Armor is Fine.

Yes, I know. There will be a lot of silver players who just lost to a Zed/Yasuo in normals and will instantly down vote this post. If you're one of these people, please do so and move on.

Tanks are hovering at around a ~49% winrate, Seeker's Armguard has a low 50% winrate for people who build it, and Ninja Tabi is basically not even built anymore. Armor is seemingly useless for people who build it, and all hope is lost. Or is it? What can account for all the complaints? Why are winrates so low for anyone who builds armor?

The problem with winrates is that they don't account for the separation of player bases. For example, tank mains usually never play bruisers and brusier mains usually never tanks. What ends up happening is, whenever one particular player base was doing bad, Riot ended up giving compensation buffs so that their winrates would match the other classes.

Tanks were one particular instance of this. Tank mains were generally significantly worse than their brusier counterparts, and in turn, Riot gave buffs to these champions in order to compensate for the lack of skill coming tank players at the time. The unintended consequence of this was the most disastrous meta in League of Legend's history, the Season 6 tank meta.

I'm sure you many of you remember the days when the only viable picks at the time were Maokai , Poppy , Shen , etc. Picking anything else would be essentially trolling. The days when champions like Akali , Ekko , Fizz , Yasuo , would take grasp and fully one shot you with nothing but Sunfire Cape and Iceborn Gauntlet , and the days when Cinderhulk was the only acceptable option in jungle.

Tank meta was in full swing. Players were more outraged than ever, there were constant complaints on Gameplay boards and Reddit telling Riot to fix the tank meta, all thanks to Riot concluding that, instead of players needing to get better at tank champions, tank items were simply just bad. Back in Season 6, the only thing I would play were bruiser top laners. I could maybe get to Diamond 5 at best, until I picked up Maokai and was able to solo boost myself to Diamond 2, at a time when Maokai's winrate was as high as 56%, even though I had no prior knowledge or practice of the champion. Maokai was simply overpowered due to the insane amount of buffs that Riot had given him in order to make up for tank players' lack of skill.

The Season 6 tank meta was not the only instance of buffing classes played by unskilled players. Enter, the Season 7 Ardent Censer meta. The exact same cycle occurred, unskilled support players got massive buffs to easy-to-play support champions like Soraka , Nami , and ESPECIALLY Janna . Support was already a balanced class at the time, but because of the massive help that the heal/shield champions got, many skilled players from other classes started migrating to support, and proceeded to abuse the now extremely overpowered Ardent Censer meta. Solo queue was completely ruined. Janna throughout the rest of the season sat at a comfortable 57% winrate.

The point is, players need to get better at the game, they cannot be given buffs simply because they cannot perform well on balanced classes, else, we will just return to another tank or Ardent Censer meta, like we did in Seasons 6 and 7.

The reason Armor is considered so bad right now is because of what we remembered of the dreaded Tank meta in Season 6. Back then, you could endlessly stack armor with no consequence and become basically unkillable, able to out damage anyone in 1v1s and teamfights. Tank players still believe they can buy armor and 1v1 anyone. Mages still believe they can rush Seeker's Armguard and Ninja Tabi and auto win lane against Zed and Yasuo. However, that's not the case anymore, and it never will be, because that's not a healthy way to balance the game. Seeker's Armguard and Ninja Tabi should help give you an advantage in lane against AD champions, but not outright auto-win you the lane. Tank items are meant to help you survive in teamfights, but not be the be-all-end-all item that makes you invincible and allows you to 1v1 everyone.

People believe that's the purpose of tank items because that's what they were used to in Season 6. We all thought tanks being insanely overpowered was just "normal" because we've had to deal with it for so long. It's time we all let go of this idea, put the past behind us, and become better players, instead of complaining that our Armor rush isn't overpowered like it used to be.

tl;dr armor is fine, you just need to get better at the game.