The State of the Imbalance

I know I'm in Silver, but hear me out.

As of late, I've played a lot of matches, and almost without reason, it feels like the game's currently imbalanced as getout. Now you may ask "What? Why would you even think that?"

And my answer is: "What are tanks but less squishy mages".

There is no real safe way to build tanks in a meta dominated by % HP Damage (True and not), between BORK, Deathfire, Vayne, Gnar (albeit he's in top), and more, as well as where Last Whisper, Black Cleaver, and for APs, Void Staff are all considered effectively "mandatory items". There is no "building tanky", there's "becoming a giant wall of HP that provides little pressure unless your kit provides some heavy consistent form of peel (very limited Maokai) or Damage (Jarvan IV) or a Mixture of both (Nunu)".

Shyvana's fallen off as, although she has damage, it's not exactly heavy unless you put quite a lil bit of AD into her, and she's not exactly providing CC. Mundo is the same: he's fast, he's tanky, he's got a good grab, but he lacks CC and Damage.

"I did great with them what are you talking about!?"

Was the enemy comp really good? Or was it that your comp was good? Maybe their players weren't as good as yours? Because when it comes down to it late game, you aren't going to see your Tanks for long, with champs like Gnar, Kog'Maw, Vayne, Tristana, Varus, and the like dominating bot.

Why? Look at the common ADC. Kog, Trist, Vayne, Lucian, Jinx. All of them want to run Whisper, so your armor's not even 300, it's less than 200. All of them want to run BORK, so they're shredding off sizeable chunks of HP at a shot (not to mention the active). 3 of them got % HP shread, 2 got AS buffs (making all that shread faster), 2 have Grievous wounds, one has an Execute. Of these, 1 has a True damage proc (which although it alone won't kill quickly, it does make sizeably bigger chunks, nearly doubling BORK's Passive-per-hit) and another has Armor/MR shread, so even building defenses won't mean much against him.

You could say "I'm a tank, I'll just sponge damage and peel them!"

What if they ignore everything you do, and just barrel for your mid laner/ADC/Jungler/Top Carries anyhow? With Dashes (lucian, Vayne), Jumps Trist), blinks (Ezreal) and hastes (Jinx) they'll just keep pushing in on your teammates because you aren't a real threat, just a minor annoyance. You lack Damage as a tank unless it's heavily built into your kit anyhow (Amumu, Nunu, Jarvan). And usually those associate with % damage, high power high area CC, or something of the sort anyhow. Skarner? He's got a measly slow and a single target stun. Sure he has his passive, but he's slow, and his speed boost is reliant on NOT taking damage. And he just won't catch high speed high mobility champs or those keeping in the back anyhow. Well that's one tank you won't normally need to care about.

Let's speak about that really, let's go more into bot lane. I would say right now it is the most volatile lane in the game. A single landed skillshot usually results in death, or forcing someone out of lane near permanently as they can no long act without potentially feeding. The lane's all about engaging supports, whom are/get fairly tanky (Leona, Morg (spellshield), Blitz, Thresh, Braum), with no real place for disengagers - all of whom are squishy (once Leona combo, one morg Q, one Blitz pull, one good Thresh Hook, one good proc of braum's passive, these supports will often die). Only real disengage-based supports that are tanky are short range and double as engagers (Thresh, Alistar). Basically, the game's bottom lane is hyper-scaled to the point there's no real "harass" or "sustain", until this point. This is the only time of a match you can honestly say a true Tank is useful (excluding Leona/Alistar/Thresh/Blitz, who's one of those obscenely CC heavy Tanks I mentioned. ...Okay Less So Blitz but still, point stands).

This point being wherein bottom lane's gotten their BORK and BT, and now, those less damagey tanks and obscenely sustainy supports who can't keep the ADC under wraps entirely and constantly are unable to actually tank (or support their ADC at all), or even out do the ADC. BT and BORK are not only healing about 35% of the damage they deal a hit, but providing a large shield so even executes won't work. BORK is dealing a % of the tank's Hp a hit, and even the active deals a sizeable HP chunk and a speed boost. So at this point, these tanky engages become deathwishes - there's no disengaging them without blowing everything, as the ADC alone has got the speed (Dashes/Blinks/Etc), the speed boosts (usually Trinity Force (referred to in this topic as TF) passive and BORK active), and sometimes the slows (Jinx, Kog, Trist W) to secure a double kill themself, let's not even include these 2+ Second stuns/stun combos that dominate bot lane.

No matter what happens, bot lane's reached a point where there's no hard answer to the carries. It's not all that uncommon that a mid laner could roam down bot, and without an auto-lock stun (IE: Panth W) or some high degree of burst (IE: Fiora Ult), the ADC won't die. And even then, between BT Shield, 35% LS, and IE Crit and potentially Triforce, that's a near impossible amount to burst down if they're able to exchange back. (I have seen Vaynes and the sort outexchange Zeds as an example).

Tanks mean nothing in this meta as long as there's an excess of % damage and armor shredding ability.

Then this moves back to toplane. Jax has been nerfed for being a "Ball of Stats", as has Irelia. Yet look at Kog'Maw (AS buff, % Damage shread per shot, highest range in the game, Armor Shread) or Vayne (AD Buff, Invisibility, True % shread, MS buff) or Trist (high AA range, free AS buff, high burst) and you get nothing but another form of a "Wall of Stats".

Yet these champions were about the few things that could reliably deal with ADCs as they had their own answers to everything ADCs have (even then some of them couldn't outdo some of these ADCs with these insane safety as they kept out of range at all times ALA Ezreal).

Tanks really only have a part vs Assassins now, and even they can burst down Tanks between DFG and Void staff (if not, hey, they'll ignore the tank to begin with). So what is a tank supposed to do in this meta? Because Thornmail doesn't mean a thing when everything running AD -has- to buy Whisper (and occassionally cleaver!)

Overall I think Mid lane's about the most balanced now, as there's no "Renekton Bar" there and yet it has an actual semblence of balance, a single skillshot won't guarantee death or a zoning out every single time like in bot. Jungle's meta is caught between "who's got the best ganking ability and can consistently win ganks". And meanwhile Bot's stuck in "who can land the most skillshots to ensure early game kills". ...At least until BORK(with the occassional BT) or DFG drop in to make the lane more rediculous.

Tl;Dr: There's too much Armor shread (especially % Armor shread), there's too much % damage, and the like that prevents tanks from doing their jobs of being tanks, causing some tanks to have fallen off. ADCs currently are the problem of being "Balls of stats" (usually due to too much being given to them through their kits) and Top-lane's fallen off as Tanks are disappearing (Renekton rarely shows up anymore far as I've seen nowadays for example).

Only Tanks that work have a near endless string of CC or extremely strong/near endless CC + tank, keeping the enemy team from wanting to do a thing.

What's YOUR opinions?