League of Legends Designer Talks Ardent Censer Power, Says They "Should Have Nerfed it Quicker"

League of Legends' Ardent Censer has certainly been the most dominant item in the game for the last couple of patches, and according to those who work on League's balance changes, the item should've been toned down much sooner.

If normal and ranked games aren't enough of an indicator to see how powerful Ardent Censer is, you can easily take a look at the ongoing professional games during the Worlds tournament to see it built at least once, sometimes team's having more than one. The pros are still playing on a different patch than everyone else is, especially now that we're on Patch 7.20, but in hindsight, Riot Meddler says that the item's impact was certainly overlooked from their end.

"Looking back we definitely misread how impactful Censer would become and should have nerfed it quicker," Riot Meddler said in a Gameplay Thoughts discussion. "We're talking about it a lot at present, including discussion on whether after the 7.19 changes it's still too strong."

Referring specifically to the version of the item that's being used in the Worlds games – one that hasn't been hit by several changes between that patch and now – Meddler added that the pros using it certainly have access to a much stronger version at the moment. However, the fact that pro players influence what players build in normal games makes it somewhat difficult to assess whether Ardent is still overpowered or if players are simply buying it out of habit or in a response to observing the pros.

"The version in 7.18 we're seeing in Worlds is definitely out of line, somewhat harder to get a good read on the 7.19 one given how much Worlds impacts what gets played in regular games/what gets talked about, even though they're different patches," Meddler said. "At a minimum we'll be both assessing it in 7.21 and looking at it again after pre-season goes out."

What needs to be done with Ardent Censer from here remains to be seen, but for those who continue to build the item in the support role or elsewhere, expect that more nerfs could be on the way soon.