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Curious why there are no good options for tanky Magic Resistance?

Nightstick24·2/1/2020, 6:15:21 AM·50 votes·38,200 views

There's Spirit Visage, Adaptive Helm, and Abyssal Mask - only these three give health and MR.

Visage's passive is useful in most situations, increasing healing, but only some champs can really take advantage of it. If you don't have healing, or your team has no healing, it's significantly less useful than it could be.

Adaptive Helm, again, you can only really take advantage of the passive in certain situations, many times it's not particularly helpful.

Finally Abyssal Mask, again it's only useful in certain situations, if you've got an AD-heavy team and/or you're an AD tank, it's passive is pointless.

All of these are pretty expensive to upgrade, though they do significantly improve the MR of the stuff it builds from, but I'm curious why there are so few items, and why all the existing ones are so situational.

Compare this with Armour, you've got Randuins, Sunfire, and Deadmans that are all generally useful in nearly any situation, then Thornmail, Knight's Vow, and Righteous Glory that are all situationally useful, though still useful more often than any of the MR items.

I'm not saying we need a thousand MR + Health super tank items, mages have hard time bursting tanky people down as it is right now, but I'm curious why it's so skewed and why there aren't a few more useful MR items. As it is just stacking Negatron Cloaks at 40 MR for only 720 gold and grabbing health is a pretty great option for early MR.

For non-tanks there's quite a few utility MR items that are pretty useful in certain situations, but if you're just going for a good old tank, it's a challenge to get more than three MR items that are useful.

I was wondering what people's thoughts are on it? I generally only play tanks/support so I don't know what it's like from a mage's perspective, do you think there should be more MR items? Am I missing something obvious?

94 Comments

ProphetOfDraven2/1/2020, 8:45:02 AM17 votes

The only reason it's acceptable is because mages typically can't deal with tanks anyway, due to having low sustained damage and for the mages that do have sustained damage you can build Adaptive Helm for. They really should give us a new MR health item though.

Irelia Bot2/1/2020, 10:57:55 AM10 votes

#BRINGBACKFORCEOFNATURE!!!!

Thefrostyviking2/1/2020, 9:21:55 PM7 votes

Honestly i think there are two magic resistance items missing.

One like spirit visage but more MR or health instead of the healing buff passive, and another that applies grievous wounds on those who hit it with an ability.

Add those in and the state of MR items should be pretty good as far as i can tell.......minus how spectral cowl is at this point, that item needs a buff.

FSRER2/1/2020, 8:56:41 AM6 votes

Honestly, I do not think there should be another magic resist option. The problem is that Magic Penetration is way too high while the items that have it are way too cheap all that while modern mages have basically unlimited mana with their rush item (item 3285). If Magic penetration was anywhere close to balanced, magic resist would feel way more impactful

FroXZenBuLLet2/1/2020, 7:39:03 AM6 votes

And people still unironically say that tanks have good MR imetization.

AidanWR2/1/2020, 11:24:58 PM5 votes

The theory is that mages have a harder time dealing with tanks. The reality is is that mages can deal with tanks easily because most MR items only give 55 mr, while Banshee's literally gives the most static MR in the game, so certain tanks can do literally nothing against mages. The thing that really annoys me about MR items is that Spirit Visage and Adaptive Helm have the same MR when one has a Spectre's Cowl and the other has a Spectre's Cowl and a Null-Magic Mantle. It's literally like, "Okay, MR item. 400 health, 55 MR, and a unique passive."

Lorenz Hellman2/1/2020, 6:15:12 PM5 votes

riot doesnt add items unless its for assassins or adc . they only remove tank items

RyzeRework2/1/2020, 9:30:54 AM5 votes

item 3110 item 3025 "am I a joke to you?"

Hi Its Scirocco2/1/2020, 10:26:55 AM5 votes

A post about mages being mages not being downvoted, am i in wrong place ? or league community has finaly grown up and realise " Oh wait, mages are probleme"

I say Facts2/2/2020, 1:08:49 AM5 votes

The main problem In the game is that the markmen are 10x tanker than tanks because god forbid if you try to chase a ranged character with infinite amount of mobility and plus for example a yummi on them for even extra speed and infinite heals.

Also, a yasou with phantom dancer will have 2x shields. I normally take longer killing Yasou than Rammus.

The game is broken once again, and the itemization for tanks is borderline useless when marksmen and assassins can be much tanker and have the ability to insta carry.

Rodenticides2/1/2020, 1:43:46 PM4 votes

Because there are no good mr items to begin with. Only item 3091 is decent, the rest are garbage. Mr items should get at least a buff of +10 mr, because they are incredibly useless.

Mianta2/1/2020, 9:05:41 AM4 votes

Yeah I've always been frustrated by it. When the enemy team chooses a heavy AP comp or even maybe just a hard AP carry, I feel like the only reasonable option is to prioritize the MR from both Flex and Defense runes, sacrificing the options for additional AP/Armor/Health.

Saezio2/1/2020, 2:44:39 PM4 votes

I feel like it's easier to be tanky vs full AP than full AD anyway.

IDK why but 6 item adcs still destroy a tank at 6 armor items. Maybe not malphite or rammus, but anything like maokai/amumu/.

Whereas any ap (whose name is not ryze) won't kill a tank with 6 MR items in such a short time.

Emo Twink2/1/2020, 8:10:54 PM4 votes

Honestly they should have an armor version of spirit visage and MR version of sunfire, and just make them unique so they cant be stacked.

MR always feels like a massive pain in the ass to go against because theres limited MPEN options, void needs a whole item, and theres no AP black cleaver, but hexdrinker mercs feels way worse than tank items and they could use more options (esp tank supports, theres not rly MR CDR items for them).

ACatIsFineToo2/1/2020, 11:50:09 PM4 votes

Mr used to be balanced because mages had much longer cooldowns, more intense mana costs, and had to really hit their abilities. Like brand. Hit his E, then cast his Q. Does he miss? He deals no damage. If he hits he can burst. Did he land his abilities? Spamming W in lane costs mana.

Nowadays almost every mage item has CDR on it. 10% on practically everything, everything is an even amount, no more 5 or 15% items. CDR is a bonus stat that you max on every mage. Even the burst mages have CDR, which is a huge red flag. If the mages that dont need CDR because they are supposed to be combo'ing people and killing them, why do they need CDR? CDR should be for mages who need more spell rotations, where there spells don't scale well with AP.

Its never a choice.

For ADC champions, you have to choose and get the right balance between AD, ATK SPD, and Crit. What happens to a Marksman that gets 5 Attack speed Crit items and no AD? They dont deal much damage. (unless your vayne I guess?) You need a mix of items.

For tanks, your items generally come with Health, Armor OR MR, and then one bonus stat like HP regen, CDR, or a unique effect. What would the game look like if it had 5 good tank items that gave Lots of Health, and MR and armor? So you could grab 3000 bonus Health, and 400 bonus armor and 400 bonus MR.

Item choice should matter for Mages. You should not get every stat easily. You should have to give something up.

jocomotion2/2/2020, 12:15:56 AM4 votes

I’d argue item 3194 is the only good MR tank item even though it’s the only one. While it’s true that against about a third of the AP threats in the game it’s passive isn’t effective, the pure MR and health are usually enough to at least dissuade those same champions from attacking you in the first place. It to me is the MR version of item 3143

What I’d like is if we had a tank version of item 3156 passive in a item that gives around 80 MR, similar to how item 3110 gives so much Armor.

I say Facts2/2/2020, 1:05:55 AM3 votes

There are Vanguards, Juggernauts and Wardens in terms of tanks.

Warden items are the flat defense and meant to provide a lot of defense in order to peel and resist a lot of damage for teamfighting. Adaptive helmet is a Warden Mr item and its passive is fairly helpful but again, as a Warden item, they could have more defense stats to keep their Warden theme of being the peeling tank.

Vanguard items are meant for being a giant disrupting in teamfights since Vanguards are basically the DPS tanks and they initiate fights first to use their Dps somewhere on their targets. Abyssal mask is a vanguard item, but instead of 15% magic damage, it should be 15% from all sources since Vangaurds are the DPS tanks once again and they are not same as Wardens. People get the word "tank" as if tank only means 1 thing "peel and defend" no Vanguards are no way near that and I think they could even use more Vanguard itemization for both armor and MR. Whatsoever, Vanguard itemizations need to provide both Defense and a passive that does damage in general.

Juggernaut items are mostly for Hp and Sustain. Spirit visage is a juggernaut MR items and it's perfect for juggernauts, I see nothing wrong with it. I normally don't find any problem with Juggernaut itemization because their sustain is there, their HP is there and their 40% cooldown is there. I don't think Juggernauts are lacking anything.

In other words, every item you mentioned of the 3 works for 1 of the 3 solid melees. Based on that, since all 3 of them are played so differently, riot could add more MR and Armor items based on each type of tank.

Items for Wardens, mostly focused on defensive and peeling. Items for Vanguards, focuses on decent defensive stats and damaging passive to provide their initiating fear into combat.

Juggernauts are fine again, and if they could use more items, then I wouldn't mind seeing more defensive Juggernaut items that focuse on Hp and sustain mostly.

Romuva2/2/2020, 12:10:53 AM3 votes

I think item 3068 should be a more general tank item. It should have a bit of armor and heath shaved off in exchange for MR. Make it's build path item 3105+item 3067 or something akin to that.

MagePowerNA2/1/2020, 10:59:04 AM3 votes

How did this go from "let's make better mr items" to "mages r luv mages r lyfe"

imortalone2/1/2020, 7:14:21 AM2 votes

agree sir. Also jg mages are kinda on the weaker side of things in comparison with fighter jgs..

Sucction2/1/2020, 11:34:01 AM2 votes

I think it's mainly because most mages really just have no answer to tanks that have even 1 MR item and boots. If they have two, they're essentially unkillable for the better part of a full minute depending on who you're playing.

The problem that causes complaints, I think, is when tanks are playing against the mages that don't have a hard time killing tanks. When playing into Ryze, Cass, Taliyah or Brand etc it does become obvious that there's not a whole lot that can be done to mitigate their damage.

I don't really have a solution besides a stronger version of Adaptive helm (Which is already rather good), or something similar to Mundo's W passive.

If we buff MR itemisation to the point where Ryze and Cass struggle to kill tanks, Annie, TF, Ziggs, Xerath etc are going to start losing duels with a level 11 Mundo/Trundle when they're full build.