Season 16 reshapes League of Legends builds across almost every role. Riot is rolling out a slate of new items aimed at specific champion archetypes, and a couple of familiar names are coming back with updated stats and effects. Item names are still placeholder in some cases, but the mechanics and intended users are clear enough to start planning builds.
New items for AP fighters and burst duels
AP melee champs have often been forced into generic mage items or hybrid picks that do not fully match their play patterns. Season 16 adds two options that try to close that gap.
Scepter of Bonking is built for AP fighters with strong on-hit patterns. It functions like an AP-focused Sheen item and doubles your on-hit effects when it procs. On champions such as Diana or Gwen, this effectively skips ahead in their passive stacks: Diana can reach the empowered swing faster, and Gwen can get an extra Snippy stack for her Q. The item is tuned for melee, all-in playstyle,s and fits best on champs who repeatedly weave in empowered basics between spells.
Emblem of All-Inning targets marksmen who play around their ultimate for big engage windows. It is a Zeal-line crit item that adds ultimate ability haste and, when you cast your ult, briefly gives a large burst of attack speed and guarantees critical strikes for your next three basic attacks. If an attack would already have crit, the item instead adds bonus true damage to that hit. Champions like Vayne that chain aggressive ultimates into extended duels are the natural users.
New sustain and finisher tools for AD champs
AD bruisers and assassins get items that reward snowballing and help close games instead of stalling out in late teamfights.
Blood Sphere is an omnivamp item that also grants tenacity and ability haste scaling with your bonus AD. It is aimed at light fighters who want to survive long skirmishes rather than pure tanks. After a takedown, Blood Sphere significantly increases your omnivamp for a short window, letting you rapidly heal back up while you continue fighting. A champion like Darius, who thrives in extended multi-kill scenarios, exemplifies the intended user.
Assassin Item (placeholder name) is designed specifically for lethality-based AD assassins to convert kills into objective pressure. Every takedown grants a temporary buff that makes your next attack against an epic monster or structure apply heavy damage over time that scales with your lethality. This gives ahead assassins a way to meaningfully help end games by shredding Baron or towers after winning a pick. The item also periodically adds bonus true damage to a spell based on your lethality. Talon and Qiyana are clear beneficiaries.
Mananomicon and the return of an active mage item
Active items have been rare in recent years for mages, but Season 16 introduces a new one with a strong risk-reward profile.
Mananomicon is an AP item that, when activated, puts your champion into a short empowered state. During that window your spells cost significantly more mana, but you gain more powerful casts and lower cooldowns. The bonus damage, healing, and shielding all scale with your maximum mana, so heavy investment into mana items directly translates into more value from the active. Control mages such as Viktor or more skirmish-oriented picks like LeBlanc can use it to spike during key fights at the cost of faster resource burn.
New range and kiting options for marksmen
Marksmen get two items that push different aspects of their identity: long-range DPS and ultimate-centric burst.
Snowbow is a high-range damage item for ADCs. It increases your attack damage based on the distance to your target, rewarding players who maintain spacing and fire from as far back as possible. On takedown, Snowbow temporarily grants a large chunk of bonus attack range, letting you safely clean up fights after the frontline has been softened. Champions like Caitlyn or Varus, who already lean on range advantages, are natural fits.
Emblem of All-Inning, covered earlier, doubles down on ult-fueled kill windows rather than raw range. Together, these items create two distinct late-game marksman paths: one around spacing and range, the other around explosive ult resets and short, decisive trades.
Support and tank items focused on teamfight uptime
Tanks and supports receive items that lean into their roles as tempo setters and front-line anchors rather than pure stat sponges.
Buff Engine is an aura item tailored for tanky melee supports. It grants an attack speed aura to nearby allies, but the aura only turns on for a duration after you apply a slow or immobilize an enemy. That duration is substantially longer for melee users than ranged users, so true engage supports benefit most. Nautilus and similar hard-CC champions can use their crowd control to effectively flip a switch that lets their carries fire faster during each engage.
Mantle of the Twelfth Hour is a defensive lifeline item aimed at tanks. When you drop to low health, it triggers a large heal-over-time effect that scales with your bonus armor and magic resistance. While this heal is ticking, you also gain bonus movement speed and tenacity. That combination lets you either keep walking forward to soak more damage and disrupt, or try to disengage after being chunked. Classic tank picks, such as Malphite or Amum,u can use it as a late-game insurance policy that makes initial focus less punishing.
New Tear line for enchanters
Mana-stacking has historically been a mage specialty, but Season 16 adds an explicit enchanter-focused Tear upgrade.
Savior’s Manabell is the first stage, built from Tear. It provides heal and shield power that scales with your maximum mana, making every additional mana item more valuable to your supportive output. Once Tear is fully stacked, it can be upgraded into Superbell. Superbell keeps the scaling heal/shield power and adds an automatic healing effect that pulses every second onto the lowest-health nearby ally while you are in combat with enemy champions. The strength of this passive heal also scales with your mana. Enchanters like Nami that stay at the back of fights can layer Superbell’s ambient healing over their regular kit.
Hybrid and returning items
Not every addition is new in name. Season 16 also brings back some classic hybrid and crit items with updated tuning.
Hextech Gunblade returns as a hybrid damage item that grants both AD and AP, along with lifesteal and spell vamp. It also features a targeted active that deals damage and slows the target. Hybrid assassins and skirmishers, such as Akali, can once again build a single item that amplifies both halves of their kit and provides a sticking tool for chasing.
Stormrazor also comes back as a marksman item that combines attack damage, attack speed, and critical strike chance. Its defining feature is an Energized effect that, when primed, boosts a basic attack with bonus damage and movement speed. ADCs like Jinx or Tristana that care about bursty first hits and mobility around fights can use Stormrazor as a mid-game spike that improves both chase and repositioning.
How these Season 16 items reshape builds
The common thread across these items is specificity. Instead of generic stats, they are designed to solve very particular problems: AP fighters needing on-hit amplification, assassins struggling to turn kills into objectives, enchanters lacking a clear mana-scaling Tear path, or melee supports wanting more direct payoff for landing CC.
Build paths for many champions will likely diverge more sharply as a result. AP fighters get a reason to skip pure mage items; assassins gain a closing tool that incentivizes proactive map play; tanks and supports can opt into survivability or team DPS auras depending on comp; ADCs can choose between range dominance, ult-centric bursts, or classic Energized play. Stormrazor and Hextech Gunblade anchor this shift with recognizable names, but the new items do most of the work in redefining archetypes.
As Season 16 settles in, expect experimentation to focus less on stat lines and more on how these unique passives and actives line up with each champion’s core pattern. The items are built to reward champs that fully lean into their identity rather than trying to be everything at once.