Devs' misconception on the reworked tank items?
7.9 patch seems to be a messy patch, to say the least, because the dramatic changes to several popular items more than likely require players to overhaul their tank builds, which is made even more difficult by the removal of the legacy client and its ability to edit custom item sets.
Despite that nonsense of removing a key QoL tool, the item changes have me further perplexed.
The developers seem to want to make tanks have a healthy approach to their item builds. That's a legitimate rationale, their methods have me scratching my head. I can understand shifting stats from health into resistances, but rather than just stop there, they gut out core tank items to make them more "carry friendly." When buying items, there's usually a trade off between competing stats. Should I invest in more damage, or could I get away with what I already have and build some defense instead? But these new durability item adjustments give carry players the best of both worlds while weakening tanks overall by removing access to some of the better tanks items available.
The developers' rationale, it seems, is that carries are at too much risk to cc and burst damage. So to compensate, they thought gutting Banshee's Veil and Guardian Angel's main defensive stats so they are more "carry friendly" without greatly compromising their potential damage output. The devs feels that carries would best benefit from an extra spell shield and self-rez effect, as long as they didn't take much of a hit to their damage output. But by making carries harder to kill, they also made tanks easier to kill at the same time. As a tank, I want to be able to survive as long as possible, so I could mitigate as much damage to the rest of the team as possible. This is accomplished with varying combinations of cc, pulling aggro (or "peeling" for the squishies), or just simply playing the meatshield. If the tank can survive that much longer, that usually translates to more time for the carries to dish out the damage. That spell shield might be useful to keep the carry alive, but that same spell shield can enable a tank to initiate better engagements, force the enemy to prioritize spells, and prevent cc-layering on the squishies themselves, in addition to staying alive longer.
Instead, tanks have reworked items that force them to choose between straight-up defense stats without the formerly accompanying unique effects or those unique effects with lower defense stats (plus throwaway stats that may or many not be useful in any given game).
Carries already have enough items for protection without overly compromising their damage-dealing roles. If they want more, then it shoudl come at a trade off, and not one at the expense of tanks. And this doesn't even take into consideration all the "support" items that already provide similar protection that carries can still get for themselves.
