Removal of Stopwatch was the single best change in years for pro play viewing experience.

I was so sick and tired of watching the crucial teamfight have like 5 people go golden. It's tiresome and not only that, it would often decide entire game outcomes.

I still think Stasis is a good mechanic to have in the game, but Stopwatch was too cheap and too omnipresent.

I've noticed that a lot of (I assume newer) people conflate Stopwatch and Zhonya's. I see people act like that if you want to get rid of Stopwatch, then you want the whole stasis mechanic gone. I guess these people didn't play before 2018 when Zhonya's was the only stasis.

I am still a bit worried about Seeker's Armguard eventually being the new Stopwatch. It might sound weird because it's 1600g but the sell value is decently high, so it's "only" a 1000g investment.

We still see pro play buy this 1600g Stopwatch sometimes. We saw Bwipo do it on Renekton the other day and it won the whole game. It just tells you how insane this mechanic was and how toxic Stopwatch was when people would still sometimes get it when its like 2x the cost.

If I'm being really honest, I don't know why it took so fucking long to get rid of Stopwatch. This item was a terrible idea on day 1 and we had so many years of pro play where Stopwatch was deciding games. There was one Worlds in particular (maybe 2021?) where it was so grating to see Stopwatch Stopwatch Stopwatch Stopwatch Stopwatch every fight. I can't imagine that the intention of Stopwatch was that it should decide entire pro games, but that's what happened pretty often.

Sometimes I really think Riot is too slow to just bite the bullet, but at least they finally got rid of the item now.