Since its inception, the Stopwatch has been a tricky item to both use and play around within the average game of League of Legends. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know to understand the Stopwatch.
labeledWithin League of Legends, one of the most peculiar effects that your champion can have is invulnerability. In many cases, applying this effect to yourself or your teammates comes at some sort of cost, such as Kayle not being able to attack while her ultimate is active or Taric needing to channel for two and a half seconds before applying the effect. Aside from these ultimate abilities, the most common way to gain invulnerability is to enter stasis; in turn, the easiest way to enter a stasis wherein you cannot move or attack but are invulnerable and untargetable is through using a Stopwatch-related item (sorry, Bard and Zilean players).
Since entering stasis via the Stopwatch leaves you susceptible to follow-up damage from enemies when you are once again vulnerable, it is important to consciously understand when and why you should be using the one-time access that your Stopwatch grants you to this powerful yet complex effect. In this guide, we’ll take a look at what exactly the Stopwatch does, how to obtain and best use it, and what to upgrade it into. With this knowledge in hand, you’ll hopefully be able to win more games!
Before we get into how you can best use the Stopwatch, it is important to thoroughly understand what it does and its unique relationship with gold value
Stopwatch
Cost: 650 gold (sells for 260 gold, 40% of its cost)
Stats: N/A
Unique Active – Stasis: Make yourself untargetable and invulnerable for two and a half seconds, but also render yourself unable to move, attack, cast abilities, use summoner spells, or activate items.
Build Into: Zhonya’s Hourglass, Guardian Angel
Note: The Stopwatch turns into a Broken Stopwatch after use. This Broken Stopwatch cannot be used for its unique active again, but it does contribute its full gold value in cost when purchasing an item that upgrades out of the Stopwatch. Unlike the Stopwatch, the Broken Stopwatch sells for 455 gold (at the typical sale rate of 70% of the item’s cost).
This is distinctly the more obvious of the two ways in which you can obtain a Stopwatch. Like all other items in League of Legends, you can purchase a Stopwatch from the item shop whenever you return to base. It is noteworthy that once you’ve used your Stopwatch and it has transformed into a Broken Stopwatch, you can no longer purchase a functional Stopwatch from the shopkeeper.
This alternative way of obtaining a Stopwatch grants you a ‘Perfectly Timed’ Stopwatch for free with the stipulation that you cannot use it until 14 minutes into the game (until then, it’s labelled as a ‘Commencing Stopwatch’ in your inventory). Getting kills and assists against enemy champions reduces two minutes off of the aforementioned 14-minute countdown. While this item is functionally identical to the Stopwatch, it is noteworthy that it only contributes a flat 250 gold value to any item upgrades purchased which involve the Stopwatch.
With those factors in mind, let’s now get into how to most effectively use the Stopwatch. In particular, let’s run through a few reasons why you would want to enter stasis and get your singular use out of the Stopwatch.
Perhaps the most common way to use a Stopwatch is to dodge incoming damage, since you can just throw yourself into stasis and become invulnerable to any incoming spells or attacks. However, one thing you might be wondering is: why would anyone choose to do this instead of using a dash or blink, such as Flash, to just get out of the way? The primary reason might be that it is generally easier to enter stasis where your champion is than to attempt to Flash into a safe location.
However, a more nuanced reason is that Flash doesn’t allow you to dodge targeted spells and basic attacks. For example, if Veigar’s ultimate is hurtling towards you, you cannot dodge it via dashing or blinking because it is a targeted ability. However, if you use your Stopwatch at just the right moment, you can entirely negate the damage that it would deal by being invulnerable when it connects with you. As a result, using your Stopwatch gives you a great way to avoid dying in the early game before you can complete something like a Zhonya’s Hourglass or Guardian Angel.
While two and a half seconds might not seem like a lot, it can mean basically everything when you’re in a teamfight. In a similar vein, having your abilities off cooldown is crucial for winning important fights, as without these abilities you’re only fighting with a fraction of your strength. In most instances, you are at your most vulnerable after having used your abilities, leaving them on cooldown and you unable to defend yourself. This is where using a Stopwatch to go into stasis comes into play, as having an extra couple of seconds (as short as it may be) can give you just enough time to let your abilities come off cooldown so that you can secure more kills and defend yourself more easily.
While the previous two reasons present high-skill, idealistic ways in which you could use a Stopwatch in order to survive longer and secure kills more easily, the truth is that many players will lack the reaction time and game knowledge in order to make the most out of those tactics. A more realistic way to look at the Stopwatch is to think of its stasis capabilities as a form of ‘panic button’. If you perceive yourself to be in immediate danger, entering stasis can give you a short period of time in which you can assess your situation and make the right decision when you’re able to act again. While there are obviously situations where this just makes you a sitting duck for enemy spells once you’re out of stasis, there are also plenty of times where you can use the two and a half seconds to figure out where you can Flash to and get away from oncoming enemies with ease.
Progressing a bit into the game, let’s suppose that you’ve bought your Stopwatch or used a rune to obtain it and then you’ve actually used it, turning it into the Broken Stopwatch. In this situation, you’re going to want to build an item with that Broken Stopwatch so that it stops eating up space in your inventory and also so that you don’t have to lose gold value by selling it to the shopkeeper. Let’s take a look at your two options so that you can best understand what to upgrade this item into.
Cost: Seeker’s Armguard (1000 gold) + Fiendish Codex (900 gold) + Stopwatch (650 gold) + 50 cold (total: 2600 gold, sell price: 1820 gold, 70% of its price)
Stats: 65 ability power, 10 ability haste, 45 armor
Unique Active – Stasis: Make yourself untargetable and invulnerable for two and a half seconds, but also render yourself unable to move, attack, cast abilities, use summoner spells, or activate items. This activatable ability has a 120 second cooldown.
The keen amongst you might notice that the active of Zhonya’s Hourglass is almost entirely identical to that of the Stopwatch. The key difference is that where the Stopwatch was a one-time use item, Zhonya’s Hourglass can be reused many times, just with a two minute interval between uses. It is also noteworthy that on top of having such a powerful active, the stats that Zhonya’s Hourglass gives are 99.25% gold efficient without even considering the active, meaning that this item provides tons of value for its cost. Since this item has stats that are oriented towards characters who rely on ability power to deal magic damage, it is obviously best built by magic-centric casters, fighters, and tanks.
In short, everything that has been said about how to use the Stopwatch applies to Zhonya’s Hourglass since their actives are fundamentally similar. The obvious core difference is to be more lenient with when you use this item, since it is only gated by a cooldown and can be used multiple times.
Cost: B.F. Sword (1300 gold) + Chain Vest (800 gold) + Stopwatch (650 gold) + 50 gold (total: 2800 gold, sell price: 1120 gold, 40% of its price)
Stats: 40 attack damage, 40 armor
Unique Passive – Rebirth: Whenever you would take lethal damage, enter resurrection (a unique case of stasis) for four seconds, and then heal for 50% of your base health and restore 30% of your maximum mana. This passive has a 300 second cooldown.
It goes without saying that this item deviates heavily from both the Stopwatch and its counterpart, Zhonya’s Hourglass. This is perhaps most obvious from the fact that it offers attack damage rather than ability power, meaning that it is intended for champions who primarily deal physical damage rather than magic damage. Furthermore, where Zhonya’s Hourglass is an item that requires you to know when and how to use it, Guardian Angel activates automatically and saves you from harm when you need it the most. However, this does come with several downsides, such as the fact that this only occurs every five minutes rather than being usable every two minutes like Zhonya’s Hourglass is. Beyond that, Guardian Angel is also only 78.52% gold efficient when considering its stats without its passive, making it terribly less cost-effective than Zhonya’s Hourglass. This is compounded upon by the fact that if you were to attempt to use its passive and then sell it, you’d only get a 40% gold return, leaving you at a pretty massive loss.
With all of that being said, the key upside to building a Guardian Angel is that it requires much less skill to use effectively than a Zhonya’s Hourglass. The Guardian Angel is a great choice for physical-damage-centric marksmen, fighters, and tanks who want to have a second chance at a teamfight and simply can’t build Zhonya’s Hourglass because it would not synergize at all with their stats.
From the information in this guide, it should be apparent that the Stopwatch is a deeply complex item that requires plenty of game knowledge to use effectively. With this in mind, there are many things that this guide cannot teach you; words alone cannot give you the game sense and mechanical prowess to be able to dodge an incoming Veigar ultimate via using your Stopwatch or Zhonya’s Hourglass to go into stasis. Since that can only come about via playing plenty of League of Legends, the best closing advice is that you need to get out there and practice using your Stopwatch (and related items) in order to get a feel for how to use them most effectively. With that in mind, make sure to apply these ideas in your upcoming games on Summoner’s Rift and you’ll hopefully be able to win more easily with your advantage in game knowledge.
