Defensive items in League of Legends encompass a wide variety of different stats and effects. There's a lot of different options to go if you're looking for a more defensive strategy and you’ll find plenty of choices regardless of what character or role you're playing. In this article, I’ll be counting down the top 10 best defensive items in League of Legends
10. Mikael’s Blessing
One of the most high-impact support items in the game, Mikael’s Blessing is a fantastic choice against any team with a lot of crowd control. It's pretty hard for your ADC to carry if they can’t even move, so Mikael’s Blessing ensures that they can (hopefully) do their job
Mikael’s Blessing Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 20% Heal and Shield Power
- 50 Magic Resist
- 15 Ability Haste
- 100% Base Mana Regen
- Active- Concentrated Quicksilver: Remove all crowd control debuffs from an allied champion and restore health to them
What Makes Mikael’s Blessing Great:
- The stat line, while not the best, is solid enough to where you could build it first or second and not suffer too horribly from having slightly weaker stats. The ability to remove crowd control early on could be really good depending on the situation so it's nice to have Mikael’s be viable early
- The ability to completely remove any crowd control from a team member can be extremely impactful. Often the only way to shut down a fed ADC is to just shove a bunch of stuns and roots on top of them and a well-timed Mikael’s makes it extremely difficult to avoid getting run down
- A very welcome change that was made to this item in preseason is that Mikael’s will now restore health in addition to cleansing crowd control. Preseason has only been out for a short while but as a support player I can personally vouch that while it's not a huge amount, that little extra oomph of healing that you can provide to your carry while your abilities are on cooldown can be the difference between getting a double kill and getting double killed
9. Redemption
The classic enchanter support item, one I know very well, Redemption has been a staple in the builds of supports for years now. This item encompasses everything an enchanter support wants to do, providing heals from a distance while keeping themselves safe
Redemption Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 20% Heal and Shield Power
- 200 Health
- 15 Ability Haste
- 100% Base Mana Regen
- Active- Judgement: Target an area. After 2.5 seconds call down a beam of light that heals allies and damages enemies. This item can be activated while dead
What Makes Redemption Good:
- There are a lot of new support items in preseason, a lot of which have crazy and cool effects, so it is good to see that Redemption has stats that keep it relevant amid all the new items. The stats make it a solid item choice that you really can’t go wrong with if you're playing an enchanter support
- I would consider Redemption to be a very skill expressive item, the ability to provide a large heal to your entire team is undeniably powerful but it takes a more experienced support player to be able to properly gauge when the best time to use it is. Use it too early before a fight and you've essentially wasted it, wait too long and your team will die before the heal goes off so this item can either be good or bad depending on the player
- The ability to use Redemption’s heal while dead is super useful, as unfortunate as it is sometimes the support gets left behind or gets caught out while warding and isn't there to help out the team so being able to assist while dead is great
8. Locket of the Iron Solari
Locket is a great item for engage supports looking to still offer protective capabilities to their team members. With Locket of the Iron Solari supports can offer both great engage and the supportive capabilities of enchanter supports
Locket of the Iron Solari Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 200 Health
- 20 Ability Haste
- 30 Armor
- 30 Magic Resist
- Active- Intervention: Grant nearby allies a decaying shield for 2.5 seconds
- Consecrate: Grant nearby allies 5 armor and magic resist
- Mythic Passive: Grants all other items a 2 armor and 2 magic resist increase to Consecrate
What Makes Locket of the Iron Solari Great:
- The stats Locket of the Iron Solari gives makes it great to build as a first item. It's nice to have a shield as early as possible and building resistances early on makes it hard to take damage, especially on supports that already have damage reduction in their kits like Leona or Alistar
- Having the ability to give a decently sized shield to multiple members of your team is great at all stages of the game. It's also really good for yourself and making sure that you aren't dying every time you engage
- While the numbers are small, the Consecrate bonus can start to add up once you start building items. It's not the most impactful thing ever, but it can be pretty helpful especially if paired with any other tanks
7. Banshee’s Veil
Banshee’s Veil is a great defensive purchase for any AP character. This item works especially well on squishy mid lane mages looking to keep from getting one-shot by any fed LeBlanc or Syndra
Banshee’s Veil Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 65 Ability Power
- 45 Magic Resist
- 10 Ability Haste
- Annul: Grants a Spell Shield that blocks the next enemy ability
What Makes Banshee’s Veil Great:
- The magic resist is great to avoid getting obliterated both in lane and in team fights, while the ability power and ability haste help make sure you aren't sacrificing too much damage for that tankiness
- The spell shield is a fantastic defensive tool partly because just seeing that it's up discourages anyone from going on you. It completely blocks all damage from an ability as well as any crowd control, and hopefully no one on the enemy team is fed enough so that they can one-shot you without needing an ability
- Banshee’s Veil is a very versatile item and can be built on a lot of different types of characters and not just mid lane mages. AP junglers like Evelynn and Lillia can build it so that its harder to be locked down and AP tanks like Mordekaiser and Galio have a lot of success building it against AP heavy teams
6. Spirit Visage
Spirit Visage is phenomenal when built on any tank with any form of healing in their kit. While it is optimal to build it into teams with a lot of AP, the bonus healing effect is so good that it's still good to build against teams with no ability power at all
Spirit Visage Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 450 Health
- 40 Magic Resist
- 10 Ability Haste
- 100% Base Health Regen
- Boundless Vitality: Increases all healing and shielding effectiveness on you by 25%
What Makes Spirit Visage Great:
- The stats from Spirit Visage are really good on their own, a ton of extra health with resistances and increased regen to boot is a major power spike for any tank
- I can personally vouch that one of the most disgusting things you can see in League of Legends is watching Dr. Mundo build Spirit Visage, press the R key, and proceed to run it down into your team where he then kills every single one of you. The bonus healing is gross, and hard to shut down even with anti-heal items
- So one of the changes that Spirit Visage went through this preseason is that before, Boundless Vitality only gave a bonus to healing and not shielding. Now that it's changed, it somehow even got even better than before. Tanks like Mordekaiser who have a shield in their kit benefit so much more from Spirit Visage now, and any given enchanter support is now going to be doing a lot more for their tanks then they could before
5. Thornmail
Thornmail is one of the few ways that a tank can apply the Grievous Wounds debuff, and due to the nature of how it’s applied this is a fantastic counter to any champion that deals their damage through auto-attacking
Thornmail Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 350 Health
- 60 Armor
- Thorns: When struck by an attack, deal magic damage to the attacker and apply 40% Grievous Wounds for 2 seconds. Immobilizing enemy champions will also apply the debuff
What Makes Thronmail Great:
- Thornmail gives you a high amount of armor and a high amount of health, as opposed to many tank items only giving you a lot of only one of those stats. This makes Thornmail kind of the best of both worlds, which feels great against a team with a lot of attack damage
- This is one of if not the best item a tank can build in the face of an ADC getting fed, plenty of them build lifesteal so not only are they taking damage just from attacking you but their survivability is going down as well
- Even if the enemy team doesn't have a strong ADC this is still a fantastic item to build when facing a top laner like Fiora or Irelia who both have healing built into their kits and deal damage through auto attacking
4. Frozen Heart
Frozen Heart is an item that you really can’t go wrong with building, unless the enemy team is all AP characters then you’ll get a ton of use out of this item because of how great its effects are
Frozen Heart Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 80 Armor
- 400 Mana
- 20 Ability Haste
- Winter’s Embrace: Reduces the attack speed of nearby enemies by 15%
- Rock Solid: Reduce incoming damage from attacks by up to .5% of your maxed health, capped at 40
What Makes Frozen Heart Great:
- Giving some of the most armor out of any item in the game this is a great item to build on any tank, and the bonus mana makes it excellent on some of the tanks who use their abilities more often like Cho’Gath or Maokai
- Reducing the attack speed of nearby enemies is a great way to help out your team because you don't need to do anything to apply the effect, it just happens. So now if the fed Fiora or Yasuo gets to your backline they won’t be able to do as much damage as they could
- While the numbers do seem small, reducing all the damage taken from every attack against you can add up especially in a team fight. As a tank, you’re going to have plenty of max health to make full use of the Rock Solid passive
3. Guardian Angel
Guardian Angel is one of the more defensive items that an attack damage character can buy, and while you will lose out on dealing damage compared to other items you can build the ability to resurrect after dying is more than strong enough to make it worth your while
Guardian Angel Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 40 Attack Damage
- 40 Armor
- Saving Grace: Upon taking lethal damage, restores 50% base health and 30% max mana after 4 seconds of stasis
What Makes Guardian Angel Great:
- The stats on Guardian Angel are pretty lackluster, but considering that this is pretty much the only way for an ADC to build armor it's better than nothing. Definitely won’t stop a fed Master Yi or Yone from demolishing you but it’ll keep you from taking too much damage before a teamfight starts
- This is one of the best ways for an ADC to protect themselves in League of Legends. Fed assassins are fed assassins and sometimes your support or tank can only do so much to keep them off the backline. Being able to come back after being killed is a fantastic way to make sure you're still there for the teamfight
- This is also a great item for AD characters that aren't very squishy but still need the resurrection effect after engaging. Irelia and Camille can force engages by jumping in with their ultimates and crowd control. Because they're going in first ahead of their team there's a good chance that they’ll die in the process so having Guardian Angel to resurrect them so they can be alive by the time their team follows up is powerful
2. Sunfire Aegis
Sunfire Aegis is one of the best tank items in the game because it works great both offensively and defensively. It gives a pretty good amount of resistances and its passive effect allows any tank to do as much damage as the rest of their team
Sunfire Aegis Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 450 Health
- 30 Armor
- 30 Magic Resist
- 15 Ability Haste
- Immolate: Deal magic damage based on your max health every second to nearby enemies. Damaging champions with this ability adds a stack to it, increasing its damage by 12% for 5 seconds at a max of 6 stacks
- Flametouch: At max Immolate stacks your attacks burn enemies for your Immolate damage per second for 3 seconds
- Mythic Passive: Grants all other legendary items 5 ability haste
What Makes Sunfire Aegis Great: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- The large amount of health that Sunfire Aegis gives in addition to its other resistances and the mythic passive of giving your items bonus ability haste makes it a great item choice even without factoring in the passive
- The Immolate passive, if fully stacked out, will start dealing an insane amount of burn damage to all nearby enemies. When paired with tanks like Maokai or Dr. Mundo who are good at locking down an enemy through roots and slows then the enemy team now has to deal with an unkillable tank that’s running them down while simultaneously burning through their health bars
- If everything else wasn't enough, this item was changed in preseason to include the Flametouch passive. So now if you've maxed out your stacks, which is quite easy to do on a crowd control heavy tank, you're very likely to be doing more damage then your ADC
1. Zhonya’s Hourglass
Zhonya’s Hourglass is the best defensive item in the game, and it's a shame that it's more suited to mages because I would love some variation of this item for every class. The ability to just completely negate all the damage coming your way is the most powerful effect an item in this game can give
Zhonya’s Hourglass Details: https://lol.garena.com/game-info/items
- 65 Ability Power
- 45 Armor
- 10 Ability Haste
- Active- Stasis: You become invulnerable and untargetable for 2.5 seconds, but are prevented from taking any other action
What Makes Zhonya’s Hourglass Great:
- Similar to what Guardian Angel does for ADC’s, Zhonya’s is one of the only items mages can build with armor so it can help with preventing getting one-shot. You can’t use Zhonya’s if your already dead so the bonus armor is quite nice
- Oftentimes the enemy team will have at least one “problematic” character. An Irelia that dashes through your whole team, an Evelynn that charms and kills you before you can cast a single spell, a Syndra that can press R and just get rid of most of your health bar, etc. A well-timed Zhonya’s completely negates all of that and allows your team to get rid of who’s focusing you so you don’t immediately die once coming out of stasis
- Zhonya’s Hourglass is also perfect against dive team comps, teams that have a lot of champions designed to dive in to pick off the squishy characters and get back out. Camille, Lee Sin, Leona, characters like that. It's pretty hard to get dived on if you can’t be targeted at all, so Zhonyas is the perfect discouragement against those kinds of teams
In League of Legends there's no shortage of items if you need to adopt a more defensive strategy, and in some cases your defensive strategy might be your best offensive strategy as well. Whichever class in the game you prefer to play, you’ll never be lacking in items that help with a more defensive playstyle
