I want to say that I believe a tank is VITAL for a team; otherwise, without a tank, it makes it so much more difficult to win team fights. I wanted to get your opinion because I noticed I keep getting teams with no tanks. It seems most players don't recognize them as valuable...
Hoi Im Temmo3 votesIt can depend on the team. the more dependent a team is on team fighting, the more important the tank is. But even if you just don't team fight, they are still nice to have for baron, dragon, and even split pushing!
Btw, I main tanks :D
part of the problem is everyone prefering fighter damage and mobility, and a lack of "favored" tanks (other than oneswho double as supports...and thats just not the same.)
Onegarion1 votesI feel like its a must to have a tank on the team and will "bite the bullet" and go tank if I have to. I just hate it when I'm supporting and expected to tank at the same time. Since its all dependent on whether or not bot lane goes in our favor on how tanky I can get I prefer to at least have an off tank or bruiser who can soak up damage early while I get tanky.
Now I'm kinda fond of those drain tank types like Vlad (depending on build) and Aatrox. Trox especially is someone I like to play bc if played right you can sustain for days and not worry about having to really be "tanky" in the traditional sense. Yet again as a support tank these drain tanks do need to be ahead by a bit to actually be powerful enough to become a tank at all. That hidden healing effect does really help out a lot in the middle of a fight when you can just soak up damage and then heal most of it back.
But yea I think a tank is a must or at least and off tank, UNLESS you want a pick comp or a poke comp that doesn't focus on the 5v5 fights. If you only want to catch the out of position person and force a 5v4 in your favor then a tank isn't necessarily needed and the same goes for poke comps since you can just whittle them down and go all in to finish them off, but both of these take some pretty good coordination from your team to make it actually work. I mean watch the LCS (while not the best litmus test) and personally i see the teams that have 0 tank fail more than the teams that have at least 1 tank.
MAZZ1M01 votesGive a two opposing teams 20,000 gold to distribute and the one with a tank will have the advantage almost always. The issue with why the question of a tank being vital is unanswerable in terms of sound logic is that if the team full of squishy assassins has 20k and the team with the tank only has 10k or 15k, the squishies will probably dominate. Even 1v1, my money's on the assassin as tanks typically don't deal that much damage. Assassins can kite, poke, and swoop in for the kill. Tanks are monsters in skirmishes and teamfights with allies who can dish out the damage. So the team full of squishies can easily overpower the other and/or get fed faster and simply outpace the tank team. Then it doesn't matter.
I've been on teams without tanks against teams full of them (I'm talking 3 tanks with a fighter) and we dominated simply because of our insane damage. Twitch got fed, Fiora got fed, and Riven got fed. We also had a Nami, I think. Don't remember who the mid-laner was. I think it was someone with a stun, but it was an AP caster. We cut through 'em like butter.
So while I believe tanks provide an edge -all things being equal, I don't think they're essential. They're just safe. I always feel safer if there's one on my team, but I've won too many games without them to dodge a ranked game because we don't have one.
