How One Item Broke League of Legends

Ardent Censer is one of the most broken items in League of Legends history. This video tells the story of how Ardent Censer ruined a Worlds Championship tournament in League of Legends, and explores the impact it had on both solo queue and the proscene.

[marboXD]

the funny thing is before the Ardent Meta the item was already nerved, it was even stronger some patches before

[niklas]

Oh the good old 5.0 Attack Speed Kog Maw Luli Combo. Stand still machine gun

[turnermd]

Ardent, ZZrot, and banner of command metas gave me PTSD

[qq]

Oh yes, I was there during the dark ages, where every single game of league you can hear the casters say “Ardent Censer meta”

[TheVicho]

The fact that Alistar had a viable healer build (when his e was the aoe heal) with 45% cdr just because of ardent was crazy, iirc the healer build was way better than the tank one.

[RB-xcwg]

fervor leona was actuallly a strat misfits used to nearly eliminate skt in quarters; they thought they could replicate it, but coulldnt finish the game quickly enough.

[lonestardreadpirate]

i was still pretty new to the game and i've always been a top laner so i never paid attention to what was happening bot lane. this meta literally just came and went without me ever even realizing but i did play through it lmao.

[myììììsha]

i can imagine this item with new champs like seraphine, millio senna(enchanter build) this could potentially break banrate chart having multiple highest banrate

[hellNo]

I remember abusing this and getting platinum in like 100 games from silver 4 or something with 60 plus win rate with Janna. No one seemed to notice in solo queue till June that year.

You could play any shielding support and as long you had one fed member in your whole team you had a chance to win by following them or forcing them to go mid and force fights when you got advantage. Insane item. I am so happy they nerfed it and the fact that I got out of gold 1 without playing support just to prove myself it wasn't the item. However the item made it so easy.

[Skaypegote]

The Jugg meta was 2015??? Nearly 10 years ago... What happened... Where did time go???

[Ewahls]

I was a part of the community that tried pointing out how absurd this item was before worlds that year. I'm glad you brought up that AF vs SKT match in particular because I distinctly remember commenting in a reddit thread for game 1 something like "If this doesnt show how broken Ardent is i dont know what will" and getting dog piled for it because afreeca lost. I felt pretty vindicated in my belief when worlds came along but it didn't make the matches any less boring :( Good video!

[tilsenkyron]

As a support main (who loves using enchanters), this was my era.

[ikiVids]

These documentary videos are so unbelievably good. Never stop making them.

[Slaking_]

In retrospect Ardent Meta was so funny. Janna/Lulu lanes every game, the same 5 ADCs always picked, Cho'Gath was simultaneously the best tank and the only viable assassin. God, what a disaster

[darkshado]

Full Team ZZRod and Banner was my favorite Meta. The sheer level of rage my friend group experienced when doing this was glorious!

[Tutajkk]

The 2017 Star Guardian event was basically Ardent Censer: The Movie: The Game.
I also remember I was building literally any champion that had a slow with Stoneborn Pact + Ardent Censer on ARAM back then, and it was so good.

[pheonixfire]

The worst part of this meta was before this when you queued for support you got support, after this meta you weren't guaranteed support and now jungle is the more likely role to get

[aisushitai]

3:43 - Oh I don't have to imagine the pain. I dealt with that many times during the 2017 Ardent meta as an old Jinx ADC main. One match always sticks out in memory, when our team support hadn't tried to buy even the components of Ardent by minute 18, and their excuse was "the item isn't really that powerful."

[killermurad]

I'm surprised they didn't hold a meeting with pro teams to discuss just banning the item. Something similar happened in recent memory with an ADC item I believe

[RinReforged]

As an adc main i personally had no issue with this meta :)