I'm just asking about thing, just curious, when every other class has items that are over 3000 gold in price.
For example:
ADC: 
,
,
Mages/APC: 
,
,
Bruisers: 
,
,
Assassins: 
, and the mage and bruiser items listed above
But I don't understand why we don't have pure tank items that cost that much. Not complaining, just asking.
Sasogwa48 votesBecause Riot wants damage to badly outscale tankiness. They don't want real lategame tank items. Though tbh, they'd be pointless since 
exist in this game.
Z Statistic18 votesNah, those just kick the can down the road.
AD, AS, and crit all multiply together to form dps that scales in three dimensions. HP and armor are the only real defensive stats, and they constitute a two dimensional scaling.
Crit damage, ArPen, AS slows, crit damage reduction can't be incremented very easily like the above examples, so they generally cancel each other out in the long run.
When converting both systems to be functions of gold, there should be more immediate return for defense but higher longterm return on dps. No, the really fundamental reason why tank items cannot be slot efficient is because of health regen. If health regen becomes sufficiently significant in a given fight, then it becomes a third dimension for defense, but unlike the other 5 vectors, health regen scales hyperbolically. Thus, in the long run, defense will win over dps every time.
I don't mean Mundo ults either. Just health regen stats on items when coupled with armor and to a lesser degree health can make someone pretty much unkillable. Sejuani with heimer on ARAM is a perfect example of this. She doesn't even need a mogs to recover ridiculously quickly during and after fights.
Sasogwa4 votes[{quoted}](name=Z Statistic,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QbkEEQfc,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2016-12-11T18:58:35.252+0000)
Nah, those just kick the can down the road.
AD, AS, and crit all multiply together to form dps that scales in three dimensions. HP and armor are the only real defensive stats, and they constitute a two dimensional scaling.
Crit damage, ArPen, AS slows, crit damage reduction can't be incremented very easily like the above examples, so they generally cancel each other out in the long run.
When converting both systems to be functions of gold, there should be more immediate return for defense but higher longterm return on dps. No, the really fundamental reason why tank items cannot be slot efficient is because of health regen. If health regen becomes sufficiently significant in a given fight, then it becomes a third dimension for defense, but unlike the other 5 vectors, health regen scales hyperbolically. Thus, in the long run, defense will win over dps every time.
I don't mean Mundo ults either. Just health regen stats on items when coupled with armor and to a lesser degree health can make someone pretty much unkillable. Sejuani with heimer on ARAM is a perfect example of this. She doesn't even need a mogs to recover ridiculously quickly during and after fights.
Health regen is in the same dimension as effective health tbh, it's not a third dimension but a reinforcement of the health dimension.
If your DPS is overall 0 against someone with 2000 health and given health regen +resists, it would be the same against someone with 5000 health and the same health regen+ resists.
Assuming we're not talking %health damage, I guess in which case having more health would be less efficient in synergy with health regen (!).
In any case, in-fight health regen as of right now is garbage. We're far from the old FON times. And if it gets counterbuilt (Mortal's Reminder) it's countered super hard.
Z Statistic5 votesYou have to divorce 'burst' from 'dps'. Burst does not have time as a variable. Instead, it's merely static. This leads to the binary "can I kill the person? Y/N" and not "how long does it take for me to kill them?" This is because we generally only consider the smallest timeframe in which someone can get a single rotation off.
This is very pertinent to assassins, but for ADC is a completely different story as virtually all of their damage does not come from a rotation but instead from basic attacks. Thus, we consider 'rotations' as a single basic attack, translate that into a time variable, and then report how much time we require to kill the target.
The main reason why it is a third dimension in scaling is because if you deal 500 effective dps and fight someone with 500 effective health regen, they might have 5000 EHP or 500 EHP; you can't kill them unless your actual instant damage is more than their EHP max. Burst doesn't really care about health regen of the target for the above reason, but then again burst also doesn't consider AS or crit into their bust most of the time. Generally, it's basically just super changing their AD, high base damage, and other factors like BoRK with Zed.
Which is also why they generally fall off against tanks as all of this scaling is merely just really fast scaling in one dimension.
Oh hey! That's another reason why we can't have slot efficient defensive items! Assassins and bust mages get boned late game.
Sasogwa4 votes[{quoted}](name=Z Statistic,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=QbkEEQfc,comment-id=0002000000000000,timestamp=2016-12-11T20:14:25.463+0000)
You have to divorce 'burst' from 'dps'. Burst does not have time as a variable. Instead, it's merely static. This leads to the binary "can I kill the person? Y/N" and not "how long does it take for me to kill them?" This is because we generally only consider the smallest timeframe in which someone can get a single rotation off.
This is very pertinent to assassins, but for ADC is a completely different story as virtually all of their damage does not come from a rotation but instead from basic attacks. Thus, we consider 'rotations' as a single basic attack, translate that into a time variable, and then report how much time we require to kill the target.
The main reason why it is a third dimension in scaling is because if you deal 500 effective dps and fight someone with 500 effective health regen, they might have 5000 EHP or 500 EHP; you can't kill them unless your actual instant damage is more than their EHP max. Burst doesn't really care about health regen of the target for the above reason, but then again burst also doesn't consider AS or crit into their bust most of the time. Generally, it's basically just super changing their AD, high base damage, and other factors like BoRK with Zed.
Which is also why they generally fall off against tanks as all of this scaling is merely just really fast scaling in one dimension.
Oh hey! That's another reason why we can't have slot efficient defensive items! Assassins and bust mages get boned late game.
Meh. All a lot of talking but for the overall conclusion that health regen increases the time you take to die. DUH. But if we talk about scaling, health regen synergizes well with resistances, but it does not with health. If we're talking burst, health regen is basically an irrelevant stat. If we're talking DPS ; health regen is a flat reduction of the damage dealt. The damage dealt is reduced by resistances, but not by health. That's why health regen and health both scale multiplicatively with resistances, BUT they don't scale multiplicatively with themselves. They ADD UP.
Adding up is not adding a dimension. If a champion has a steroid that adds him a flat amount of bonus health, do we talk about new dimension? No.
Z Statistic2 votesYou're making it more complicated than it needs to be mathematically. You can replace dps with a continuous stream while losing a negligible amount of accuracy late game. By doing that, you can also replace health regen with a continuous stream while losing an even tinier amount of accuracy. Coupling that together, you can can then replace the vector of health regen with a % damage reduction stat that takes in modded damage and health regen as arguments.
This new function is of the family 1/x where x is the difference between the two arguments above.
This is all to calculate time-to-kill, and as x approaches 0, the time-to-kill explodes towards infinity.
I mean, if you want to use a burst framework on it, ok, there's nothing inconsistent mathematically, but I don't see how it makes any intuitive sense to say an ADC has higher bust than Talon because the ADC deals 2x more damage over the course of 20 seconds. The whole reason why health regen shifts between simply adding to EHP and becoming a dimension in its own right is because the measurement variable shifting between the binary Yes/No of death for bust damage and a continuous time-to-kill.
This is all to say imply that health regen is negligible for assassins and aoe comps but can be a factor in and of itself as an ADC or dps mage
Krynul22 votesA lot of good points here but also a very simple one being overlooked: Damage makes it easier to acquire gold.
Building damage enhances one's ability to gain gold in almost every aspect. It allows more effective/faster last hitting, enhanced ability to kill champions, faster turret destruction, faster objectives. Once you build damage you can snowball your ability to earn gold and thus build more damage. It's very intentionally a snowball effect and it's why feeding the carry is important.
Look at someone who builds a tank item, with the exception of sunfire, has your ability to earn gold been enhanced in any way? Can you last hit better? Can you kill faster? How about securing objectives? Think about the role a tanky champion has on a team. What happens when the tank runs in and kills a whole bunch of people, everyone screams at him for KS'ing. Building defense is essentially a gold sink meant to slow down the enemy carry.
So to balance this we have high end offense items costing more because people who build those items can gather gold exponentially faster than those who don't. Meanwhile, defense items cost less because you need to be able to buy those items so your defenses can spike and allow you to keep up with a carry despite having far less gold.
6Sfool5 votesSounds like tanks need a better way to get gold. I wish there were more expensive tank builds to keep them relevant in the lategame but I know that I would not be able to afford them unless one of my items was titanic. I know tanks shouldn't be powerfarmers but they shouldn't be gimped for gold because they decided not to build damage. FOTM is a nice item for this but it's only a support item. Maybe full tank items should provide some sort of gold generation on taking damage. Tanks zoned out of their lane would not get access to the full gold generation because they could not take much damage, but tanks that are doing their jobs well could scale faster and get more gold for the late game.
SirHeavyScrotum5 votesMeh, it seems pretty balanced really. Tanks are very strong right now.
Krynul1 votesIt could be the case but then tanky dps champion who can still farm and even kill effectively will also be getting free gold. No one needs darius running around getting free gold for tanking damage while he snaps up all the kills with his ultimate.
khorney8 votesUmm tanks or supp make 0 money . Relic shield is the worst income in the game
AirKingNeo6 votesBecause tank items are supposed to be easier to buy while behind and because they don't get a lot of gold income mid-late game.
That's it, that's the real reason.
What about LDR/Mortal? They just have too much % pen, their design is fine, balance isn't.
Kosm1K2 votesit's % bonus armor, so it's supposed to even out kind of since the tanks have a base armor, at least, that's what I think riot's reasoning is
SteelMankind1 votesBack in the beginning of s6, the % bonus pen was much lower but no one was building it because it was just so much weaker than the old last whisper in most cases.
The switch to bonus armor means that it's really only a tank-killing item for adc's to get - it doesn't help them much with fighting other squishies. Since the point of the item is to kill tanks and only tanks, it better be good at doing that.
WoonStruck5 votesBecause tank itemization actually working made ADC and mage mains throw a hissyfit.
In other words, it made everyone at Riot throw a hissyfit.
ChaoticPinecone5 votesBecause the way balance is set up, Riot doesnt want tanks to outscale DPS. Tanks get their armor and power spikes earlier, but also fall off lategame compared to 6-item ADCs.
You need ADCs to outscale, survive, and kill tanks so they can end the damn game. If tanks outscaled ADCs, youd end every 5v5 teamfight with the tanks surviving, unable to push towers or take dragons/barons. Or youd just have 5v5 tank comps where the game just drags on, with you only able to actually get a pick when its a 5v1.
rtbf761092711 voteshuh that's cool. Makes sense.
Taizuki3 votesBecause Riot LOVES tanks. They still think tanks "play from behind" but in reality tanks build 1 armor item and can 1v1 any AD champ and live with half health then they just snowball with full tank and become unkillable in team fights thanks to CotC.
Rivuo2 votesBecause Riot LOVES tanks. They still think tanks "play from behind" but in reality tanks build 1 armor item and can 1v1 any AD champ and live with half health then they just snowball with full tank and become unkillable in team fights thanks to CotC.
Dont say that before you get all the anti-adc people posting on this thread
Especially the ones that get mad a 3.7k item counters a 2.3k item
G4LLOWSC4L1BR4TR4 votesI don't have much an issue with a 3.7K item countering my 2.3K item, I'm just kinda annoyed that I can't have my 3.7K item counter their 3.7K item because I don't have any 3.7K items available to me in the first place. By all means, if I'm going to counter your items I should pay teh appropriate amount for that, but as it stands now that's not even an option.
Rivuo2 votesI don't have much an issue with a 3.7K item countering my 2.3K item, I'm just kinda annoyed that I can't have my 3.7K item counter their 3.7K item because I don't have any 3.7K items available to me in the first place. By all means, if I'm going to counter your items I should pay teh appropriate amount for that, but as it stands now that's not even an option.
Ok you're playing a tank. Your job isnt to solo the adc by them hitting you.
ADCs are in a bad spot right now unless youre playing the 3 favorable ones ( vayne twitch caitlyn )
ADCs are horrible right now. I have no idea why you feel the need to nerf them even more. I understand all these silver and bronze players are biased as fuck against but god damn.
G4LLOWSC4L1BR4TR3 votesI'm not saying a tank should be able to 1v1 them, I'm saying a tank should have the same opportunity for high cost high power items as every other class. I know that by and large ADCs aren't in a great place at the moment, and implementing some higher value defense items would probably warrant more buffs than they already need, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Things need to be rebalanced every time items are added or removed, but we should still add those items. I don't want to nerf ADCs, I want to level the playing field a bit and then rebalance things from there.
Additionally, I'd argue ADCs as a class need to be rearranged a bit. They're starting to shift away from late game and more towards early/midgame dominance, which isn't really where they're designed to be best and seems to have been causing a lot of issues as of late.
Rivuo2 votesI'm not saying a tank should be able to 1v1 them, I'm saying a tank should have the same opportunity for high cost high power items as every other class. I know that by and large ADCs aren't in a great place at the moment, and implementing some higher value defense items would probably warrant more buffs than they already need, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. Things need to be rebalanced every time items are added or removed, but we should still add those items. I don't want to nerf ADCs, I want to level the playing field a bit and then rebalance things from there.
I understand what you're saying but as it stands right now Tank items are very cost efficient, Later in the game when adcs outscale you as a tank, its not that you are doing anything wrong or items
Its just thats what they are made for. Lets be honest, throw away all the biased opinions you have of tanks or adcs ( Not saying you have any )
Have you ever bought ninja tabi and saw how low an adcs damage become? Like honestly, I pray to god every game as an adc ninja tabi doesnt come through for the enemy team
And when im playing anything tanky ( Shen or darius are my two ) ninja tabi literally makes me a god amongst adcs.
My point is, Eventually adcs have to out scale you. Pre 30 minutes adcs dont do much in terms of damage to anything with a cloth armor.
I get what you're saying but i dont think tank items can be buffed or made more cost efficient without atleast nerfing ninja tabi by 5%
G4LLOWSC4L1BR4TR2 votesLate game a ninja tabi isn't going to be doing that much to stop an ADC. It'll reduce their damage a bit, but it's hardly gamebreaking or you'd see it every game on every tank. ADCs aren't supposed to do anything to anyone before 30 minutes, that's a thing that only started happening the last season or so.
Rivuo1 votesLate game a ninja tabi isn't going to be doing that much to stop an ADC. It'll reduce their damage a bit, but it's hardly gamebreaking or you'd see it every game on every tank. ADCs aren't supposed to do anything to anyone before 30 minutes, that's a thing that only started happening the last season or so.
You are correct. Ninja tabi wont do that much late game
But if ninja tabi is all you have late game.... Is there a reason to get mad when you die fast?
And yeah adcs arent supposed to be doing anything before 30 minutes, The problem is after 30 minutes tanks are supposedly dying too fast.
But thats the trade off you get for having a shit early to mid you know what i mean? They can do that much damage because they dont do anything for the first 30
G4LLOWSC4L1BR4TR2 votesThey should do more damage late game, but as it stands tanks aren't even able to buy items for late game because late game tank items don't exist. If you added more expensive tank items then if tanks wanted a strong early game they could continue to buy the cheap ones they've already got, but if they were willing to take the early/midgame hit they could skip those and invest in more expensive ones to be strong late instead of being stronger early. Essentially, it would give them the option to choose between strong early and weak late or strong late but weak early, rather than being forced into strong early and weak late.
Zelorxon3 votesBecause think about it this way: Damage is a positive vector, defense is a negative vector, you want to use your positive vector to push towards your enemy team, meanwhile you want to use your negative vector to reduce the enemy's vector.
Now, defense is a stat that in order to be used effectively as a "positive" vector, it must be purchased ahead, and it will eventually scale with hp as resistances and hp multiply eachother (pretty much like AD and AS)
I'm not saying that you need to build tank items first, i was just explaining it from a mathematical perspective.
Sèx Craved Eve3 votesDefensive stats are pretty bad late game once people get 
Big Lincoln3 votesbecause tanks are balanced around the mid-game so their itemization is overall cheaper (flawed philosophy but it's what we have to deal with)
Assuming they farm well they usually get their items first so they can survive early-mid, but then fall off to CC bots once penetration items are acquired.
The Yetii Rider3 votesTanks have to have slot inefficient items so that they aren't unkillable too early on. Because of that, you have champions that have to build armor, MR, health, health regen, and mobility. They also have to stack all of these stats as much as possible, but you can't have armor and MR on a single item. If you do, it's either tuned to be horribly unusable (
), is absolutely batshit overpowered (Runic Bulwark) or causes balance problems and gets tweaked constantly 
.
But you still need multiple stats. So, tanks basically need to buy more items to get the appropriate level of tankiness (Need both 
and
in order to tank all types of damage). Because a tank has to buy multiple items to really start tanking, their items are required to be cheaper.
Tanks suffer from a lot of the problems that a theoretical pure hybrid (AD AP) champ would suffer from, except that they can't take turrets and have no need for in-kit mobility so they're a lot less frustrating to play against.
G4LLOWSC4L1BR4TR5 votesThat justifies why there need to be cheaper tank items, but couldn't you leave some of those in while also adding more expensive "specialized" items? For example, as a tank you'd buy your first two core items (HP/Armor & HP/MR) and then after that you could grab say a 3500 gold item that's particularly effective against a specific type of damage, perhaps something with both crit damage reduction and a %AS slow on it, or maybe even something that reduces %hp damage. That's just an example, I haven't really considered how that particular case would effect game balance, but the idea would be essentially the same. After you've got boots and your first 2-3 items you could start specializing with more expensive items intended to work against particular damage types.
Mokkun3 votesBecause they want defensive stats to be cheaper, but damage to out-scale in the long run.
Borbland3 votesWhat we need are truly unbreakable tanks, but with extremly low damage. Now tanks have fairly high base damage, meaning full tanks still do a bit of damage. We need to reduce that damage and increase their tankyness so they become true tanks.
agbudar1 votesyea i personally wish rammus was exactly this but somehow he does a shit ton of damage with the right build
and you literally make any adc wish they had played hearthstone that day.
and its stupid if you ask me that he does this much but its the only way atm how he can be balanced.
Bârd3 votesTank items are reactive buys. They protect against physical and magic damage (generally one or the other), and you generally need to get buy some of each resistance to be actually durable.
If you had to spend more than 3k to protect against that damage type, you wouldn't buy it just because it was prohibitively expensive.
If it protected against both, it wouldn't be allowed to be strong since it would almost always be the right buy if it were even decent, simply because of the high value.
A Doorknob2 votesArmour doesn't help you make gold in any way other than perhaps sunfire cape..
FantasySniper2 votesDamage champions make more gold, so their items cost more to compensate.
Tank items also have relatively independent scaling, so you don't want them to be too powerful. Otherwise damage champions could build them and be unkillable.
ZT Xperimentor1 votesToo late, again 
FantasySniper1 votesYeah, but Gage was more of a hybrid item anyways.
ZT Xperimentor1 votesMeant for bruisers like nasus, but no riot guts it instead of making it scale on bonus health or be melee only.
KoKoboto2 votesMaybe it's because mid-game when everyone groups tanks generally don't get any farm. Tanks may have good waveclear but mages and marksmen clear waves faster and safer so...
DunkinNoobs2 votesBecause Riot sees how their game is actually played. As the game goes on, less and less of the gold on the map gets allocated to the tanks and instead goes to the carries. Riot realizes this and makes carry items cost more and tank items cost less so that both carry and tank champs still have similar gold progressions despite having dissimilar gold incomes.
phil7012 votesTanks do less damage, and thus naturally have less gold due to getting less kills and having a harder time farming.
aspects12 votescause tanks dont get to farm as much as the other classes, which is why they are not expected to have as much gold
Kosm1K2 votesWhat if we made a triforce like item but for tanks? the requirement would be to buy 3 specific tank items which would result in mostly health and armor, and it be like hydra which has a counterpart for ap damage
AtheosisX1 votesLike chain mail, negatron, and giant's belt? Building into 60 armor and MR and 400 health with a passive that slows enemies when they deal damage to you? That's pretty scary...
Kosm1K1 votesno no, I explained poorly. Hydra has ravenous(for ad) and titanic(for tanks). In this item, there would be 2 different items with a specific use. TriArmor which has armor and health or TriMR which would have MR and health. If they're too much of a stat stick, just give them unique passives and tone down the stats.
EDIT: also they have to be kind of obscenely priced, otherwise everyone is going to pick up 2-3 of them. Having them have the cinderhulk bonus hp passive would help it so only tanks buy it, and it would be the same unique passive as the one from cinderhulk to ensure tanky jglers dont become the new meta. I guess it would be a hard pair of items to balance
notmebuthim2 votesI think it's to balance the gold distribution out. Tanks usually don't get a bunch of kills or farm like a carry does, so their items cost a bit less.
Loon op Zand1 votesMakes sense
Depárt1 votesIt's so that tanks can powerspike earlier than carries, because they're only meant to be strong in the first portions of the game. They get outscaled so spiking early gives them a strength to counter their weakness.
