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Guardian Angel an overpractical item?

Pluid·11/6/2016, 3:02:00 PM·2 votes·1,213 views

Why does it feel like Guardian Angel requires very little amount of decision making when purchasing it? There isn't a pattern to which champions normally buy it; Tanks buy it, adc's buy it, bruisers buy it, even supports buy it. If you take a lot at the last game of worlds, 6/10 full builds included a GA.

This item doesn't seem healthy. It feels like nobody really buys it for the stats, they buy it because of how cheap it is and the passive.

Are you a squishy that doesn't want to die? Buy GA so you have 2 lives and lower the incentive for an enemy to target you. Are you a tank that wants to kamikaze into the enemies to engage? Buy a GA so you have 2 lives and can live after a suicidal engage. Are you a bruiser that wants to stay in a fight as long as possible? Buy a GA so even after you die, you can be revived and finish cleaning up.

I feel like an item should normally target a specific type of champion that would want to buy it, but in GA's case, literally anyone that doesn't like dying buys it.

Proof: Lolking Guardian Angel Within the top 10 champs alone, you have 2 adcs, 2 assassins, 3 bruisers, and 3 tanks.

Also if you look at sites like champ.gg or koreanbuilds, a lot of the time a champions most popular/highest winrate build includes a GA just slapped in there.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but how is this item healthy and not overcentralized?

5 Comments

Danjeng11/6/2016, 3:08:16 PM4 votes

GA's success may be a result of correlation, not causation. Generally, players who are already doing quite well build GA. If they were behind, it would not be much use, as they need other items to have an impact on the game. For example, ADC's need damage/crit/penetration/AS to get the ball rolling.

cfreetenor11/6/2016, 3:58:52 PM1 votes

I actually think it fulfills a very nice niche. I don't buy it normally, maybe I should, I just prefer to get damage and try to focus on positioning as a damage dealer - and teamfight utility as a tank.

But it seems to function best on champions with low cooldown and high impact abilities, such as Fizz Irelia Diana Vi Jax

It is very appealing to some champs who can make a lot of use of the extra 2-3 seconds of teamfight time, or have the utility or disengage to get out of a dangerous situation if they can't. The selection bias that DANJENG mentioned applies to this, as when we are talking about GA as a 6th, 5th, or even 4th item, the other 3-5 items can go a long way to making some abilities with low cooldown and with good scaling very high impact. Like Yasuo XinZhao Quinn

That is why we see ADC's getting it, because they can DPS very well late game - as they are designed to - which is right around when they get such an item. Therefore an extra 3-4 autoattacks (if they end up dying anyway) is more than worth giving up a slot in their inventory for a non-damage item.

Çhåryzård11/6/2016, 4:17:41 PM1 votes

I feel like it's a good item, but there should be a restriction as to how many are on a team.

Somtimes when teams are ahead late game I see like 3 people with them..