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As a Tank player, I am currently forced to play Bruisers or Assassins in jungle

Salvor Hardın··63 votes·18,183 views

Good morning, and I hope this doesn't come too Crypost. I'm the player Salvor, from the LAS server, I've been playing mainly tanks from the S5, I got to Diamond this season, and currently have a team that we practice with almost every day.

Well, getting to the point, I just realized, that my pool of champions is practically reduced to the few who are not tanks. Renekton , Evelynn , Fiddlesticks and JarvanIV AD.

My jungle tanks, which I enjoyed playing during the S5, S6 and S7, are no longer useful or suffer a lot.

Zac: When I play it I get invaded by the rival fighter-killer jungle, and I have no way to defend myself but to escape, or to make time for an ally to help me.

Gragas : In the previous season he was so nerfed that he had 45% or less winrate the whole season, and they "solved" it by buffing the Gragas AP, leaving the tank completely out.

Sejuani : I don't think it's necessary to explain, everyone knows its current state and we hope that Riot will solve it.

JarvanIV Hecarim : Their tank versions (with only 1 damage item) are not what they were, and now they have to build almost full damage.

Volibear Skarner Amumu : Old skills kit, need work, or buff that leaves them broken for play (sadly).

Malphite : Only AP viable, like Gragas.

Nautilus Maokai : They received buff to carry them jungle, but their slow cleanliness and speed of movement makes them unviable.

Nunu Rammus : I think they are the only viable tanks in the jungle, not because of what they can resist, but because of their Damage and CC.

https://play.op.gg/aecf7eaa3243551d8d6890b45ae7d4a4.png

I don't have the magic solution to this, it could be a nerf to conqueror, a buff to some tank item, small individual improvements, the point is that improving the useful life of the tanks (not making tank META) would be beneficial, both to lower a point the damage meta, as to make more viable the marksman who are currently suffering.

Thank you very much for reading, excuse me if my English is not perfect, and save the comments of "tanks are brain-dead", "we don't want goal of tanks" for another place.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/6/60/Little_Camper_Emote.png/revision/latest?cb=20180322145141

108 Comments

PapaGreg2113 votes

Tanks can't be allowed to be good or they might get picked in an LCS game

DeusVult3 votes

Tanks do get picked in LCS, or at least in many pro regions

Tanks in team play are far stronger than they are in solo queue because they can dictate engagements, in solo queue you can dictate an engagement but if your backline is braindead, than you just die

LordGeovanni3 votes

Tanks are stronger in team play than solo que is because Tanks do Dictate engagements Proplayers and high elo understands this they wait for their tank to go in and follow it up while In lower elo they like to afk when the tank engages waiting for people to get low before joining but not thinking how are the enemy supposed to get low if you the back line damage dealers arent doing any damage? then tell the tank you shouldnt have went in. DPS mains Like to Think its all about them that they shouldnt help anyone and everyone should help them.

PapaGreg211 votes

If you see a tank in an LCS game, more than likely there are nerfs coming pretty fast because they slow down the pace of the game which Riot feels is bad for the viewer. I've played this game for awhile and I understand what Riot's incentives are for balancing at this point. It's by no means for the general playerbase to enjoy the game.

Stróc Dúnmharú12 votes

Riot needs to nerf damage across the board, to be honest,

DeKirschi10 votes

good, fuck tanks.

Salvor Hardın67 votes

Thank you for great and deep argumentation. [slayer-jinx-wink]

TheSingularity2 votes

Hopefully this still works. Take naut into the jungle Try going resolve precision (alacrity and coup de grace). Take atk speed then both armor runes. Summoners=smite and ignite. Your Q replaces flash for escapes. The ignite allows you to beat early game brawlers like lee sin, graves and shaco. Excluding buffs, camps in order of importance= krugs, crab, wolf/raptors, gromp. Gromp isn't worth taking early due to how much damage it deals and how little it gives for the time investment (gromp has atk speed buff for the 1st 3-5 seconds) It also helps you get fed faster and provides a grievous wounds source (cos we all know how often people buy it)

Saevum4 votes

No, Naut needs a lot of AS which was removed when they removed the old rune system (28%as), otherwise he would be viable his jungle clear wouldnt be so slow. He became another casualty during the rune changes and jungle changes.

TheSingularity3 votes

No, he doesn't. He didn't need that much attack speed before and he doesn't need that much now. I'm not sure what dictated that attack speed value but one could achieve 41% attack speed, seems you're underselling me on our old runes ;) I'll assume this one's a smurf because you've played almost no nautilus since you started. So there's that -_-

If you are that dependent on attack speed, you playing him wrong. You don't need attack speed because you should be ganking constantly.

When naut jungle was worth keeping stats on, his most common and highest win% page was atk speed marks, armor yellows, a mix of scaling and flat CDR blues and movement speed quints. Providing 15.3% attack speed. I rocked that exact page and resulted in positive winrates in the 5 seasons I played him predominantly, 4,5,6,8. Currently this set up gives you half of that value, and you can increase that to 26% via alacrity.

My winrate with this set up, 57%. Seems the stat sites are listing my total games wrong (one says 19, another 14. Total is closer to 50). But given it's a garbage tier pick, that no one plays it's not half bad.

Edit: Went back and counted each individual match: 57% winrate over 59 games. It goes up to 62% when I count all naut jungle games for the season, so not just the ones with ignite. So, "Naut needs a lot of AS", yeah, get out and return when you have a clue babe.

Well that was fast, are you stalking me? I'm flattered but please, my anchor is too big for u

iPooUnicorns10 votes

Tanks are only allowed as supports, didn't you get the memo?

Salvor Hardın7 votes

Okay, then make viable supports for all the tanks mentioned above. [sg-lulu]

Zero Skill Tank2 votes

As if dude, there is literally no tank support ATM who would have a decent winrate and not-ignorable playrate.

I guess Taric is close with 51.5 x 1.1, but that's literally the best there is.

Gravesinger4 votes

Not mentioning the reasoning for Taric is because he has the one 'tank stat' which truly counters burst meta- invulnerability.

Frog goes moo2 votes

braum, kench, leona. Try em out they're pretty good.

Sharpest glasses1 votes

I mean thats how you play tanks, even when you play top, you play them as support V2.

CLG Rampage7 votes

Right there with you bro. Tanks other than Sion, Shen and Poppy are just terrible right now. Maybe some day they'll throw tanks a bone, but for right now it's a lot of Garen top for me.

Salvor Hardın5 votes

Today I'm going to see if Sion cleans the jungle well. I rely on the good judgment of Meddler and the balancing team to realize the problem. https://i.imgur.com/xH7SRUQ.png?nodirect

Acanthus4 votes

Cho also works. You also get the bonus of having nunu-level objective control when your ult is up. But both he and Sion work because you have the benefit of getting a lot of free hp, allowing you to build more resists.

SanKakU6 votes

I think tanks should get a Magic Resist jungle item and an Armor jungle item. There are three non-HP Jungle items and the HP Jungle item. Tanks need more options.

Salvor Hardın3 votes

I agree, maybe a smite option as well, since they got out the green of wards.

TheSingularity2 votes

Spirit of the ancient golem <3

Beast Brawler1 votes

Honestly, the HP jungle item feels pretty lackluster. It needs like 30 armor and mr to go with it or something, it just really doesn't feel like as much of a power spike as the other ones. Especially the Warrior and Runic Echoes enchants, they feel pretty strong for their value. Cindehulk? Ehh, I take maybe two or three seconds longer to kill after buying it, sometimes it's only one or two more autos.

Incognonymous6 votes

As a jungler, I can't say I didn't see this coming. Tank junglers had the longest run of +50% winrates as a group-- spanning multiple seasons. It was from a healthy place. If you give your team the tools to win, they win more often-- completely the opposite of snatching the win from the enemy by being broken, as is our custom to associate when we cite winrate.

Riot absolutely hates that shit now. They don't want healthy, slow, strategic plays. They want 3000 unit mobility plays into one-shots. It's sickening.

fire2635 votes

As a zed main, I can't say I like tanks much, but yea they generally are pretty bad right now. Unfortunately, most of the balancing has gone to pro play to make it enjoyable, and since pro play is different from solo q in which they don't need to have damage to carry, cc and tanking is just all they need as they can rely on teammates in pro play, hence why they keep buffing ap ratios and damage all around on most tanks and removing their tankiness. Not much solution to this other than instead of buffing bad champions, just continue nerfing good ones that way the overall damage in the game is slowly reduced, making it so you can actually can actually be a tank without getting blown up.

On a side note, jungle is my secondary role and despite her state being generally very bad, I've been doing very well on Sejuani ^.^ I don't know what exactly it is that's making me do well on her most games I play, shes more of a pocket pick when my team needs cc and somewhat tankiness, and I guess also her passive is making her playable for me as since most teamfights only last about 10 seconds, she has her passive tankiness for most of it. I don't know if it's just luck thats making me do well on her, but I would give her a try again, I personally really enjoy her as a champion. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Fear the Kayn5 votes

Tanks need to be changed to absorb a ton of damage, but literally deal so little damage they cannot fight anyone. That's the only way I ever see them being balanced. Just walking cc bots that absorb damage.

Nea1042 votes

Yes, that's the point. As a tank: I won't kill you, you won't kill me. Sadly this company has a really distorted misconcept about tanks.

("but if tanks deal no damage, you can just ignore them"... false; as pointed out, cc's, especially taunts, peculiar saving features like Braum or Tahm, place swapping (not existing in this game), and so on...).

SithesisLord4 votes

You just buy a Merc Treads and a tank loses about half its utility.

Tanks need some respectable damage.

An M1 Abrams during normal combat operations doesn´t fire blanks now, does it?

Dyrreah1 votes

Except that I go for fucking mercs plus tenacity rune plus steraks and I'm literally standing still until I die. Also, pick tank with knockups, that's just cancer I feel like I'm a bouncing ball not a champion because it's all about knockups.

PB4UAME2 votes

Look at Overwatch for a good take, imho on tanks.

They do respectable DPS. IF you play one well, you can fairly easily get 3-4 gold medals, including for Eliminations, Objective Eliminations, and Damage dealt. The trick though, is that they tend to have very constant, reliable, often AoE damage, that would take forever to kill an individual target, but in a teamfight can start ramping up if the tank isn't dealt with. They have less CC to offset this, but still the most of any class, and they have the highest health/resistances of any class as well.

Despite this, most other characters can 1 vs 1 an isolated tank. Additionally, their defenses are often powerful, but on lengthy cooldowns, or are limited or exploitable in ways that require the opponent to play around them, with fairly clearly or organic counterplay, e.g. most of the shields are only one directional, and half of them have to be placed on the ground, and cannot be moved until they come off CD again.

League used to be pretty similar. Malphite and Amumu are a pretty good example of old tank design. Amumu just sits around shredding MR, doing AoE %HP damage slowly, and doing smaller bursts of AoE as he gets auto attacked, with one big AoE CC to bait out or avoid. Malphite wants to sit on a target slowing their movement and attack speed, and smacking them so hard it hurts their allies around them, but he struggles to get on to people without his ult, which is his only hard CC. Again, his ult is a huge threat, but one that can be flashed, avoided by not grouping up, or baited out.

If we were able to shift to a less CC heavy (but still more than other classes; CC in general has been creeped to fucking hell and back. Shit like release Ekko should never have even been thought up, let alone have made it to live servers. Giving assassins like Ekko, and Pyke more CC than half the tanks were released with kind of forces tanks to have a shit ton of their own CC, which isn't a great arms race to have to fight) iteration of tanks, and additionally remove or alter most of their burst damage to instead be AoE or (current)%HP based such that they couldn't 1 vs 1 or burst anyone down-- I think then we could restore a lot of their bulkiness and durability that has been removed over the years.

Cosmic Khan3 votes

I got autofilled top against a Jax. I picked Poppy to counter his Leap Strike, and I counter-built him to a T, getting Ninja Tabi and Adaptive Helm in lane phase - despite all of my resistances and health, he was still able to melt me entirely because of the Conqueror Rune letting him do insane true damage each time.

I don't normally play tanks, but that felt really bad. I couldn't have built or played better against him, but he was still able to beat me due to true damage conversion.

GayFluffyUnicorn1 votes

If you lose to jax as poppy you are garbage, straight up.

Edit: in laning phase obviously before someone tries to intentionally misunderstand. Ofc jax outscales you with conq AS IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Without conq you picking poppy would mean he would never kill or outscale you how is that balance? You win laning phase and outscale him?

Cosmic Khan4 votes

{quoted}

If you lose to jax as poppy you are garbage, straight up.

Edit: in laning phase obviously before someone tries to intentionally misunderstand. Ofc jax outscales you with conq AS IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE. Without conq you picking poppy would mean he would never kill or outscale you how is that balance? You win laning phase and outscale him?

Platinum II must mean I'm garbage, isn't that interesting.

Or it's the fact that Conqueror is doing more than it's supposed to. It doesn't scale, it provides a flat 20% of your basic attack damage to true - which, for Jax - includes his magic damage from W and R procs. With the way Conqueror currently is, there is no playing tanks in to any bruiser. Every bit of resistance you buy ends up getting outscaled by their true damage that constantly goes up.

Salvor Hardın3 votes

True damage was a very very gross way of making bruisers viable, now we are paying the consequences. And the marksmen are also paying for it, in the absence of Tanks, they are also displaced from the Meta.

Abuse me3 votes

As fighter player I was forced to play Darius entire tank meta and none bat an eye. Why should we care now about you?

SithesisLord8 votes

A tank player being forced to play a fighter in a fighter meta is one thing.

A fighter player still playing a fighter in a tank meta is another.

Abuse me2 votes

Noone is forcing you to play fighters, its just your notion of tanks being weak or something which is statistically proven to be wrong time and time again. But yeah even if someone forced you to play fighters in fighter meta, whats the big deal? You suddenly have 2x more choices than tanks. I am sure youll find something that suits your needs.

SithesisLord6 votes

Statistically proven to be wrong?

Where exactly?

Because Ornn is hot garbage, so much so to the point that Riot is jusrning him into a Juggernaut with reliable CC with a 3.5 second Unstoppable just to make him less pro play mandatory and less of a troll pick in Solo Q.

Tahm Kench support is dead in terms of efficiency, and TK top is too team reliant.

Amumu is not doing so well, but only because his best players aren´t building him like he's meant to be built. They´re building him full AP.

Sejuani is sitting at 40% winrate with a .5% pick rate. 40% winrate.

Nautilus is doing slightly better than the previous tanks, but still a bit bad.

Zac is on the same boat as Nautilus.

Braum is only played as much as he is because Lucian is a good ADC to pair with him.

Shen and Nunu are hovering around the same performance levels as Tahm Kench.

Gragas is being played full AP.

Maokai is mostly used as a counterpick or by mains and OTPs.

Galio is likely to return to building full AP, because he barely built in any way like a tank already.

Taric is a decent support, but his pickrate supports the same logic as Maokai. Counterpick or used by mains/OTPs.

Poppy is used as a counterpick to the Dash City bullshit that´s top lane nowadays.

Leona, Rammus, Blitz, Alistar, Sion and Thresh are the ones either meta or close to being meta.

6 tanks being overall efficient and not being niche picks/counter picks.

Six.

Fact is, tanks are too big brain for SoloQ, and why only a select few of them will ever even see the light of meta.

Iota Theta4 votes

[{quoted}](name=Abuse me,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3O54YcAq,comment-id=0011,timestamp=2018-12-06T22:20:00.182+0000)

As fighter player I was forced to play Darius entire tank meta and none bat an eye. Why should we care now about you?

So, a fighter player playing a fighter in the tank meta? Why would someone bat an eye at that? Besides, you could’ve also played Trundle, Renekton, Jax, Xin Zhao, Fighter build J4, Vi, etc, most considered viable in the old tank meta. Heck, Trundle is a big anti-tank by stat stealing, and tanks can’t outsplitpush most of those, especially if they have a Hydra.

Why did you play only Darius? Many fighters are dps based, meaning they can kill tanks, you just have to build to do so. Like, build Cleaver and a whisper item and not Trinity, for example. If they rely on healing like Maokai, buy an Executioner’s. Can’t be good against both tanks and squishier champs like a lot of fighters are now.

Abuse me1 votes

Playing Jax in tank meta XD, legit loled right here. Actually playing any autoattack based champion tank meta XDDD, do you realize that these existed? item 3047 item 3075 item 3110 item 3143 and they were even stronger than they are now? Hell ye dude I loved killing myself faster than killing the tank. Please stop with this bullshit we all know that no fighters that didnt have innate sustain in their kits were even remotely capable of surviving lanes against tanks.

Iota Theta7 votes

[{quoted}](name=Abuse me,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=3O54YcAq,comment-id=001100010000,timestamp=2018-12-07T14:00:34.553+0000)

Playing Jax in tank meta XD, legit loled right here. Actually playing any autoattack based champion tank meta XDDD, do you realize that these existed? item 3047 item 3075 item 3110 item 3143 and they were even stronger than they are now? Hell ye dude I loved killing myself faster than killing the tank. Please stop with this bullshit we all know that no fighters that didnt have innate sustain in their kits were even remotely capable of surviving lanes against tanks.

Do you realize Black Cleaver and Last Whisper were stronger then than they are now as well? How about the fact that Ravenous Hydra was still popular back then for fighters and Tanks had no means of Grevious Wounds back then? There was a reason tanks felt like health batteries. Back then, if they for whatever reason built all 4 items, that’s 3 pure armor and one armor/health item, meaning %armor pen was even better and they also were weaker vs magic, which some fighters like Jax also deal as well as makes them weaker to mages.

How about that Thornmail was a garbage rush item back then? Bramble Vest didn’t exist back then. It was only good after getting more armor items (and even then, only really good on Malphite and Rammus), at which point then you as a fighter could start ignoring the tank because they couldn’t actually stop you clearing and tower taking. No, Thornmail did not force you to kill yourself back then anymore than it does now. Watch matchups of tanks vs trundle come late, even after Bramble, and once Trundle got to splitpush level the tank coupd not stop him. Same went for any fighter that could build for splitpush. Want to fight and kill the tank, build to fight the tank. Not build to kill squishies and still kill tanks because of a rune. You can’t be balanced and good against both very well.

But no, can’t break free from the same builds of Trinity+ on Fighters.

Edit: since you’re laughing about my comment about Jax, let’s take the data a bit farther, shall we? The most well known tank meta, aka, Cinderhulk meta, was back in 2015. I remember because it was shortly after I started playing the game. Through 2015, Jax maintained a popularity rate of around 5% with periodic spikes above to about 7%. Now, his winrate during that time, early 2015, his winrate was around 50%, dropping below a couple times. About 1/4-1/3 of the way through 2015, around when cinderhulk released and through almost the end of 2015, Jax maintained, on average, a winrate of approximately 60%, or at least high 50s, whether you look at overall or just top respectively (odd, since he was mostly top lane back then anyway) Hm, Jax doesn’t do well in tank metas?

How about the recent one, in 2018? Different conditions, different champs like post buffs Ornn. His winrate is indeed lower, he also dropped to near 0% at one point, but that’s a major anomaly and there must have been other factors cause it goes with a drop in popularity as well. Disabled at one point or something?

HÔPÊ3 votes

I feel you. They are too weak. They should scale into late game monsters, but shouldn't have too much damage, because they felt like brusers before. Tanks should get reworked. Their early should be garbage. Their late should be tanky as fuck. But when something has 5k hp and does a lot of damage, it is toxic.

Dr Dog2 votes

well you could give warwick a try? hes not exactly a tank but hes pretty damn close to one and he can do really good, try out the new DD with him because of his natural healing and mixed dmg its pretty damn good on him and keeps him very tanky with his e

Salvor Hardın3 votes

I hadn't thought of the new DD in Warwick, maybe I'd give it a try.

As a thank you, I recommend that you give Renekton a chance in the jungle, it gives surprising results, and it's good at almost everything, invading, 1 vs 1, ganks, and so on. https://i.gyazo.com/eaba281adf023b8d2827562faef90142.png

I Spread Cancer2 votes

Top Amumu players are playing him full AP. His tankyness on standard build is a treat to nobody so they rather go full glass canon.

Salvor Hardın23 votes

That's why, "tanks are only viable if they build full damage."

Then they're not tanks anymore, like Gragas

ModCaptainMårvelous2 votes

And this is new?

How do you think mage players felt when assassin mids where the best pick? How do you think bruiser players felt when tank tops were the number one choice? ADC mains go here. (We see what happens when you can pick something else bot). I'd also talk about assassin players but I'd imagine Boards loves how assassins couldn't be viable so it'd be cathartic to list them.

Frankly yes, there will be times when your class is bad in said role. Part of league is having to play new things like back in the old days where if you couldn't play EVERY SINGLE ROLE, you didn't queue up for ranked.

FéliXXX1 votes

if you cant play them get better at the game cos tanks are not bad at all

Salvor Hardın6 votes

cos tanks are not bad at all

Most of the ones I showed are not able to compete against the killers/ bruisers or have to be played full damage (therefore they are no longer tanks).

if you cant play them get better at the game

Technically I'm a league above you sir, don't use such bad and generic arguments. You can justify anything with the "then you have to do better".

Beerstein1 votes

I think Amumu kit is fine, just suffers the same as Zac, can be easily manhandled unless your lanes babysit the jungle which makes him useless unless you get lucky.

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