This guide will cover some of the best in class items for each role in League of Legends, highlight a Mythic or two in each role, and will get you to think more about potential items to build!
Itemization in League of Legends is an ever-adapting part of the game, and while there is some consistency in terms of what items you will look to build each game, there is a lot of variety, and some options are harder to consider in the heat of the moment. This guide will cover some of the best in class items for each class role in League of Legends, while highlighting a Mythic or two that are the most popular choice(s), and hopefully will get you thinking more about items you can build on each subclass of champion.
Even with the AD nerfs from 11.17, I think this item is still incredibly strong on the fighters who build it. You want this item on champions who have low cooldown auto attack-based abilities, such as Camille, Wukong, and Jax. Champions such as Sett and Lee Sin who auto attack but have longer cooldowns don’t really want this item, as they want to get more rotations of their abilities in fights off, and so they want to aim for Goredrinker as well. These are the general default best Mythics for these champions at the moment since they tend to outperform the others by a fair margin, but you do see occasional outliers such as Gangplank who prefer crit-based builds with Shieldbow, Prowler’s Claw, or Trinity Force, but those champions tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
This item is really strong due to its ability to grant you a very big shield. One thing a lot of players don’t notice is that the shield you are granted is increased based on the number of champions you have hit within the last 6 seconds. This means that this item is particularly strong on champions with a lot of area of effect damage, and it can even be a decent item on tank champions who deal a lot of AOE AD damage like Sion if you are doing well and want to be tanky while also still doing damage. However, you generally want to build this item after you complete your Mythic and maybe another item or two, since the shield effect scales off your maximum health, which makes it a better later buy since you’ll be scaled up a bit from runes such as Overgrowth as well as having other health items from your Mythic and another legendary.
This item is somewhat under-built in my opinion, especially following the buff to health back in the 11.4 patch which raised it above the stats it was when it was originally made. It’s especially valuable for fighters, since oftentimes you don’t want your ADC building Grievous Wounds, and while Thornmail is good at times - namely against Fiora, Sett, and Riven - Chainsword often functions better outside of those specific auto-attack outlier champions on Fighter champions, especially ones with a lot of area of effect abilities such as Gangplank and Renekton.
Ever since the change during the pre-season where Ravenous Hydra now applies on abilities and certain item effects such as Goredrinker active, Ravenous Hydra has become a really good item on champions that didn’t previously build it such as Gangplank and Zed, while the champions that previously built it such as Camille, Fiora, and Riven only became stronger as a result of the buffs. The build path is also really nice for these ability-based champions, as the item also gained ability haste when it was changed during the preseason. Consider building Ravenous Hydra if you are playing a champion who likes lifesteal and wants the cooldown reduction from the item, especially if you do large amounts of area of effect damage to begin with.
This item is really solid for bruisers for two reasons; being able to to play fights more aggressively and looking to trade your GA for the life of an important carry is incredibly valuable and can turn the tide of a game with proper usage. The other reason is not to do with the item itself, but rather the components of it. Stopwatch is very useful on a lot of fighters if you buy it at the right times, usually I aim for the third dragon in the game when I start to consider buying Stopwatch, since that’s around 15-20 minutes which is when potentially game deciding fights can take place in solo queue. For this item, I would consider it if I need to dive deep into fights or buy time while my team does front to back team fighting. However, if you don’t need to do either of those things but still want an Armor/AD item, Death’s Dance is definitely the move due to its healing and physical damage delay.
This item is pretty strong on most tanks who build Bami’s Cinder, due to the fact that you gain 100 bonus health with each legendary item, as well as the slow on auto attack which increases by 4% on melee champions and 2% on ranged champions per 1000 maximum HP. Due to items like Anathema’s Chains and Warmog’s Armor being so strong at the moment, it makes this Mythic in particular rather tempting since you will have high amounts of health to buff this passive. The slow is also really nice, especially against champions you have a hard time sticking on while you wait for your next rotation of cooldowns to come up. Turbo Chemtank and Sunfire Aegis both have their uses and are better on some tanks than Frostfire, but in general this is the Mythic you want to look to get.
A new addition to the game, Anathema’s Chains is especially strong for tanks in the top lane, and oftentimes you will see top laners who build this item opt to go for it first. The damage reduction is incredibly powerful, along with the eventual crowd control reduction at max stacks. On top of that, you get a high amount of health - 650, to be exact - and a small amount of ability haste which is a nice little cherry on top of everything else. Overall, I highly recommend this on tank top laners as a first item at the moment, and it’s a possible option on some tank junglers and even some tank supports such as Leona.
This item was reworked during the pre-season slightly to reduce incoming basic attack damage that also scales up by 3.5 per 1000 maximum health, capped at 40% maximum damage reduction. Otherwise, the item still remains the same attack speed slowing mana item. I think this item is in a really good place right now, and is a very solid pick on champions that really want to get into the enemy’s faces and slow their attack speed. If the enemy team has a lot of auto attack based champions, like say a Sett, Irelia, Yasuo, or Yone to name a few, this item is extremely valuable against those types of champions.
Similar to Anathema’s Chains, this item is also pretty cheap, so I’d definitely recommend getting it as a second or third item. It can even be built on some fighters, for example; I saw Bwipo during the LEC finals go Frozen Heart second against Sylas, Viego, Gangplank, and Ezreal as Trundle. These champions are all auto attack based and low-range save for the Ezreal, and so he gets a lot of value off of building the item because Trundle really wants to get into the enemy’s face and it makes the champions he’s playing against have a much harder time outputting a lot of damage.
The go-to Grievous Wounds Legendary for tanks, and it’s easy to understand why after they reworked it to apply Grievous Wounds on your immobilizing abilities. This made the item a lot better because now even if the enemy tries to ignore you, they will still get their healing cut if you’re able to land your immobilizing abilities onto them. However, this does not apply to Bramble Vest, so be sure to keep that in mind when considering this item. I’d generally recommend grabbing this most games, unless there are absolutely no AD damage threats on the enemy team and you don’t need the healing cut.
I’ll preface this section by saying I covered ADC Itemization a few months ago which you can find here, and while I largely feel most of the items I covered there are the same, there are a few new things that have popped up, and I have to eat my words for saying on-hit builds are bad, so...here we go!
This item has been popping up a lot more on champions that are doing the Wit’s End/Guinsoo’s build, and I can see why, as ADCs are just trying to farm up to hit those 2-3 item power spikes, so having the staying power of the Vampiric Scepter both in lane and in fights is very nice to be able to secure that scaling. You see it especially on a champion like Kalista who is very dominant early, and what you can do on her is stack your first three waves and then crash on the enemy tower on the fourth wave to reset with a Vampiric Scepter and really start going to town on trades.
I do think all three ADC Mythics are still good however, so it’s important to be critical in your thinking when considering which you should buy as most ADCs other than a few exceptions like Jhin, Samira, and Ezreal can potentially build all three crit Mythics depending on what they need. If you’re not sure, the way I’d boil it down is - Galeforce for dodging an important skill/repositioning, Shieldbow for sustain in fight/survival against burst, Kraken if you need high damage output and you’re tough to get to.
This item was recently nerfed with its now linear level scaling where you stay at 15 on-hit damage until level 9, and while I do think it’s pretty bad as a first item now for ADCs, it’s still pretty solid as a second to third item when you start ramping up in levels and damage. This goes doubly so if you are a solo lane ADC like Vayne, since you gain levels quicker compared to being in bot lane. I don’t think this item will really be going away anytime soon since it still ramps up insanely quickly once you hit level 9, but before then you’re better off investing in other items that will give you enough damage to hold out until you can get value out of Wit’s End from your levels.
This item works really well at the moment due to its synergy with Wit’s End, where every third auto procs on-hit effects at 100% effectiveness. Due to the combination of these two items resulting in such high attack speed builds, this means ADCs are pumping out not only a high amount of physical damage due to the on-hit scaling from crit chance on Guinsoo’s passive, but they are also putting out high amounts of magic damage on each third auto attack they do in a team fight as well. I do still think this item is niche outside of this interaction however, so if either Guinsoo’s interaction with on-hit gets nerfed, or Wit’s End takes another hit of some sort, you may see this item fade away a bit. For now, however, be sure to run Guinsoo’s if you’re an attack-speed based ADC and you are building Wit’s End.
This item is arguably up there with Divine Sunderer in terms of power at the moment in my opinion, it is incredibly strong at all points in the game right now and provides a bunch of excellent stats not just for assassins, but even ranged fighters like Jayce and ADCs such as Varus, Graves, and Draven. The Serrated Dirk buildpath along with Vampiric Scepter allows for riskier trading in the early game with incredible amounts of burst with your Lethality, and unlike the other Lethality Mythics, Eclipse has the added benefit of being an excellent scaling item due to its 4% armor penetration you get per Legendary item. Save for a few exceptions such as Pyke who benefits more from the dash of Prowler’s Claw, I think this is by far the best Mythic at the moment and should be built on anyone who builds a lethality Mythic.
Originally I was going to cover Serpent’s Fang here, but I actually think Umbral Glaive might become a higher priority item following the lethality nerf to Serpent’s Fang against non-shielding compositions. I think this item is strong in both competitive and solo queue, since it essentially functions as an additional Oracle’s Lens and unlike Oracle’s, it guarantees you will spot something since it only activates around wards. It also allows you to build a lot of long swords early and upon completion, gives a small amount of ability haste. I think this item should be looked at a bit more deeply now, and would consider this as a second lethality item after a Mythic if you don’t need Ghostblade/Serpents utility or Grudge’s % armor penetration.
This item is a pretty solid mainstay alternative to Lord Dominik’s Regards for champions who don’t like building crit chance but really want to get percent armor penetration. There’s honestly not a whole lot to say about this item since it’s one of those things that’s pretty straightforward to understand the value and power, the only note here is that I generally consider building this item when I see 3+ champions on the enemy team with armor items, since the percent armor penetration is more effective than lethality at that point for damage.
Following Patch 11.17, the gold cost of the Ghostblade was dropped by by 100, as well as giving 15 Ability Haste in exchange for 5 less AD, which is fairly notable and makes Ghostblade a slightly more appealing item for AD Assassins, as well as AD casters such as Riven and Jayce. On top of that, this item’s active and passive are very good for champions who want to roam around the map a lot like Talon and Qiyana in the mid lane, and it's worth looking at not only the move speed boost you get from the active, but also the ghosting effect that makes it so you can freely pass through minions and champions.
This item is incredibly valuable due to its active ability that gives a small dash as well as movespeed after, which champions such as Diana who wants to dive into the enemy team and get off big abilities like Moonfall really want to pull off. This item is also nice for its flat magic penetration, which while not very valuable against targets that build magic resistance, it still is a nice little cherry on top against targets who may not be building any magic resistance in the early to mid game. I’d consider this item if you need the help chasing enemies down or the repositioning power of the active for your big spells.
Similar to ADC Mythics, I think most Lost Chapter Mythics are generally on-par with each other and it more so comes down to what you need to do to best succeed, so I figured I’d make a general section for each of them. If you’re against heavy dive/melee compositions that aren’t on the tanky end, or if you’re a shorter range mage like Ryze or Cassiopeia and want to confirm your combos/add more CC, Everfrost is an excellent choice for those situations. If you want more burst damage against squishier compositions and a little bit of mobility, then Luden’s is definitely the choice. If neither of these fit, I think Liandry’s Anguish is the best choice. This is due to the fact that looking at the meta right now, a lot of champions itemize a lot of health options, especially if they’re AD top/jungle fighters or tanks.
This is probably the best second offensive item you can build on most mages if you don’t have Tear of the Goddess or need a Zhonya’s in my opinion. Even if the enemy isn’t itemizing magic resistance, it still is a decent buy due to its pricing compared to Rabadon’s Deathcap. Deathcap is a good item and gives you a lot of AP, but in solo queue games can go kind of fast, so cheap, fast investments can pay higher dividends compared to the really big investments like Deathcap. That said, I think it is higher priority on control mages compared to AP Assassins, the reasoning being that AP Assassins such as Ekko benefit offensively more from Lich Bane, whereas ones like Katarina and Akali still like Zhonya’s more due to the tankier stats and the timing it buys to let their next round of cooldowns come up during their downtime in stasis.
This item is key on both control mages and AP Assassins for different reasons, but it’s an incredibly strong item for a fairly cheap price, especially if you take the stopwatch rune on certain champions like Gragas. There’s even been a trend in competitive play where some supports like Rakan, Leona, and Rell where they buy Zhonya’s as a first item. For those classes of support champions and champions such as Sylas, Diana, and Akali, you want to take Zhonya’s after you use your combos/engage as a way to buy time for your next rotation of cooldowns to come up. You can make some very clutch plays or riskier engages with Zhonya’s as well, because it will buy time for your team to follow up on your engage/dive with you still in the fight for a bit longer.
For control mages, Zhonya’s is important to dodge burst combos or engages from the enemy team, as well as buy time against enemies who are diving you. It’s much more defensive in its general compared to the AP Assassins and Supports, although sometimes you can use it offensively for cooldowns in a similar fashion to those champions. The timing is less forgiving on control mages due to the fact that you are easier to kill if someone jumps on top of you, and you need to be certain that you are in danger to use it, as bad usage can severely impact your damage output and leave you vulnerable to a dive if it’s off cooldown.
There are many items in this game that fulfill many different situations, and while this guide covered a handful of them, it’s only scratching the surface of some of the best items in each class of champions. Don’t be afraid to experiment and figure out what works best for you on the Rift and find the key items that will grant you higher chances of winning!
Best of luck on the Rift and stay safe out there!
