Regarding tanks and Meddler post.

Hi,

I wanted to make this post to share my thoughts on Meddler post and to discuss the issues that tanks are facing beyond survivability but also share some concerns at the some point.

I see a lot of ppl including hashinshin saying tanks are not fun to play and they can't carry. Well... I don't aggree with that because oneshotting and killing everybody doesn't have the monopoly of fun. Tanks are super fun to play. You still need to land your combo effectively and your macro decisions are key. You create spaces, block some paths and give tempo to the fight.

"Tanks are low risk, high rewards". Well, if you don't do your job properly in fight, you lose the fight. I mean by that, positionning properly, using your CD at the right time on the right person according to your cooldowns. You're a support with higher amount of gold and higher expectation and you've to control the whole fight. I can't count the number of times that I lost a fight on my own because didn't position properly, focused the right person at the right time or used my CD according to their plan. I can't count the number of times, I didn't create enough spaces before engaging, only leaving my team free to be smashed. See, playing tank consistenly is not that easy and there's high risks too.

Lately, I don't see any tanks in my games. The reasons have been discussed a lot in other threads and I won't go over these points. We know for fact that slot efficiency and true damage are big reasons behind this. However, I believe there are other reasons than pure fight efficiency. We do not need **tanks as much as we used to **. Assuming the tank survivability is fixed, can we expect tanks to come back to 1 average per game? I don't think so.

**Why tanks used to be needed and why not having a tank was a big issue back then? **

back in the days, if you had no tanks, you couldn't dive and you most certainly would lose the game at some point for that sole and unique reason. Baron used to give a stat and regen buff only, drake was just a gold objective and herald did not exist. Hence, diving was a necessity. The enemy tank would CC bruiser/squishy trying to dive while they would will tank opponents turrets forever as if they never existed.

Over the course of the years, some buffs have been added to the game. Baron buff to minions, Rift Herald, Mountain drakes. All those buffs give an edge in term of advancing toward the nexus. On top of that, t2 and t3 have been nerfed giving less time to react and regroup. Theses objectives added to the nerf makes diving less necessary. Also, fights are way shorter. So if you ever need to dive, you don't need a tank because the proportion of damage taken by turrets is nowhere close. A simple bruiser can do it now. I believe these are anothers big reasons why tanks are less picked because it's much more rewarding to destroy the lane to take those objectives while not even needed a pure tank to dive if ever it's needed.

Tanks and overall damage.

I'm going to use a quote from last meddler post to highlight another reason why tanks are even less necessary - even completely useless depending currently.

> "Teams without tanks lack a front line, so tend to get burst more due to the lack of soak/zoning. Metas without tanks also mean it's more likely that each team has 4, or even 5, damage threats on it as well though, especially if enchanters (the main other non damage group) are also being played less."

I'm suspicious about that statement. Having tanks may increase the fight lenght for sure but I'm not sure tanks will effectively help to deal with the TTK and oneshots everywhere - which is the current issue. If someone dies within 0,25 seconds, there's nothing a tank can do, especially if they are invisible. Here's an example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0aG4EIEcrw

Now, the TTK is super low and is applicable to a lot of champions including divers and assassins. If there's no time to react, then tanks are kinda useless and it won't reduce the "damage" per se. Usually, you can't zone them really. Instead, you would have to fall back on them making them surrounded followed by CC - assuming they did not outplay you waiting for CD's to be used. Now, if they can oneshot someone in 0,25, there's not much you can do. Instead, you can zone effectively, bruisers, control mages, adc and tanks themselves but not the divers and assassins. Poppy stands out for that reason with her anti-dash zone btw.

It is naive to expect tanks to fix TTK and the amount of damage. It is also naive to expect they'll be used more in soloQ because If tanks can't do their job, which is controlling the main threats, it's best to play oneshots carries themselves.

They're getting buffed... what can we expect?

They're laning phase as top is safe for both sides as the opponent is pretty much free farm... Assuming they do not hit like trucks. That's why I think that buffing tanks with damage as you did is a terrible idea. I wish you would focus more in defensive stats and utility instead of base damage. Honestly, yes tanks need some damage for sure to create pressure, but they do not need to oneshot carries or bruisers. That's forcing them into a job that they shouldn't do.

Some tanks will be buffed namely for the jungle : Nautilus and Maokai among others. Now, if you were playing in early seasons, you know what are Nautilus and maokai jungle and I'm pretty sure many of you still remember how strong these guys used to be. The lethality of their ganks is no match. Assuming these guys hit their combo, it's a ganranted kill. Nautilus will come at you, stun, E slow to bait the flash, then Q the flash, stun again. These type of super ganks may just lead to something we've already seen : The (re)emergence of tank toplane or hyper mobile toplaners to not die all the time to theses ganks or even further jungle nerfs. I would in that regard, be careful with their buffs focusing in their jungle clear efficiency rather than buffing them with base damage - as you did with sejuani.

Small conclusion

I believe tanks are fun to play because they involve great expectations and macro decisions. Although, I believe that even if their survability is fixed, they won't become as common as to find one per average per game. One reason is that they're less necessary than they used to be as there's less need to dive big time : Shorter fights, barons buffs, mountain drakes and herald. I don't think they'll reduce the "damage" because they won't have the possibility to control main threats unless TTK is fixed - especially assassins and divers. I hope the buffs won't be damage based but rather focus on utility, defensive abilities and jungle clear efficiency. Their job is not to oneshot carries.

I'm hype for the next post about damage. I do not pretend I've all the knowledge of the game but these were my thoughts and I think they're valid.

Cheers,

[poppy-wink]