League of Legends continues to evolve throughout ten seasons since 2009. With each season comes massive changes to champions, items, and the way you play the game. Some of the items have had compelling moments in the past few years.
Most of the items on this list have been removed or changed massively. We will also only look at items when they were at their most powerful and not going through a life cycle of possible changes. Here are our top picks for some of the most impactful items in League of Legends history.
10 ZZ'Rot Portal
A somewhat recent item that is no longer in the game for several reasons. Initially granting the user 50 armor and magic resist and movement speed around turrets. What people remember the ZZ'Rot Portal for is its ability to summon void minions to push waves. An active ability to drop a portal that endlessly spawns minions that push up a lane. If not dealt with, this item can hold waves for a long time, and help siege objectives. Also, every 4th minion it spawned as buffed, but each minion died after about 4 seconds on their own.
9 Heart Of Gold, Philosopher's Stone & Kage's Lucky Pick
For old school League players, this entry should come as no surprise. Unlike the support items today, all three of these items give passive gold over time. They were initially for supports, but mostly every lane started buying them. Because of the passive or the item is in the build tree for another item, they give tons of gold with no counter.
Sometimes people would buy all three because the passives didn't cancel each other out. Avarice Blade could also but in this spot, but it wasn't nearly as popular as the other three items.
8 Banner Of Command
The Banner of Command has one, if not the longest line of changes in LoL history. One point in the items life it could buff a minion, granting it extra stats. Buffing a any minion increases is damage by 100%, armor and magic resist, attack range, and health. It also gives the gold for its kills to the caster. At one point, this buff made the minion immune to magic damage but changes it to damage reduction in future patches. This item has massive sieging power and combining with ZZ'Rot Portal; it gives so much power and survivability to split pushers.
7 Feral Flare
In season 4, Wriggle's Lantern receives an upgrade that is so powerful it only lasts about half of the season. Feral Flare is one of the only few items in the game's history with an infinite scaling stat. Champion kills, assists, and killing large monsters grant stacks. Stacks give increasing bonus magic damage to basic attacks and life steal. On top of increasing stats, it also increases the gold the user gains through monster kills and gives a free ward. Heavy auto-attack focused champions dominated with this item if they allowed to stack.
6 Madred's Bloodrazor
Older players got to experience this item's power and know why it was quickly removed. Before the start of season three, Madred's Bloodrazor continues to dominate the rift. A very high-cost item but allows each basic attack to deal 4% of the target's maximum health as bonus magic damage. Pairing with a 40% attack speed makes this item extremely powerful. Primarily built on champions with AD, it allows them to destroy tanks who stack armor resist because of the bonus magic damage. Along with the odd stats it has, it wasn't easy to play against and is why it makes the list.
5 Force Of Nature
Force of Nature was an essential item for tanks, due to the amount of self-sustaining healing it gives. This item regenerates 1.5% of your max HP every second, which provides an insane regeneration on top of an additional 200% base regen it also gives. Building Force of Nature with items like Warmog's Armor and Spirit Visage makes tanks nearly unkillable without anti-healing items. Later, Force of Nature's passive transfers to Warmog's Armor, and then removed. These items brought about the first tank meta in League of Legends.
4 Black Cleaver
In some player's eyes, the current Black Cleaver is a shadow of what the original item once was. In early season 3, Black Cleaver has armor penetration as a base stat and shreds past 40 armor on full stacks.
What makes this so broken was that the passive could stack with multiple Black Cleaver's, allowing about 150% armor shredding. With this, champions abilities that hit multiple times rapidly can destroy someone's armor to the point they are doing true damage.
3 Spear Of Shojin
Another recent removal from Season 9 is the Spear of Shojin. Its original concept was much different before it removing the item and giving the item a full rework. Most players remember the item by its second redesign, and the reason it was quickly taken out. After casting your ultimate, your first auto would cause your autos for six seconds to lower your basic abilities cooldown by 20% per auto-attack. Stacking attack speed with this allows champions to spam their other abilities making them a rolling death machine. It is no longer in the game; for this reason, interacting with champion abilities, this much has little counterplay. However, items like this one can be found now only in Nexus Blitz mode.
2 Sword Of The Divine
Another item from the wild balancing days of season 3 & 4 is the Sword of the Divine. Giving the user 45% attack speed, one of the highest base attack speed stats on an item. Along with the stat, its active would grant the users next 3 auto's to be 100% attack speed and Crit. The active gives reliable burst windows every 60 seconds, and champion kills refund half of its cooldown. Marksmen and assassin champions can kill a squishy opponent in a matter of seconds with this item.
1 Deathfire Grasp
If you are a long time League of Legends player, this top entry might come at little to no surprise. Deathfire Grasp is one of the most popular items that the league community would love to get back, just as much as they hate it. Giving 120 AP, 10 cooldown reduction, and an active that deals 15% of the targets max Hp in magic damage. Not only does its active deal a lot of damage, but the target would take 20% more magic damage from any other spell for 4 seconds afterwards. DFG makes burst mages pop champions even faster, and those who didn't now could. The item is so popular, in Pentakill's first album, Smite and Ignite, this item is the second track on the album.