Tanks in Top: Deceased

Okay. This is a post to basically say how dissapointed and annoyed I am with the state of this game. Namely the fact listed above. Tanks are dead. The simple fact is that tanks are not powerful anymore. They are not a threat, and they are not good anymore.

I have been playing this game for over two and a half years, and up until this point I have had full and total respect for Riot and their development teams, but I want to bring some facts to light that I believe have been overlooked.

First I think it's important to highlight the difference between a tank, a carry, and a fighter.. A fighter is a champion like Trundle, Gnar, Darius, Irelia, champions who usually build a mix of offense and defense, these builds often involve 2-3 offensive items, boots, and 2-3 defensive items. Now I believe that for fighters, the state of the game is good for now, they can 1v1 people all day, and in some cases, even carry games. But they are not the reason I'm here.

Carries have been showing up in top lane recently. This includes champions like Riven, Tryndamere, and Fiora. These are the champions that have 95 attack damage at level one and you are completely unable to fight because they have ridiculous damage. These are the champions that after only 2 or 3 kills can dive in 1v3 and kill all 3 before they take a single point of damage. These champions are immensely powerful and need ABSOLUTELY no buffs. They are definitely not the reason I'm here.

I am here to talk about tanks. Shen, Volibear, Dr. Mundo MD., these are the champions that I want to talk about. These are the champions that have horrible early games, where they can only hope to farm up enough spare change for an item or two that might make them useful in the midgame, before they are melted by late game carries. These are the reason I am here.

Statistics

Lolking.com takes information from every single ranked game played in League of Legends, and puts it in to a nice graph for players to view. The one I am linking here Is a graph of all the most popular champions played in top lane. For those unable to see the chart allow me to explain. The chart displays the 14 most popular top lane champions in league of legends and their winrates when matched against each other. Please notice that in this chart there are plenty of fighters and carries, yet only one tank. Shen. Now if you look at all of the winrates displayed, Shen's highest winrate (as of 8/6/2015) is a 51.68% which isn't terrible, but when you look at all 13 possible matchups (he can't match against himself) he has 3 winrates over 50, one at exactly 50, and 9 WINRATES below 50%.

Now if you look at the List of most popular champions played in the world, you will get this. Again for those unable to see i will describe. It shows the 10 most played champions in the world. Among them, the only "tanks" listed are Thresh, who often does not get the slightest bit durable until late game, and Leona, who actually can be a tank. But the issue with both of these champions are that they are supports, and on low budgets. So even if they can become tanky, it will take a very long time for them to be tanky enough to be relevant.

On the flipside, let's look at the least popular champions. Listed here are the ten least popular champions in league of legends. Sure we see some expected faces, cough cough urgot cough cough, but then when you look at the rest you see tanks. We see Yorick, Zac, Skarner, Singed. 4 of the least popular champions in League are tanks, each with less than 2500 games a day WORLDWIDE. Now I am sure that many will say, those are just "bad" champions in desperate need of a rework, while this may be true to a point, it still shows that tanks need help, whether from a rework or some other method they need help.

I have also attatched the champions with the lowest winrates I don't feel I have to reiterate myself anymore.

Now let's focus one of the biggest issues with tanks. Items.

Constantly, tanks are being out-itemized (not sure if that's a word) by other roles.

Doran's Shield: 440 gold, 80 health, 6HP/5 and -8 per basic attack. Doran's Ring: 400 gold, 60 health, 15 AP, 3M/5 and 4M on killing a unit Doran's Blade: 440 gold, 70 health, 7 AD, and 3% lifesteal

Doran's shield is the typical starting item for most tanks. Health, Rgen, and damage reduction, sounds great! But here's the issue. Most top lane fighters nowadays take Doran's blade to start. For these fighters, who generally have around 85-100 AD at level 1 get 3% lifesteal.

At level one, assuming that these fighters are attacking almost constantly (we'll say 1 attack every 2 seconds) a fighter will deal 85 damage to a minion, and heal for 2.55 HP every attack. At 1 attack/ 2 seconds, this is 1.275 HP/second.

A Doran's Shield generates 1.2 HP per second. At LEVEL ONE the fighter's item is regenerating more than the tank's item. Once you get to level three, (we'll average 3 AD per level) 94 AD at 3% lifesteal gives you 1.4 HP/ second. This means from regeneration, tanks are completely outclassed just in their starting items.

As for the other parts of the items, the 7 AD almost completely nullifies the -8 block passive of the shield, AND then the Blade user gets 7 AD to use with abilities. And yes, the Shield has 10 more HP, woohoo, that's completely nullified by the ability damage from the blade as long as the Blade user lands at least two abilities. (and if you're against a Darius, Riven, Garen, etc. They're going to land a lot of abilities.)

Lastly, the 3% lifesteal scales the entire game, while the regen is fixed in place, so that means at 200+ AD, the Blade is drastically out-healing the shield

Now the ring, I will try to keep this short. Obviously these were made for completely different champions so it's hard to compare these items, and when you get down to it, you can say that they are pretty equal in strength, with a slight edge to the Shield. However, the disparity between these two items is their cost. paying 40 less gold for a starting item allows you to start with one extra potion. As we discussed before, a Shield regenerates 1.2HP/ second. This means that in order to make up for the extra potion, a tank has to survive 125 seconds to regenerate as much as the potion. That's 2 minutes and 5 seconds of being lower on health than your opponent in lane, during this time it is easy for a jungler or mid laner to roam up and help secure a kill on the low health tank.

Just a little bit more on the shield: in patch 4.3 Doran's shield lost 20 HP and 4HP/5 this is the main reason that the shield is so inefficient.

That is just the starting items.

As for the rest of the items, I will give some credit to Riot for making purchases very incremental and easy, an upgrade is rarely over 1000 gold, and most of the upgrades are in chunks of 300, 400, 450 etc, so it is simple to buy your items. But that's all. Besides being convenient, these items do not have the stats to stand up to early game bullies or late game carries. Between the new black cleaver, reducing 30% of armor, and last whisperer/void staff ignoring 35% of resistances, it is very difficult to itemize against high damage carries, even building health is a difficult option thanks to Blade of the Ruined King and Liandry's Torment, not to mention so many champions today having %HP shred.

Another issue is simply the gold differential. It's simple, we want kills on our carries, right? because then they can do their job and actually carry. But this creates a huge gold discrepancy between carries and tanks. To the point where a tank's income is barely better than a support's. This means that items that cost the same amount are bought much faster for carries than for the tanks who protect them.

Besides all of the statistics let's talk about playing the game. Tanks jobs are, at the core of it, to take damage so their carries don't. This means tanks are charged with engaging, peeling, and blocking, very hard to do if there is only one tank in the game, even harder in solo queue when communication can be difficult and your team may not be able to do their parts.

Early game: Tanks are bullied in lane, if by some miracle they happen to get ahead, they still don't have the damage to properly trade with their opponents. Mid game: This is when tanks are strongest. Before carries get their % penetration and big damage items like rabadons and Phantom dancer. Late game: You're screwed. All the % damage available to players means it only takes them half a second longer to delete you than it would for them to delete your carries.

So when were tanks ever strong? WAAAAAAAAAAAY back in the day, top lane was dominated by mundo and shyvana, the two tanks that no one could kill, then people branched out a little with jax and trundle, but it was still a mostly tanky top lane. This was when tanks were strong. Then for a while they fell out of power in favor of Lulus and Rumbles, it was the EU that brought us top lane Maokai, and for a while, it was great, mobility, engage, damage reduction, he was THE tank. Then he too fell out of popularity as other items developed and he simply was not as strong as other champions.

Now for the sake of argument, even though it does not apply to top lane (any more) I will discuss Cinderhulk. The 25% extra HP made late game tanks possible. Especially in a time when popular AD carries were Sivir and Kalista (who have a bit of trouble with tanks) the extra HP gave them the room to get resistances and cooldown reduction necessary to be a late game tank, with CC, health and plenty of resistances. This worked. BUT! the main reason this worked was because of the immolate passive. This damage allowed tanks to hold their own in the early to mid game, not fall behind, and get the stats that they need. However, with the damage taken away in favor of faster jungle clear, to be a strong late game tank, you need to farm. A lot.

One of the first arguments I expect to hear against my post will be the upcoming "Juggernaut Patch" So let me stop you right there. The juggernaut patch is not buffing tanks. It is not, so don't try to pretend it is. Darius is getting damage bursts (as if he needs them). Garen gets true damage and super execute. Skarner is getting more movespeed and mana regen. And Mordekaiser is getting a pet dragon, and while this is absolutely amazing and totally badass, it's not a buff to tanks. Tanks in no way benefit from this patch.

Oh? What's that? There are new items? Well let's have a look.

Possibly Dead man's plate is coming to the Rift. 2750 gold 600 HP 55 Armor and a passive which is basically stattik shiv.

Okay, not bad it's got decent stats and a cool passive, but this does not seem like something a tank will really be building, this is for a mobile fighter who wants to survive a bit longer when dueling enemy carries.

I'm linking the other two items here.

Titanic Hydra. Again not terrible. %of your health as extra damage, but this isnt for the tanks that want to stack resistances and peel, this is for fighters who once again want to duel enemy carries.

Sterak's Gage. This can be used by two different kinds of champions, either fighters who are afraid of of getting completely bursted before they can fight the enemy, or tanks.

Yes that's right this post which has now gone on the entire time saying that tanks are weak and dead just said tanks are getting a buff. But, it is a very small buff. This is the item which will save tanks from getting 100% in 2 seconds, it will give them a little bit more time to maybe get off a crowd control ability. But in the long run, a Tank will have no use for the AD, so that just leaves a 30%HP shield that DECAYS RAPIDLY. Again, this is not a huge buff that will fix all our problems, this is a band aid trying to stop a hole in a dam. This will only turn a 2 second deletion into a 3 second deletion. MAYBE it will let you last long enough to make a difference. but maybe not.

Now I am not saying that fighters are bad, tanks are the best, blah blah blah. I am saying that I am a League of Legends player who absolutely loves playing tanks and is sad to see them become so inefficient and obsolete.

I am not saying buff the tanks. I am not saying nerf the carries. I am not sure what the solution is to this issue but I know that there is an issue. My only goal in this post is so that people will read it, and maybe realize, yeah there is a problem, and then as a community we can find a solution. Sadly, I fear that this post will just become lost in a sea of unnoticed ideas.

Please put your comments below and tell me what you all think. -Arzellous