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Have we considered that tank junglers have a high winrate because...

Spacesuit Spiff··21 votes·3,831 views

...they're picking tanky champs after Sup and Top refuse to, instead of going Lee and dooming the team to have no initiate, no teamfight, no seige, etc?

I've had a couple games where I've first-picked a non-tanky jungler, and then after that comes Fiora and Janna or the like. Squishy supports are popular right now, and not everyone wants to play a tanky top in soloq, since everyone wants to carry. Best case scenario I just go full tank Vi or Reksai but that's still not too good. Tank junglers might just be doing well because by being in the game, it means their team has a tank.

Note that I'm talking about silver, which I just finished climbing out of. Above that, people generally understand how to throw together a passable team.

Also, an unpopular opinion: the provisionals aren't as fucked as we think they are, even if they totally seem like it. Why? Because I got 10 teams that could easily be featured in any of those "wtf bronze" videos, went from Plat 5 so Silver 5... and then immediately leapfrogged across Silver because not only did Riot want to give me 35 points per win, I also skipped a division every time I won a promo. Plat 5 to Gold 5 in 2 days (at which point I'm taking a break to steady myself for the pure hellishness of Gold 5). You just have to adapt your play to your silver teams; once you understand that 75% of the strategies you could use with a competent team can't possibly work (my low moment was trying to lane gank and just sitting in a bush getting more and more incredulous as my adc just continued to push the wave into the enemy tower instead of setting up my gank. Just use the river exclusively.) you'll climb back to where you were surprisingly quickly.

48 Comments

Frikgeek11 votes

Blind picking a tanky melee top is suicide in this meta. They'll just pick LIssandra/Swain/Ryze/Annie or whatever other midlane reject and make your life miserable. The state of toplane atm means you can't expect a tank all the time. Tanks beat Assassins, Assassins beat mages, and mages beat tanks. Lissandra beats everyone because she's a prick. So yeah, tanks are only safe picks in the jungle, but they can't really out-gank a Lee or a Jarvan. You'll have a better lategame, but that's only if you manage to get to lategame without your towers being down and a huge gold deficit.

exiledFromBadmen2 votes

Isn't Jarvan a tank?

Cindikle5 votes

He's a Bruiser.

TehNACHO3 votes

Bruiser/Fighter. Nautilus is a tank because you build tankiness and utility, and your play style revolves entirely on the utility you're bringing to your teammates. While Jarvan is similar in this regard, he may not build nearly as much tankiness and almost no utility in favor of reserving spots for damage items, and his play style revolves more around himself.

Kingsgrave1 votes

{quoted}

Bruiser/Fighter. Nautilus is a tank because you build tankiness and utility, and your play style revolves entirely on the utility you're bringing to your teammates. While Jarvan is similar in this regard, he may not build nearly as much tankiness and almost no utility in favor of reserving spots for damage items, and his play style revolves more around himself.

He also has ridiculously high bonus AD ratios akin to Lee/Rek/Pantheon

Seviang1 votes

I think that Malphite is almost always a safe pick top lane in the current meta, and he's about as tanky as it gets. He's versatile in his skills and build paths to stay in lane against many different matchups, and he only needs a few items to be effective in a team fight so he can win games while behind or ahead.

Frikgeek1 votes

Oh yeah, a guy who wants to stack armor is surely effective vs all the ranged poke mages. Try playing Malph vs a good Lissandra and you'll see what I mean. She can ult when you try to ult her and then just kite you forever. Her Q CD can go down to like 2 seconds and with some manaregen she can endlessly spam it while you either take massive poke or are forced to miss out whole waves of cs.

Seviang1 votes

{quoted}

Oh yeah, a guy who wants to stack armor is surely effective vs all the ranged poke mages. Try playing Malph vs a good Lissandra and you'll see what I mean. She can ult when you try to ult her and then just kite you forever. Her Q CD can go down to like 2 seconds and with some manaregen she can endlessly spam it while you either take massive poke or are forced to miss out whole waves of cs.

Against ranged AP poke, you simply max q and rush a chalice. That let's you poke back along with some MR to farm safely again. Malph does well against most of the popular top champs, Lissandra might be the only really dangerous matchup imo. But with Malph you shouldn't be going for kills in lane, you should be going for farm and then try to be a force in team fights.

Sammystorm1 votes

Right then you see veryone build a substantial amount of ap on malp. I think mao is a safe pick though.

Orangesilk2 votes

As a Cho'Gath player, I absolutely LOVE lane swapping with my midlaner if the enemy took a midlane assassin, that way I'm guaranteed to shut down the enemy laner, and then scale into the lategame as a teamfighting machine. I have also taken Cho'Gath as a legit midlane pick if I'm sure my toplaner is playing a high-damage champion in a good matchup (Think a Riven vs Rumble scenario). Us tank players just have to learn to adapt to different scenarios and situations (Even if that scenario is me crying under turret, stacking MR and hoping not to get creamed by Syndra).

The thing with tank laners/junglers is that if the jungler is a CC tank, the laners must have high damage to capitalize on the CC provided, and the same way, if the laner is a CC tank, the jungler must be able to provide that extra damage, there's nothing funnier than seeing a Nauti ganking a Malphite lane only for the enemy to take 10seconds of low damage and then run away.

RoyaiChaos1 votes

No... Mages have the most trouble against tanks actually because they rely on burst, so they're good against squishy bruisers or adcs.

Trylobyte6 votes

I guess Riot's statistics don't lie - A team with an actual tank is going to win more often than not. Why is the tank in the jungle? Well, tanks are bad laners. Since they lack damage and don't often build any, this means a tank in lane is going to have a bad time vs. anyone that has either a lot of damage, a ranged attack, or wave-clear, which is most popular laners. This puts them in the jungle where they can farm in relative peace.

Learn 2 Swim3 votes

Riot has paid employees on its boards defending Lee Sin non stop.

This season has had almost 15 different junglers nerfed and Lee remains #1 or #2 for 4 years in a row while not being touched.

Kuroi868 votes
  1. JarvanIV
  2. RekSai
  3. LeeSin The king has been dethroned... o.0

Weird thing is, I've not seen nearly so much of Lee after last seasons nerfs. Outside of Rek'Sai who's still new and shiny, I've really seen more tank junglers than any of the top junglers this past season.

Sneak Dog17 votes

Lee Sins thing isn't that he is permanently the best. His thing is that he is permenantly *among *the best.

exiledFromBadmen1 votes

Sins?

Did you mean Lee Sin?

Raja Chachki1 votes

Sin's is what he meant I think....and I agree with him too

Bears Dont Care1 votes

{quoted}

  1. JarvanIV
  2. RekSai
  3. LeeSin The king has been dethroned... o.0

Not really, Lee sin has a far better kit than both Jarvan and Rek'sai, and Rek'sai is also getting her base damage nerfed again.

doubleguac5 votes

I know the Lee Sin hate train is still running full steam on the forums, but I really don't have that much of a problem with him anymore. He's obviously incredibly strong and versatile when played well, but the S5 jungle seems to actually punish Lee Sins who aren't playing well (which the S4 jungle didn't do). If he fails to pull off early ganks, he's more likely to fall behind in levels and gold and potentially delay or miss out on his mid game power spike.

I know I'll probably be downvoted to hell for this, but I'm going to say it: I think he's in a decent spot right now. He has incredibly play-making potential in the early/mid game, but he falls behind if he doesn't successfully make plays. That seems like a fair trade off for a champion who peaks in the mid game, and falls off late game even if he is doing well.

A really good Lee Sin player can still put the team on his back. But there are plenty of other junglers who are exerting almost as much early game pressure while being much easier to play (Vi, J4, even Xin to some extent).

LilxPaprika3 votes

i won all my placements playing mostly full tank shyvana. went from gold V to gold 2. for this very reason. our team needed someone to soak and front line. often times just getting the enemy to have their spells on cooldown because they wasted it on you is all you need. i also enjoy shen jungle.

exiledFromBadmen1 votes

Could you tell me your build? I play off-tank Shyvana and build 2 damage items (item 3153+item 3718 or item 3074+item 3714) then tank.

LilxPaprika1 votes

{quoted}

Could you tell me your build? I play off-tank Shyvana and build 2 damage items (item 3153+item 3718 or item 3074+item 3714) then tank.

look at my build history i go full tank 9/21 with 1 doran blade sunifire and hexdrinker/maw for dmg. i might go cdr boots too. depends on if we're behind and need to go even tankier or if team needs aegis.

LongFur Fox3 votes

Another reason is that tanks provide cc and while a team can never have too much cc there are many times you see a team with no cc get slaughtered bacause they have no cc.

Akali and katarina being popular also makes tanks better.

exiledFromBadmen1 votes

Yes. Stopping Katarina ults as Sejuani is easy.

LongFur Fox1 votes

q and ult are both good for that?

Not many champions have 2 hard cc and sej q is on a decently low cd.

Marenjii3 votes

J4 is doing good because it is near impossible to miss an E-Q with chilling smite. Rek'sai is broken. And Vi presses R on your carry and proceeds to 3 shot them.

Drunk Rummate1 votes

to be fair, you don't need a tank if you've got something like an Azir or Rumble on your team.

Regarding the actual point, I think tank stats just spike in power sooner and since junglers have very limited gold income this season, it's important for them to buy gold efficient items. A damage jungler is very weak unless they get several early kills where a tank jungler will be useful unless they die a lot.

AccountaBilabudy1 votes

How to win ranked:

-Ban J4, Vi, Reksai -Pick Chogath jungle -Full tank item 3721 item 3110 item 3143 item 3065 item 3091 item 3117

Acidic Puddle1 votes

Well as of recently I have become a big fan of Thresh support. He is meta and tank...

Tin Tarantino1 votes

I'm pretty sure there is going to be a size able meta shift soon, we're already seeing mages in top lane again, maybe tanks will be mid to keep assassins from snowballing or something.

Malix Farwin1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tin Tarantino,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=KhfVViTb,comment-id=0008,timestamp=2015-01-27T16:32:27.524+0000)

I'm pretty sure there is going to be a size able meta shift soon, we're already seeing mages in top lane again, maybe tanks will be mid to keep assassins from snowballing or something.

Unless of course you mean AD assassins then yea you are right

assassins are getting nerfed, mages already are nerfed. if anything you will see an AD meta. Anything that uses AP atm is getting nerfed hard

What Is Smite1 votes

When the Jayce mid meta was Dominant I played AP Bruiser Malphite into it and I made his life terrible in that lane

Vegas Dad1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Malix Farwin,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=KhfVViTb,comment-id=00080000,timestamp=2015-01-27T18:33:05.851+0000)

Unless of course you mean AD assassins then yea you are right

assassins are getting nerfed, mages already are nerfed. if anything you will see an AD meta. Anything that uses AP atm is getting nerfed hard

eh only thing being nerfed hard in AP is the 3 button cheese via dfg, time to learn to play the game AP mages are just fine.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

Tank junglers are very strong right now,

People dont realize it, but champs like Naut and Amumu win games.

You might get shit on for 40 minutes worst case scenario, but if you play them right, you WILL win in the end.

Kingsgrave1 votes

{quoted}

Tank junglers are very strong right now,

People dont realize it, but champs like Naut and Amumu win games.

You might get shit on for 40 minutes worst case scenario, but if you play them right, you WILL win in the end.

I tried to go Rek'Sai against Sejuani in ranked a few days ago and she destroyed me literally every single fight. Sure I could kill targets 1 or 2 at a time but she could ult an entire team and make it impossible for me to do anything about it.

TotalJerk1 votes

You're making the false assumption that tanks are reliable. At lower ranks, they are the least reliable. You lack the damage, but that doesn't matter as long as your team follows up on your initiation. At low ranks you cannot expect your teammates to do that.

I tried full tank Alistar in normals, once. My whole team would often stand at the edge of teamfights watching me get slowly (and if you've ever played full-tank ulted Alistar, you know I mean SLOWLY) get chiseled to pieces, then shout "report Alistar for feeding"

Malix Farwin1 votes

Here the thing wrong with your statement. It is always in the assumption tht everyone has tanky supp or tops. If someone is last pick you should assume they will play what they have. You could also communicate with them. I dont understand why you get to complain about top and supp got going tank but they dont have to complain about you not going tank.

zliplus1 votes

It's not just a silver thing. Not many people like to play tanks (not bruisers, tanks), so simply having a tank does make a big difference, even in Gold/Plat.

lDontLiftIcarry1 votes

nah I actually have a 100% winrate skarner on my LAN accoutn right now and 100% winrate WW both full tank. Outside of the AP jungle item or frozen heart instead of that for a 20% CDR i literally just go full tank.

Xela Syab1 votes

Jungle is weird man, then again people dont know how to freeze lane. Granted if you freeze lane too much and your jungler never comes then the tower falls. Essentially I focus bot and mid lane when I jungle, see if I can gank. If I can't I atleast help with warding and junglers forget that.

jusho11 votes

i just had this issue. i had someone pick EZ to go top vs a jax with a diana jungle and yas mid. I told him that we had no tanks and only bot lane left he just screwed us.

he conceded and went bot lane we ended swaping around had yas go top diana mid and i picked sion jungle so we could have a damn tank. I ended up early diving and front lining the pushes and turn a game that was close to a lose into a win. by simply being a tank and the other team didnt have 1

DJ Hatsune Miku1 votes

Carry syndrome. I wrote up a huge discussion on this before. Carrying is way more difficult than just being a team player and playing cc bots. Most people think they're better than they are and can just stomp with "op" champs. They blame thier team for losses and brag about the few times they go legendary rather than just shooting for consistency. I love going Fiora or Kat mid and getting 20 kills a game but there is a very good reason why my Naut and Udyr have winrates around 70%.

The Bearded Bard1 votes

Pretty much. I started out liking Nautilus a lot, but honestly now I only play him so my team has a tank. I would much rather play Shaco as he's way more fun, but alas, gotta do what's best for the team.

I am the Remedy1 votes

Stopped reading at "going Lee and dooming the team to have no initiate".

Also, 80% of people that pick Lee shouldn't pick him. He's garbage unless you're actually good with him. And even then, he's just alright. I feel 10x more powerful when I'm playing jarvan, rek'sai, vi, etc.

RoyaiChaos1 votes

Lee honestly has a pretty sucky initiate compared to most other champions.

Budupops1 votes

Good point, but i also think the reason tanks have a high win rate is because they are not meta, and therefore the people who play them have been playing them for a while, unlike some low elo players who just play who is op but cannot play them right.(Zed is an example of this)

Jamnon1 votes

Who's the best tanky jungler?

FistOfSharkiesha2 votes

Amumu Nautilus Sejuani imo. They have amazing initiating capability, CC, sustained damage, and tankiness. Everything a JG needs.

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