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My personal take on tanks

Knight SoIaire ·2/12/2020, 6:54:33 PM·51 votes·15,084 views

How about instead of giving tanks damage and pretty much watering them down with bruisers/juggernauts

You would just start reworking them to do their job

seriously... tanks were always just a bag of hp with cc slapped on top to make an actual champion. Their role was to soak damage but they almost never got any tools that would allow them to do it in any direct way. So they resolved to cc'locking for their team and chasing enemy carries just to be the only target available but they never actualy did their job directly

To this day there is only one dedicated tank in this game that has tools for tanking damage and its with his shield

We had with his ult draiining nearby damage but riot deleted it.... if i rememver correctly they deleted it because they didnt like that it dealt damage based off enemys damage... which was easy to fix with some number showelling. But no instead we got some tree sprouts with more cc

Galio could give people some damage resist with his ult... which had a hefty cooldown but that was removed too

Tanks as a role were always meant to be the teams shield... many of them even carry the goddamn thing around yet only braum knows how to use it for anything else than bashing people

How about getting those 200+ years of experience to work and giving those champions some identity aside from being bruisers with less damage... cause that will never be interesting to play unless overpowered... not to mention that many damage dealers carry their own cc nowadays... so tanks are no longer the masters of cc and engage they were in the past

109 Comments

Ragnaveil2/12/2020, 7:14:30 PM43 votes

They hate the idea of tanks being tanks. Sorry.

EDIT: For anyone who downvotes me, how can you not see the signs they dont like tanks being actual tanks? Pen's extremely high, armor and mr dont mitigate as well as they use to. How is that not enough proof?

LordGeovanni2/12/2020, 10:05:58 PM17 votes

Every carry and their mother has CC so trying to make CC a tanks identity is doomed to fail. unless we rip cc out of most of the dps champions

Gath Immortal2/12/2020, 8:34:48 PM7 votes

I love that riot and so many people seem to hate stat check champs, but the entire purpose of tanks is supposed to be stat checking. They have always been "you must have this much damage to ride this ride" in almost any game. Honestly I think mundo is the best pure tank around right now in terms of soaking damage and even he struggles to keep up with how much insane burst is out there.

Kroda132/12/2020, 7:23:36 PM6 votes

YOu forgot about Ornn he is really tanky

VonCesaw2/12/2020, 10:50:26 PM5 votes

CN and KOR don't like tanks Those markets are loaded with Whales, who will buy the Kpop/pretty girl/anime skins on their favorite burst mages/assassins/marksman-support combos

ModAcademy Kayn2/13/2020, 6:02:36 AM4 votes

Tanks should only be primarily tanky and only tanky when you're in a game where you're actively able to Make people target you. In any other format, you need a reason for people to hit you as a tank. Look at Overwatch, a game with "Tanks" yet each and everyone of those tanks have their own form of high damage output. Not as good as the DPS's of course, but they're still very much a kill threat. Reinhardt can kill you in what, 3 or 4 swings of his hammer? Most the other tanks can kill anyone squishy when up-close, less so when they're far away. Can one-shot folk if he lands his charge.

Why? Because they have no way of forcing you to deal with them as tanks. They can't force you to shoot them. Sure, you can go the Braum route and give them lots of abilities that can deny damage, most the tanks in Overwatch actually do have a version of that. Orisa and Reinhardt shield, Dva's defense matrix, Feet-fetish boy's shield. By giving them damage, your team is forced to handle these big tanky boys, allowing them to actually put their tankiness to use instead of just being ignored.

Why isn't that enough for them, why can't they take away damage and load them with those kinds of abilities?

Because then we reach a problem of interactivity. Everyone hates Yasuo's shield wall, but imagine if every tank in the game had an ability like that. This actually did happen in Overwatch, with Shield Meta, where you had Bridgette, Reinhardt and Orisa on the same team, and it was just shield after shield after shield. I never played it, so I'd have to go off the anecdotal evidence of my friend that it fucking sucked. Or perhaps the similarly disliked 3-tank Meta.

Simply put, it feels bad to have your efforts constantly negated. Tanks are harder to kill, pack them with too many abilities designed to soak or stop things from happening, and it gets boring. By diluting their power pool with damage, not only do you expand the players options by giving them more tools to punish people who are out of place, contribute to kill someone/being able to Lane at all, but you also stop it from going too far into frustration zone of "Can't kill this person" or "I don't get to do anything because they exist".

Remember, just as being able to do too much damage is a bad thing, being able to tank too much is equally a bad thing. Damage for tanks gives them options in lane and also makes them far less reliant on having the other person make up for the damage you lack.

Saezio2/13/2020, 9:03:41 AM4 votes

Maybe we could start with FLAT PEN APPLYING BEFORE THE DAMN PERCENTAGE PEN.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT?

OR alternatively, REMOVE THE DIMINISHING RETURNS ON STACKING RESISTANCES AND MAKE THEM TRANSLATE TO FLAT MITIGATION.

Like, did they ever give any compensation for the most huge tank nerf ever? And for adding so much pene to the game?

Kroda132/13/2020, 12:30:31 AM3 votes

Ornn is fine the way he is other tanks to need to be on his level

RyzeRework2/13/2020, 4:50:54 AM3 votes

They nerfed maokis ult because he was smashing in league and became an unkillable killing machine that could fo 0/5 and still kill the enemy adc that was fed. Nobody remembers the tank meta where sometimes they had 4 tanks an a adc because everything was useless.. people bitched about 50 min games that didnt matter untill the last teamfight. Tank meta was by far the worst meta ever. At least now I can just die and be done instead of watching a tank sit on my face and slowly drain my hp bar.

whiteLight3r2/13/2020, 12:09:13 AM3 votes

There is one proper tank in the game at the moment (ignoring the part about shielding and increasing ally resistance) its ornn (zac is too, kinda) and Id bet hes gonna be nerfed soon. Its because of all the damage (passives, abilities, and items) in the game. Everything else is bruiser basically

SirTauntsALot2/13/2020, 7:12:19 AM3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Knight SoIaire ,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PPvcE9qu,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-02-12T18:54:33.026+0000)

How about instead of giving tanks damage and pretty much watering them down with bruisers/juggernauts

You would just start reworking them to do their job

seriously... tanks were always just a bag of hp with cc slapped on top to make an actual champion. Their role was to soak damage but they almost never got any tools that would allow them to do it in any direct way. So they resolved to cc'locking for their team and chasing enemy carries just to be the only target available but they never actualy did their job directly

To this day there is only one dedicated tank in this game that has tools for tanking damage and its with his shield

We had with his ult draiining nearby damage but riot deleted it.... if i rememver correctly they deleted it because they didnt like that it dealt damage based off enemys damage... which was easy to fix with some number showelling. But no instead we got some tree sprouts with more cc

Galio could give people some damage resist with his ult... which had a hefty cooldown but that was removed too

Tanks as a role were always meant to be the teams shield... many of them even carry the goddamn thing around yet only braum knows how to use it for anything else than bashing people

How about getting those 200+ years of experience to work and giving those champions some identity aside from being bruisers with less damage... cause that will never be interesting to play unless overpowered... not to mention that many damage dealers carry their own cc nowadays... so tanks are no longer the masters of cc and engage they were in the past

I am a tank main myself (otp Shen) and I agree with you. However, in order to do this riot needs to nerf damage overall. Tanks should deal some damage or else they adc's will just ignore them.

NelsieLisnen2/13/2020, 12:19:25 PM3 votes

Yeah, they need to tend to each tank separately. Those pbe Sunfire buffs are nonsense. Riot don't get that fat damage is not what tank players want. We want to be actual tanks, as in, being able to tank tons of damage late game while providing utility for our team. Take each tank and decide what you want them to be. Full utility tank? Ok, buff resistances, cut the damage down. Semi-bruiser tank? Buff damage, nerf resistances a bit. Oh, and remove this godawful % health true damage from the game. It's dumb, SO DUMB. Riot need to realize that champs with these perks don't just counter tanks, they counter everything that has a health bar. Either make it true damage OR % health damage, both is just overkill.

General Esdeath 2/13/2020, 12:20:22 AM3 votes

I think the problem is Riot's idea of tanks are CC bots or "HUGE fucking base damage with HUGE defense but not much CC" and Riot decided to use both for Ornn instead of making him a tank with good CC who ALSO HAS unstoppable and can buff his late game team mates.

Hentai 1 99LPog2/13/2020, 5:05:58 AM2 votes

true tanks and true assassins are quintessential to healthy meta.

Tanks to shield from adcs and assassins to try to kill them which in tearms brings shield etc. supports to try to save them and hyper carry adcs to kill tanks.

bruisers are there to bully tanks as an option for snowball or if you need more umpf in your comp mid game

mages are usual poke/wave clear or there to assist burst on caught target (like support jungler adc top if bruiser) or you know hit their bigg risky ults like oriana ziggs etc.

from tanks we got braum (as only real tank) and orn as only other thing that can tank (but has r%%%%%ed base dmg)

Crescent Dusk2/14/2020, 5:30:08 AM2 votes

Problem with tanks is they take way too long to come online because their jungle clears are trash, and in laning most tanks besides shen/malphite get bullied out of farm, just like tanks in the jungle who get invaded without being able to do anything.

And by the time you manage to build tabis+randuin+spirit visage+deadmans/thornmail, the ADC/mages already are on 3 items or more with one of them either doing %HP damage or ignoring 30%+ of your resistances you just built.

In essence, tank items are way too expensive for the fact you have to split gold between two resistance types while damage dealers make no such split sacrifice and keep stacking their one source of damage plus a single item granting penetration over 1/3+ of your bought resistances.

Tanks either need much quicker, healthier jungle clears/wavepush to up their gold income significantly so they can actually get the items that actually make them tanks, or the tank item costs need to drastically come down.

Even better would be doing a pass on all tank champs and increasing their base armor+hp+mr and level up bonuses to make them actually feel like tanks without needing to have 2+ items to actually start feeling somewhat sturdier than the enemy Rengar or Lee Sin.

I'm really disliking this Mundo/Ornn/Sion/Malphite/Poppy/Shen design in which they're giving tanks more damage as a band aid and then they feel wholly oppressive to any assassin/mage besides Zed/Akali instead of turning them into actually durable, well sustained disruption machines.

Heroes of the Storm does this perfectly. Tanks like Muradin or Diablo don't do much damage, but they're incredibly durable and their job is to break front/backlines and disrupting DPS from coordinating damage on their teammates.

It seems like that entire role has only been given to tank supports like Leona and Nautilus while everybody else gets screwed because they have to solo lane/jungle as a weak 1v1 tank.

BigFBear2/13/2020, 1:34:29 PM2 votes

The thing is. If you make tanks very very viable there probably isn't just one tank per game. There maybe are 4 tanks in a game then.

Riot don't want such mechanics in the game because no one wants to watch long boring fights where no one dies for 40 seconds.

The Bad Touch2/13/2020, 5:12:03 PM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Knight SoIaire ,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PPvcE9qu,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-02-12T18:54:33.026+0000)

How about instead of giving tanks damage and pretty much watering them down with bruisers/juggernauts

You would just start reworking them to do their job

seriously... tanks were always just a bag of hp with cc slapped on top to make an actual champion. Their role was to soak damage but they almost never got any tools that would allow them to do it in any direct way. So they resolved to cc'locking for their team and chasing enemy carries just to be the only target available but they never actualy did their job directly

To this day there is only one dedicated tank in this game that has tools for tanking damage and its with his shield

We had with his ult draiining nearby damage but riot deleted it.... if i rememver correctly they deleted it because they didnt like that it dealt damage based off enemys damage... which was easy to fix with some number showelling. But no instead we got some tree sprouts with more cc

Galio could give people some damage resist with his ult... which had a hefty cooldown but that was removed too

Tanks as a role were always meant to be the teams shield... many of them even carry the goddamn thing around yet only braum knows how to use it for anything else than bashing people

How about getting those 200+ years of experience to work and giving those champions some identity aside from being bruisers with less damage... cause that will never be interesting to play unless overpowered... not to mention that many damage dealers carry their own cc nowadays... so tanks are no longer the masters of cc and engage they were in the past

I love how they basically removed Maokai Ulti..... then gave Sett a better version of it on his freakin W.

Xonra2/14/2020, 4:53:12 PM2 votes

Yeah sadly Juggernauts and "bruisers" have flat out made Tanks...not really a full role anymore. All they've done is give tanks damage so you end up with cancer like Ornn who somehow out damaged half the champs in top lane these days. Most of the non-tanks in top have just as much CC anyways and almost every damn new champ the past 2 years that isn't a tank comes with some built in shield, a do damage and get a shield (like Sett ) or are reworked into having a shield.

What exactly is the point of tanks when other roles can tank just as well, have just as much CC in most cases, and on top of that deal damage and likely have mobility.

Like op said champs like Braum are one of the few tanks that actually do their job. Leo is up there and Naut would be if he didn't get the nerf glare the moment a pro player picks him a single game.

Noraver2/13/2020, 12:18:17 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Knight SoIaire ,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=PPvcE9qu,comment-id=,timestamp=2020-02-12T18:54:33.026+0000)

We had with his ult draiining nearby damage but riot deleted it.... if i rememver correctly they deleted it because they didnt like that it dealt damage based off enemys damage... which was easy to fix with some number showelling. But no instead we got some tree sprouts with more cc

lol Sett Not okay for Maokai to protect his allies, but definitely okay for Sett to get true damage from the same mechanic. 200+ years of combined experience! :^)

I say Facts2/14/2020, 2:04:50 AM1 votes

Exuce me there. Tanks are categorized in 3 different roles.

Juggernauts: Immobile bruisers with high hp, sustain and executionable damage
Wardens: Peeling tanks, usually scale of defense to peel for allies and cc enemies. (This is the one that you were referring to and yes Braum is Warden so ofcourse he is doing his job perfectly)
Vanguards: Aggressive and initiating tanks, they were never meant to peel for allies, but instead, they were meant to go ham on enemy team and dive and kill their target while providing an amount of CC to help them initiating the fights.

You can't mention all of them as "tank" it is wrong. You are talking specifically about "Wardens" and yes I agree with you there, Wardens need to be more tanky and less of damage dealers to peel allies. However, if we talk about Vanguards, I would rather they receive more itemization to help their initiating and provide them more savage teamfights.