"Tanks do too much/a lot of damage"

Ralanr·Apr 8, 2017·36 votes·8,322 views

Honestly this line has bugged me for a while. But it's possible I do not fully understand what people mean by "A lot of damage".

When I think of "a lot of damage" I think of how that effects someone who is built to take damage. If it's hurting them a good or decent amount, then I consider it "a lot of damage" because what doesn't kill a tank is probably going to kill a squishy super quickly (potentially one shotting them).

In this video (and I personally think is still dumb) however, the tanks didn't really do a lot of damage based on my understanding because of how long it took to kill each other. Some fights couldn't even end.

Idk, maybe I'm overestimating just what "A lot of damage" is supposed to be in league. It only makes sense to me that we'd use the durability of the class built to shrug off damage as a scale for what is a lot of damage and what isn't though.

137 Comments

PennsApr 8, 201727 votes

By "a lot of damage" people mean "the Maokai jumps on me and does like 800 damage with a rotation", which is a lot of damage for someone that built 0 offensive items and doesnt ever die.

RalanrApr 8, 201726 votes

How much do people expect to survive by building no defensive items though?

PennsApr 8, 201721 votes

Well how much damage do people expect to do by building no offensive items? It goes both ways really, but if the damage wasnt so easy to land it wouldnt be a problem.

RalanrApr 8, 20178 votes

I agree on the last part. Tanks should be very unreliable with their damage.

YalathanilApr 9, 20175 votes

Tanks should not be bringing damage to a teamfight, but rather CC, initiation and a meat shield on the front lines. The problem is that if their abilities are doing large amounts of damage to the enemy squishies, they also have the tankiness to survive being focused by the whole enemy team, at least until their team can clean up/

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

The unreliable damage isn't for them in teamfights though. It's for them in lane to give them a better skill ceiling.

JarvansWARApr 9, 20176 votes

Which is why tanks like Shen and Sion are great examples of tanks.

Except the former is a case Riot insists on nerfing until they finally re-implement him as a jungle camp.

Big LincolnApr 9, 20171 votes

that's why Shen should come to the light

item 3078 is waiting for you

JarvansWARApr 9, 201710 votes

Get away from me and get that shit out of my face.

item 3748 Come here bby

Sire HippingtonApr 9, 20172 votes

the problem is that you can't make them unreliable in their damage without makeing them also unreliable with their cc, else they can easily setup their damage with the cc. And once they are fully unreliable, they are prettymuch unplayable with the amount of mobillity and shit we have in the game. Just look at Cho, his numbers are more busted when they ever were in history and yet he rocks an all time low on his winrate ever since they took the reliabillity of his W while nerfing rylais.

KilanostApr 9, 20174 votes

Do zero defense carries expect to get away with being caught out of position? Gotta give them something.

Its bad enough tanks serve as a giant blood bag for anyone who builds some lifesteal.

YouCantClickThisApr 9, 20172 votes

{quoted}

By "a lot of damage" people mean "the Maokai jumps on me and does like 800 damage with a rotation", which is a lot of damage for someone that built 0 offensive items and doesnt ever die.

{quoted}

How much do people expect to survive by building no defensive items though?

You just highlighted the problem right there. I hope you caught yourself. In this situation, tanks get to build purely defensive items, and your response was "well that's because squishes aren't building defensive items", well if the tank isn't building offensive related items why should other champions need to build defensive items to counteract said champion? That's where the imbalance lies.

EndlessSorcererApr 9, 20173 votes

The game is designed such that damage outscales defense.

Is it really such a shock that this applies to base damage and base defense too?

Moooose3Apr 9, 20178 votes

It's almost like tanks have base damage on abilities or something. And move slow af with usually only one mobility spell.

ZT XperimentorApr 9, 20178 votes

It's just the self-entitled marksmen mains complaining about being killed by anything, again.

StaliniumApr 9, 20173 votes

to be honest, the complaint is more of when mages (most board users, at least from what I've gathered... sometimes including myself) have 3/4 of our hp taken out at 20 minutes by one rotation of Zac item 1401 item 3143

like. what the fuck...

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

With how they plan on cutting reliable damage from those three tanks they are working on, I think you'll at least feel outplayed next time this happens.

AnidanApr 9, 20173 votes

How often do people really feel outplayed at this point? Half the time they blame the enemy champion whether they died of any cause, outplayed or not unless their damage telegraphed as heavily as a WoW Raid Boss's big hits. And even then, obviously every champion can't have those telegraphs or different problems arise.

Some champions have kits designed around outplaying, but as a result people just claim those champions are paradoxically incapable of outplaying because they have tools specifically designed for outplaying. The result is that people just don't feel outplayed by pretty much anything anymore, they feel like the enemy controls the entire fight as opposed to reacting to changes in the fight. Even then, if a champion has telegraphs they don't feel outplayed, they seek to blame something else or point out their own play, rather than recognize it as an outplay by the enemy.

FortisDominusApr 9, 20176 votes

wtf? its tanks killing tanks ofc they are doing no damage to one another at full build with only their base values.

oh your a bronze player who only plays tanks no wonder this is so bias lol

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

So let's just ignore my logic about how damage is judged and attack me directly?

Nice ad hominem.

AhristocatsApr 9, 20173 votes

don't ever feel bad

despite your rank you're one of the most wised man of the board i ever crossed

-compliment from a high elo player~~

-gH

Sahn UzalApr 9, 201710 votes

Attacks someone personally based on their rank

Comments from a level 17 account to hide the fact that you are probably no better.

God, you are one sad individual.

FortisDominusApr 9, 20172 votes

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https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=an+unseen+rengar

https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=the+saltstalker

These are my acc's. Right now I mostly play on riddrion, I want to get to diamond with just eve (for the most part). I know you want to believe im a bronze or silver player, but im sorry to say that im not xD.

Sahn UzalApr 9, 20173 votes

Gold.

No offense, but a potato could have a better understanding of the game, as long as you're mechanically competent at all you can reach gold.

You being gold really does not impress me in the slightest for the sake of this argument.

agbudarApr 8, 20175 votes

its funny to see tanks having an all out brawl

RalanrApr 8, 20171 votes

Funny and boring somehow.

SlythionApr 9, 20172 votes

I love it, but to each his own

Then again, I play a lot of tanks/juggs and have the standpoint that fights should last awhile, leaving room to strategize and outplay/come back instead of it being decided in the initial first 2 seconds like a damage meta prefers

AnidanApr 9, 20171 votes

I hear that a lot, that longer fights require more strategy and had more comeback potential, but in my experience it was the opposite. All the strategy and tactics were to decide what would happen in the initial moments and then as the fight dragged on it generally just became an elongated case of sweeping up the pieces after they've fallen where they may. The strategy is present for the first 4-6 seconds, but after that it deteriorated as important abilities were long-since used up and remaining people were retreating and the objective started being taken. I used to think long fights were a good thing, but there is such a thing as too long, which is about where most people asking for long fights want it taken. There's a middle ground that sounds much better to me at this point.

SlythionApr 9, 20171 votes

I can imagine, but even your "too long" scenario is preferable than fights being over in <5 seconds imo

"cleaning up the pieces" can also be viewed as a "hunt" in some cases, or from the defensive side, an escape. From my pov, it adds a certain element that can't be achieved through the damage meta.

The first 4-6 seconds tend to be the most important stages of a fight in that type of meta, as it is in most real-world situations. The initial "clash" tends to decide which way the battle will favor, but at least the chance of a recovery is still there, rather than the "what just happened to all of us" like it has been.

Idk, even from your perspective I would still prefer longer fights opposed to current ones. It's important to note that Riot did tackle damage a little bit, and it was appreciated. I hope they do more, but their recent "lets release champions overloaded with potential" motto sidetracks it.

shrugs

AnidanApr 9, 20172 votes

Oh, I should definitely clarify: Current fights are, in fact, too short. What I prefer is a middle ground between the extremely long fights that a lot of tank players seem to want and the rocket tag that assassins prefer. The middle ground feels best to me, in my opinion. Of course, feel free to disagree :) Somewhere around 4-6 or 7 seconds for the major part of the fight, as opposed to 1-2 seconds for the damage meta fights or 8-10 seconds for outright tank meta fights.

SlythionApr 10, 20172 votes

I agree, a middle ground for 6-7 seconds would be preferable. In a comparison though, I'd take an 8-10+ second fight over a 3 second fight if I had to choose an extreme, but I'm biased being a mainly tank/jugg player :^)

We seem to be on similar preferences though, wet noodle fights of 10+ seconds are only fun to watch when it's between supports tbh :^)

SpoofghoulApr 9, 20174 votes

If they dont bring any damage then they are going to need something else to be a threat, right now most of them do not carry that much more cc then other classes except for maybe nautilus

They need to be disruptive in some way or they will be ignored, this can be with their base damage so that you cannot ignore them forever.

Or double their cc so you have to deal with them and keep them at bay and perhaps you will be forced to focus them or be stunned all the time

Or perhaps they need more debuffs or aura's

They are going to need something to draw ''aggro'' as well as means to say hey do not attack me

Right now all they have for aggro is a medium amount of cc at best and the rest is put into other utility and damage, but mostly damage and it isnt even that much, once an adc builds GA your damage is no longer relevant anymore and they can ignore you for half a minute

Reducing their damage further without compensating elsewhere leads to the whole class being unviable

The question is what do the league players want, tripple the cc? tripple the debuffs? a combination of both? Ill tell you now, people are going to hate it, tanks will be more annoying then ever with things like that.

And besides that tanks will still need to have tools to farm or help fight objectives too, just look at the jungle who plays tanks there anymore? their clears take too long to make an impact and their damage/defense is too low to stand up to lee

LankPantsApr 9, 20172 votes

their clears take too long to make an impact and their damage/defense is too low to stand up to lee

Can I just point out that this is as much an issue of Lee Sin as it is of tanks? When I jungle tanks I don't feel that threatened by anyone else other than Shaco, it's mostly just Lee. I also don't feel like I can stand up to Lee on many non-tank junglers either. That's not to say that there aren't issues with jungle tanks, I do believe that there are many, but in this case I think it's far more so an issue with Lee Sin.

vOmvbrawfUApr 9, 20174 votes

The underlying question to this entire debate is:

Should a champion building 0 offensive items be able to outduel a champion building 0 defensive items.

VekknaApr 10, 20173 votes

It's not even that. Most mages could build item 3165 item 3151 item 3116 item 3001 and still have no prayer of winning a 1v1 with a Zac with item 1401 item 3065 item 3083

BALDG1VEN BOOMERApr 8, 20173 votes

I think the reason a lot of people say they do too much damage is because they bring a lot of reliable CC that's easy to follow up on.

Maokai though has a point and click root and his ultimate could be toned down a bit in terms of damage. But generally speaking tanks damage don't scale all that well and looking for things like Sunfire that also add in addition to their damage.

But when you have a squishy who is building no defensive items what so ever it's only fair that they'll be blown up fast to whom ever gets on them, it's also one of the reason why some ADCs have a support following them around.

RalanrApr 8, 20172 votes

And I can understand that. It's why I think tanks should have more unreliable damage.

4NoxiousHoursApr 8, 20172 votes

I think when people say a lot of damage they mean their abilities mixed with items like item 3068 item 3075 lol

RalanrApr 8, 20173 votes

Potentially, and sunfire is getting nerfed as a result.

Thornmail I don't see often enough.

NineTailedMysticApr 9, 20171 votes

A Tank Champion with zero offensive items shouldn't do more than a quarter of a squishy champions HP. Played against a Zac, his rotation did about a half my HP. That's outrageous. I buy some MR and be fine for a while. He buys an Abyssal and I start taking half my HP again. That's okay, he bought an offensive item with a strong passive.

The thing I cannot fathom though, is offensive scalings that scale with defensive stats. Like how Taric gets damage from Armor, or Galio gets damage from MR, or how much Tanks have an HP scaling of some kind.

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

{quoted}

A Tank Champion with zero offensive items shouldn't do more than a quarter of a squishy champions HP.

Then what's the downside of being squishy if not even tanks could hurt?

The thing I cannot fathom though, is offensive scalings that scale with defensive stats. Like how Taric gets damage from Armor, or Galio gets damage from MR, or how much Tanks have an HP scaling of some kind.

Usually defensive scalings on offense stats are too low to really matter. It also better encourages said champion to build how they are supposed to build.

AptestApr 9, 20174 votes

In league of legends, A champion incapable of killing an opponent is either useless, or is a support with overloaded utility and an understanding that there is a glass cannon backing him up with uber DPS.

Therefore to keep from being useless tanks needs damage. Not, just enough damage to make them hurt a little bit and then you kite back and kill them, but rather, enough damage to send you packing.

Offensive scaling with defensive stats is there to make sure said tank gets to have that damage. Without it, you'd have to load the damage on his base stats (oppressive early game that falls off super hard) or have him scale very strongly on one item that he just builds full damage every game and does a "utility assassin" thing.

NineTailedMysticApr 9, 20171 votes

Then why do Tanks get tanky, damage, and utility?

Anyways, I'd like you redirect you to my reply to Ralanr.

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

Really in terms of damage, they don't get much (as you can see from the video). They can't take towers fast, they aren't good at taking objectives, hell they can't even kill a super minion before the next wave arrives.

Chembaron YamadaApr 9, 20171 votes

In the video they are just using auto attacks. Which means that your argument for taking objectives is correct. But most of tanks damage is in their kit, having good base damages and many of them have %HP damage which makes killing super minions alot faster.

Of course tanks have to be able to deal some damage on their own though. Otherwise they wouldn't function in lane. They can allow these tanks to have damage... as long as it's unreliable. If your main damage comes literally just from standing on top of someone (Zac W, Sejuani W, Amumu W and so on) that's the problem and for some of them they will tackle it with the tank update.

RalanrApr 9, 20171 votes

They use abilities at the end.

Chembaron YamadaApr 9, 20171 votes

The point still holds. Tanks should be able to deal damage, but it should be unreliable. Like requiring you to hit a skillshot, CCing the enemy against a wall and stuff like that.

The champions I mentioned literally just need to stay next to a champion because they have AoE spells as main source of damage centered around them. Some even deal damage over time and they just have to turn it on (Sejuani W, Amumu W).

RalanrApr 9, 20172 votes

With that I agree. Tanks should be more like Sion and less like Amumu.