The reason tanks feel weak.

As we think about the problems surrounding tanks I think a couple things stand out.

The problem with giants belt: As most of you know the first items you want to buy to defend against armor as a tank is usually or . Both those items when completed are very good. However the two recipe items are sub par compared to damage items. As a tank you need both health and resists if you don't have both you are not going to be able to do your job. Now the problem comes in that as a tank you have to save up 1000 gold to buy . Lets briefly look at what ad champs can get for roughly the same amount of gold or . Now provides a significant atk boost + a nuke and a slow and it builds into a item that makes health less valuable as a whole. The other item builds into 1-2 items both of which make your armor considerable less effective. Now if you are on par with the other laner you both back at the same time say when you have around 800 gold. The other laner comes back with a or 2 . You however have much worse options. The armor route is fine with 2 . However their is no good early game item for tanks short of a . If you buy you are either a bruiser and building into something offensive or you are building sub par tank items. The same thing happens with . So if you really need hp you HAVE to save up 1000 gold by which point they already have a item that defeated the purpose of you buying health. We need a better build path for .

The problem with defensive items. Now we really have 4 main defensive items , , , and . Now the problem with these items are that they are very specific. Randuins is meant to hurt auto attackers. Sunfire is bought rarely but when it is people use it for its damage. is only really bought by people that can abuse the passive. is bought by everyone else. As you have probably noticed their is a extreme lack of options to counter build your opponent. Largely due to how bad the niche items are at protecting your self. People almost always rush 2 of these 4 items first. Now what we need is more health + resists options that allows to counter build opponents. Tank items should not be generalist items. If a opposing team has a fed assassin I should be able to have the option to build a item that counters that assassin but also gives me health. All ad champions really have to worry about is how high their attack damage is. Ap champs have to balance quite a bit more, mana, cdr, and ap, but they have the items to be able to do that and still build against opponents. Tanks need more health + resist items so they can properly counter their opponent.