I've been playing typical Leona support build (locket, bandlepipes etc etc) but have for some time now started rushing Heartsteel on Leona as the first item. Its probably not going to be a popular opinion (and teammates freak out when we lose) but I think it works very well on her atleast in gold/plat/em - can't speak for higher elo.

Here's a summary of why. The HP boost is insane and allow Leona to shrug off damage like nothing. This means in teamfights she can stand on the front line and control engages, but also on lane Giant's belt and HP items you build provide that within the lane.

Once I've got heartsteel (building t1 boots alongside that) I'll then get full boots then locket/bandlepipes OR situational items. I don't normally build Hollow Radiance / Sunfire Aegis and go one of two roots:

- debuff items like Frozen Heart
- team buff items like Abyssal Mask
- full-mega tank items

The goal for me with leona is to be the teams heat sink for damage.

Pros:

• Eating up damage for dinner on bot lane: building up to Heartsteel you buy giant's belts which give 350 hp each - I find this hp especially useful against high damage bot lane, cc bot lanes, or even sustain dmg on bot where you need hp to either sustain in fights.
• Health for Engage / Disengage + CC: Leona is unique in that 3 of her 4 skills cc (two stuns and a root). The HP boost combined with Leona's CC allows a sustained engage and trade but also room for error and to disengage if the fight doesn't go your way. Many times I've saved my adc as we retreat by rooting and stunning to cover the escape and then the hp allows you to survive.
• Control of frontline in teamfights via pure HP damage mitigation: especially against teams with high poke, the HP allows you to shrug off poke dmg and herd the enemy teams. Locket alone only provides the protection after the engage, and you're much less having appetite to go in if you've been eroded down to 60% hp.
• Scaling: obviously the passive builds HP so I find Heartsteel really great in games you can anticipate going on longer.

Cons:

• Cost: 3000g for HS versus 2200g for Locket of Iron Solari .... - but I refer back to the fact giants belt provides utility in the lane for Leona due to the ability to eat up damage.
• No buffs to teammates: locket or bandlepipes buff your teammates via teamshield or attackspeed. This is the big one. HS obviously provides no buffs to the team.

Despite what the title says I don't *entirely* believe this. It comes with a caveat being that tank items are actually viable... if its only 1 or 2 on pure damage champions.

My experience as a player is limited to Diamond 1, so take with that what you will. I have played over a hundred games this season.

Every tank item in the game is pretty gold inefficient to begin with or needs other melees / tanks to function properly. Take Hollow Radiance for example. Completely useless in this meta since everybody is playing one shot mages or assassins that don't stay close to you for long. Kaenic is pretty gold inefficient unless you have a lot of HP, in which case its alright, but the enemy AD will just one shot you instead, and stacking too much HP this meta is worse than just building a small amount of defensive stats. Heartsteel is impossible to really stack in this meta since everybody is ranged or an assassin that dips before it procs. Abyssal doesn't matter cuz mages one shot most champs past 25 minutes anyways and its other stats aren't great.

The only really worthwhile tank items are Thornmail, Randuins, and Jak Sho. All of which you should properly just pick up as your 5th or 6th item on a full damage AD champion.

Why do I personally think this is? There's too much damage in the game and tank items can't keep up. Every AP item gives probably 10-20 AP too much to begin with. There's too much pen in the game. The 7th mage item bot grants them an additional like 5k in stats with Rabbadons as opposed to the 3k on an ADC (even less since after their 4th item, ADC items exponentially lose value).

The fastest fix for riot in my opinion would be to grant a small durability update that buffs MR scaling overall since its far lower than it realistically should be. If they don't want to do that, they can rework the ADC quest away from a 7th item. If they don't want that then they have to remove Rabbadons which will NEVER happen due to many other issues. Not many choices but the game needs a small durability update or item reworks.

The biggest issue with tanks that hurts them especially hard this season is how MR and Armor growth scales logarithmically (or however it works). It's less value the more you buy of it. So a thornmail on a full critality Viego is probably 2x better than a thornmail on a full armor Ornn. This is not the case for damage in the game. And when there's more damage in the game, tanks suffer more. I say all this as somebody who doesn't even enjoy playing as a tank. You'll notice when the enemy Zeri buys Randuins, but you probably wouldn't if the enemy Ksante did for their 6th item.

Another option Riot could take is to rework armor and mr reduction scalings the more you have them. This probably won't happen ever so tanks will remain worthless for another few months. ADC's are also pretty worthless too since mages are just better in pretty much every possible situation. They do more damage, don't need to be in the fight forever and can just throw spells out and dip, have generally much more health and self-peel, and are easier to combo with.

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

¡Hola! Estoy realizando mi tesis de Psicología y necesito tu ayuda.⚡

Si tenés entre 18 y 40 años, residís en CABA o GBA y jugás partidas clasificatorias de League of Legends, te invito a responder esta breve encuesta.

🎮 Te va a llevar solo 5 minutos y tu participación es voluntaria y anónima.

ENCUESTA ➡️ https://forms.gle/q8M2fRGto6zY6Fis9

¡Tu respuesta va a ayudarme muchísimo en mi investigación sobre Comportamiento tóxico, tilteo y motivos de juego!

Y si podés compartirla con otras personas, ¡me ayudás un montón! <3

I'm a mid main who constantly loses games because I mistrack enemy summoner spells. I'd ping Flash in chat, my team would respond "thanks," and then 30 seconds later I'd completely forget the cooldown and get surprised again. Classic.

So I built a small desktop overlay called LeagueFo that sits in the corner of your screen and tracks enemy summoner spell and ultimate cooldowns automatically. It works by pulling data from Riot's official Live Client API (the same public API Overwolf apps use), so no memory reading, no scripts, not bannable - just the data Riot already makes available. You hold Tab to open your scoreboard and the overlay becomes interactive alongside it; release Tab and it fades away so it's out of your view during normal play.

A few things it does:

• Auto-loads all 5 enemy champions and their spells + ults when a game starts
• Left-click a spell or ult to start its cooldown timer manually
• Accounts for CDR automatically, items, runes like Cosmic Insight, and Ionian Boots are all factored into cooldown calculations so the timer you see is actually accurate
• OCR chat detection, reads your in-game chat and automatically starts timers when teammates ping summoners or ults
• 16 language support

It's completely free. We're still early. Currently putting together a proper installer and Discord for feedback and support.

I'm genuinely curious whether this kind of tool is something people actually want, or if most players have just learned to track cooldowns mentally.

What's your preferred method for tracking enemy summoners and ults mid-game?

The OCR-chat detection also requires you to mark where your chat box is, in order for it to read your chat accurately. We recommend to include two rows for the chat, in case people spam it so the system has time enough to detect the summoners & ults and start the timer for you.

We just launched our Discord server, join it and have a chat with us and see the software in action.
https://discord.com/invite/wsWx7ZB624

TL;DR: Bramble/Thornmail only apply GW when the enemy autos you. Morello/Chempunk apply it when YOU deal damage. Half the healers in the game don't need to auto you, so half the time Thornmail does nothing.

—
EDIT: to be clear since it came up, every example here is a self-healer, so the healer and the healed are the same unit. Against enablers like Soraka the GW has to land on the carry being healed instead, different problem, see comments.
—

Lost a game into a Mundo top last week. I had Thornmail around 20 min, felt fine about it, and he still walked out of every fight and came back full. Went and read the
tooltips after, and the reason is right there in the text.

Bramble Vest / Thornmail: "When struck by a basic attack on-hit, deal magic damage to the attacker and, if they are a champion, inflict them with Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds."

Morellonomicon: "Dealing magic damage to enemy champions inflicts them with Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds."

Chempunk: same thing but physical damage.

Same 3 seconds. The difference is who picks the moment.

Thornmail is retaliation. It needs him to hit you. Mundo's sustain is his R, it's a big regen over time and he doesn't have to touch anyone to get it. So the window where the GW actually matters is the one where he's disengaging, which is exactly the window where he isn't autoing you. You can finish the item and never have it up when it counts.

Warwick is the opposite and that's why people think Thornmail is fine into healers.
His sustain is bolted onto his autos. If he's on you, he can't heal without eating your GW. Item and champ line up.

Vlad is the same case as Mundo, his heal is an ability. Aatrox mostly too.

So the rule I use now:

- healer has to auto YOU to sustain, and you're the frontline -> Bramble is great,
cheap first back, and you wanted the armor anyway
- healer sustains off his own kit, or heals while walking away -> applied only.
Morello if you're AP, Chempunk if you're AD. The tooltips are strict about the damage type
- you're not the one getting hit -> applied only, always. Thornmail on a mid laner against an enemy top laner is a dead item

Same idea shows up outside of healing, which is what got me thinking about it.

"I need armor" isn't a decision. Randuin's and Frozen Heart are both armor and they answer completely different things, crit vs on-hit attack speed.

Against a shield comp, resistances don't touch the shield at all, that's Serpent's Fang, and nobody buys it.
Against one assassin who exists to delete you in a single window, the actual answer is usually Stopwatch or GA, not resistances.
Even boots: Tabis into autos, Merc's into magic and CC, and people pick them on autopilot.

And you can't really settle this with winrates. Serpent's Fang has a bad sample, but nobody buys it into the comps it's for either, so the sample isn't measuring
the thing. That's the whole problem with itemization stats.

Anyway, tell me where I'm wrong. I'm mostly looking for cases where retaliation is correct for a reason I haven't listed.

Other team picks a roaming support? your lane is now 2v1.

other team picks a mage bot lane and you have an adc? doesn’t matter if you win lane because your adc will be useless and you’ll lose every team fight.

the best part is that this also all applies to mid laners and junglers. The players who decide the game are the deviant bot laners who are willing to play disgusting picks for free lp and no other lane gets any say in it. and we have to wait 2 weeks for any nerfs at all?

Hi guys,
Big news. A buddy of mine is working for an coding company and last week they got signed by riot to help them build a new Cliënt. Better organisation and btter connection to the games!
This is not a joke. He said there dead-line for the code was until september and that for the new season it will probably be launched and made public.

What is it that makes azir such a staple pro pick despite being considered bad in solo q? and why is he bad in solo q? Is it a mechanical thing or is it the pro environment? I’ve seen plenty of Azirs in solo q that felt oppressive to play against but I have no experience playing him so its hard for me to grasp what’s going on here

I made borisdiff.gg: free, no signup. Currently supports 7 champions (Ahri, Akali, Jhin, Katarina, Lux, Vayne, Locke) with hand-modeled mechanics: Jhin 4th shot, Vayne Silver Bolts, Akali R2 execute scaling, etc.

You pick a champion, level, ability ranks, and items, sequence an actual combo (multi-part casts handled separately, e.g. Ahri Q out/return as magic/true), and it computes damage against a configurable target. Two builds compare side by side, and every state encodes into a shareable URL.

Ability numbers come from Riot's data files (CDragon bin calculations), refreshed weekly, so it tracks the live patch rather than hand-entered values. Item passives like spellblade procs, IE crit damage, Liandry's burn, and Black Cleaver shred are modeled; crit is expected value.

Known gaps: no rune keystones yet (adaptive shards only), no summoner spells, and item passive coverage is incomplete.

I'd love people who actually know the damage formulas to try to break it — pen ordering, spellblade interactions, and champion edge cases are where I'm least confident.

(P.S. "Your math is wrong, here's why" is the most useful comment you can leave, ideally with a share link to the setup.)

Hey everyone,

I made a small League of Legends mini-game where you try to guess which team won just from the draft.

I already posted a few updates here before, and based on the feedback I received, I’m still working on improving the game step by step.

For today’s update, I added a multiplayer mode.

You can now join a room, play against other players, and try to survive by guessing the winning team correctly.

Next updates based on previous comments:

• Keep improving the UX and mobile experience
• Improve the quality of the games shown
• Add more high elo / better draft examples
• Improve accessibility and keyboard navigation
• Make the guessing experience feel more fair and interesting
• Continue adjusting what information is hidden or shown

I’d really like to get feedback on the multiplayer mode:

• Is it clear enough?
• Is it fun to play?
• What should I improve first?

Link: https://guess-who-won.vercel.app/

Thanks again for all the previous feedback!

Idk if this is the right sub for this, pls tell me if there’s another more indepth/“mathy” sub.

If I want to compare the two stats, i’d just take my current base mana regen and divide that stat by 100 and than that’s how much one percentage point is worth in terms of flat mana regen Right?

But the wiki tells me that one fmr (flat mana regen) is valued at 60 gold and pbmr (percentage base mana regen) is valued at only 4 gold.

This would mean that with just 7 base mana regen (which a lot of champions already have at level one) pbmr is the better deal (math below). Of course this difference just gets way bigger the longer the game goes on, if you have 21 base mana regen pbmr is more than thrice as good as flat mana regen.

Am I missing smth?

Math for flat mana regen one vs pbmr (assuming 7 base mana regen):

Fmr: 60 gold for 1 flat mana regen
Pbmr: 60 gold for 15 pbmr= 7*15/100=1,05 flat mana regen

Sooo! Yesterday i played a game with a friend for the first time in years. I was ADC, he was toplane. We both went well in lane, though after his toplane turret fell, he said i should go mid, and he would take botlane, meaning my farm would fall massively if i had to compete over it with midlane.

As he is currently diamond and i just started again and am just Gold, is that a usual strategy? Or was he stuck in solo queu mentality?

I’ve seen mixed information online about Riot hardware bans and Vanguard detections. For people who understand the system better: Are HWID bans usually instant? Do they normally happen only after repeated violations? Can one flagged account affect other accounts on the same PC? I’m curious about how Riot generally handles this nowadays.

Hi there, I'm coming back to League after an almost 10 year hiatus. In the past I would mainly play bot lane swapping pretty indiscriminately between ADC and support.

And while I'm unsurprisingly stuck at the bottom of Iron, in the few handfuls of games I've played at least three times when I've gone ADC the support player chooses Sion and then runs with the Jungler through most of mid game.

I'm familiar with the concept of a roaming support (a buddy loved to play Bard when they were first released), but I've never seen Sion roam before until now. Is thus a case of Irons doing Iron things? Or is there a meta reason for this? It was just surprising that it's happened a few times in a small pool of games.