What is the purpose of a tank?

zabrath·5/1/2015, 4:49:56 AM·1 votes·692 views

Ok. A tank, by traditional means, is supposed to be a person who sacrifices damage output to be more disruptive and can take a hit so the damage can do their job. Right now a tank can take on any damage dealer in the game, under tower, kill them, then walk away. So I am trying to figure out the trade off, the sacrifice a tank makes to be tanky. It doesn't seem as though that trade off is there, so that means that tanks do the job of the damage dealers just as well, if not better. so what is the point of a adc or mage if a tank can do everything they can ( other than attack at a range, but then again most tanks have gap closers) better?

5 Comments

EndlessSorcerer5/1/2015, 4:56:46 AM4 votes

Why wouldn't tanks be able to fight damage dealers? Tanks have built primarily to survive while damage dealers have built primarily to damage their targets. Even if tanks don't build damage, it doesn't really matter if their targets have built no defense and they can survive long enough to use their base damages.

Tanks don't really itemize penetration, so resistances and health can mess with them. Try getting Banshee's Veil or Randuin's Omen (or Maw of Malmortius or Zhonya's Hourglass or Abyssal Scepter, etc) after ~3 damage items and you will see their damage against you drop dramatically.

You can really see how the damage dealt by tanks and squishies scale if you look at how they fight against themselves. A tank fighting a tank will take forever with each taking minimal damage, while squishy vs squishy fights will often be over in seconds as each hit chunks the target.

See also, here. While the OP was salty, there is some useful discussion in the thread which may help.

Dreadlocks5/1/2015, 4:58:16 AM2 votes

idk man a real life tank can do a lot of fucking damage as well be hard to destroy :)

arcinex5/1/2015, 5:05:08 AM2 votes

Tanks stand in the backline shooting rockets clearing the area/scouting for infantry to move in.

So tanks, in theory, do a sh1t ton of damage.

Tanks in league of legends? They're meat-shields.

Only Play Darius5/1/2015, 5:00:44 AM1 votes

Well you see, the Russian T-90 tank is capable of absorbing massive amounts of damage, and at the same time can level a building with a couple of shots.

I think your description of a tank is pretty accurate.

Phuc Dat Bich5/1/2015, 5:44:44 AM1 votes

yeah because we all see that shen going in and 100-0 an adc or an apc or the enemy bruiser like LB/Kat/zed or any other burst assasin do i am right?

I mean i shit you not i would start spam the terror of burst shen in my games and when i see an enemy i would just use E-Q and i would burst him down to 0 in 0.1 second who need katarina when you have shen brah