Titanic Hydra is probably the best item for a tank

Morgy Morgy·Mar 19, 2016·2 votes·667 views

It give them health and attack damage, and a strong active component that can shred anyone if you have enough HP. Overall, this item is extremely strong and maybe a bit unfair. Too bad tanks are still useless because lol 9 armor pen items is balanced

2 Comments

Hayaishi2Mar 19, 20161 votes

Might wanna stop feeding as a tank, then you'll realize how hard to kill they become.

67chromeMar 19, 20161 votes

Titanic Hydra is probably the best item for a tank

Titanic isn't a great item for tanks, mainly because Riot broke up tanky champions into 2 archetypes: Tanks and fighters. Tanks are tanky CC. Fighters are tanky DPS.

Tanks have the job of initiating fights and locking down priority targets, though they can also use their kits to counter-innitiate and peel for allies. Fighters have the job of killing things.

Titanic Hydra is a tanky DPS item that helps you kill things, making it not the best tank item but a pretty solid fighter item.

Too bad tanks are still useless because lol 9 armor pen items is balanced

The vast majority of those armor penetration items are flat penetrations.

Flat penetration is actually hard-countered by armor.

Vs. 30 armor, 30 armor penetration allows you to do true damage. Vs. 300 armor...it doesn't.

That's a case of treating a ~77% damage from physical target as a 100% damage from physical target, or a DPS increase of exactly 30%. Vs. treating a 25% damage from physical target as a ~27% damage from physical target, or a DPS increase of ~8%.

Considering a 30% increase in DPS from AD, AS, and AP is just going to be a 30% DPS increase regardless of what your opponent buys: the gold-value of flat armor pen shrinking rapidly does mean that flat armor penetration is in fact countered by armor, and it's countered pretty hard.

%Penetrations are the exact opposite (100% pen vs. 0 armor is 0 more damage, 100% pen vs. 100 armor is 100% more damage), but on that front it's worth considering what happened to %penetrations this season with "lol tanks are useless because 9 armor pen items now".

item 3071 requires 6 stacks rather than 4 to apply 30% shred. It also got it's flat armor shred component outright removed, so double-whammy nerf. item 3035 got changed from 35% total armor penetration to 30% bonus armor penetration. It's now-comperable upgrade in either item 3036 item 3033 are 45% penetration vs. bonus armor instead of 35% penetration total armor. Considering base armor on Sona gets to 76 and mega armor-items like item 3068 item 3143 item 3742 don't offer more than 50 armor, 45% vs. bonus armor is a massive nerf from 35% vs. total armor. The armor levels necessary for 45% vs. bonus armor to be better are just extremely unrealistic to find, outside of you're team getting creamed by a legendary full-build Malphtie, in which case a minor ~5% boost in efficiency isn't going to be all that helpful.

More importantly with this change: Last Whisper and it's upgrades are only cost-effective vs. tanky targets, item 3036 is over twice the price of a item 1038 sword and only offers a B.F.Sword's stats vs. squishies, meaning LW just dropped from being a good item vs. 100% of your opponents to an item that's only good against ~1/3 of your opponents.