Can we not allow people building full tank to outdamage carries?
I struggled with this notion before as well, until I realized something:
Range and Mobility are as good, if not better, defensive mechanics compared to actual defense when it comes to LoL.
In your typical JRPG with turn-based combat, then yeah - counter-balancing defense and damage is a clear choice, because those are the only 2 real avenues to balance things.
But in LoL? Champions can move around, dodge things intentionally, utilize range to strike opponents without getting hit back.
Range is pretty nifty for not taking damage, to the point
isn't a particularly bad item on
.
Mobility is amazing for surviving, that's pretty much indisputable. A
is just not going to need the same level of defense as an
to survive the same situations.
Anyways, due to how LoL's itemization works:
Fighter/Tanks don't actually start the game with their defensive mechanic (defense) and need to build items out of the defense tree to survive long enough to do their job - which is dealing damage.
Because assassins, mages, and marksman already come equipped with their defensive mechanics allowing them to survive long enough to do their job (in mobility and/or range), most assassins, mages, and marksman come with lacking damage and need to build damage to deal damage.
Fighter/Tanks tend to get enough damage for free they can compete with the DPS of other damage classes, allowing them to build defense and do damage: rather than placing double the itemization burden on them (which would make them pretty useless). This is why Nasus gets a potential 300 AD steroid, infinite-damage stacking Q, and the largest flat armor and MR shredding debuff in the game, where a damage roll like Caitlyn only gets 50% bonus damage every 10 attacks.
But anyways:
are allowed to be damage rolls while being tanky because being tanky isn't any better than being rather mobile and being a damage roll or having exceptional range and being a damage roll.