I saw some champions being built with ardent censer, because well, it's really good right now. I played ivern and taric with ardent censer and the heals and shields were quite strong. I heard that someone also played nidalee ardent censer. What makes ardent so strong?
Before this patch, it gave attack speed and on-hit life drain. Basically the support would finish the item and then suddenly their ADC had a massive sustain advantage and DPS advantage. Also some champions can proc it on the whole team, so their whole team was getting attack speed, on-hit damage, and healing. For a cheap item with great stats (CDR, good AP, healing power), that's a lot for just 2300g.
A lot of the currently popular ADCs are people like Kog'Maw, Twitch, Xayah, Tristana and Kalista. These are all pretty strong scaling autoattackers, so giving them an ardent in the early-mid game just makes them that much scarier. Ardent isn't as good on champions like Jhin and Miss Fortune, for example, because they don't autoattack as often.
Basically it's just overtuned. It just got another change this patch that removed the healing, but they also buffed the attack speed and made it apply to the caster as well, so I don't know if that's going to push it out of meta.
Ardent Censer is strong item that not only can provide targeted buffs to, say, an ADC, but it also provides strong utility for you as well, since you receive mainly AP, and more healing power. It really took off with Janna, since her shield becomes extremely powerful after Ardent Censer
So mainly, it's for increased heals/shields/extra magic damage for your team.
A lot of the currently popular ADCs are people like Kog'Maw, Twitch, Xayah, Tristana and Kalista. These are all pretty strong scaling autoattackers, so giving them an ardent in the early-mid game just makes them that much scarier. Ardent isn't as good on champions like Jhin and Miss Fortune, for example, because they don't autoattack as often.
Basically it's just overtuned. It just got another change this patch that removed the healing, but they also buffed the attack speed and made it apply to the caster as well, so I don't know if that's going to push it out of meta.
So mainly, it's for increased heals/shields/extra magic damage for your team.