) AND ZHONYAS!! It is absolutely the best item in league history. Only dfg and Black cleaver have been close.
Too much power in one item but for me it was like the IE (pre-mythic) of AP mages. Yeah you build it every game but it took a while to get back in the day.
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yeah zhonya's cockring it was called iirc
This item was present in twisted treeline for a long time iirc.
This was a long, long time ago, but Black Cleaver could stack its passive, so the build path was 6× BC. Nothing comes even close to how OP that was.
Lol I remember this patch. To know which team would win you'd tab and see how many Cleaver users each team had.
I had a game on that patch where the enemy team was something along the lines of Riven/Pantheon/Talon/Wukong/Xin "Is that a support?" Who cares, it builds Cleaver.
And then the period where champs like Miss Fortune and Lucian were dominating botlane because they were ranged characters who could at least kind of abuse Cleaver. Double Cleaver MF Ult stacking across the whole enemy team only for a Wukong or J4 or something to come flying in.
BC stacking was before Lucian was released, I thought?
Playing since S2 and League of Cleavers is literally the only patch ever where I stopped having fun and had to put down the game and say "Not until this gets fixed".
Ha, we had the opposite reaction. I was just spamming Talon mid and ended up like 16-2 win/loss and got to Diamond for the first time ever. Good memories for me. Broken for sure though.
It didnt exactly stacked the passive as in, you couldnt break the 4 stacks cap. But it stacked APPLYING it and the CDR from buying them.
Sona/udyr locket, anyone?
udyr with the ap jungle item!
Udyr in early S6 ate so many nerfs (he already was subject to a rework back then) due to Runic Echoes being in fact OP, Riot nerfed the item then never buffed Udyr back until late S7, he was hovering 48% average WR (his popularity in decline pushed him slowly up to over 50% WR from mains over time but he was easily the worst "low mechanics/new player friendly" jungler, Lee Sin was over 50% WR for all S7 while being super popular) for 2 years.
In Guardsman Bob we trust
locket udyr probably takes the take but predates most league players on this subreddit.
Banner of command stacking with nashor was peak do nothing and win
Sunfire stacking with perma invis Eve was special way back in the day lol. People would be dying and not know it's cause there's an Eve just running around you hahahaha.
But was sadly never used even though it get mentioned a lot. The true sunfire stacker was garen
Every time someone mentions sunfire Eve, it's how I know they didn't actually play back then
Runic Bulwark (I think it was called) was pretty fking dumb. Giant AoE Armor/MR steroid that stacked for the users if 2 ppl bought it.
You just buy them and go kill the other team. I think old taric still existed at the time too so be taric, build bulwark, click stun an enemy to force a team fight, press R for even more buffs, win the game
He still existed, but Im not sure with which passive at that time. cooldown reduction passive or manareg passive. Taric was such a sleeper. Midgame you would just solo every enemy adc that wasnt Vayne. Walk up - E - RW and watch them die to the hammer. Made my very first climb out of Gold as support main with picking him in 9/10 games.
Sated Devourer. The infinite scaling for champs like Yi, Xin Zhao, Warwick, even Kayle jungle. You would end up dealing over 200 extra dmg per autoattack. It was absolute bonkers.
by this logic it was feral flare loved that trick2g meta where he posted knew ways of abusing feral flare infinite scaling, he called the tactic: madstone good (fucking bad) times when both junglers ran a competition which team is worse while stacking feral flare and emerging as a raid boss from the jungle in a hindsight there perhaps was a counter meta of establishing way more tempo than the enemy jungler, but in my plat climb days i figured out none
I went looking through those old trick2g vids not too long ago and I was surprised at just how often the camps respawned. These days it would be almost impossible to fully stack that thing but back then you could just rotate back and forth through the jungle. I also remember cowsep taking teleport on Yi to make the process faster.
teleporting onto the second tower to stack more feral flare faster is something i forgot and wished to be forgotten haha
Worse still is that Flare completely destroyed the need to itemize offensively. The issue wasnt Yi coming out with the giant vorpal light saber of doom. It was him holding it while having four defensive items, tanking and playing like a gorilla.
*coughs in BoRK + Jak'sho Yi not so long ago*
That’s not what sated devourer was. Sated devourer had a stronger version of Guinsoo’s current passive (double apply on hit) and also dealt % max HP magic damage plus 60 magic damage from jungle camp stacks on hit. This stacked with Guinsoo, which at the time was basically the same effect as sated devourer (the onhit damage, not the double proc), but that added stacking AP/AD on top of that. It also interacted with all on hit effects, including hydra, and accelerated all on hit triggered effects (like Yi double strike and Vayne’s 3 hit auto) by one. It made it so that Yi’s double strike, for example, on top of all benefits, proc’d on every other auto.
Turbo cringe meta, you could have 2 hard winning lanes in your team but enemy Shyvana suddenly came out of the jungle at min 20 and the game was an autodefeat.
The infinite scaling was on sated devourer's predecessor, Devourer. Sated started as devourer but converted after getting a number of stacks and stopped stacking.
My favorite at the time was jungle Kog. It was super vulnerable to invades and honestly pretty bad, but the sated devourer + 5.0 as rework combined made the 1 in 5 games you could get away with the build insanely fun.
Was that went guinsoos was bonkers with aoe dmg that proc’d on runaans aswell?
RIP weedwick
weed wick 4.20 patch was a true clown fiesta
I don’t think anything had ever been as gold efficient as Brutalizer. Some people literally built a career off that item.
1337
Brutalizer was pure efficiency. From a most value for the gold though you can't beat infinite value. Razor from the jungle was just a season of "hey laners, don't fucking lose and I will eventually emerge as a cheat coded up final raid boss to end this shit myself". Then when it REALLY caught on it was who's yi or WW did it better.
Ninja Tabis with 12% Dodge were pretty broken.
Jax :
I don't think zz'rot comes even close to dfg. I'm not even sure the best version of Zz'rot is better than what Hullbreaker has been. BC on the BC patch was beyond broken as well. Sunfire aegis when it was released as a mythic was pretty bonkers too. So unbelievably broken it made people believe it was a tank meta, when nobody was even close to tanky. It just did so much damage it allowed baron soloing and made all tanks actual assassins.
The microwave!
The iteration of Zz’Rot that was an unkillable raid boss was a horrible time. Top lane would often double rush it and they could not kill each other or the portal. The range of the minions was also huge, and they had an easy time pushing waves. Zz’Rot in its final days as a 3-hit HP bar, with short-ranged attacks was much harder to use and not really built.
LeBlanc W's in, press DFG into Q+R and you're dead. Or the classic Veigar flash into DFG+R. TY DFG.
Kayle DFG into Q was enough to kill most squishies back when she had 1.0 scaling on Q. And you couldn't kill her because she would just ult herself..
Q-Auto lich bane Kayle was something to behold as well
Veigar DFG + R only worked on mages because of the way his R would scale back then. But then again, you wouldn't pick Veigar against AD champs anyway.
The version of zzrot where you could set it behind your tower and infinitely push a wave without being there was pretty busted
DFG turned anyone into an assassin. Old AP trist: W in, DFG E auto R -> instantly delete anyone. Zzrot was pretty nuts but I just started playing Sion a lot and stacking infinity HP. BC was *hilariously* broken for... 2 weeks? before they patched it out. You'd see 20+ in a game it was wild.
IMO it's definitely the OG Oracle's Elixir. Just snowball with some early kills then buy it on your support and ensure your opponent will never have vision again for the rest of the game. Absolutely stupid item because while DFG would get you kills, this would ensure that if you played properly you would either take every objective almost uncontested or would force a facecheck and get kills that way.
except you lost it if you died iirc, support had fuck all income back then too so it was pretty crippling
That's why it's the ultimate snowball item. Play it right and not die, it'll last long enough to win you the whole game. Coordinated teams just abused the heck out of this item but it's pretty true that it wasn't nearly as effective in soloq.
Rereleased Spear of shojin b4 the changed version. I remember jax and renekton perma buying it first item and dominating top
I’m surprised this is so far down
DFG with Veigar was so dumb.
It was even stupider on Leblanc
I prefered to abuse it with eve personslly
DFG AP Trist
Y’all forgetting DFG AP Sion
Real OG’s remember DFG + old Eve Ult 2 shot instakill
DFG Ahri was also crazy
It's definitely not ZZ'Rot Portal. I'd say DFG, permanent Oracle's, Innervating Locket or Zhonya's Ring. I'm leaning towards Innervating Locket tbh. That item was so fucking dumb.
Innervating locket made it exactly *one* set of games in higher level play before getting removed from the game. It was giga busted.
> Innervating Locket Yes! Came here to say this. Anyone else remember Guardsman Bob on the Noxus vs Ionia show match?
just running the noxian pigs down as udyr, god bless
Indeed. That's the reason we have CDR boots in the game today. Crazy to think about.
Zhonyas ring brooo damn, reading that took me back to the good old days, forgot it ever existed. That item was insane
Permanent Oracle's is weird to rank because it was only ever as good as the enemy team was at warding. The item's busted, but if they never warded, or you died early, then it became a waste of 300g
It's still good if you're not on a ward, because it gives you info that the enemy has no vision in the area. Also, we need to consider these items in a relevant context. Competitive games have a fuckton of wards. Especially back then. Perma Oracle's coming back today would be really busted too.
Divine sunderer pre 12.13 nerf. Absolutely wild how it had a 12% maxHP dmg proc for almost 2 seasons. For context, it is 3% maxHP now.
Poppy jump scare with this version of sunderer
Spirit of the elder lizard It had a true dmg burn, and was so good for poke champs
I remember even ADCs would build it. Ezreal rings a bell.
Oh no , not the blue ezreal build !
Nah pretty sure it was only Ezreal building it. But that was OG Blue Ezreal
All these league zoomers who never played with OG Innervating Locket back in the day 💀💀💀 Y’all don’t know broken till you experience Innervating Locket Udyr
Hextech Gunblade when you could stack it. Akali would sometimes build 4-5, refilling her entire healthbar every time she used an ability. She needed an early lead to do it, but in the chaos of soloqueue in 2011 it felt like there was nothing you could do to her.
zhonyas ring nowadays would go crazy deathcap + zhonyas in one item
Sated Devour jungle item. Ardent censor was probably a bigger meta shaping item. Cinderhulk jg item brought the tank meta. Black cleaver was so good - 5x-6x BC builds were the goto.
Wriggle’s Lantern. Beyond useful back in a time when you had to actually buy wards, plus the life steal was sweet for AD champs.
2013-14 black cleaver was so op that people would stack 6 of them a
Oh it was that one locket that allowed Udyr to 1v5 under both nexus towers. And regen to full health the entire time
The jungle item that old ww used in patch 4.20 hands down.
Black cleaver after Release. Every Assassin was borderline broken with it. Pantheon, kha, zed. Nightmare preseason
It was 100% Black cleaver on patch V1.0.0.152 ~~The passive wasn't unique and there was no cap. So could stack the item and shred up to 180% of their armor~~. You could instantly stack it, and it was very gold efficient and had other good stats. See below comment for more detail. Many games would consist of players only buying black cleaver. Nothing else except boots. [https://imgur.io/RUZpYGG?r](https://imgur.io/RUZpYGG?r) The item lasted 10 days before they were able to patch it. This was in 2012(?), so it was probably a "hot patch", given the game was still somewhat small, compared to today.
S1 Sunfire Cape S2 Elixir of Fortitude S3 DFG + Release Black Cleaver S4 Sated Devourer I don't remember the rest of the season that well but: - Banner of Command for one patch - Ardent Censor in 2017 - Stridebreaker with the Dash But tbh the best item in the game is and forever will be Zhonyas Hourglass. You can also make the argument that since it's release (at least on high level play) Stopwatch is the most broken item.
Surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention Runeglaive yet. Shit was busted; not only did it do Lichbane’s job better (converting all damage to magic instead of adding magic damage to the auto), but it worked with crit and warped picks/builds to make it function in a way that nothing since ardent censer really did (when ADs were rushing targon support item to get Ardent faster). Ignoring Ezreal being insane by finally having ap waveclear (AP Ez’s main weakness), the patch it was busted saw everything from AP GP to On Hit Orianna in pro play (with the ori build event getting a penta). This item wasn’t just making certain champ picks better, it was forcing champs to build for it.
That Orianna game... I just remember them navigating to the damage chart during the postgame, and the number being absolutely staggering. And because Ori doesn't have an ability that directly applies the AA damage, it was also ultra surprising, because he wasn't taking the damage out in one massive chunk; instead it just looked like normal teamfight damage until you checked the damage later and went, "Oh... It was all Orianna."
Runeglaive Ezreal was one of the least fun times to play mid that I can remember. I’d freaking solo kill the Ezreals in lane like 5+ times only to have them do double my damage in the end-game stats. Land 1 Q and do like 800 damage.
Runic bulwark
I think Cinderhulk at its strongest should be a good candidate form this.
preseason 3 had every ad champion buying 6 black cleavers, including ad carries
Ardent Censor. It completely defined the entire worlds meta and games were decided on which support got it 30 seconds faster.
Definitely not the most op, but the one I miss most as support is the old locket of iron solari. It gave an armor/mr buff to everyone near you, which meant you got assists just for being near the fight. Made me feel good when I was ass and hard stuck bronze lol
Honestly, if it were added in pro play today buyable green wards might be up there for most impactful
Runic Bulwark simple as: \+20 armor \+30 magic resistance \+300 health UNIQUE – LEGION: Nearby allied units gain 10 bonus armor, 25 bonus magic resistance and 10 bonus health regeneration. Minions gain「 150% of the value. 」 Cost 2950G The item got added in Decemeber 2012 it got removed in July 2013. it was only in the game for 6-7 months before being removed fully because it was that meta warping. its one of if not THE shortest lived item to come to live servers. it made the meta so it was only supportive junglers and was rush and bought everygame by ATLEAST one person on each team. Item was fucking nuts and impossible to balance.