League of Legends is a game that has existed for almost 13 years now. The Item system has seen many updates and changes throughout this decade-and-a-half-long journey. Since it is a core part of the game, each change has had a massive impact on everything. Even the slightest patch can change builds and the meta entirely.
Some changes were much more drastic than others. For example, the Season 11 Itemization update brought total chaos into the community. Builds, the meta, playstyles – everything had to change immediately. These updates and patches impact the popularity of each Item in the current meta.
In this article, we will be talking about the Core Items – i.e., the least popular Core Items in League of Legends. Their unpopularity might be due to their own lack of quality, but many reasons can exist for that, so we’ll talk about that as well.
So, with the intro out of the way, let’s begin!
Also read: Least Bought Boots
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7. Silvermere Dawn
- Pick Rate: 0.1%
- Stats: +40 AD, +300 HP, +35 Magic Resistance
- Unique Active – Quicksilver: Removes all crowd control debuffs (except Airborne) from your champion and grants 40% tenacity, 40% slow resist, and ghosting for 3 seconds (90-second cooldown).
Silvermere Dawn is an Item that I so rarely see that I was actually wondering if it even was a Summoner’s Rift Item. Honestly, this is the case with some of the others on the list, and that just speaks volumes on how poorly marketed they are. People are often unaware of the very existence of some of these Items that get quietly added to the game with no real purpose.
Silvermere Dawn is a peculiar example, however. It offers some quite nice stats and the QSS active. It is mind-boggling that absolutely no one is purchasing this Item. The other QSS Item – Mercurial Scimitar, is also on the list. This brings me to the conclusion that QSS as an effect has lost its popularity, which is difficult to believe since I am so used to ADCs buying it.
At any rate, the stats are there to show an accurate picture. QSS Items are unpopular and rarely purchased, despite being incredibly useful. We will actively track the popularity of these items due to their peculiarity and will update the list thus if any positive changes happen. It’s a shame that some good items fall under the radar due to poor popularity or Riot’s abrupt meta shifts.
6. Abyssal Mask
- Pick Rate: 0.1%
- Stats: +10 Ability Haste, +450 HP, +30 Magic Resistance
- Unique Passive – Unmake: Enemy champions within 550 units (center-to-edge) of you become cursed, reducing their magic resistance by 5 (+ 1% bonus health), capped at a reduction of 20 magic resistance. Gain 7 bonus magic resistance per cursed enemy. Champions can only be afflicted by one curse at a time, prioritizing the most potent curse.
This was perhaps the most shocking discovery I’ve made while researching this article. As someone who’s been around League of Legends since 2012, I remember the viability, popularity, and presence of the Abyssal Scepter. The Abyssal Scepter was this Item’s previous iteration before being reworked a couple of Seasons ago.
It was an Item that worked on so many different Champions and builds that only made the discovery even more shocking. That only 0.1% of players purchase the Abyssal Mask is something that I never thought would be the case. However, this just goes to show how much impact Riot’s meta changes have had on particular Items.
Even though it might be popular and viable at one point, it can become utterly obsolete at another. The Abyssal Mask is not a bad item by any means. In fact, it’s one of the better anti-tank Items out there for Mages. The lack of extra AP or some other stats may have contributed to its loss of popularity since it used to have those attached.
Riot never really mastered the rework side of things. They always push for the extremes, changing stuff either towards total OP or obscurity. I hope they are learning from recent experiences, and it seems like they are. How that will sit with the big heads above remains to be seen. The community needs to increase its presence and strengthen its voice against such practices in the future.
Also read: Least Bought End Items
5. Mercurial Scimitar
- Pick Rate: 0.3%
- Stats: +40 AD, +20% Critical Strike Chance, +30 Magic Resistance
- Unique Active – Quicksilver: Removes all crowd control debuffs (except Airborne) from your Champion and grants 50% bonus total movement speed and ghosting for 1 second (90-second cooldown).
Our second and final QSS item on the list fares a bit better than the previous example. This is likely because Mercurial is much more suited towards Critical Strike and Attack Speed Champions, which are much more popular than the regular Bruiser at the moment. Other than that, I am equally shocked that this Item is so low on the popularity ladder.
I’ve always remembered Mercurial, especially as a popular Item to get. Whenever faced against a high CC team, you would rush QSS and eventually Scimitar for better protection against the brutes. However, it seems that the player base has moved away from such playstyles, instead opting for direct resistance instead.
QSS is a great item that should never be overlooked. Even if you don’t seek to upgrade it to Silvermere or Scimitar, it’s good to have on your kit for protection until you get something better. I hope these items will eventually resurge and find their rightful place in the meta. They’re not that bad to be kept this low on the list, and we’ll see how things change soon.
4. Warmog’s Armor
- Pick Rate: 0.3%
- Stats: +10 Ability Haste, +800 HP, +200% base HP regeneration
- Unique Passive: Grants WARMOG’S HEART if you have at least 1100 bonus health.
- Unique Passive – Warmog’s Heart: Regenerate 2.5% maximum health every 0.5 seconds if damage has not been taken in the last 6 seconds (3 seconds for damage from non-champions).
Next up on our list is one of the oldest and most popular items in League of Legends. Popular at least nominally as everyone in the community has heard of Warmog’s. It’s the staple Tank item in League of Legends and is certainly something no one likes to see. Warmog’s can turn even the squishiest Champion into a full-blown Bruiser, which makes me wonder why it’s so low on the list.
The low pick rate can be due to HP’s poor defense return on its own. HP is nothing more than a paper tiger without extra armor or Magic Resist to complement it. The extra HP does nothing if you’re up against a fed Katarina who can do thousands of damage in seconds. You need Magic Resist and Armor in those situations.
We’ve gone over the calculations on how Armor and MR work, and we’ve shown there that they make each point of HP worth more. That is why Warmog’s might be low on the list, apart from one more thing.
The Tank Meta in League of Legends is slowly dwindling. Tanks are nowhere near as powerful in Season 12 as in S11, where they weren’t even half as strong as in Season 10. The Tanks are slowly losing ground, and their core items like Warmog clearly show that. There are some more Tank items on this list that I will connect to this story as well.
As someone who often plays Bruisers and Tanks, it’s honestly disappointing how Riot has been treating them for the past few Seasons. The same problem as with everything is present – nerf it into the ground instead of balancing. I genuinely hope that Riot will shift away entirely from this practice in the nearest future.
Also read: What is “inting”?
3. Gargoyle Stoneplate
- Pick Rate: 0.5%
- Stats: +15 Ability Haste, +60 Armor, +60 Magic Resistance
- Unique Active – Monolith: Gain a shield for 100 (+ 100% bonus health), decaying over 2.5 seconds, and 25% increased size while active (90-second cooldown).
- Unique Passive – Fortify: Increase your bonus armor and bonus magic resistance by 5% for 6 seconds when a champion deals damage to you, stacks up to 5 times for a maximum of 25%. This stacks once per unique Champion.
As we can see, the higher popularity of Stoneplate vs. Warmog’s proves my direct defense claim. People will opt more for building Armor and MR than pure HP. Stoneplate gives them both and is a nice finishing touch to any Tank’s build. It’s incredible how valuable this Item can be against high damage teams. Tanks can become insanely burly just by picking up this one Item that isn’t even that expensive.
However, despite this, the popularity is still drastically low for what it’s worth. This Item is fantastic and super helpful, showing that people simply don’t play Tanks. If we consider that most people are in the Silver and Gold divisions, there isn’t exactly a good team composition mentality in those ranks. Of course, players in higher divisions will have much more specialized and concrete team compositions.
This is likely where the 0.5% comes from – players who understand the importance of a Tank within the team composition, especially against high DPS enemies. In lower ranks, where most people reside, doing damage is the only thing they know. Meathead mentality in the lower divisions is ruining the popularity and meta of these great items.
Let’s hope that low Elo players learn to play as fast as possible. We can’t be carrying our friends in each match forever.
- Pick Rate: 0.5%
- Stats: +60 AD, +30 Ability Haste, +20% Critical Strike Chance
- Unique Passive – Deft Strikes: Basic attacks on-attack that critically strike reduce your basic abilities’ cooldowns by 20% of their remaining cooldowns.
Now, this is an item that I like to pick up sporadically when playing Gangplank. I think that the primary reason for this Item’s unpopular position, despite being quite powerful, is the stat balance. It leans too much on AD while being a spell caster’s Item. There are rarely any Champions in League of Legends that rely on spells that aren’t Mages.
This is why I say I love it on Gangplank. Hell, it can even be good on Jax. The crits help my barrels be on top while still allowing me lower cooldowns to have them consistently. It’s a good item for AD casters, but as I’ve said, those are few.
The 0.5% pick rate is impressive considering all of the above. I hope they rebalance this Item’s stats a bit to make it more viable to a broader spectrum of Champions. This is the correct Item for the wrong crowd, which is a unique situation I haven’t seen in other places so far. Let’s hope for a rebalancing shortly as I believe the Item has a lot of potential to be used by good Assassins and Mages.
Also read: Best ADCs in LoL
1. Anathema’s Chains
- Pick Rate: 0.5%
- Stats: +20 Ability Haste, +650 HP
- Unique Active – Vow: Designate the target enemy champion as your Nemesis and gain 1 stack of Vendetta every 2 seconds over 60 seconds, up to 30 stacks, resetting upon selecting a new Nemesis. Cannot be cast for 15 seconds while in combat with champions and having a Nemesis (90-second cooldown; Global range).
- Unique Passive – Vendetta: Take 1% reduced damage per stack of Vendetta from your Nemesis, up to 30% reduced damage.
- Unique Passive – Vengeance: At maximum stacks, your Nemesis has 20% reduced tenacity while they are within 700 units of you.
Here’s another Item that I thought was from ARAM or some other quirky game mode. Like seriously, I’ve never heard of this Item up until today while I was researching the article. It’s incredible how many Items just fly under the radar like this, even for people who play this game for hours every day.
This seems like an excellent Tank item, but I cannot deduce anything due to the lack of my experience against or with it. The sheer unpopularity this Item gets is incredible. I gather this is a good item that has simply not gained the attention it deserves. Its functionality goes similarly to Stoneplate and is good against high DPS enemies.
I love how this game has so many things hiding in plain sight. This article will make me explore every nook and cranny of League of Legends to try and find something I’ve missed. You never expect what this game might have in store next, even within what’s already released.
Conclusion
League of Legends has many Items on its roster. So many that people just cannot follow every one of them. Thus, unwanted Items are born, and the ones above certainly are unpopular. Some of them are so anonymous that I’ve heard of them for the first time today.
I am sure there are others of the sort hiding in the game’s shop that I’ll have to look into it deeper. Until then, let’s make sure we give these Items a try to see if they really deserve this treatment. P.S. most of them don’t.
I hope you’ve found this list informative and fun to read, and I wish you all the best on the Summoner’s Rift.
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
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