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Why people seem to desperately want a tank meta back?

Credit Ninja·2/22/2017, 2:30:08 PM·1 votes·1,111 views

Randomly lurking on these forums shows that quite a few people wants to have the tank meta back. Iirc the tank meta was when there were around 3 tanks on each team and shoved a significant amount of non-anti-tank squishies out of the meta due to their useless nature against the tanks. Keep in mind tanks during this meta was able to basically 1v3 squishies due to their absurd base stats while also being tanky.

People seem to want "wet noodle fights" back but at the cost of no squishies being viable? This isn't what I want, but people seem to? Please explain to me why people would prefer this kind of meta.

P.S. Tanks doing their jobs and tanking while other squishy champions doing their jobs while also being viable I see as a balanced meta not a tank meta.

P.S.S. Although I was a noob way back when, but I remember when purely tank items were relatively cheaper than damage items due to the fact tanks lived off assists rather than kills in addition to heart of gold/philosopher's stone (gold generation item) and was able to stay relevant for most of the game without being too powerful. I kind of preferred that kind of meta.

10 Comments

Rebonack2/22/2017, 5:21:07 PM3 votes

People like teamfights that don't end in 5 seconds.

Oleandervine2/22/2017, 2:34:28 PM2 votes

Tanks are hard to kill, yes. But with the damage nerfs going through, tanks won't one shot you, games won't end in 30 minutes, and late game champions will make a comeback.

BastionKross2/22/2017, 4:05:06 PM2 votes

The last tank meta League had was in season 4 with Cinderhulk was new. During that time, you had a maximum of two tanks per team, mostly top and jungle. Support usually didn't pick a tank, because this was the same time that Annie was literally reshaping the bot lane support meta around herself.

Tanks were strong enough to do their job, with only a few outliers becoming too powerful Gragas Sejuani and getting nerfed down in a timely fashion. Sej was the more infamous of the two, since she was at the center of a controversy about her "having had her time in the spotlight" to justify her getting nerfed down and staying there even after Cinderhulk was nerfed. As a side note: To this day, we still refer to the act of nerfing a champion because it's too strong with a certain item, then nerfing said item later on, then unfairly not buffing the champion back up as compensation, being Sejuani'd.

Finally, that time during season 4 when tanks were strong was the most diversity we've seen from League since. Tanks extended teamfights, allowing for champs to get several rotations of abilities, protected squishy champs from being deleted by assassins, introduced tanky champions to the jungle that really struggled before like Malphite Shen DrMundo Renekton Taric, and extended games long enough that late game happened pretty much every game; so snowballing champs and hypercarries were just as viable as the lane/jungle bullies picked to take advantage of tank's weaker early game.

Even the two classes that suffer most when tanks are strong, marksmen and assassins, were still viable. Assassins could still delete a squishy if they waited for the tanks to blow their CDs on something else (a.k.a. they used their heads instead of going in whenever they wanted) and non-caster focused marksmen were great tank killers with the old versions of item 3153 item 3035.

Ultimately, when tanks are strong they enable diversity; as opposed to when damage-focused classes are strong and people are dropping in a second or less. Nothing kills diversity faster than nearly everyone being quickly deleted in a teamfight.

ZT Xperimentor2/22/2017, 5:24:52 PM1 votes

Because people are tired of; being 2-shot regardless of who they play, only the select abusive champions being viable, games being 1-sided, ext.

GigglesO2/22/2017, 5:30:03 PM1 votes

Because it isn't fun to die instantly.

xBushx2/22/2017, 2:31:49 PM1 votes

We want fights that dont end with one mistake. That's why all the % dmg bonuses that EVERY one took are getting nerfed thank christ. It was the masteries pushing the lethality over teh edge

Credit Ninja2/22/2017, 5:41:07 PM1 votes

Reading the comments, I see a lot of people not liking the amount of damage this season. Wouldn't that mean every season before this one would be fine? (Not just the tank one?) and yet I see people crying for a tank meta when I just want a balanced meta.

MinaZer02/22/2017, 2:35:12 PM1 votes

because of what Riot is saying about the change to tanks, it started with the mastery changes all of the random damage increases being gutted(tanks doing less damage) and the soon to be gutting of tank items and buffs to tanks to innately have the stats to replace the current item stats.

So they are tanks in essence and not by solely item stats making them into tanks (i.e. Tank Fizz, Akali Ekko, Katarina)

Hige2/22/2017, 2:53:13 PM1 votes

I think they don't want a tank meta... but bringing tanks back in the mix would balance the lethality problems, currently you can pierce about 100 armor with just lethality items, then a black cleaver and last whisper items and you can bring a 300 armor tank to about 80 which throws them out of the equation, kind of...

Tank items aren't particularly tank oriented though, so the rework is gonna help alleviate that a bit