Disjoint thoughts about Damage and tanks meta

Item 1: People prefer to play damage dealers.

If tanks are as viable as non tanks, we tend to see very few tanks being played. Traditionally top lane and jungle are where you play a main tank, players in both these positions prefer champions with independent kill threat.

Why is this so? Tanks are not less useful overall. However:

In top lane the tank play is more stagnant - catch the wave, wait for tp. speculative roams are discouraged by prevalence of "good at taking towers" champions. Early game objectives are faraway and joining with jungler/mid to 2-man an objective is hard because jungler/mid not in area (See below) As such less incentive to play "interact with team" champions, more incentive to play "crush your lane" or "scale up and duel" champions. The latter are also both very good tower killers, and desirable picks in their own right, which discourage tank play further.

Mid and jungle not incentive to interact with top lane. Less ability for mid laner to kill top laner, as opposed to kill sup and adc, less objectives on top lane for jungle to follow up gank with, and more objectives to lose to counter move. In addition top laner more mobile than bot lane, more ability to run away successfully. This in turn makes top tank less desirable, because tank's satisfying moments are unlocked in team play, which does not happen enough in top lane.

In jungle, playing tank requires help from team. Tanks can not 1v1 "independent kill threat" champions especially early on, and therefore must runaway from threats early. Additionally tanks are less able to make plays without support of team. In some part, tank players has to get his bot / top / mid involved in his invades, at least in the sense that need more push pressure. This kind of dependency in both own team and enemy decisions is undesirable for the jungle player.

Item 2: "Damage meta" caused by prevalence of "damage champions"?

if top has independent kill pressure champion and jungle has independent kill pressure champion than if they 2-time an opponent than their burst just instagibs the target. In a meta where 5 champions each have independent kill pressure, each CC landed by one champion will have follow up from another champion. The champions that have independent kill pressure generally die to the combined fullcombo of 2 champions, this translates to each pick resulting in insta-death.

This happens less in metas where some champions require team aid to help with getting kills.

item 3: "I like tanks in the meta" (not in my role though)

Tanks are good in 2 ways to team play. They require team involvement in an interesting way (group mid and keep pressure while top is splitting is not as much fun as fighting and getting kills). Winning with them is funner for the other players because the other players are invited to be critical to the winning. Feeling impactful in a game that has tanks in it is easier because tanks are good at giving otherwise vulnerable champions the opportunity to act freely (as opposed to the above damage meta, where an ADC or mage committing to a fight results in being instantly nuked and deleted by all the reserved jump-on-kill-this skills of the other team).

This works in smaller numbers too its good for the jungler that top is tank because easy ganks top, and also has someone to enable the damage jungler to get kills in mid game. etc. Good for top that jungler is tank because enemy jungler doenst just show up to kill you, has to use the enemy top and you have agency there, or he has to involve you in fights to succeed and being involved is fun etc.

The idea that the side lane has to be involved in the middle of the map is generally positive for the side lane. this gives side lane the option of being on the predator side vs the enemy jungler, which is fun. this happens the most when one jungler is a carry, whereas the other is a tank (tank loses to carry alone, but carry is easy and fast kill if team assists)

result is if I am playing a damage dealer, the amount of fun I will have increases with the number of tanks on my team.

item 4: there is such a thing as too many tanks (for having fun)

If there are 3 tanks per team, the burden on damage dealers is great. This means the late game is basically the carries. Mid lane picks are constricted to high DPS champions, and bot lane are constricted to late game hyperscalers. it feels bad for everyone: the jungle and top can't play their favorites. The mid can't play their favorites. The bot cant play their favorites. Everybody are dependent on 1-2 carries. Maybe they have fun reaching their 6 items, but everybody else feels like shit for having to depend on this 1 person.

item 5: optimal number of tanks?

seems to be 1 main tank per team. Played by top, mid or jungle, not by the support. and 1 other beefy champion, can be a support tank, but can also be a bruiser with 1 tank item.

problem is right now, this is the most fun for everyone, but the tank player gets to have less fun than the other players.

aftertought:

The core problem is, tanks are less fun for the tank player and more fun for the other players. if you make tanks op, you decrease the fun of the guy who plays the tank, and increase the fun of the other guys. so jungle players maybe want more tanks in top lane? and top lane players want more tanks in jungle? idk

if you buff tanks, everybody gets more fun, exempt for the guy who has to play the tank, who gets less fun. if you nerf tanks, everybody gets less fun, exempt for the guy who has to play the tank, who gets more fun.

so the question is, how to get tanks to be more fun? this is not a simple question, because part of what makes tanks fun for other people, is the tendency of tanks to involve those other players in the game directly instead of the other players being on overwatch duty. but that is one of the reasons tanks are not fun.

ideas ?