@myth-leagueoflegends was yummi in this tournament rushing ardent censor? Since W heal on hit and ardent heal hit stacking? I realise yummi was not in the game yet xd
@amiablereaper i can 100% assure you that they were using a target champion only toggle keybind paired with a attack move keybind. Its the ONLY way i ever found to do that consistently.
yep, i think it was 7.17 where they changed it to be flat 25% instead of scaling to 35%. but it also started off stronger, used to scale from 20% instead of starting at 25%. so it was buffed early and a bit weaker later
I think what broke the camel's back was relic sheild ADC. Once that was figured out it was doomed. I remember watching old Imaqtpie videos from that time
@qq1933 id rather that than the mythic worlds where every game you hear "and x has completed his divine sunderer/goredrinker!!" 4 times every game again. XD
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.
It wasn't just ardent, his interaction with it & windspeakers blessing made that the best "keystone rune/mastery" for him too. (I cant remember if they were technically called keystone runes or masteries back then, they were still part of the "mastery" trees)
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.
Yup, and I was playing bot 😂. Granted, I was bronze and blessed by 0 game sense. I actually miss those days when I thought Zed had a kill button and nothing made sense to me
i was new player too but i was always a meta slave. When people banned lulu or janna i just picked kayle support max W and first item ardent censor. It even became better when it started working on it's user,so it's like i got myself a nashor tooth and gave it to my adc as well
@@HelterwithoutSkelter Assuming hes not already fed, Zed's "kill button" requires him to hit Q and E after ulting, dodge one of those and u usually survive. I think that's what he's referencing. Before he knew how it worked lol
i can imagine this item with new champs like seraphine,millio senna(enchanter build) this could potentially break banrate chart having multiple highest banrate
oh, new champs would absolutely be permabanned if this item was still that powerful. Imagine 5.0 attack speed akshan. Kai'sa being a plasma stacking machine gun. APHELIOS!!
Milio would be a really good user of it but Im not sure about Seraphine. Remember that it was about stacking as big of a shield as possible on one single ADC. That's why Janna and Lulu were the most popular and not Sona (AoE shield) or Soraka, although Sona and Soraka were still in the high tiers
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.
I abused it too at the time. I was just playing my typical Sona then Ardent Censer was one of the recommended items. I read the whole thing and thought this might be a good build. I love how pretty much no one dies in my team on a TF when I was playing Sona since her W can proc it the the whole team. Pushing towers with it was also insane. You'd prolly save about 20 seconds of pushing both T2 and T3 turrets
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.
it was fr crazy bc skt couldn't deal with it and also skipped out on the ardent support and played braum and such ircc I was so hype that series, fr such a breath of fresh air
This video was an awesome blast from the past. Not just the PTSD of ardent meta. But seeing the morde ghost dragon, old art, the champion picks being on the side of screen, first year of 10 bans, hearing Phreak, Riv, papa smithy casting, huni on SKT. I miss old league
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!
I hate that league players will justify almost anything in a match because of a win or lose. Thankfully the community overall seems to be getting less stupid over time.
Enchanters are my favorite characters, but this meta made me bored and tired of the same thing game after game from both sides. I kinda quit the game & didn't play through the height of the ardent censor meta
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
Fr. I was support main and before then I always got my role oruto filled to when practicing top or mid. Since then I don't think I ever been auto filled into support when practicing my off roles.
As an adc at first I enjoyed it cause I felt the care of my supp, but then I realized I liked a more aggressive all in Nauti/Leona type of lane. Scaling every game didn't feel exciting
@@Treecake1 You realize, that Ignar and his team had another ardent champ in that game aswell? They played with Ivern jungle, who bought Ardent first. Like Myth said in his video about Game 3 of SSG vs SKT. You can go Leona bot lane, as it is a counter, but you still get an Ardent on another champ in the team. I agree it was a counter to gold stacking on supports, but it wasn't a counter to the Ardent meta. You had to go Ardent, if you didn't you just lose the game by 20 mins.
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.
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
Season 5 was the Juggernauts/top lane meta - GP, Morde permaban. -funnel all resources into Darius, Fiora, Riven. -even Faker was on Lulu mid duty Season 6 was the mid lane/AP meta. -Syndra permaban. -funnel all resources to LeBlanc, Orianna, Ryze, Azir.. or Rumble, Kennen -3 pushing lanes -tank Ekko -support Miss Fortune Season 7. well, Ardent meta -league of pink wards -10k gold deficit comeback -Fervor Leona -Galio, Chogath, Trundle facetanking everything -relic shield ADCs Season 8 was the start of flex meta, the unpredictable pick-bans. every player xcept ADC share the same champion pool -Akali, Aatrox, Irelia, Jayce top or mid -Camille top or jungle -3 west teams in semis, but China still won omegalul
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
i was recommended this channel randomly by YT. and as a League player for about 12 years now i will say all your videos are good!!! one patch i would suggest you do a video on is patch 4.20 aka the warwick meta in post season 4/pre season 5
Great video man. This is like a fever dream watching this video and remembering what it was like to play in ardent meta. It's hard to believe this was even a thing in the game. I remember there was a few games where people would report you if you didn't go ardent support lol
You know what's funny? Trundle support was actually somewhat meta as he was building (surprise) ardent censor. There was a rune that gave healing to allies if you stunned someone so he could proc it
What's hilarious is that it took months for Ardent to get picked up. That piece of garbage item was ruining soloQ in January-February of 2017 yet pros were convinved tank/engage supports were the meta. It was a horrible time to play adc because you were completely at the mercy of your supp
It also had the same timing with the buffs to Ivern after release, so imagine the carnage of an enchanter in the jungle with ardent, who can hide drake with bushes, it was too broken, I abused it right up until the Ivern W nerfs and just swapped to Janna. Season 8 was the payback for the ardent meta
I remember playing around this time, and everyone was already complaining how OP it was and riot was like... nah we don't believe you and the stats FOR MONTHS. It was worse than 5.16 patch.
Actually it was to opposite. The playerbase claimed that gold coin start was bad, it got a bunch of buffs, and people still insisted the item sucked. Ardent was way stronger, and got a few small nerfs before people realized how stupid broken the item was. Even with the item being OP, there was a line of thought that enchanters were subpar compared to engage supports. When enchanters started dominating the meta, PEOPLE STILL DID NOT BLAME THE ITEM, they said that the culprit was the shield/heal mastery. The Phreak clip shows how the players were delusional on how strong coin and ardent censer were. And the most infuriating part: When the playerbase finally realized on how strong Janna was, they weren’t worried about the meta being around botlane, that how the game has ever been. What made people mad, was because they felt people with no skill were climbing ranks with Janna without really deserving it (and also, engage support players who felt that it was unjust that skill expression didn’t matter). I swear to god, if wasn’t the fact that the item could only be used by braindead champions, it could be even more broken, and the playerbase wouldn’t care at all.
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."
Such a great video. I remember that was my second season maining adc and it was fun for a moment to feel like my team actually played for my role, but then it became so repetitive and it really killed the mood for worlds making it boring and quite predictable :(. I only disagree with you in 15:20. I think the series I most enjoyed that tournament was MSF vs SKT, ignar was the one to came up with the Leona with AD mastery page to counter lulu, and then he picked a blitz that actually made it difficult to faker to play the game. Watching a LEC team take to game 5 the then (and now 'cause 2024 lol) current world champion revitalized my hope to see more diversity of picks in the rest of the playoff, sadly it wasn't that way
Some meta champions become OP and unchecked for years. Some items become OP for multiple seasons. Supports were OP for one month, and Riot shut us down immediately.
Thankfully the LoL balancing team learned from this monumental blunder never made gigantic, game-breaking changes to the game ever again, right? ... right?
In fairness for all the Incidents that have happened since, nothing has been even as remotely bad as Ardent and at least usually gets nerfed fast like the Banner Incident and AP Galio Incident
You made me remember a game in 2017 where my Mid laner was insulting me for not starting the support item for the Ardent meta, then my support followed up with "Dude Im playing Leona", we both got reported for not playing the meta bot lane comp
This feels like the Overwatch 1 equivalent of when Brigitte first came out and everyone just stacked 5 more tanks around her shielding... but instead of an all tank push, it was 1 AD carry, 3 tanks and some support with Argent Censure.
If I remember correctly, this was the year that I started playing. I didn’t know about the Ardent meta. But I did theory craft running Relic on ADCs before it became popular, for a completely less impressive reason. I was like ‘the shield is great, it helps me last hit, and it generates gold’. Edit: actually after listening more, I think my Relic route was before this, it was in the early days of Relic. Before the nerfs. I must’ve started the year before
In 2017 I was just starting to play this game so I'm really glad I was throwing games with my friends in blind pick matches instead of worrying about meta strategies and stuff, this whole meta sounds like it was hell to deal with for everyone involved
To create more context of how good this item was, Xmithie was buying it on Sejuani to proc off of masteries that healed your team when they attacked enemies you CC'd. The stats were so significant it didn't even matter if the heal was noticeable.
@@skrattaoppar9753 I know, but giving your whole team permanent Ardent buffs was brutal, also considering the meta at that time, playing sona was as safe as it will ever be, because the other team will be playing another enchanter, and she outscale them all, and the early wouldn't be as much of a problem
it was a matter of value. lulu gave attack speed and Janna bonus ad and their shields made it so you could not itemize against them. That was the key factor. This was before serpents fang was a thing. Sona and soraka lost their value with anti-heal. Lulu and Janna only got stronger
@@M0ONCommander on top of that, Janna and Lulu have strong disengage, and anti-dive tools. They could afford to pick weak early game champions and not be permadived, Soraka and Sona couldn’t. And who else would benefit from the Ardent buff? Top was some tank frontline, and mid a control mage (or even another tank like Galio), and Jungle was also a tank. Aside from Janna and Lulu, we also had Rakan, Taric, and Karma, all who were way superior than Sonna and Soraka
hey that's my favorite item. it's why I mained Sona when i still played the game, found it real cool that I can constantly tag my team in fights with buffs and protection and they refuse to die.
They reworked Mordekaiser right before worlds, but this was not just a rework like any other. This was a rework that was designed to shift the meta, for the first time ever they designed a champion to 'innovate' on the standard lane assignments. Bruiser/Tank top, Carry/Bruiser jungle, Mage/Assassin mid, Marksman bot, Enchanter/Tank CC sup was the standard. Mordekaiser was a melee midlaner to counter assassins as he was kinda tanky, but got reworked to be the first functioning melee botlaner. W gave passive bonus exp to the ally you put it on, to ensure you were higher level than your lane opponent (the idea was that this exp advantage would counter the range disadvantage). He did crazy damage with his Q that was "next 3 auto attacks are empowered and especially the 3rd was essentially a tactical nuke, with triforce this 3rd Q would oneshot squishies). AND THEN his passive of his R was that whenever you killed dragon you got a phantom pet dragon that you could control like Tibbers but was as tanky as the dragon you killed. This resulted in a botlane that was always ahead, would always have bottom prio, therefore always killed dragon, would get a pet dragon to either push with or simply click to attack the enemy botlaner who had to run back to their T2 tower because they would just get killed by phantom dragon under T1 tower if they 'ignored' it. In worlds this translated to: The team with mordekaiser would win the game, TSM went 1-5 in groups I think, the 1 game they won was vs the best in their group (korean team i dont remember which) and the only reason they won that game was because that Korean team was pretty much locked and left mordekaiser open either as disrespect or to get some practice against mordekaiser piloted by a lesser team I started playing at the end of season 3 so it has been a while, but this is what I remember from 2015 worlds meta if I missed anything or am wrong about something somebody please correct me haha
As a guy who played Janna, I liked the Ardent :) I began to built Banner of Command when the new Baron update came out and it was so fun seeing cannon minions destroy turrets from across the map. Sad they removed it :(
I was a Karma main, and this was the era of me playing Karma Jungle/Karma Top, no one liked me for it but god was it funny, ardent censer made her a total goofball in ganks, run in, shield the carry, walk in a straight line, free assists lol. I think they ended up nerfing Karma's off roles to keep her bot at some point after I left, so I feel like I was ahead of the curve on Brusier Karma meta in the end.
Fun fact we had the same issue in dota 2 with the solar crest rework. Not becaus it would buff teammates. But it could buff yourself. Basically the item gave movement speed, armor, attack speed, physical damge shield. And a bit of the same in stats pasifly. . The biggest chance they made is that it only gives you the shield and the stats overall were reduced. Item now no longer is a core rushed item after the chance. Still good but not meta.
Remember blackfire torch used to have an active ability like BOTR did? And you could first buy it on pre-rework swain and essentially just burn the enemy outta lane. The good ole days
There's never been a meta where my role as a jungler was worse and felt more useless. It was also the worst viewer experience I have ever experienced, 2017 will always be the worst year ever in league for me.
I definitely agree with you but i have to say, one of my fav set of games come from that meta... Misfits vs T1 was and still is one of the best we've seen, especially in that awful meta
@@CKWong-sp3oeHe nerf the champs he gets ran down by and buff the champs he plays. His highest rank was when he super buffed Janna and fell off again when she was nerfed
Recently watched a video about Khan’s history in league and how the ardent censer meta invalidated his play style as an aggressive top laner. Great explanation as to why that was.
I disagree with the assertion that finals game three was the most exciting game. People still talk about semi finals skt vs rng being the single biggest carry job ever. Faker dragged that team to the finals
You should make a video on the meta where every single champion become a top lane tank rushing Bambi cinder/ice borne gauntlet. If I remember correctly this was season 5. Any champion could be an immortal tank that destroyed everything. The most common where ekko/fizz
Something that went unmentioned was that the stats that were supposed to be unique stacked if you built more than one You could full heal your adc from less than 5% hp with soraka w+r in under .1 seconds
oh i remember buolding this item always on soraka cause of the att spd plus the healing was so good back then I would always just stand behind my ad and spam w on them and this was the first soraka rework too where her q has longer range and can insta heal u to full health lmao it was also so satisfying how u go from %5 health to full health whenever u land the best 5 man q my enemies were always flabbergasted whenever they see a 5 man q from soraka lol
Patches just shouldn’t happen two months before worlds in general. Riot completely destroyed multiple World championships. That level of incompetence should not be possible.
What I remember most about this meta was having to change lanes to win more games. I was (and am) a main adc, but because of smurfing and boosting I had to change from lane so bot lane was smurf against smurfs
You could ve shown the MSF series, where the Blitz/Leona actually worked and forced skt to change their drafts as well (IK they still had Ardent in other lanes)
I remember when arden used to give the buff to yourself when you shielded yourself. It was used mainly on diana if I recall. I personally built it on skarner an you had pretty much pernament arden buff.
I know someone who's been a top lane main for years, harstuck silver. during ardent censor meta, he swapped to support, and made it to plat. after, he swapped back to top, and is back to being hardstuck silver.
I loved it. I finished Diamond 4 that year one tricking ardent censor janna with like a 30 kda and 75% win rate. I never finished above Plat 3 in any other season.
I still remember getting 11 straight wins in rank playing utility nunu with zzrot portal and banner of command. Zero kills per game. Games end in less than 15 minutes. No tower plates yet. I just straight up push 2 lanes at the same time and watch their inhibitors melt
Honestly Ardent Meta wasn't that bad , maybe for the people playing but i remember watching and i enjoyed it. Nowadays ADC meta in mid lane Tristana/Corki 90% of games for me is by far the worst meta i've ever watched and i've been watching competitive league since 2013... I stopped playing LoL in 2016 but i still watch it almost daily.
Okay but does anyone remember the old, self cast, ardent that created the monster we knew as Ardent Diana… then a few years later we had moonstone mord😐
Actually for me, I was really noob back in 2017 and it was just in that meta with OP ardent that I finally reach gold for the first time spaming my main in that moment Janna, so I actually have good memories of that time. Not sure how would I react to playing that meta today.
I was basically just starting my ranked journey that year as an adc main and I got so sick of getting ardent diffed that I swapped to spamming Janna support. I also want to point out that this item was so strong that if you were able to proc it AT ALL, you built it. Yes, even Shen.
