In ‘How Did This Happen,’ theScore esports takes a look back at some of the most busted, broken and insanely overpowered things to ever make their way into the world of competitive gaming.

It's always the jungle, isn't it?

Junglers are at once trying to farm efficiently, keeping tabs on the enemy team and looking for a gank. That multi-faceted role is part of why the jungle is one of the most complicated things about League of Legends. It's a large stretch of map that offers so much utility that it has to be constantly tweaked and adjusted because it's just so hard to balance.

But nearly every time Riot tries, they mess it up.

Last time, we discussed Runeglaive, a jungler enchantment that found a home on carries like Ezreal thanks to how absurdly powerful it made you. This time, let's look at its counterpart: Cinderhulk, the item that made you utterly unkillable.

How did it work?

Like Runeglaive, Cinderhulk was added as a replacement for an old jungle enchantment, in this case replacing Juggernaut. The idea behind Juggernaut was that it gave the user a flat 500 health bonus, some cooldown reduction and reduced the amount of time you were caught in crowd control. The problem is that it didn't really scale into the late game too well, since the flat health bonus became less and less relevant as the game went on.

Cinderhulk was supposed to fix that. It also offered a flat health bonus — just 350 health — but also gave you a 25 percent bonus health buff, applied after runes and masteries, on top of a passive that dealt magic damage in an area of effect around you for between 17-24 and 25-51 damage per second, increasing the longer combat went on.

Cinderhulk was supposed to fix the fact that Juggernaut wasn't attractive for tanky junglers. It did fix it. It just fixed it far too well.

WTF?

Twenty-five percent bonus health applied after all other bonuses is a lot of health, and you were able to get it pretty early on. Cinderhulk cost a total 2,200 gold, which was pretty easy to get in Season 5, since the jungle provided more gold back then. On top of that, it gave junglers an earlier power spike than most AD carries, since they'd need more gold that they were building up slower.

All of a sudden, you'd be faced with a nearly unkillable, tanky jungler who was getting harder to kill with every level, and as they stood there eating your hits, you were the one slowly taking damage. Jungers were immortal, and they were cooking their enemies with Immolate.

This also tied in pretty closely to the low diversity in the jungle at the time. The strong jungler champion pool was shrinking, and with how efficient it was to just build Cinderhulk, more players started gravitating to tankier champions to take better advantage of the tank buffs.

At MSI 2015, four champions made up nearly 95 percent of all jungle picks, all of which were tanks. Cinderhulk was built 52 times in 28 games played. Tank junglers overran the meta and dominated. You weren't killing the jungler, you were just getting cooked.

What happened?

It's worth re-stating here that the jungle is hard to balance. Riot tried all sorts of things to fix the Cinderhulk Crisis. They nerfed champions who were able to abuse it, like Sejuani, but the problem persisted. In patch 5.7, a few months after the item was added, Riot raised its cost and reduced the flat health bonus.

Of course, the core issue with Cinderhulk was the enormous percentage health buff on top of how strong Immolate was on such a tanky champion. So in patch 5.9, Riot nerfed Immolate's damage, and made it more effective against monsters instead of other champions.

Of course, that still didn't do it, so in patch 5.16, five months after Cinderhulk was introduced, Riot finally broke down and reduced the bonus health from 25 percent to 15. As a result, the flat health buff went up to 400. In 5.22, Riot raised the price of the item as well, which we essentially the final nail in the coffin.

Cinderhulk went through a long usage drought, still finding some use on tanky junglers but it was no long the go-to item for all junglers. Recently it's gotten a few buffs through a general tank item buff update, and is even up to 20 percent bonus health now. Time will tell if Cinderhulk returns to its unkillable glory, but for now, Cinderhulk has been smashed.

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.