Low Health Tanks?
Usually when I play tanks, stacking health is a given. However, I've gotten bored of it lately. Are there any champs who are good tanks with low health and high resistances besides Poppy?
26 Comments
yes they're called bruisers
Short answer, no.
Long answer. Tanking generally works by the tank surviving long enough to get in the middle of the enemy team and disrupt them while forcing important cooldowns/spells on them instead of a better target. Generally tanks have low damage and high utility along with poor scalings, so going tanky is a given. However, resistances by themself are basically useless. For basics, every 100 resistances = 1 more entire health bar that enemies of that damage must go through. So at 1000 health, gaining 100 armor gives you an effective 2000 health against physical damage. Now, this is semi static: every 100 armor provides 100% more effective health, so 200 armor = 3000 effective health, 300 armor = 4000 effective health and so on. Then look at this: at 1000 health and 100 armor gaining 1000 health gives you 2000 total health and 4000 effective health against physical damage. That means 1000 health is providing 1000 extra effective health compared to 100 armor. As your armor goes up, the amount of health needed before getting more armor provides the most defence also goes up. At 1000 health, 500 armor getting 100 more armor gives 1000 effective health, but getting 1000 more health gives you 5000 effective health. And so on.
So without health the resistances are rather weak and meaningless, especially since any form of penetration or reduction will remove all forms of tankiness.
Other than Poppy they don't really exist, unfortunately. I agree with you, I think it could be cool to be able to have a character that's super tanky without also stacking tons of health, but it doesn't really work with how the game is designed. As Lord Dusteon mentioned, things like penetration and the way resistances are capped make low health tanking pretty much an impossibility unless it's built into the champion's kit (Poppy).
There are champions that work well at low health like Poppy such as Tryndamere and Aatrox. You can make them pesky by giving them things like Rageblade, Maw and GA to frustrate your opponent.
Poppy is a fighter, really. Her passive just helps her survive.
A relatively low HP tank would be Malphite. I've mained him for a while, and most games I don't even break 4k hp. You can have 3kish and do fine, because of how well you scale with armour. Your passive is also effectively 10% bonus health.
mordekaiser/ ap xin zhao
I have done a tank Yi in ARAM. But that was only because the enemy usually doesn't check to see what way yi is building hehehe. They just expect for him to jump in with q and then they focus him dead. The short nature of that mode let me get away with it for most of the match. But normally, if you stand there and do no damage and no cc, they don't really have any reason to target you so you aren't even going to soak damage or make them use cc on you.
a tank needs to have abilities which mitigate damage either by absorbing it or by denying it. just soaking damage is not tanking. tanking means you are wasting your enemies time for your team. if all time you can waste is the time it takes them to 100-0 you, its not tanking even if you have alot of health and resistances. if they have to actually invest time into movement and cooldowns to damage you, THAT is tanking.
I mean specifically champs who might only have 1100 or 1200 health, but who could have over 100 of each resistance; maybe more. Master Yi with 10% life steal and 3% spellvamp in runes, masteries and a Dorans Blade sounds viable, and especially with Seraphs Embrace and Nashor's Tooth for a w buff.
It's very difficult to have an actual tank, who doesn't have high HP. Cause HP scales so well with your other defenses.
But for a few Bruiser Oriented champions. Higher defenses in exchange for HP, typically benefit a little more from sustain. Such as from Life Steal. Nasus would probably be a prime example as he has built in LS in his passive, which (I believe) also works with his empowerd Q.
Rammus. If the problem is having to BUILD health, Cho'Gath might also fit your fancy.
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Volibear
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Swain
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Garen (new)
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Rammus
There was a build for
that I was kind of working on awhile back. Basically a resistance stacking drain tank where you build 
and then some other tank items. Your W heals for a pretty large amount in team fights and such. It's pretty fun.