Immortal Shieldbow

Immortal Shieldbow is a 3,000 gold crit item in League of Legends that trades a little damage for a safety net: 55 Attack Damage, 25% Critical Strike Chance and the Lifeline passive, which shields you for 3 seconds when a hit would drop you below 30% Health, as of patch 26.21. Marksmen who get dived buy it; marksmen who get peeled usually don’t.

What does Lifeline do?

It catches you once. Take damage that would push your Health under 30% and a Shield appears for 3 seconds, long enough to flash out, get a heal from your support or finish the assassin who jumped you.

The trigger is the important part, not the number on the shield. It fires on the hit that crosses the threshold, so burst that takes you from full to zero in one spell still gets absorbed in part, and that is exactly the situation a marksman fears most (a Zed ultimate, a Rengar leap, a fed Kha'Zix). After it fires, the passive goes on cooldown, and the shop tooltip shows how long. Will it save you twice in the same fight? No, so treat it as one free mistake per engagement.

Is Immortal Shieldbow gold efficient?

Almost, before the passive: 98%, or 2,925 gold of stats for 3,000 gold. The breakdown is 55 Attack Damage at 1,925 gold (using 35 gold per point from basic items) and 25% crit chance at 1,000 gold.

So the shield costs you roughly 75 gold of stats. Cheap insurance. Honestly, if you would otherwise die to the first dive of every fight, that is a fair price. The comparison people make is with Infinity Edge, which gives more raw damage for more gold and no defensive passive at all, and the right answer depends on who the enemy team sent to kill you.

Who should build Immortal Shieldbow?

Marksmen on a crit build who face assassins or dive champions and don’t have a peel support. Think of a Jinx against Zed and Nocturne with a Lux behind her: nobody is saving her, so she buys her own save.

In practice it is rarely the first item. Most crit carries open with a damage item and add Immortal Shieldbow second or third, once they can see which enemy is going to be the problem. The catch is that a crit build has only so many slots, and a defensive item in one of them means your damage spikes later than the enemy marksman’s. If your team already protects you well, that trade is a bad one. Playing a fighter or a bruiser instead? The crit chance does little for you, and the LoL items database lists better survival options for that kind of champion.

What does the build path look like?

Pickaxe (875 gold) plus Noonquiver (1,300 gold), then 825 gold to combine. Noonquiver is the piece to buy first on most recalls, because it brings crit chance and Attack Damage together and makes waveclear easier. Nothing builds out of it.

How has Immortal Shieldbow changed over the patches?

More than most items in its price range. Riot’s data files first list it in patch 10.23 as a Mythic with Attack Speed and Life Steal, and the big turns since then are:

• Patch 13.10: cost 3,400 → 3,000, Attack Speed removed, effect reworked.
• Patch 14.10: Attack Damage 50 → 55, crit chance 20% → 25%, Life Steal removed.
• Patch 14.21: effect text changed, the current Lifeline wording.

So the item has slowly lost its sustain and kept its shield. The Life Steal went from 12% at the start of 2024 to nothing by mid year (a lot of players still remember it as a healing item, which it no longer is). The full table above lists every entry, patch by patch.

When is it the right buy?

When you can name the champion who is going to kill you and your support can’t stop them. Funny enough, that describes most solo queue games at the ranks where carries play too far forward, which is why Immortal Shieldbow shows up so often on carries who are learning the role. For a clearer picture of what each position is responsible for, our guide to LoL roles covers who is supposed to protect whom.

FAQ

How much does Immortal Shieldbow cost?

The full price is 3,000 gold in patch 26.21; 825 gold of that is the combine step, and the shop buys it back for 2,100 gold.

What stats does it give?

Two stats only: 55 Attack Damage and 25% Critical Strike Chance, with no Attack Speed or Life Steal.

When does Lifeline trigger?

When incoming damage would take your Health below 30%. The Shield lasts 3 seconds.

Is it a Mythic item?

Not any more. It was a Mythic when it arrived in patch 10.23, and became a normal Legendary item when Riot removed the Mythic system in 2024.

Does Immortal Shieldbow still give Life Steal?

No. Life Steal was removed in patch 14.10, so the item no longer heals you on its own.

What does it build from?

Pickaxe and Noonquiver, and it does not build into anything else.