The Best League of Legends Champions for the New Items in Season 12

Introduction

Today we will discuss on everything you need to know about The Best League of Legends Champions for the New Items in Season 12, a Riot game.

Did you know that the new Season 12 items make some champions extremely overpowered?

Welcome to Season 12 of League of Legends, where another year effectively means a brand-new game to learn and attempt to master! This year, some of the biggest changes made are with the additions of some new Mythic and Legendary Items to shake up the meta and try to create a more dynamic approach to how some Champions can be played! While this is a welcomed change to create a healthier and more balanced environment on the Rift, there’s certainly going to be some new hidden combinations of items and Champion kits that will be incredibly powerful. With the preseason changes having been out for almost a month now, we can confirm that that is the case for some items on this list.

To get a better understanding of these additional items’ strengths and synergies and which Champions work best with them, let’s dive into the components of these items and the target audience Riot intended on assisting with the new item.

Season 12 New Items

Crown of the Shattered Queen

Crown of the Shattered Queen is a new Mythic Item meant for mages that need to survive upfront burst damage that cannot commit to an early Zhonya’s Hourglass purchase without being put severely behind. This was a constant issue in the last year for a lot of mages in solo queue because assassins were incredibly prevalent the only counter as a mage was to build a Stopwatch, and then eventually upgrade it to a Zhonya’s Hourglass. While having this item was helpful, there were two main problems that mages couldn’t surpass. First, Stopwatch could only be used once for its active ability before it needed to be upgraded to the full Legendary Item Zhonya’s Hourglass for another 2000+ gold. This mean that mage players had to play extraordinarily safe in the early game to avoid blowing the Stopwatch ability early on and be incredibly vulnerable until they completed Zhonya’s Hourglass. The problem with that is that mages are already inherently vulnerable in the early stages of the game because they need a lot of gold to grow to a desirable power level which would not be feasible when the build path was interrupted with the need to upgrade to a Zhonya’s Hourglass. This problem was more of an issue for less skilled players because they were more likely to make the mistakes that would result in this severe punishment; however, this problem was still seen on the wider scale. The second problem with the Stopwatch/Zhonya’s Hourglass stasis mechanic is that it would make them untargetable and seemingly just delay the inevitable. Unless the stasis was timed well enough to essentially dodge a large burst of damage, the assassin would simply engage, the mage would use the stasis, and then the assassin would just wait until the stasis was gone to complete their combo and kill the mage. That’s where Crown of the Shattered Queen comes in handy!

The passive ability on this item “Safeguarded” reduces the incoming damage significantly for a short duration after the Champion takes damage. This allows the assassin to still deal damage so there is no risk of needing to time the abilities as the mage, while also making it automatically kick in, so mages don’t need to react to a quick engage from an assassin either. Furthermore, the item’s second passive “Poise” is triggered when Safeguarded, where the Champion gains ability power for a short duration that even allows them to fight back when the assassin engages! This combination takes the interactions between assassins and mages from being heavily skewed in the assassin’s favour to now being quite evenly matched and more dependent on skill and outplaying the opponent. Additionally, this item being a Mythic Item also smooths out the curve of the traditional mage’s build path to make it more optimized for a competitive match.

The Best League of Legends Champions for the New Items in Season 12
Crown of the Shattered Queen

Evenshroud

Evenshroud is the second new Mythic Item meant for tankier Supports with heavy crowd-controlling abilities. Before this item’s existence, the Support Mythic Item options were very cut-and-dry and not well optimized for the different types of Support playstyles that exist. As such, this item’s passive ability is “Coruscation” where after immobilizing Champions or being immobilized, the holder makes the target and any nearby enemies “Repent”. Repent increases the damage they take by a significant amount for several seconds. Not only is this an exceptional Mythic Item to have when engaging fights for the team, but it also allows the user to take advantage of it’s passive when being engaged on! Having both options as a part of this item means that it will be worth purchasing when ahead or behind and can be considered a great option for helping snowball the team’s advantage, or on the flipside, help negate the advantages the enemy has when they are the ones with the lead.

The added benefit of building this item in lower skill matches is that it promotes the idea of tanking abilities for your carries when you are the tanky Support for your team! Since Coruscation applies when being immobilized as well, it’s always going to be worth stepping in front of an engaging skill shot that is thrown in the direction of the team’s carry!

The Best League of Legends Champions for the New Items in Season 12
Evenshroud

 

Axiom Arc

Axiom Arc is a Legendary Item that was added to create a more rewarding playstyle for Assassins who take the risk of pursuing a threat and fully committing to that enemy. This item accomplishes this in two main facets. Primarily, it gives these Assassins more ability haste to lower their abilities cooldowns and makes it less punishing to pursue a kill via full combos since their abilities rotate off cooldown sooner. Secondly, and more importantly, the “Flux” passive on the ability refunds a significant percentage of the Assassin’s Ultimate ability’s cooldown whenever an enemy Champion dies within three seconds of the Assassin damaging them!

While this does sound incredibly powerful (and it is), all it really does is add some insurance to the risk factor of the Assassin playstyle. With Assassin’s primary use being ‘all-ining’ an enemy carry and then trying to get out afterwards, if they do get the kill, they can still be useful afterwards if they don’t die in the process.

Axiom Arc
Axiom Arc

Shadowflame

Shadowflame is another Legendary Item that Riot Games added for the new Season to provide more options for Mages. This item provides to ability-powered Champions the same benefit that Serpent’s Fang provides to attack damage-powered Champions. Essentially, this item is useful against shielding enemies and tanky enemy Champions by nature of it’s passive “Cinderbloom”. Cinderbloom increases damage to Champions by adding magic penetration based on the target’s current health, with the maximum magic penetration being given if the target was recently shielded!

To further assist with the troubles that Mages had last season, adding in Shadowflame will make Mages, and especially Battle Mages, much more potent into incredibly tanky teams with powerful shields or shielding abilities!

Shadowflame
Shadowflame

Winter’s Approach/ Fimbulwinter

Winter’s Approach, and it’s upgraded version Fimbulwinter, are the last new Legendary Item added to League of Legends this Preseason. This item was created specially for tanky Champions that have Mana problems. To solve the Mana problems for these Champions, the item’s passive “Mana Charge” grants three bonus Mana for each time an enemy is hit with an ability or basic attack that is doubled to six bonus Mana if the enemy is a Champion. The additional Mana granted from this passive is maxed at 360 Mana where the item then upgrades to Fimbulwinter. The added benefit once upgraded to Fimbulwinter is the passive “Everlasting”. The passive consumes a small percentage of current Mana and grants a shield for a short duration after slowing (if the wielder is melee) or immobilizing an enemy Champion. Additionally, this shield is almost doubled if more than one other enemy is nearby when activated.

Winter’s Approach will help bridge the gap between the strength of these weaker, Mana-dependent Champions and Manaless or bruiser-like Champions in the laning phase. The item will aid in getting these tanky Champions through the laning phase and will help make sure that they are still useful in the later stages of the game when they need to be in the frontlines tanking damage despite having little-to-no resources compared to their counterpart.

Winter’s Approach/ Fimbulwinter
Winter’s Approach/ Fimbulwinter

Crown of the Shattered Queen

As mentioned in the item’s description, Crown of the Shattered Queen is incredibly useful on scaling squishy Mage Champions like Viktor, Aurelion Sol, Anivia, and Kassadin. All these Champions share the same problem of being incredibly easy to kill throughout the game and against an Assassin are normally as good as dead unless they manage to get incredibly far ahead!

Crown of the Shattered Queen
Crown of the Shattered Queen / Anivia

When using this item, players must remember that it will not negate the damage Assassin’s do but will severely inhibit them. During the duration of this effect, use your heavy damage skill shots that are normally hard to hit when they are up close and personal, and save your heavy crowd-controlling abilities for when the effect is waring off (after a second or two). Not only will this potentially result in a winning trade but having the crowd-controlling effects trigger towards the end of the passive will allow the Mage to escape, or at the very least, reposition.

Evenshroud

The best Champions for Evenshroud are certainly the heavy crowd-controlling tanky Support Champions that have exceptional engage potential and can tank the enemies’ engage attempts. Either way, if these Champions are involved with the initial play to engage the fight, there is a good chance that they will help their team out significantly. Of course, with the Repent passive on the item effecting nearby enemies, the item is still more impactful when engaging as there will likely be more enemies around them when activated, it still makes for a great option for minimizing the impact of being engaged on! The best Champions with this item are Leona, Maokai, Nautilus, and Rell.

Evenshroud / Leona
Evenshroud / Leona

Axiom Arc

Axiom Arc is an amazing item that helps make the highlight-reel moments possible in the Preseason. There are many attack damage-based Assassins in League of Legends and they will all see benefits with this item, however the Champions that are likely most aided with this purchase are Qiyana, Talon, Zed, and Nocturne!

Axiom Arc / Talon
Axiom Arc / Talon

Shadowflame

Shadowflame is Riot’s answer to the complaints Mage players have been issuing all year long about the insane power that shields have over them. To help deal with this problem, Mages can build Shadowflame to melt through these shields with ease and stop feeling like they are just trading Mana for Mana with shielding Supports! The best Champions to purchase this item on are the standard Battle Mages when played against heavy shielding opponents. Usually, these Champions do not have quite enough damage in an initial burst to kill an enemy in one rotation when they are shielded, and afterwards find it tough to finish them off because they enemy can be shielded again by the time the abilities are back off cooldown. These Champions include Viktor, Annie, Orianna, and Rumble!

Shadowflame / Annie
Shadowflame / Annie

Winter’s Approach/Fimbulwinter

Finally, Winter’s Approach/Fimbulwinter is evidently impactful for Mana-hungry tank Champions that would otherwise have no hope of making it out of laning phase against bruisers. This item provides the resources needed to survive the early game while also having a nice build path that scales well into their late game strengths of being heavy crowd-controlling tanks in the middle of the action! The best Champions to build this item are Poppy, Maokai, Malphite, and Ornn!

Winter’s Approach/Fimbulwinter / Maokai
Winter’s Approach/Fimbulwinter / Maokai

Conclusion

If you found this The Best League of Legends Champions for the New Items in Season 12 useful and you think it may have helped you please drop me a cheer below I would appreciate it.

Overall, the additional items that Riot has added are widely accepted and appreciated by the players (aside from some minor balance changes that will be required). Likely, these items will help create a healthier and more balanced ecosystem for more Champions and metas to thrive in throughout the year and hopefully, will lead to some incredible new build/Champion discoveries!

If you have any questions, comments please post them below I check periodically and try to answer them in the priority they come in.
Also if you have any corrections please do let me know and I’ll update the article with new updates or mistakes I did.

Which is your favorite Season 12 item?

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