Suggestion: Make Size a Stat

(TL;DR at the bottom)

With the upcoming changes to the tank jungler item line, I think it's worth talking about other possible ways of making tanks (and only tanks) more valuable.

For a very long time, the major problem with tanks has been that they're frequently outclassed by bruisers: bruisers can reach similar levels of tankiness as tanks, and sometimes even have similar amounts of crowd control and initiation potential (most popular junglers like , and tend to fit this bill), all while outputting a lot more damage. Because bruisers and tanks tend to follow similar itemization paths, it's also difficult to change one class without affecting the other. Generally, there's a lot of confusion between tanks and bruisers at what one class should have that the other shouldn't, and while a fair bit of this comes from champion design (see above), I think it also has to do with the fact that itemization doesn't really bring out the differences between the two classes: tanks want more tankiness and crowd control, but so do bruisers, and in the case of both, sacrificing tankiness for utility is generally not preferrable.

I do think, however, that there is a core difference between tanks and bruisers, in that tanks want to take hits for their team. Bruisers can often go with a full tanky build and serve a role similar to a tank, but ultimately a well-designed bruiser will want to stay alive as long as possible if it means they can keep on dealing lots of consistent damage. Tanks will, ideally, want to stay alive if possible, but their success is dependent on how much attention and power they can divert away from their team and onto themselves, and I think the best way to achieve that is through size modifiers:

#Suggested Changes:

• Add "+X% bonus size" to tank-oriented items (for example, , , , , , , , the upcoming Cinderhulk enchantment and probably some others I'm missing).
  • Slightly unrelated, but integrate Crystalline Bracer into the recipe for . Seriously, it's the perfect fit, and it would make building the item a lot less inventory-intensive for tanks.
• (Maybe) buff these items' personal tanky stats, since the wielder will be taking more hits.
• Make targeting, range and collision on abilities consistently edge-to-edge, and not center-to-center, so that size not only affects how far you can hit an enemy, but also how far that enemy can hit you with their own abilities.
• (Maybe) Make the size of at least some abilities scale with champion size (sort of like 's Vorpal Spikes).
• Adjust the size of intended tanks so that their base size is bigger than that of non-tank champions ( deserves to be much bigger than he currently is, for example, on par with ).

The end result is that tanks willing to become bigger, better tanks, would have access to several items that would let them take up more space and attract more attention from the enemy team, and could even become tankier than bruisers in a way that bruisers wouldn't really want to itemize for: while there's ultimately going to be a lot of champion work to differentiate bruisers more from tanks (again, champions like Jarvan might still want to play like an actual tank, despite being bruisers), the idea is that a bruiser picking size enhancers (hue) is going to make themselves a bigger target, which isn't the primary intention of a bruiser despite being a very desirable goal for tanks. Tanks would also be the best natural beneficiaries to these items, since they're the biggest champions around (or are meant to be, at least), and potentially adding more stats to these could help tanks genuinely take more damage than bruisers. This is obviously not an instant easy fix to the whole tank vs bruiser problem, and may not even make tanks more popular on its own, but I think it's one possible way of differentiating tanks and bruisers, and bringing out each class's strengths.

#TL;DR

Some items could be made to increase the size of the wielder, which tanks would love (they'd be better at attracting more attention and attacks towards themselves) but bruisers wouldn't like as much (they'd rather focus specific targets and deal lots of damage over time, and not be as big a target). This would create a better distinction between proper tanks, who need a bit of love, and tanky bruisers, who don't as much.

What do you think?