Glad another one joins me in the Chorus of how oppressive tank meta is, So many details get involved into it, but here's a few of the problems on what i see causes the meta:
- Items that stack HP alongside Armor and/or MR in addition to having a powerful utility tends to become something ridiculously snowballie. One example is Deadman's plate which grants 500 hp and 50 armor, which is a considerable amount of defensive stats, considering a typical match up in top lane on 5vs5 will most of time be a AD champion (Darius, Illaoi, Wu Kong, Aatrox) or champions who tend to have ridiculous kits like Nautlius or in some rare cases i don't see often, Yasuo.
+NOW what really makes Deadman's plate turn into a powerful snowball is the fact that 'Dreadnought' slowly builds up bonus move speed up to +60 by the time you hit max stacks, though CC can remove it, the mobility granted by it is already insanely impressive in terms of a spike, even if you got 5% bonus move speed from a Tri'force and you had '400 move speed' before you bought it, you would only get a measely 20 move speed. Meaning its literally a tank item that can give you effectively triple the move speed bonus from the majority of Zeal built or Tri'force built items. This isn't even counting for the damage bonus where it becomes a flat 100 bonus at full stacks and if your melee, you get to stab a target for 50% slow for 1 second, making it that much easier to CC them with other abilities and kill them.
- The other case element is how powerful of a stacking power items that grant HP and AD or HP and AP can snowball an advantage easily especially if you avoided getting killed all the time, farmed CS efficently and to shorten the time taken, manage to kill your opponent even if you had jungle gank assistance. This applies to items like Black Cleaver for AD and Rod of Ages for AP. The point of black cleaver is suppose to be a bruiser sort of item to rip apart armor, grant half the cool down for cap, give you that chase potential thanks to the 20 move speed bonus on physical damage hits(which makes that spike better when i originally thought it was autos only) and of course, the +300 hp and +50 AD bonus.
--In comparison, Rod of Ages seems pretty simple, but it granting +300 hp/mana and +60 AP is like a AP tri'force, its giving you rounded off stats, plus the up to +200 hp, +100 mana and +40 AP over time lets you slowly get a damage bonus creep at no extra cost, which also the passive Eternity is secretly a powerful oppressive tool, especially in the hands of champions who can refund their own mana thru their own skills and would still get the recovery bonus thru Eternity, granting even more sustain power to free poke in fights and creep kill an opponent by forcing them to drain themselves of mana and hp, if they don't have similar measures like their own Rod of Ages.
--Not as effective against resource'less champions, but the point is its literally core to any AP tank champion like Swain and Vlad to get them that early game power spike and just like a number of mages like Ryze who builds Seraph staff and Rod of Ages, Vlad can double dip on scaling bonuses with AP and HP, his passive grants more of the same stats and let him get even beeier. While Swain can exploit the hell out of using his own passive to regain mana, Eternity lets him also regain hp by using mana and mana whenever he takes damage, Even i they put caps on the health recovery, its going to stack over time insanely strong when your hitting multiple targets of a target repeatedly with an attack.
+To add to this case, When i was enjoying a few 3vs3 matches as Fiora (my latest waifu in terms of being a extremely fun champion to play and ain't some meta pick scrub either type), Around level 12, thanks to Deadman's plate and Black cleaver, i was roughly around 2.2k~2.4k HP, which i consider to be quite beefie at that point while also still rocking 200+ AD, even when i had a Yasuo and Kled opponent coming after me i still manage to eradicate both of them even though the Yasuo was going tank (even had frozen mallet already and Sterak's Gage) while the Kled had Black cleaver too and was also going the AD+Armor mix. I still manage to rip them apart, especially in multiple times the Yasuo tried to Tornado me, but i counter it easily thanks to Fiora's W riptose, dive on him with my ultimate and Q+E rip apart him and recover back the damage i took when he tried to dash and use Q strikes and autos to try and fight me, only for him to get clinged on by me due to black cleaver's move bonus plus the Vital hit move bonus and the slow effect of Fiora's E, followed by a massacring auto critical.
--Even when both of them tried to come after me, i still managed to kill the Yasuo relatively fast and rip apart the kled and made it impossible from him to scatter shot and flash away with just as much ease, especially in the mid-late fights i already mixed in some more CDR items like Ghost'blade to make it even harder for them to run and get ripped apart by Fervor of battle stack bonuses since Fiora's Q and E reset lets her stack insanely fast for that huge damage bonus bringer.duel
--Though several times of those it was because i had a +1~2 level lead thanks to the Yasuo not thinking whenever he 1vs1 me and he tried to Tornado juke me only to get stun and mauled. When a champion can effectively massacre 2 other opponents of similar gear and stats, then its either itemization crazy'ness, overpowered utility or the players were just plain bad.
--Fiora's not one of the overpowered utility types(Instead requiring 'skill' to use her proper and i would definitely say significantly more then Yasuo does since you play enemies around Vitals and perfectly W'ing when they CC launch to give them that damage spike Q+E combo insanely easy.) and it was against one of those overpowered utility types (hell some of those matches were even against standard critical Yasuos and i wrek'd them pretty soundly too), It might of been partially due to Fiora's tool kit lets her stick on a opponent easily and cancel punish damage combo blasting and counter CC a target with the W, but rushing Deadman's plate on a few of those matches shoved plenty of nails in the coffin combined with Ninja Tabi completed before the plate and then Cleaver right after to create this powerful mobile force of AD dueling that made me feel like i was playing a week 1 champion whose kit was still untouched from balancing patches and just vaporizes everything they strike.
--The point is, the 'tank' building items give effectively the same amount of hp you start with or usually half the hp of what you have by mid game, which already creates a significant gap difference vsing opponents who focus on damage more then damage+HP building. I especially noticed the difference when i gave up building Ravenous Hydra first in favor of building Black cleaver, Dead man's plate or my alternative for Black Cleaver, Tri'force which makes Fiora's hyper carry potential rofl stomps alot of stuff thanks to the 40% attack speed bonus, passive mobility and extra mana on top of HP and AD to resolve a typical 'standard' AD champion's nightmare: "Running out of Mana during a fight and not able to effectively fight once its drained).
It ultimately comes down to this: "Either you build HP on top of damage and rofl'stomp the squishie champions who dont have insane kits to bypass that weakness OR you get stomped on by champions who just build tankie early on then creep into Damage to either negate Early game fighting for their spike in mid game, usually going as far to shut down your CS by using their larger HP pool to soak minion aggro with ease to force you to back off long enough for them to turret wall you or they walk away to let you push them back up to repeat the process, while still trying to bully you still. Either way, such styles need to be axed out of the game and instead work like a proper polygon of champion types have proper weaknesses against certain roles, are strong against just as many roles and they can't odd'ball build to negate their own weakness and still work just as strong as they are when they build how they are suppose to be built.
[zombie-brand-facepalm]
