From Buy Ardent to Bye Ardent - What's Next for Bottom Lane?

Ardent Censer's nerf in patch 7.21 has finally broken the bottom lane meta of Janna, Lulu, Soraka, and other supports that could take full advantage of the immense amounts of utility that Ardent could bring to a team. Ardent gave 20%-35% attack speed, 20-35 magic damage on-hit, and 25 health back on-hit before the 7.19 patch. Currently, Ardent gives only a 10%-30% attack speed buff, and 5-20 magic damage on-hit. This latest nerf has summoners turning to items other than Ardent, and completely different support champions.  

Now with Ardent out of the way, the play-making support with very good engage and crowd-control has more power than they had previously. The likes of Leona, Alistar, Braum, Thresh, and even Blitzcrank can now shine more brightly. These types of supports were already good against the Ardent support team compositions as they could easily focus down the enemy bottom lane and hopefully gain an advantage over them before their Ardent power spike happens. This strategy can be seen in the Quarterfinals match between South Korea's SK Telecom T1 and Europe's Misfits Gaming where in game two, Ignar, the support on Misfits, picked Blitzcrank into Wolf's Taric.

With Ignar's Blitzcrank and Hans Sama's Tristana, they were able to burn both of Wolf's summoner spells at just around two and a half minutes into the match. Misfits acknowledge the summoner spell disadvantage that they have put SKT's bottom lane in, and attempt to go for a four man tower dive with everyone except their top laner. On paper, it was the right play to go for, but their poor execution had them give up two kills to SKT while only getting a single kill on Bang's Kog'Maw. 

Itemization

The item builds for the tanky engage supports are nearly identical with the two main champions that have builds that are the most different are Rakan and Taric as they overlap from the Ardent meta with their consistent shields and heals. Below is an example build:

The last two items of this build can be interchangeable with other items that fit the situation that you're in. Boots of Mobility is an important item in this build as it really emphasizes the engage aspect of these champions and helps when roaming to other lanes during the laning phase.

Eye of the Equinox and other Sightstone support upgrades are efficient when it comes to the stats, and the passive that it gives while also being item slot efficient as it frees up another slot for another item, instead of having to build a Face of the Mountain and a Ruby Sightstone.

Knight's Vow fills in the void for the supports that couldn't build Ardent. They're both around the same price point; Ardent being priced at 2300 gold and Knight's Vow at 2200 gold. The passive for Knight's Vow helps with the survivability of both the support and the ADC, with 12% of the damage that the partner takes redirected to the user, and 12% of the damage that the partner deals heals the user.

Locket of the Iron Solari is a very solid choice for a majority of situations with its AoE shield that scales with the user's bonus health. Very useful when dealing with enemy AoE abilities such as Orianna's Command: Shockwave or Miss Fortune's Bullet Time.

The last two items in the build are interchangeable depending on the situation and the what the enemy team composition is. If dealing with a more magic damage based enemy team, changing out the Randuin's Omen with the likes of a Spirit Visage or an Adaptive Helm. When dealing with more Attack Damage champions, skipping the Abyssal Mask and going straight to the Randuin's Omen and another armor item like a Thornmail is highly recommended. If your team has a comfortable advantage, a Warmog's Armor as a fifth item is also a viable option, as the passive out of combat health regeneration helps you keep healthy and remain with your team to siege and push out a lane to gain more map pressure which then can be used to secure objectives like Baron, dragon, or turrets.

Rakan and Taric are slightly different from the usually tanky engage supports like Alistar, Leona, and Thresh as they have the heals and shields to utilize items like Ardent, and Redemption. Their item builds usually consist of a Redemption along with the first four items in the build, leaving only one item slot left to be filled out. Their build would look like something along these lines: 

Conclusion

Though Ardent has been nerfed into the ground, there is still a place in the bottom lane for the supports that typically build it. For the most part, they are still great picks when paired with a less lane dominant ADC champion, such as Vayne and Kog'Maw, or into a dive heavy enemy team composition. Now it's time for the tanky engage support to take center stage, so go ahead and try out these tanky supports for yourself and you might just find your next champion to main.

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