Talk:Ardent Censer/@comment-24693081-20140618135314/@comment-6281696-20140621211714

The issue is that most, if not all, support items appear to be build & balanced around the notion of solely providing utility as opposed to help the actual champion. Especially in the case of the tanky support. Admittadly they've been working on improving that and we're a hell of a lot better off than we used to be. But it's still nowhere near good.

Virtually all items purposely aimed at supports are items I'd only ever get solely because of their utility despite their lack of stats, and the moment I could get the utility somewhere else I wouldn't even look at the item. The only item that currently exists which I think does things right is locket, I need MR & Locket is a decent defense item on comparable level as Banshee's but it provides me with some team utility, hence I'l take that as a support. Basicly all other support items fail in that respect. Pretty much all feeling like in order to gain some utility & extra support I need to purposely handicap myself in some way. Leaving you with a choice between either making a much more expensive build with better stats & little to no added support beyond what it does to directly empower your skills (which in the case of tanks is again lackluster because they usually don't have shields and such, and unless your Braum your ability to actually force them to focus you isn't all that good) or handicap yourself to gain some utility. Neither of which are very good options.'

I don't think tanky-support itemization is bad because ardent censer is a fairly decent item on some of them, I think it's bad because there are basicly no decent support items actually aimed at the tanky support with the possible exception of Locket.

As for the whole open itemstuff, I consider that a bad thing as it comes with certain problems. For example, any properly good tanky-support item is liable to be abused by bruisers (see old bulwark). As for others building things I consider silly. In essence I don't care that you build this, however I do consider it bad when an item such as this becomes massivly popular on characters that really shouldn't want it on a regular basis as the amount of situations during which it is actually a good idea to buy is very limited (it doesn't work all that well with caster focussed teams, lack of defenses, bonus being not all that high making it an early game item when the lack of defenses is an even bigger deal, danger of bad pushing, late game waves get instantly killed anyway negating its pushing power largely). it should be a fairly niche item, yet I suspect it'l rapidly become a core item on Alistair. And people will claim that is a "good" thing because an item got used by a class of champions that wasn't entirely intended and look how this game involves with all it's freedom, but lack of actually usefull options...