Addressing the problem with Tanks.
Have you noticed how only sion, cho and ornn have been the only viable tank options toplane in competitive?
Sion and cho - LOTS of free HP makes up for the lack of hp in tank items
Ornn - probably the most utility out of any tank available, and is viable for the same reasons we see nautilus around if hes ever picked as a niche pick.
You know why Sejuani is the only tank jungler than has been meta really at all? Because of her passive free resists, so she can go straight into a warmogs which is good because none of the other tank items give enough fucking life
SOURCE OF ISSUE/EVIDENCE I'M NOT TALKING OUT OF MY ASS:
Riot fucking blasted tank items a year or two ago on the same patch where they changed around thornmail and randuins
Here: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/midseason-2017
https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/patch/patch-79-notes
Initially tanks were OK because of the ardent meta in late 2017, where they could just go stoneplate + locket + knights vow because team comps wanted a tank toplaner to fill the hole you'd have from having a squishy supports.
ITEMS SORTED BY HP AND LABELED WITH WHAT ROLES NORMALLY BUY THEM:
https://i.imgur.com/FnDvW7w.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Sj6LHYo.jpg
You may have noticed almost NONE of these items that tanks would normally buy ever usually have ZERO mana attached to them.
So do you remember those tank changes again in 7.9?
FOR EXAMPLE: https://i.imgur.com/5P2H2oT.png
Here is Nautilus, you may remember him as a meta pick around a year or so ago in 2017. As you can see, a patch before they tank item update he his riptide mana cost got nerfed by 10 mana per level, at this time Nautilus players would use riptide to push the waves up whilst stacking dorans rings. A 10 mana cost increase could make him effectively use 200 extra mana before backing if he was to use his riptide 20 times to push minions/trade.
Then 3 patches in patch 7.12 (for the worlds patch that year was 7.18) later there was a dorans ring nerf that made its passive unique so you couldnt stack them. Stacking dorans rings was the ONLY way tanks could sustain their mana in lane while still building a life based tank item like sunfire or visage.
These dorans ring nerfs forced most tanks into going Righteous + Stoneplate + Abyssal and then locket + knights vow for ardent meta protect the adc comps. This was OK for them at the time because you werent playing against a bruiser that built cleaver or had conqueror AND there were ZERO adcs building BOTRK at the time.
https://lol.gamepedia.com/2017_Season_World_Championship/Main_Event/Scoreboards
Look at all those fucking kogmaw and twitch picks with zero BOTRKs present, in a meta where there were actually tanks toplane, these tanks were so damn neutered they were better off building fucking support items then entire worlds tournament and adcs for the most part didnt even have to buy LW or BOTRK
POST WORLDS 2017:
As we know the only tanks meta in the last year were Sion, Ornn, Cho, Sejuani jungle and at points skarner was good.
And I don't count "tanks" like olaf because hes fucking paper lategame.
Urgot was played as a pseudo-tank because he could use the bruiser items that would give shit loads of HP along with having armor shred and getting stoneplate and a few actual tank items.
#How to fix?
Riot needs to decide if they want tanks to have a lot of life or not.
Option 1: Seemingly they have decided on tanks having more resists less life as a philosophy. This would mean they really fucking need to consider toning down the amount of armor shred in the game. Because the need for armor shred IS far less when most tanks have less effective life.
And if this means nerfing cho/sions free life passives then fucking do it for the sake of other tanks.
Option 2: OR, Allow tanks to buy more life items by doing:
THIS:
Riot can make mana more accessible in tank items so they can buy these life based tank items, because right now they are forced to buy mana/MR or mana/armor items to sustain in lane.
Option 3: OR :
They could also effectively do this by buffing tank mana costs across the board if that's easier to manage than buffing items because of the risk of other classes abusing item buffs.
Option 4:
No changes because the other 10 tanks don't deserve to be viable options.
tldr: tank items fucking blow donkey dick for what a tank needs in lane comparitively to what they need to not be fucking absolute paper lategame with the the few exception champions (Sion, Cho, Ornn is paper but his utility is good, and sejuani) that are viable because of utility and laning ability (ornn) or because they get free life (cho and sion) or free resistances (sejuani). They need life because of the presence of lots of armor shred and true damage making resistances unreliable, and It's currently impossible for tanks to build life and survive lane, putting them in a checkmated position. Damned if you do damned if you don't.
