Why are defensive stats so useless? I want to actually tank again.

Cheesybox·1/18/2015, 1:17:37 PM·119 votes·10,444 views

The past 2 games I've played I've built a plethora of defensive stats and no matter what, I will get destroyed instantly. Does not matter if I stack resists, stack HP, follow the perfect gold efficient balance of the 2, I cannot survive any engagement at all for more than 2 or 3 CC'd seconds. Penetration items are so stupidly gold efficient that one LW or VS can negate a couple thousand effective HP, and there is so much % HP damage in this game now after your resists are shredded to nothing. I know all you do is buy yourself "time" with defensive items, but when they're negated so easily, why bother?

156 Comments

Rebonack1/18/2015, 5:12:54 PM33 votes

The issue is that defensive items are horribly cost-inefficient compared to their offensive counter-parts. To make matters worse, there's no sufficiently beefy HP item to provide a soft-counter to %Pen (+25% bonus HP item, Rito plz). To make matters even worse %Pen is a double-dip stat. It scales off both YOUR damage AND the enemy's resistance. If it were changed to scale ONLY off the target's resistance (like, say, bonus True Damage based on how much Ar/MR they have) then it would be much more manageable as well as making it clear to players that the counter is building HP instead of more resist.

ValyrianBlade1/18/2015, 1:25:28 PM16 votes

The only problem I see is with LW and VS. Even against low amounts of armour/mr they are as strong or stronger than other penetration items, and they are ridiculously cheap.

Their effects should either be reduced to around 20% (I don't like this though because their should be a way to deal with tanks), or their gold cost should be increased to the 3000 range (meaning they need new recipes because the combine cost would be insane).

I just think it's wrong that LW is core on every adc even when no one on the enemy team has even bought armour, and void staff the same for ap against no mr.

I guess a third option would be to leave the price but change the stats to be ONLY penetration. So the item is really slot inefficient if the other team doesn't have a tank at least.

Circuit Bear1/18/2015, 7:05:44 PM12 votes

Because Riot hates tanks. They aren't flashy and they have proved it time and time again. LCS Big plays are all that matters to them now

Cheesybox1/18/2015, 1:28:30 PM8 votes

I agree, I don't want 400+ resists being impossible to deal with, but why is a 2300 gold item core on any damage dealer and gold efficient throughout the entire game?

Lord Lohengramm1/18/2015, 6:47:40 PM8 votes

Even if you're a full tank, you can't just enter inside 5 people without your team's backup. As you will get CC'd so hard and probably won't make it out.

If we supporse that you're a full tank, you have at least double health of others and about the triple of their armor and mr. We assume that you're three times harder to kill than any squishy. If we suppose that your team have the same damage as the enemy team, then your team should have killed three squishies while the enemy team only kills you, and we can suppose it's a won teamfights, no?

Tankiness is for teamfights not for duels.

Meep Man1/18/2015, 5:00:26 PM7 votes

Play Alistar , he never dies.

But in all seriousness, there needs to be better defensive items.

Unironic SJW1/18/2015, 6:54:57 PM6 votes

Gotta keep defensive stats weak to prevent the game from being League of Mobile Bruisers which happens everytime defensive stats are strong. I'm sorry, tank mains but until Riot accepts that champs need to be tanky OR do damage and not both (only exception to this rule is shit like Nasus who is irrelevant for the first 20 minutes) , we're going to have this issue. That's why every tank item got chain nerfs

Drukyul1/18/2015, 7:11:21 PM4 votes

Having 100 Armor/MR with a ton of damage on top is way stronger than having 200 Armor/MR with mediocre damage. Because Lifesteal is OP.

Arcade Andrew1/18/2015, 7:29:53 PM4 votes

{quoted}

The past 2 games I've played I've built a plethora of defensive stats and no matter what, I will get destroyed instantly. Does not matter if I stack resists, stack HP, follow the perfect gold efficient balance of the 2, I cannot survive any engagement at all for more than 2 or 3 CC'd seconds. Penetration items are so stupidly gold efficient that one LW or VS can negate a couple thousand effective HP, and there is so much % HP damage in this game now after your resists are shredded to nothing. I know all you do is buy yourself "time" with defensive items, but when they're negated so easily, why bother?

item 3075 item 3075 item 3075 item 3075 item 3075 As somebody who played mainly AD to escape bronze I swear if a tank got a thornmail I hated life

Ginny1/18/2015, 8:49:35 PM4 votes

The problem stems from the fact that it's much easier to build high amounts of AP than AD, and yet for some reason even easier to build higher amounts of Armour than Magic Resist.

Barring additional effects, MR items have a very noticeable smaller amount than their friends in the Armour section. There are two armour items that give +100 armour while the highest amount of MR an item will have is 55 - almost half of the amount of armour. Not to mention there are several MR items that aren't necessarily relative to tanking - Mercurial Scimitar, Wit's End, Abyssal Scepter, Athene's Unholy Grail, Maw of Malmortius, etc. while most armour items are build to tailor to the needs of tanks - Frozen Heart with its mana and passive, Thornmail with its passive, etc.

I think that sometime this season, we need to see Armour and MR being addressed.

Philbo Baggins1/18/2015, 9:48:47 PM4 votes

You should only expect to be able to take FULL attention for around 3-4 seconds. That is normal. Your team should be drawing attention too. If they aren't, then its a teamwork issue not a tank issue.

Painted Celt1/18/2015, 9:52:37 PM4 votes

I agree that tanks (especially health stackers) haven't been feeling especially tanky for a while now, which is kind of a loss of fantasy for players of champs like Nautilus, Dr. Mundo, Singed, Zac, etc.
How would you guys feel about...

item 3153 Blade of the Ruined King Cost: 3200 (900) +25 Attack Damage -> +20 Attack Damage +40% Attack Speed -> +35% Attack Speed +10% Life Steal -> 8% Life Steal

UNIQUE Passive: Basic attacks deal 8% of the target's current Health in bonus physical damage (max 60 vs. monsters and minions) on hit. UNIQUE Active (90 second cooldown): Deals 10% of target champion's maximum Health (min. 100 -> 150) as physical damage, heals for the same amount, and steals the target's Movement Speed for 3 seconds (melee champions steal 25% Movement Speed, ranged champions steal 15% Movement Speed).

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item 3144 Bilgewater Cutlass Cost: 1400 (240) +25 Attack Damage -> +20 Attack Damage +8% Life Steal

UNIQUE Active (90 second cooldown): Deals 100 -> 150 magic damage and slows the target champion's Movement Speed for 2 seconds (melee champions slow 25% Movement Speed, ranged champions slow 15% Movement Speed).

Would this be a potentially healthy tweak? It would remove some of the extra power on BOTRK to make it clear that the health shredding is the reason to upgrade it from its components, with slot efficiency and other tacked on bonuses just being icing. With these changes, it might become less of a must buy, especially on ADCs, and more of a strategic counter against heavy health stackers. All in all, this wouldn't change much, but I think it would probably be a healthy nudge and it is slight enough that it wouldn't require other major rebalancing alongside it...

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Also, here is an idea for a change in defense masteries:

Runic Blessing: Start the game with a 50 Health Shield. The shield regenerates each time after respawning -> Mastery removed; Legendary Guardian shifted into its position on skill tree.

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Tenacious: Reduces the duration of crowd control effects by 15% -> Effect unchanged but mastery moved down a tier in the skill tree (into Legendary Guardian's previous position). Requires 1 point in Swiftness.

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*NEW* Unbreakable: Reduces the effectiveness of Armor and Magic penetration effects by 25%. Requires 20 points in Defense.

I feel this would be a much more suitable final mastery for Defense (I don't think many people will mind Runic Blessing being phased out either) while providing a much needed buff to one of the non-offense trees. Obviously, players using this mastery would need to be quite invested in defense (IE., a real tank) for this to be effective due to the 20 Defense mastery points requirement.

Here are examples of how this would play out in a game:

Player A - 300 Armor (no Unbreakable mastery)

Player B - 300 Armor (with Unbreakable mastery)

Player C - Last Whisper [35% armor negation] + Brutalizer [10 flat armor pen]

Example 1 - Player A is attacked by Player C -> 300 Armor - (300 * 0.35 [Last Whisper] + 10 [Brutalizer]) = 185 effective armor on Player A

Example 2 - Player B is attacked by Player C -> 300 Armor - ((300 * 0.35 [Last Whisper] + 10 [Brutalizer]) * 0.75 [Unbreakable]) = 213.75 effective armor on Player B.

In this case, this is equivalent to Last Whisper's armor penetration effect being reduced from 0.35 to 0.2625 and Brutalizer's flat pen being reduced from 10 to 7.5.

stealthfox941/18/2015, 9:56:23 PM4 votes

I agree tank itemization could use some help however I don't want to go back to early S4 when tanks where unstoppable.

maikokk1/18/2015, 7:02:54 PM3 votes

if item 3035 and item 3135 provided a % increase (pre-resistance) in (physical/magic) damage instead for providing %penetration it would make the situation a bit more managable.

they could be valuable early game, as the affordability should reflect, and dull down as tanks mass resistance

Oleandervine1/18/2015, 6:26:28 PM3 votes

I personally think the VS and LW should drop the percentage altogether and get a flat penetration instead, like the Haunting Guise and Brutalizer have. Give a smaller percentage, like 10-15% to the Sorcerer's Shoes and make a physical version of the boots for AD characters as compensation. Plus, boots like that would force ADCs to pick between Beserkers and %Pen instead of having both with the current LW.

Akenero1/18/2015, 11:07:51 PM3 votes

Being tanky in this game IS easy. % health things suck, yeah, but that makes someone have to make the choice of either using their abilities or actives(aside from gnar) to try to take down the tank, a non-damage dealing character, or use them on higher priority targets. Being a tank means you break the front line, take the hard cc the enemy gives you, and let the rest of your team attack the enemy. If a fight goes in your favor, you're either dead, having taken a LOT of CC, but your team has won the fight, or you're being ignored and are disrupting the enemy team from the interior.

BastionKross1/19/2015, 4:23:40 PM2 votes

Two major problems with tanks:

  1. Bruisers have slightly less survivability (they die in four seconds instead of five) while bringing significantly more damage than tanks. Why play a tank when you can be a tanky champ that also does damage? The two classes need to be separated more to prevent one from doing the other's job and then some.

  2. Penetration itemization needs to have a downside. When a carry picks up item 3135 item 3035 item 3153 item 3151 they gain tons of damage against resistant targets like tanks and bruisers, while also still gaining quite a bit of damage against squishy targets as well. When you have tank buster items like that, buying them should be a big decision since they should greatly increase your damage against tanks, but don't give enough offensive power to let you continue to murder anyone who isn't a tank like you bought another damage item instead. You should have to choose, either do lots of damage to tanks but leave your tanks and bruisers to clean up their carries, or be able to kill their carries in two autos but leave someone else to deal with their tanks and bruisers. Not both with the same items.

Akesgeroth1/18/2015, 10:50:33 PM2 votes

I absolutely agree with this. Even 6 slotted in tanking items, you'll be dying in no time while doing no damage. AD characters in particular are out of control right now.