Infinity Edge
To put it bluntly, among the basic items in Teamfight Tactics, Infinity Edge is the weakest and has the least versatility. In the current meta, only Talon can effectively utilize this item, while other melee carry champions like Tryndamere, Irelia, Warwick… don’t use it at all. As a result, Infinity Edge is experiencing an extremely low win rate despite its relatively high pick rate.
So why don’t current melee carries need Infinity Edge? The reason lies in the fact that most champions of this type already have the ability to close in on targets using their dashes (Irelia, Tryndamere), making the range increase effect from that item meaningless. Moreover, with the current meta demanding champions to deal strong burst damage, items that enhance critical strike chance, excluding armor like Infinity Edge, or Blue Bow are far superior to items that only provide attack speed like Infinity Edge.
Guardian Angel
There’s a truth we need to acknowledge: the traditional Mage playstyle with strong burst damage carries has disappeared in this 6.5 season. The removal of Lux and the introduction of Ahri, a unit that requires more time to scale, has made the Mage team feel significantly weaker than before. Consequently, a vital support item for the burst damage Mage playstyle, Guardian Angel, has been plummeting in win rate since the 6.5 update.
Another reason Guardian Angel is losing its standing is the emergence of the Gemstone Core, which has a similar effect. Therefore, players no longer need to build Guardian Angel to still achieve massive damage with their critical hits from their skills. Perhaps in the current meta, Guardian Angel is only suitable for Yordle – Marksman compositions with Corki as the main carry, as this unit makes very good use of all the stats that this item provides.
Dragon Claw
Along with the decline of Mage compositions, an item specifically meant to counter such team compositions, Dragon Claw, is also no longer as strong as before. It’s true that there are still compositions dealing significant magic damage at this point, but they only exist on certain champions rather than the entire team generating damage like Mages. Therefore, equipping a Dragon Claw to a tank champion is not a good item build in the current meta.
Even when facing strong magic damage compositions, Dragon Claw is no longer a very good counter item. If you didn’t know, at the start of season 6, Riot reduced the damage of this item to 18% of the maximum health of the champion casting the spell instead of 30% of the maximum health as before. Therefore, the amount of damage this item deals has become extremely weak, combined with the fact that Mages are no longer popular, it’s easy to understand why people have “abandoned” Dragon Claw.