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How to improve tanks

Youngcuck·3/22/2019, 4:29:34 AM·14 votes·9,514 views

Tanks are obviously not in their best state right now and they would benefit from some slight tweaks, These are my ideas:

  • Keep tanks as vulnerable as they are now in the early game but increase their damage to minions (only minions, not champs) so that they can better control the waves and safely farm in lane. In their current state, trying to get CS and getting the wave in a good place against champions like Darius, Renekton, Fiora, Jayce, Irelia with the low damage tanks deal to waves is a disgrace.

  • Introduce more items to allow for more variety. Tank items are very one sided and inflexible: you build item 3068 early to farm, item 3065 to tank the enemy mage, item 3143 to tank the adc and the rest are optional but with very few viable alternatives. item 3075 Never have I seen this item being relevant past the early game, the return damage is insignificant and later in the game champions you built that item for just stack so many heals that grievous wounds become useless. item 3025 This item is VERY niche and really useless on tanks since raw defensive stats a useless without HP stacking. item 3110 I cant even remember the last time I've seen this item consistently on a tank. It gives a shitton of armor but guess what, raw stats are not worth if you want to tank because of lack of HP, also the passive on that item feels really insignificant, 15% less attack speed is barely noticeable when items like this item 3087 give 40% and adcs usually build 2 Zeal items on top of their item 3006 . item 3742 This item feels like its much more useful on bruisers and immobile juggernauts than tanks, you really dont need that empowered auto that slows on a champ that already packs a ton of CC. item 3512 This item looks like a great idea on tanks, in fact it may sounds amazing on paper but ingame it sucks big time, in fact you only see this item on Yorick and Udyr and sometimes as a desperate holding nexus strategy when you have 2 or 3 inhibs down. I like this item but it needs changes in the raw stats it offers. item 3800 This is one of my favorite tank item concepts, it gives everything a tank wants and needs: health, mana, cdr, HP regen, armor and an active to stick to enemies and slow them down. Whats the problem of this item? Problem is you need other items first to be able to even last for the 2 or 3 seconds it takes to get to the enemy backline and games dont last enough to get to the point in which you will be able to build this item. item 3193 This is by far my favorite tanky item concept. It gives defensive stats which are increased in teamfights and an active that doubles your max HP while in a big fight. I also love the fact that it decreases the wielders damage when passive is active because tanks are not meant to be a damage threat to enemy squishies, just a CC threat. And its also cheap which allows for champions that dont usually get kills (tanks) and in general have a lower gold income to easily buy it. Problems with this item? It only works as a 5th or 6th item because if you dont stack HP, there is no HP to double.

  • Reduce the amount of % armor penetration these two items give item 3036 item 3033 . Tanks dont need to be the first to die in a fight. A tank wont realistically be able to 1vs1 the enemy adc while its being peeled by their team. The team that loses their damage carries first is in most cases the team that loses the teamfight, so why making tanks so easy to kill when they are not a real damage threat to the enemy team? If one team loses their carries in a fight, their tanks are eventually going to die too.

  • Items like these item 3153 item 3124 may be balanced on their own, but when paired together they just mow tanks, there is nothing you can build or do against them. On-hit damage is very controversial, especially on champions that can heavily abuse these items. I thing in general these 2 are fine excepting that Phantom Hit passive on item 3124 , that thing needs to disappear.

  • The rune system doesnt benefit tanks at all. Grasp is more useful on bruisers than tanks, Aftershock is the only decent keystone for tanks in the tank tree and its already been nerfed and Guardian is honestly more of a support keystone than a top lane tank. Demolish is very good for tanks. Font of life has already been mathematically tested to be complete bullshit and worthless. Shield bash is crap because guess what, tanks want tankiness not damage!! Honestly that rune is more useful on champion like Riven. Bone Plating has been nerfed because it was picked on pretty much every champ that needed to survive early game poke. Unflinching and Revitalize are better on supports and bruisers respectively. Honestly the tank tree needs a big change, I would create a brand new tree for tanky supports and change the current main tank tree to better fit the role.

  • There is so much true damage, % damage and on-hit effects abusing in this game that its basically impossible to tank all of that, most of the new champs have stupid untankable damage characteristics. Kayle true damage on every auto after lvl 16. Pyke ult is a % HP execute. Urgot ult is a % HP execute. Brand a lot of % AOE damage on his passive. Camille massive true damage Q on a very low cooldown. Darius Tank? Pff I'm Darius bro. Evelynn This champ was made to kill squishies but the amount of damage she does to tanks with her MR shred and % missing health ult is absurd. Fiora Her passive and ult are unaffect by whatever item you get, the more HP you build the more dmg she does and armor is just useless. Gangplank barrels ignore armor, than god this was nerfed a long time ago. Illaoi Good luck trying to last more than 2 seconds against this fine lady. Kaisa Passive designed to destroy tanks which has a stupidly strong sinergy with this item 3124 . MasterYi Youre just a big stack of meat ready to be turned into a kebab when you fight this guy.Vayne hehe tanks btw. Velkoz if you get tagged by his passive there is nothing to tank there cuz true damage. And dont forget all the Conqueror abusers on top of this. My point with all of this is that there are lots of counterplay options against tanks but very low options for tanks to deal with that kind of damage.

This was my perspective on the game from the point of view of a person that doesnt main any lane or role and just enjoys to try a bit of each and I honestly feel like tanks are the most helpless champions in the roster. I hope the textwall wasnt too tedious and feel free to bash me as much as you want, I know how the boards work in terms of roasting.

27 Comments

Boatwhistle3/22/2019, 4:45:14 AM4 votes

They really need to introduce more scaling to the game that behave as negatives. For instance there could be an item that give a metric ton of tankiness but reduces your dmg to champions like stone plate passive only less extreme and all the time.

Tahminatrix 3/22/2019, 4:49:41 AM4 votes

{quoted}

  • , also the passive on that item feels really insignificant, 15% less attack speed is barely noticeable when items like this item 3087 give 40% and adcs usually build 2 Zeal items on top of their item 3006 .

item 3110 and item 3082 actually reduce TOTAL attack speed, still not a bad example considering its entirely useless against ad casters (most of which can build black cleaver which also gives 20% cdr AND ->400 HP<-!!!) and even many auto reliant champs have some form of auto reset or actions to perform between autos.

The item is INCREADIBLY niche and doesn't even perform very well unlike black cleaver which you might aswell consider to be the offensive counterpart that even assassins abuse to a great extent.

Handy Sandy 3/22/2019, 12:13:52 PM2 votes

A tank wont realistically be able to 1vs1 the enemy adc while its being peeled by their team. The team that loses their damage carries first is in most cases the team that loses the teamfight, so why making tanks so easy to kill when they are not a real damage threat to the enemy team?

Tanks need damage in order to be threatening. When you have all those defenses you normally 1v1 anyone because of your base damages. If you reduce those base damages, you're useless and nobody focuses you. If you lower CDs for more CC so they focus you, then that tank is just OP because stuns every 2 seconds. I don't think there's any easy way to solve this.

Also everyone's thinking about Vayne Yasuo MasterYi well how's a Fiddlesticks supposed to deal with tanks? If you play Fiddlesticks or anyone else without bps you'll notice that tanks are still really tanky.

even Velkoz is terrible against tanks even tho he has true damage.

Peel for my ADC3/22/2019, 12:21:00 PM1 votes

Great post man , if Tanks had more item synergy like Adc's and mages do the game would be a more welcoming place for tanks , you also forgot all about our friends Varus KogMaw they eat tanks for lunch

Done253/22/2019, 12:40:04 PM1 votes

FYI, Pyke's R is a flat HP execute, not a max% one.

FireDrizzle3/22/2019, 1:12:22 PM1 votes

Buffing tanks waveclear wont make laning vs Kled, Fiora, Irelia (when she isnt nerfed) etc possible because they don't need too care if the tank has a minion wave advantage.

Tanks are hopeless top in the early levels because the runes and they don't scale because resistances are generally worthless. I can have a stacked dark seal on Singed and just armour otherwise but get facetanked by a Draven with 0 pen.

Speeedy3/22/2019, 3:23:15 PM1 votes

coming from an ADC perspective, I don't think item 3036 is a problem as its a 4th+ item, item 3033 is only when they have healing like vlad, soraka, etc. I think item 3153 is in a decent state but shouldn't be allowed to be combined with item 3124. My biggest problem with those 2 items is if you fully stack rageblade you are nearing the AS cap with 2 items vs if you go item 3031 and 2 zeal items you still need like a tristana Q to get that close to the AS cap. It just makes certain champions like Vayne or Kaisa super strong since she has no need to build LDR or Mortal Reminder all game. I think its just too strong of a 2 item spike since you become unable to duel them till you get 4+ items. IE+Completed zeal is winnable vs Bork + Rageblade but its completely RNG based on the number of crits you get, which is terrible design in my view since it becomes a coinflip of luck.

Always angry tbh3/22/2019, 8:16:32 PM1 votes

How it works right now is that the more resistance you have the less effective it is. So if you stack more resistances to counter the pen one or two opponents may have you waste gold against literally every enemy who doesn't have it (yet). Pen is currently too effective when you get the right amount of resistances but still moderately effective on people who only get one resistance item. Also the value of one single resistance item is much higher than when you start to stack them. It's hard to explain without explaining the formula but as things are right now pen is more valuable than resistance from a certain point in the game and this point is way too early. It also makes it so that tanks are very weak late game because their resistances are less valuable than pen.

Also CDR options for tanks suck. The only 20% cdr options are Armor items that give way too much armor for it to be valuable. If anything, tanks need HEALTH options with CDR. Maybe make the CDR scale with something so it doesn't instantly give a crapton of health AND 20% cdr, I can see that being problematic. Make it give a bit of the promised CDR with every takedown or something like that. Maybe an item that converts a certain amount of resistances to % damage reduction so that excessive resistances actually become valuable when you stack your tank items. Could be an active item that lasts for a few seconds.

It'd be perfectly fine if tanks were very beefy and hard to kill (Which they should be). As long as they don't deal too much damage like they did before. I really just want to see tanks again and play them myself.

heroikc3/22/2019, 4:34:31 AM1 votes

You forgot Illaoi

OSAY93/23/2019, 5:23:04 AM1 votes

it's the runes that are the issue imo. there are really only 2 tanky runes that are viable in the whole game. there's aftershock (which is fantastic), it provides heavy defense bonus for a short period of time. and makes tanky engages really scary and tough to counter with burst. This is good.

The second is tier 3 resolve. Bone plating mitigates the most damage, imo, but second wind and conditioning aren't horrible either. these are the second.

The third you could argue is overgrowth, which really isn't bad, but it's really not very good, nor does it make you tanky in the long run.

so that's it. we have 2 rune slots, with 3-5 to choose from, 3 coming from the same slot.

that's it.

item discussion is nice, but until we have more than 2 runes that add tankiness, you have your reason.

thanks rito. [zombie-brand-facepalm]

Colte3/22/2019, 7:20:51 AM1 votes

i dislike the % HP execute ultimates especially pyke's ult, i've seen it penta kill some people (very poor positioning on their side but it resets cd on kill which is dumb)

KVbqbFsC8e3/22/2019, 7:22:22 AM1 votes

Delete Conqueror and Guinsoos. Thats all it would take.