“Beautiful,” wrote T1 content creator and League of Legends analyst Nick “LS” De Cesare on Twitter. That was his first reaction to Anathema’s Chains when it first revealed two weeks ago.
Anathema’s Chains is one of two brand new items Riot Games introduced to the game in patch 11.13, the other being Hullbreaker.
YouTube content creator Skooch loves it, and thanked Riot for “the anti smurf item we’ve all been waiting for”, while Riot’s own Lead Designer Jeevun Sidhu highlighted that it’s not just meant to counter a big threat on the enemy team, but also split push champions.
Here’s everything you need to know about Anathem’s Chains:
Anathema’s Chains stats and effects
Base stats
- Total cost: 2500 gold
- Build path: Giant’s Belt + Kindlegem + 800 gold
- Health: 650
- Ability Haste: 20
Effects
- Vow (active): Choose a Nemesis to start building a Vendetta over 60 seconds. Has global range, must be used out of combat, and can be used while dead (90 second cooldown).
- Vendetta: Take 1% reduced damage from your Nemesis per Vendetta stack. This damage reduction starts at 0% and stacks up to 30% over 60 seconds.
- Vengeance: At max stacks, your Nemesis has 20% reduced tenacity while near you.
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The first thing you need to note is that Anathema’s Chains is not only a tank item, it’s a pure HP item, which means that champions who deal true damage can still hurt you to an extent.
The added 20 ability haste on tanks and supports, who are gunning to use their crowd control more than once in team fights, is also a plus.
Its active effect is very simple to use. Similar to Knight’s Vow and Zeke’s Convergence, you need to choose a champion to bind this to, this time, out of combat, on an enemy champion.
Note, however, that it is not effective to rebind Anathema’s Chains repeatedly due to its stacks. You only get damage reduction and the maximum 20% reduced tenacity against you over a 60 second period, which discourages you from swapping targets too frequently.
How effective is Anathema’s Chains as a tank item?
Priced at 2,500 gold, Anathema’s Chains is a very cheap item that’s accessible to both solo laners and supports. It is also the second-highest single health item (+650 health) in-game after Warmorg’s Armor (+800 health).
“The health per gold is maybe the highest in the game,” analyzed LCS caster and League of Legends content creator David “Phreak” Turley in his patch 11.13 rundown.
Based on his calculations, even if you’re just getting Anathema’s Chains for its health and ability haste without any stacks Vendetta or Vengeance stacks, it has an 89% efficiency. At max stacks, Anathema’s Chains is at 117% gold efficiency.
When should you build Anathema’s Chains, and on which champion?
In his Anathema’s Chains rundown, LS doesn’t think it’s an item that players should build every single game since it’s not a cookie-cutter item, and appreciates the new dimension it brings.
“Having dozens of unique niche items in the game to allow ‘item-skill-expression’ for people truly thinking about game state/opponent comp/etc,” wrote LS on Twitter.
Going into detailed scenarios where Anathema’s Chains would be useful, Phreak gave these examples:
- When you’re up against a split-pusher like Tryndamere
- When you’re playing support and you’re up against a fed opponent, this could be an effective first item, for after getting their core, supports typically don’t have enough gold to complete secondary items
- If you’re an AD carry facing an assassin, such as Talon, on the enemy team; you’ll need to consider whether the 30% damage reduction — which is huge — outweighs an alternate item like Guardian Angel which allows you to revive
Read the full League of Legends patch 11.13 notes here.
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