We take a look at some of the most broken items in the history of League of Legends.
League of Legends may one day find perfect item balance… but it probably won’t be before the heat death of the universe. Still, as much as we love to hate on the current offenders, they pale before the true monster items from League of Legends history.
League of Legends has been around for over ten years now and over the course of more than two hundred patches, we have seen many OP items come and go as its many designerstried to tinker with their creation. In fact, it is hard to limit ourselves only to five. Still, we at EarlyGame have risked our sanity and communed with our gaggle of ancient LoL lore masters, trying to gauge from their anguished screams which five items have been the greatest terror on the Rift. So, here we go:
5. Banner of Command
Okay, who remembers Banner of Command? This item was completely broken thanks to the massive amounts of armor one gained from it, as well as magic resist. You also got movement speed thanks to the item's passive.
But what really made this such a broken item was its active, which meant that you could give a minion 40% reduced damage from champions and 100% bonus damage against turrets. This was basically used as a split push minion that was unkillable and broke the game. Good riddance this item is gone.
4. Sword of the Divine
Let's take a trip back down to memory lane. It's Season 3 or 4 and League of Legends was finally growing into the popular game we know it to be these days, but some items were pretty overpowered and well one of the biggest offenders of being just way too OP is none other than Sword of the Divine.
Whoever built this item would gain 45% attack speed, which in itself is pretty nutty, but there were a few more stats Riot added to this item. The item had an active which granted champions 100% bonus attack speed and 100% critical strike chance for a whopping 90 seconds. Sounds pretty broken, eh?
- Interested to learn more about current items? Check out our LoL Item Guide for Eclipse!
3. Leviathan
Leviathan is a removed item. Thankfully, it's gone from the game because this item was extremely broken. Not only did it protect players from true damage, it also gave tanks way too much survivability. The item could give a champion up to 820 added health. Warmog's Armor, which is still an item in League only grants 800.
Similar to Mejai's Soulstealer, you gain stacks by getting kills. The difference? Unlike with Mejai's where you lose all stacks when dying, Leviathan only lost one-third of stacks when dying, so tanky champions stayed tanky. The stacks would give champions extra health. At 20 stacks, which was the maximum, champions would also take 15% less damage. Even though the item wasn't supposed to reduce true damage, it was bugged and did for most of its existence in the game.
2. Spear of Shojin
A more recent member on our list. The Spear of Shojin tried to fill an important niche for bruisers by making them play around their ultimates, but it slightly overshot the mark. Thankfully the item was removed in Season 9, but before then it was completely broken and made life hell for League players.
The passive made it so any autoattacks within 6 seconds after casting an ultimate refunded 20% of the cooldown of any basic (non-ultimate) ability. With a bit of attack speed, this became absolutely bonkers as Jax, Master Yi and a few others could essentially 1v5 the enemy team.
1. Deathfire Grasp
The namesake of the Pentakill headbanger, the item commonly referred to as “DFG” was the bane of any squishy character when there was a fed AP champion on the map. Thankfully Riot decided to remove the item completely from the game in 2015.
On top of very respectable stats – 120 AP and 10% cooldown reduction – it had an active that did 15% of a champion’s max HP as magic damage and amplified all magic damage in the next 4 seconds by 20%. On burst mages, DFG was an absolute game changer and made them completely broken.
Thankfully Riot decided to remove these overpowered items, from the game completely, though we would love some Banner of Command shenanigans once more. Maybe one day we get a game mode which is all about deleted items? Would be pretty fun, eh?