/Some/ tanks should rightfully be near juggernaut damage levels

Specifically, Wardens.

With Riot's fairly recent class restructure, tanks were split into two categories: Vanguards, who engage for their team offering heavy crowd control, and Wardens, meant to protect their team from damage or prevent enemies from getting near them.

Wardens, typically at least, lack strong engage tools, with the best of them being 's E, which requires heavy mispositioning from the enemy to be a good engage, and 's E, which is also his only source of crowd control at all.

Compare these to the engage power some typical vanguards have. has a long range spear toss that leads into a massive chain cc, 's ult reaches far behind the enemy line and can set either a particular target or an entire team up for followup cc, rolls like sonic around flanks and into key pick targets.

The point is, Vanguards offer two things over Wardens: reliable chain cc, and engage power.

More than half the champions under the Warden label lack any engage at all -- , and only one offers chain cc -- .

The way I see it, these champions having more damage than their Vanguard brethren, and a stronger combination of pure offense and defense than the similarly engage-focused Diver class, is entirely warranted. Just as a Juggernaut should also rightly have stronger stat values than Divers or Vanguards.

Using the 5 metrics on League's official champion pages, the breakdown of these classes should look something like this on average (Values out of five stars as opposed to the client's 3-point scale)

Vanguards Damage: 2 Toughness: 5 Crowd Control: 5 Mobility: 3 Utility: 2

Wardens Damage: 4 Toughness: 5 Crowd Control: 3 Mobility: 1 Utility: 3

Divers Damage: 4 Toughness: 3 Crowd Control: 3 Mobility: 3 Utility: 1

Juggernauts Damage: 5 Toughness: 5 Crowd Control: 2 Mobility: 1 Utility: 1

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With this in mind, I do think several Vanguards are doing too much damage for what their role is meant to be. Them being tough, even the toughest characters? That's fine. Having the best crowd control? Also fine. But them treading on the space of Wardens and Juggernauts who don't have the luxury of such strong engage options NOR chain cc in team fights is something that doesn't sit right. ult does 410 (+90% Bonus AD) forgoing any further damage afterward, but Ornn's hits for 450 (+20% AP) AND has opens its several victims up for followup attacks? Again it just doesn't sit right. Poppy has to compromise her tank items just to reach the base damage of a character with better engage and much stronger crowd control. Then there's his W that can hit for up to 44% maximum HP compared to both hits of Poppy's Q hitting for a total of 16%, and this is on a spell that gives Ornn a shield whenever he wants it, compared to Poppy needing to pick it up or proc it from a cs (with longer static cooldown).

This isn't meant to hate on Ornn, as I actually think he's quite weak right now, but he just has a kit which is quite similar to my main Poppy, so it's the easiest example to use.

I think the division between the two kinds of tanks should be balanced around their unique contributions. Ornn could get a bit extra in the way of engage-based defensive stats (like base health and health per level), while his sustain is lowered (lower health regen and especially mana regen. He's meant to be beefy and hard to kill with a strong engage, not a lane bully that can stand around forever because his regen values rival Garen's passive). That sustain should be for the Juggernauts and Wardens who need to press the advantage when they can by virtue of lacking the tower diving or free escape tools of their dash-happy kin.

TL;DR: Wardens are fine doing a lot of damage because they lack engage and cc just as Juggernauts do. Vanguards are not because they don't lack either.