Dear Gameplay and Balance: tanks are going to be fine in 5.16, don't worry.

Now before you bombard me in downvotes, please, I ask that you read this and allow me to explain exactly why. Some of this is perception, some of this is reality.

Let's start off with this: tanks have been good for a long time. When was the last time Maokai top wasn't a tier 1 top laner? Mid-season 4? Mundo? He's always off and on, never a bad pick (not so much for solo queue, but we will get to that). Sion? Still off and on, was tier 1 by far for a long time. I would still consider him tier 2. Shen is back. Gragas is still God tier. Braumstache is back in full swing. Nautilus top is still tier 1 and will continue to be, tier 2 in support alongside champions like Leona. I have no idea why people stopped playing Sej, she's still very good. Do I need to even explain Alistar atm?

I'm telling you this now: none of this is going to change next patch. Figjters were buffed, but fighters will now actually function as fighters - not champions that stack resists and abuse base damages, something that has often pushed tanks out of the meta in top lane entirely (See Renekton/Trundle/Shyv in s3/early s4). Tanks will be good in accompany with bruisers (support tanks especially) and traditional tank tops will be reliable counterrpicks to shut them down, in fact i suspect tanks will thrive at this.

Now, I realize armor items overall received a nerf in value and in cost effeciency. However, there's more variety in armor itemization that excels at different things. Deadmans plate will be god-tier on anything looking to hard engage, tanks and figjters alike. Randuins will help vs crit stacking carries. Sunfire will probably resurface as a premier item in top lane. Frozen Heart is still ridiculously good. MR also just got buffed, which helps top lane tanks mostly. Locket is still good for supports.

But here's the thing, true tanks are still innately ridiculously durable, these changes won't push them out of the game. And that hasn't changed, nor will it. And that's why riot gave buffs to different tanks armor that don't typically acquire a lot of gold, just to make sure they didn't overdo it on the armor changes, and I don't think they did.

In reality, the only things that have changed are the strength of tank junglers (and this is mostly a competitive thing) and I'll get to that, and eliminating tanks like Maokai, Gragas and nautilus from soloing carries while being unkillable. That was an unhealthy style of play and it blurred the line between tanks and bruisers/fighters. These changes give bruisers their identities back via direct changes to them, item changes for them and item changes for tanks. This change will redefine both bruisers roles and tanks roles, turning tanks into what they're supposed to be: disrupters, damage soakers and initiators, not champions that dive back lines and solo carries until those carries have 5-6 items to actually kill them. Trust me, tanks will be good and if you're a tank player, you're not going to lose your power to disrupt and soak damage. That's still in tact.

Now, as for jungle tanks. Here's the deal fellas, in competitive league of legends, tanks in the jungle have never really been balanced. They're either so obnoxiously overtuned directly or through itemixation that they're completely overpowered with just 2-3 items alone (because in competitive play, the jungle role is especially starved on income). This is the only way they see competitive play, otherwise they're just not considered good. That's still a big problem and riot has been actively trying to figure that out for the last 2 years. I don't know the answer to it either, to be honest.

However, that said, solo queue-wise, tank junglers are still going to be extremely powerful. They still have been, despite the recent runeglaive and devourer junglers dominating solo queue as well. Champs like Sej, Amumu, Gragas etc always have pretty good winrates because in solo queue, tank junglers are much more likely to get gold since you won't be sacrificing your camps and exp to the rest of your team, and it's hard to coordinate efforts to shut them down early when they're vulnerable.

So long story short folks, tanks are still going to be good. Bruisers will be back and I suspect this patch could see the most balanced diversity we've had in a very long time.

As always, thanks for reading this, lovers.