Statikk Shiv
To put it bluntly, with Urgot’s dominance and the Chemtech team composition, Statikk Shiv has risen to become one of the most powerful attack items in Teamfight Tactics. We must remember that the Chemtech team inherently deals a lot of magic damage, thanks to units like Lissandra, Viktor, and the Chemtech Requiem trait also causing magic damage. Therefore, the continuous magic resistance reduction effect that Statikk Shiv provides is an excellent tool to amplify the team’s overall damage.
However, in patch 12.1, Riot heavily nerfed the interaction of the Sweeping skill, where every third hit of this ability is now counted as a basic attack, instead of every second as before. To put it simply, the number of times Urgot can activate Statikk Shiv will now decrease by one-third, along with a significant reduction in damage and magic resistance reduction duration. As a result, this item has continuously dropped in rank and is no longer an overpowering attack item.
Redemption
In version 11.24, Redemption quickly became stronger as it provided excellent support for teams using the Giant and Brawler traits, which were all the rage. This item essentially heals based on the lost health of allies, so “tanky” units benefit significantly. Moreover, providing a 25% area damage reduction buff makes Giants and Brawlers even stronger and harder to take down.
By version 12.1, the dominance of Redemption is no longer present as the team compositions revolving around those two traits have been nerfed. Indeed, the Challenger team is still a strong playstyle, but Redemption is not quite suitable for this composition. The reason is that most Challenger units have relatively low defense and health stats, resulting in the benefits provided by Redemption being quite low. Therefore, this item is no longer as favored as it was in the previous version.
Archangel’s Staff
If you’ve noticed, most of the strong team compositions in the previous version were those that needed to scale their power during battles. For example, the Kai’Sa – Iconic team needs to buy enough time for this unit to cast its abilities 2-3 times to deal enough damage to eliminate opponents. Likewise, Urgot requires a certain amount of time to attack and gradually reduce opponents’ magic resistance with his Statikk Shiv.
Therefore, items that provide scaling stats over the course of the battle, such as Archangel’s Staff, are extremely powerful. When combined with units like Viktor or Kai’Sa, they can literally wipe the entire battlefield at the end of the round. However, as the meta shifted and compositions oriented towards “quick strikes” like Assassins and Challengers rose to prominence, the pace of matches accelerated tremendously. As a result, Archangel’s Staff has also significantly lost value.