Guardian’s Horn

Starter item · Patch 26.21 · numbers from Riot's Data Dragon files, refreshed every patch

Total cost950 g

Sells for665 g

Gold efficiency42%

Guardian’s Horn stats

+150 Health

Passive and active effects

Passive: Recovery: Restores 20 Health every 5 seconds.
Passive: Undaunted: Blocks 15 damage from attacks and spells from champions (25% effectiveness vs. damage over time abilities).

Effect text as written in Riot's game data; for scaling effects, the in-game shop tooltip shows the exact numbers that match your current stats and level.

Gold efficiency

Stat	Amount	Gold per point	Gold value
Health	150	2.67 g	400 g
Total stat value			400 g

Gold efficiency = stat value ÷ item cost = 400 ÷ 950 = 42%. The gold per point comes from basic items of the same patch (for example, Long Sword: 35 g per Attack Damage). Passives and actives are not counted.

Guardian’s Horn patch history

Patch	Change
14.14	Effect text changed
6.12	Cost: 1000 → 950 gold; Base Health Regeneration %: 125 → none; Health: 200 → 150; Effect text changed
5.22	Cost: 1015 → 1000 gold
5.1	Cost: 1025 → 1015 gold; Health: 180 → 200
4.17	Effect text changed
3.6	Added to the game data

We compare cost and stats patch by patch in Riot's Data Dragon files. "Effect text changed" means the passive or active wording changed in that patch.

Guardian’s Horn is the tank starting item for ARAM in League of Legends: 150 Health for 950 gold in patch 26.21, plus two passives. Recovery restores 20 Health every 5 seconds, and Undaunted blocks 15 damage from every champion attack and spell that hits you, at 25% effectiveness against damage over time. The Howling Abyss shop is the only place that sells it, it does not build into anything, and almost every melee tank starts with it there.

What does Guardian’s Horn do?

Three things, and the smallest one on paper is the best. 150 Health is the obvious part. Recovery adds 20 Health every 5 seconds, which is slow but never stops, and Undaunted shaves 15 damage off each individual hit from an enemy champion.

That flat block is why the item exists. ARAM is a map full of poke, and poke means many small hits rather than a few big ones: a Ziggs bomb, a Caitlyn auto, a Lux E, each one landing separately, each one losing 15 damage before it reaches your Health bar. Against a champion whose whole plan is to tag you twenty times before the fight, that adds up to a few hundred damage prevented per minute (more than the Health the item gives, in a long poke lane). Does it do anything against a Nasus Q for 800? About two percent of it, so no; the Horn is a poke answer, not a burst answer, and the 25% effectiveness against damage over time means Brand and Malzahar get through it mostly intact.

Is Guardian’s Horn gold efficient?

On raw stats, badly: 42%, because 150 Health is worth only 400 gold at 2.67 gold per point and the two passives have no price in the reference table.

So the number is useless here, and the real question is how much damage Undaunted blocks in your game. Put simply, if the enemy team has three ranged champions, it blocks a lot; if it has Garen, Darius and Sett, it blocks almost nothing that matters. Recovery, for what it’s worth, is roughly the regen of a Doran’s Shield without the condition of having taken damage first, which on a map with no recall is quietly valuable. The sell price is 665 gold.

Who should start with it?

Melee tanks and bruisers who expect to stand in front: Malphite, Ornn, Sion, Braum, Alistar, Cho’Gath and the like. Mages take Guardian’s Orb, marksmen take Guardian’s Blade, and fighters who want damage take Guardian’s Hammer, so the Horn is the one of the four ARAM starters that gives no offence at all. Honestly, that is fine, because a tank on the Howling Abyss earns their keep by eating pokes before the fight starts, and nothing else in the shop helps with that for 950 gold.

Who should skip it? Tanks facing an all-melee enemy team, where the block barely triggers and a Ruby Crystal plus boots does more, and any champion who plans to deal damage rather than absorb it. Rare in ARAM, but it happens. One Doran’s Shield and potions on the first buy is the usual alternative, and it is the better one when the enemy poke is a single champion rather than three.

How has Guardian’s Horn changed over the patches?

The item appears in the data from patch 3.6, and Riot has trimmed it more often than buffed it:

Patch 5.1: Health 180 → 200, cost 1025 → 1015 gold.
Patch 5.22: Cost 1015 → 1000 gold.
Patch 6.12: Health 200 → 150, cost 1000 → 950 gold, and the old bonus Base Health Regen removed in favour of the flat Recovery passive.
Patch 14.14: Effect text changed.

Thing is, the current shape dates from 6.12, nearly a decade ago, and the 14.14 entry is wording only. Funny enough, the Horn is older than the other three Guardian’s items, which arrived later as the mage, marksman and fighter versions of the same idea (one starting item per class for a map without a laning phase). The LoL items database shows current prices for all four.

When should you sell it?

When you need the slot for a sixth item, and not before, because Undaunted keeps blocking 15 damage per hit for the whole game and the 665 gold refund buys nothing useful. Which slot goes first, the Horn or boots? Usually boots, on a map where you walk ten seconds to the fight. If you are new to ARAM and want to know which positions and classes the Howling Abyss rewards, the guide to LoL roles covers what tanks are built to do on any map, and Doran’s Shield is the Summoner’s Rift starter that comes closest to what Guardian’s Horn does on the Abyss.