Rito Plz
#What Is Making Tanks So Strong? Well it is debatable, but a lot of people can agree its a combination of masteries, items, and innately strong kits. The first two points can be easily addressed, making the last one no problem.
#What About These Issues?
The Resolve Tree The new mastery tree offers a lot of good stats compared to the other trees. For example Runic Armor; with all points in this it offers 8% increased shields and healing. A lot of tanks take advantage of this, tanks such as Ekko, Mundo, Volibear, and Zac are good examples. It also has synergy with Spirit Visage which offers 20% bonus healing (25% next patch). Next there is Swiftness, this offers 15% tenacity and slow resist, both valuable stats. This mastery basically helps tanks survive ganks (if not a jungler) and have a better team fight. Finally we have keystones. I am not going to talk about each individual one, but all of them are strong, specifically Strength of the Ages. 300 bonus health once fully stacked (even more if you have Cinderhulk), and 6% healing when being around a large monster or siege minion that dies (synergizes with Runic Armor).
Items There are three main items that have been prominent during the tank meta. Spirit Visage, Sunfire Cape, and Iceborn Gauntlets. Spirit Visage works good with Runic Armor, not to mention a lot of tanks have innate healing. It also offers a lot of health, which makes it an efficient buy against physical damage as well as magic. Sunfire Cape is powerful because of waveclear, dps, and health, which makes it an efficient buy against magic damage as well. Lastly Iceborn Gauntlets, in my opinion it isn't a huge problem, which Riot has treated it as. The item gives 20% CDR, 65 armor, and a Sheen passive that slows in an AoE. It offers a lot of utility, and good defensive stats to go with it. Not to mention CDR, which previously was hard to build on most tanks, and for good reasons.
#How Can Riot Fix This? I am sure I don't know entirely how to fix this, but I have some ideas. The first one would be to replace Runic Armor, it is way too strong to exist with Spirit Visage. Another would be to reduce the health given by Spirit Visage and Sunfire Cape, while increasing their resists to slightly compensate. This should be changed enough to make both items there to itemize mainly against one type of damage and not both. Another thing to change is Iceborn Gauntlets. They want to accept it as a tank item, but I think it should be left to bruisers. Give it back it's 125% base damage bonus, but nerf the armor it gives to 50 from 65, and if it still proceeds to be a problem price increments would help. Also consider increasing the price of tank items in general, but increase their strength accordingly (resists/passives, health is already in abundance). This would make it so tanks have more strength in the late game, instead of early-mid game. A later power spike would mean tanks and carries are strong around similar times, making them easier to deal with. Lastly add resist shred to towers. This wouldn't really affect squishies trying to dive, but it would make it harder for tanks to ignore turrets.
