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Just an opinion on recent tank itemization discussion

TehNACHO··7 votes·915 views

tl;dr at the bottom.

So a lot of tank discussion has been flying around on the Gameplay & Balance board recently, and some of the posts have really baffled me. Specifically, almost all of them have tend to only ever been talking about "Tanks". Not Fighter Tanks akin to Garen or Mundo, not Utility Tanks like Cho'Gath or Nautilus, and not true tanks like Braum or Shen. Every single time, itemization discussion always seems to tackle all three groups of Tank Champions as one big whole, and then pretend that whatever itemization change that they want to make will benefit all three groups (well, no, usually only two. A lot of people don't want the Fighter Tank/Bruiser itemization to start abusing tanks again) even though their changes never seem to actually tackle what these types of tanks actually want to have. Now before I keep going on and on about these terms, let's actually define them:

-Fighter Tanks are your Dr. Mundos, the Hecarims who want to charge straight into battle, the tanky Wukongs, and so on. These are the champions who are always in the thick of a fight very specifically to harm the enemy team as long as possible, and when you look at how their abilities work, it makes perfect sense. Take Dr. Mundo for example, literally all 4 of his active abilities scream "I want to fight as long as possible". His Cleavers, being entirely percentage based, means you don't need to worry about building any damage to make them effective. Just keep chucking as many as possible. His Burning Agony has built in Tenacity and increases the effective time Dr. Mundo has in a battle by shrugging of CC effects that pin him down. His Masochism, the E ability, isn't just some auto attack modifier that you can activate once to get the full benefit of. Instead, because Auto Attacks are the only things that use AD in Mundo's kit, this is once again another case of time. Want to gain the full benefit of Masochism? Better Auto Attack as much as possible during its duration. And then Mundo's Ultimate, being regen based instead of a straight up auto heal, makes him perfect for longer lasting engages. Everything about Mundo revolves around being in the fight as long as possible, and any tank itemization changes around him, or other Fighter Tanks like him, need to be based around this idea. You are trying to increase the effective amount of time this champion has on the front lines of battle, want to improve his QoL by giving him better tank itemization? Optimize tank itemization to this specific goal.

-Utility Tanks are your Cho'Gaths, your Nautilus (Nautili?), and your Alistars. These are the champions you bring onto your team because of, at least for now, their stupid amounts of CC and built in tankiness. That second part of their kit is important because itemizing for them tends to be really inefficient in terms of raw defense. Utility tank itemization can really be represented by these items, though many more also fit the bill: item 3190 item 3800 item 3083. Notice a common pattern about these items? All these items are somewhat gold inefficient in raw stats; if I wanted to just be as tanky as possible, a Banshee's Veil or Randuin's Omen is going to benefit me much more than these items ever could. But what's important is that they bring even more unique effects, utility for me to buy. This is why the built in defense on these champions' kits are so important; itemization for them very specifically is stat inefficient in trade for getting more abilities to support the entire team, be it granting them Auras to Righteous Glory's initiation capabilities to Warmog's Armor always keeping you topped off for the next fight. Itemization for these champions need to be built with this goal in mind. Granting "raw stats" items really only benefits Fighter Tanks and to a lesser extent, true tanks. You want to benefit these guys by offering tanky utility, and not be afraid of being gold inefficient towards them. Offer strong niche items for these guys to build for any given situation, don't try to give them more super tank tools, since they don't benefit as much from the latter than they do the former.

-True tanks really only have two poster children at the moment, Shen and Braum. I find it a little disappointing because of how dynamically different their kits are; Braum fits the definition of a Utility Tank very well, whereas Shen's Passive, Q, and W seem to scale on time, leaning Shen towards Fighters. Despite this, there's a very obvious shared Trait between these two champs; their primary goal is to make sure that everyone else on the team is safe from danger. Stand United to Stand Behind Me, these champions are there to defend others, and itemization should reflect this. Similar to Fighters, raw stats greatly augment their defensive abilities. Similar to Utility Tanks, active or passive effects that defend others are great options for these two to look into. What really separates True Tanks from Fighters or Utility Tanks however is that Fighters tend to build raw stats because they are optimizing for their effective time on the battlefield. Utility tanks want as many options as possible so that they always are able to bring powerful effects to a fight. True tanks however build raw stats to optimize their defensive abilities, or search for very specifically for defensively focused utility instead of utility for every single situation.

Now of course, these are not strict definitions. Many utility tanks (especially Alistar) can be argued to be true tanks. Because of how his Ultimate works, Maokai also sits in this weird limbo space depending on how he builds or plays (Build some AP and CDR, he looks like a Fighter. Build Utility, he's a Utility Tank. Build defensive Utility and the player focuses on defending others, he's a true tank). The point is though that there are somewhat obvious lines between all three types of champions that should be defined if we want to help any of them. Think of our Jungle itemization for Season 4 compared to Season 5. Optimizing for as many champions as possible with only as few items as possible really only benefits very few (Lee Sin/Evelynn/Elise meta op). Optimizing for different types of champions using multiple different items (and combinations) for multiple different kinds of situations allows for better opportunities for "everyone" to shine.

This ultimately sums up my thoughts on tank itemization for League of Legends. If you guys feel like Fighters or Bruisers are especially weak, focus on raw stats, or unique effects that very specifically focus on giving a certain champion more time to be constantly fighting (Think Tenacity here). If you guys want to see more Utility Tanks running around, don't focus on raw stats. Focus on finding every single niche a utility tank may want to build for, and grant them a new item to fill that niche well. If you guys want to advocate the play style of True Tanks, give them defensive utility and focus on the raw stats that directly affect their defensive abilities. We can't just make threads demanding that tank items get straight up buffed, as that tends to lead to only the fighters benefitting and the actual tanks that the posters intended to help with the changes will get left behind. We need to look towards what changes will best help what types of tanks if any tank itemization discussion wants to actually get somewhere.

tl;dr: There's more than one kind of tank in League of Legends. If Tank Itemization discussions want to be as beneficial and impactful as can be, we need to recognize this.

18 Comments

Knight Devout8 votes

Agreed. The reason why I really don't like Sunfire cape , for example, is how people want to slap it on as many tanks as possible regardless of it low gold efficiency and small actual damage (past mitigation). Sunfire is a great item for Tank Fighters because if you want to stay in the fight as long as possible, and your other offensive options are more or less equally poor, you might as well pick Sunfire for the hybrid tankyness+damage. But Sunfire Cape braum (and I saw them a lot)... well, not saying that it's a bad pick, but are you really going to stay in the enemy team long enough to make it worth? As braum you usually stand between your squishies and the enemy line-of-fire. Sunfire is also stat inefficient, so what if the tank you picked is an utility tank with low resistances/mobility? Wouldn't you be better with a Frozen heart? Warmog? Righteous glory to actually get in the fight? For example, I once saw a snowballing Cho'gath building RG instead of said item.

And , since this is not a Sunfire discussion, how about tank players that go full tank? Yes, you have 4000 health and 300 armor, but you still need to be an actual threat to the enemy team if you want the enemies to even consider autoattacking you.

Now, In favor of tanks, one thing I think needs to be addressed. Riot in the past addressed all the aura items that were considered "power without gameplay". With some exceptions, that's the exact same issues we currently have with Last Whisper , and Void Staff.

#In my opinion, Offense has to outscale defense, but through gameplay, not just by buying items that are around 2.5k gold and are your best options whatsoever. If we want to give a meaning to defense and to item and abilities such as Jarvan Dragon Strike, Renekton Slice and Dice, or the black cleaver/Abyssal scepter in general, we can't also have a single items ignore more resistances that those items combined.

"Hey, the enemy team is stacking armor? No problem , just buy last whisper on ADC" should become "Well, the enemy team is stacking armor, but with Black Cleaver and Taric Shatter we can deal with them better".

ScurvyNave5 votes

I completely agree it is almost always better to but penetration times than resistances these days. Pure armour does shit all to deal with all the crits and penetration items on the rift

ProfDrDeath3 votes

"Hey, the enemy team is stacking armor? No problem , just buy last whisper on ADC" should become "Well, the enemy team is stacking armor, but with Black Cleaver and Taric Shatter we can deal with them better".

The problem with this approach lies in the fact that it doesn't leave you much to personally deal with enemy targets that have high Armor - making every 1vs1 (like, in a splitpushing situation) about who can stack more of that stuff.

Last Whisper, for itself, is a necessary item for the game - which is probably the reason why Riot did not touch it up to now. It is there to prevent stacking armor from becoming an overwhelmingly strong strategy, due to how high armor values actually are (and need to be, too - armor is supposed to enable you to weather strong, sustained damage after all).

The problem with it, currently, lies in the fact how cheap the effect actually is - with the current values, Last Whisper is a cost-efficient item even against targets who did not buy additional armor. Make it 300-500 gold more expensive, and you'd change the whole equation. And no, having it only work against bonus Armor is not the solution, either - it would be required to be buffed to a ridiculous efficiency (like, ignoring 60% of bonus Armor) to make it actually work, which in turn punishes buying any armor at all way to hard.

Knight Devout1 votes

In that situation we have more considerations to do: is turret damage strong enough to deter people to dive? Who is the target you wanna go and have a 1v1 with? because if you are a talon who wants to 100 a sunfire cape shyvana, yes, I deem that going alone with no magic damage shouldn't be the correct strategy to punish her for splitpushing. But in general, that's a problem with how turrets damage is puny against target who have enough health and armor, especially when they also have a strong enough burst to take you 1v1 under your own turret.

So, if enemies are strong at splitpushin, buffing arpen until assassins can take them 1v1 is not a good solution. A better solution would be increasing turret damage, and, strategy wise, sending a melee carry like Fiora or Tryndamere to 1v1 them. And a Fiora/Tryndamere/Yi can 1v1 mostly anyone even before lastwhisper.

EDIT: I went off-topic. What I mean is that arpen/magipen shouldn't be left overpowered just to make splitpushers easy to deal with. Especially because some of those splitpusher scale with arpen/magipen themselves.

Kuroi861 votes

And as the ADC buys armor pen or last whisper, the tank should also be stacking health. AD

Knight Devout1 votes

I don't get your point, but botrk is a viable replacement for bloodthirster in its current state. So stacking health isn't always effective.

Kuroi861 votes

Armor is good against AD, ArPen is good against armor, Health is good against ArPen, AD is good against health. And against Bork, Frozen heart is my item of choice.

Knight Devout2 votes

Umh, in case you missed the point of all those discussions, Arpen and botrk are good regardless of what the enemy is building.

Kuroi861 votes

I've seen the discussions. I've just yet to see this godly level of ArPen. I play tanks and bruisers. I'm still a pain in the butt to kill when I get my items. People say armor is worthless, yet I can still tank most of the enemy team and set them up for my team to ace.

I read the discussions. But I've yet to see any proof beyond people whining that they aren't immortal.

Knight Devout3 votes

Then that's your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I also play supports, mainly tank supports, and also enjoy fighters or tank/fighters like Sejuani/Shyvana and Nautilus.

And I agree with the fact that Last whisper is either too cheap or too strong.

AMYS GRAVE1 votes

a godly level of armor pen, hmmm.... if they build item 3035 + item 3071 after a few attacks you'll get 1.35*1.05^5-1 = 72% of the targets armor penetration along with some other nice stats.

Kuroi862 votes

Not quite. Black Cleaver reduces a targets armor. Say the target has 200 armor, full stacks from cleaver would mean they are now down to 150. This actually reduces the effectiveness of Last Whisper. Ignoring 35% of 200 armor is 70 negated armor, after applying black cleaver stacks it only negates 52 armor. Then add on the 10 flat pen from BC and you're down to 88 armor. It's actually more like 56%. This is of course not calculating effective health or AD. The problem is there are relatively few champs that can apply BC stacks fast enough for it to really be effective.
Most champs will actually go for item 3142 instead for the active while still gaining the flat pen and cdr. I honestly think the only problem with Last Whisper might be the AD it grants making it decent against squishy champs as well as against tanky champs.

AMYS GRAVE1 votes

ahh, i misread BC... but still 56% armor pen is extremely gold efficient compared to the gold that tanks have to put into armor.

i like the idea to remove the AD from LW, makes sense.

Kuroi862 votes

This is of course assuming you're playing someone that can fully stack the shred from BC and keep on going. The only champs that immediately come to mind are Pantheon Garen &MonkeyKing . Typically people are only going to get one form of armor pen, the only champs that will get two are assassins and a very small group of bruisers and again, most will go for item 3142 instead of BC. So this level of armor shred/pen is rarely ever seen on SR simply for how inefficient it is to stack.

Most people will simply pick up LW, which just means "Okay, now I can actually hurt the tank instead of pelting him with wet noodles." Seriously, try an AD build with out LW, the enemy tank will laugh you off.

I figure, drop the AD on LW by 10 and then another 5 each patch until things feel a bit safer with the item. I don't think it needs to be hard nerfed, but experimenting with tweaks in numbers can't hurt.

Sire Hippington2 votes

most of the discusions were about how much harder damage scales compared to tankiness. All tanky champions have in common that they want to be somewhat tanky, and thus a discussion for tankiness vs damage applys to all of them. Secundary effeckts like the sunfire aura or the slowaure from FH are more subjekt to what type of tank you play, or even more which role you play in your team. With braum for example, you can focus on peeling for your carry, which would make sunfire rather bad, but you could also buddy dive the enmy backline and proceed to lock down high priority targets with your Q+passive, so sunfire becomes a good item as u dive into the enemy team and try to stay close to their squishys.

I'd also argue that there is no such thing as a 'true tank', every tanky champion is a hybrid beteen bruiser, fighter and (utillity)tank, braum is more or less a straight utillity tank, while shen is a bit between utillity and fighter. Shyvana would be a more or less true bruiser while irelia is a pretty straight fighter.

Atm, tanks the focus more on the utillity side are rather succesfull, while bruisers/fighters are rather weak. The reason for that is simple, utillity tanks deal their damage and cc in bursts, they don't have to stay infight for alonger time to be effecktive while fighters and bruisers are dps-oriented, so they need to stay close to be usefull. However, staying close is pretty hard seeing how peeling/disengage currently prevails, combined with how strong damage is compared to tankiness. Even if you manage to get close to your target again after all the inital cc is gone, you are usually so low that you will die way to fast to make your dps work. As a utillity tank, you either initiate with hard cc, locking down important targets, and if your team brings proper followup, those targets will be gone and no one cares if u died right after the initiation or might get kited afterwards, or you go for peeling, which means you won't be a focus target, u will probably be outside of most aoes and all you need is to cc enemys that get close to your carry every now and then, there is o getting kited nor a focus fire of 4-5 enemys bursting you down despite full-tank itemisation.

alaskaneagle1 votes

54367

I usually read but only got the TL'DR in this one. Just came in to say that for this season and last season and maybe a bit of the season before that, it seems like riot is trying to kill the tank role so that the games are shorter, faster paced, And most importantly to riot - LCS games are more exciting.

Seems to be what is happening with tanks

The5lacker1 votes

The first thing they need to do is remove the Tank tag and replace it with "Guardian" so that people actually know what you're supposed to be doing as a tank, then expand the Fighter category a tad to encompass tanky Fighters like Mundo and Garen and the like (which it pretty much already does.)

Wyrmblade1 votes

Why not remove armor/magic pen and balance it out so things still hit how they should hit?

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