Frozen Heart Ezreal is now extremely favoured by Korean Masters and Challengers.
Having the responsibility for dealing damage, all marksmen always prioritize damage build to maximize their power, and Ezreal is not an exception. However, since patch 11.11 came, a brand new build has been created: Frozen Heart Ezreal.
Specifically, the three core items of this marksman in the current patch are Divine Sunderer + Muramana (upgraded from Manamune) + Frozen Heart. This build is hilariously called “a variation of Blue Ezreal”, which had been previously very popular in the past. Nevertheless, while Iceborn Gauntlet was a semi-tank item, Frozen Heart is completely a tank one. This build has the highest pick rate and win rate at the Korean server: 28.17% and 60.55% respectively.
The reason for this “bizarre” build is that Frozen Heart is a hard counter of assassins – the biggest threat of marksmen, especially AD ones. Additionally, assassins have been quite OP during the two latest patches. So, what does Frozen Heart provide us with? 80 Armor, 400 Mana, and 20 AH. Obviously, mana is extremely necessary for Ezreal and that huge number of Armor will lessen assassins during their mission. In addition, with that 20 AH, he will have 55% CD in total when he completes his build. However, the most useful thing of Frozen Heart on Ezreal is its passive. It declines the amount of damage received from autos and the more HP you have, the more damage will be reduced. Besides, Divine Sunderer provides 400 HP to your champion, which makes use of that passive.
The last time we saw tanky build on marksmen was probably when Angel Guardian had not been reworked and completely provided your champion with defensive stats instead of AD. A few days ago, that build was finally back with Tank Kog’Maw and now is Ezreal. As a result, Frozen Heart Ezreal will be apparently the outset of the period of creative builds for several champions and roles.
However, you have to notice that this build only fits with marksmen mainly depending on their skills, which make up a small portion of the number of champion in LoL. As can be easily seen, Ezreal is the best one, or the only one.
Among defensive items in LoL, Frozen Heart is on a relatively higher level than other “colleagues” like Spirit Visage or Thornmail. So, purchasing tank items for marksmen is not nonsense at all and this also a fascinating playstyle for you to try.