So there are no core tank items for lane anymore?

kasfas · 2017-05-18T13:27:09.936Z

This has confused and frustrated me, because every class has at least one item they can rush in lane and have it make them effective all the time, but tanks can have no such item? Why is that? Is it because you are trying to avoid the one item spike? What about Morello's, Black cleaver, triforce, and roa, all of which are core items that can be built by many different types of champions and make them effective. Sunfire used to be this, but after the health and damage nerf I still think it's not a good item. So, will we be given a core item for tanks in lane that allows us better fighting? If I may, I suggest righteous glory. It's stats are already good, as many tanks need mana and enjoy the 500 hp. The only problem is the active. The active needs to be changed to something more useful in lane like some kind of damage or tanking steroid. Some examples: 1: Upon death, deal 10% of your max hp in true damage to your killer. 2: The last champion to damage you is marked. Damaging a marked enemy heals you for 5% of your max hp. 3: Upon damaging an enemy champion, heal for 7% of their max hp (40sec cd) 4: Damaging an enemy marks them. The closest marked enemy deal 10% less damage to you. 5: After being in combat for 4 seconds, you may radiate an aura that deals 8% your max hp in whatever damage your nearby enemies will take the most of (so max damage is 40% of all champions hp. If they will collectively take more magic than physical damage, it will be magic damage) to all enemies in 350 units from the EDGE of your champion model. I think righteous glory could be the morello' of tanks. #MakeRighteousGloryGreatAgain

RalanrMay 18, 20178 votes

Ehh...there are tanks that are supposed to have a decent to good laning phase. Plus it's hard to have a mid game spike when you require two core items to do that (my understanding is that mid game power spikes are usually first item rushes).

The Yetii RiderMay 18, 20172 votes

The tanks that are "supposed" to have a good lane are Shen, Poppy and Sion, all of whom can build Black Cleaver or Titanic Hydra as their first item.

PeepingPeafowlMay 18, 20172 votes

wut?

Shen is supposed to have a terrible lane, that's the whole reason he got nerfed awhile back.

Guyy FieriMay 18, 20172 votes

Shen has a good lane but it's how you play it. He doesn't have a good lane in that he will be able to bully every matchup come level 3, some matchups he can but not all. Shen us a good lane that he can survive even the most obnoxious of bully lanes. With his W to dodge out of damage or auto attack based stuns like Renekton W and the ability to cleanly lasthit under tower using his empowered Q autos, Shen can take pretty much any lane and come even, even against a champ like Quinn. That's the strength of tanks in lane is their ability to not die.

kasfasMay 18, 201725 votes

Then tanks cant be played in lane can they?

Tanks need lane presence in order to be viable.

I don't like only being able to farm in lane, it's boring. I want to be able to interact with my lane opponent meaningfully, which is impossible right now.

Guyy FieriMay 18, 20173 votes

False. Take Shen. Even after the 7.9 nerfs to Shen, he's still really strong. His kit gives him the tools to survive lane and not die against the likes of Riven, Renekton, Irelia, etc. as such, he then has the power to completely turn the tides of team fights or skirmishes across the map. Shen is not a champ designed to be lane dominant, but he still is very much relevant. And sure there might not be a great "laning item" for Shen. However, most tanks, their laning item, is whatever defensive item they rush based on the matchup (usually Sunfire Cape or Randuins for me on Shen). Seriously, don't underestimate the power of tanks in lane, even if their itemization isn't the greatest right now.

kasfasMay 18, 20173 votes

Shen is a special case who also has reliable damage coming from his q.

I'm talking about the tanks i like to play: Sion, Poppy and Malphite a bit

Guyy FieriMay 18, 20172 votes

Malphite is just not in a real good place right now tbh. So that's not a scenario that we can really base tanks off of. Poppy has plenty of tools in her kit to be more than Lane dominant into the right matchups. Her W counters a heavy majority of the strong top laners (Renekton, Irelia, Pantheon, Kled, Fiora, etc) as it cancels out mobility. Also having a point and click form of Cc with a conditional stun is very strong in lane and her base damage are high enough that she can lose a threat to squishier laners. Sion is a champ that imo just doesn't have the mobility or the instantaneous Cc needed to survive top lane right now. When I can just play Fiora into Sion and dance around his Q and then dash around his E and, if Sion all in, riposte the ult, there's just so little that Sion can do; regardless of what items are strong. And, imo, there a incredible multitude of champs that do what Sion does but does it better.

kasfasMay 18, 20172 votes

That doesn't explain why poppy's winerate had declined in the patch of the update though Something like 2%. I'd argue poppy is still ok in lane, but her Midgame sucks now relatively speaking.

She still works, and in fact I've been rushing ibg and steraks and doing ok in lane, but immediately become shit after lane phase ends.

Guyy FieriMay 18, 20171 votes

Well that's because you don't have enough health imo. Streaks doesn't give much and IBG gives none. So you have little health and no mr, of course it's shit, and mid lane Mage who sees a Poppy with no mr and little health is gonna jump on you instantly

kasfasMay 18, 20171 votes

well im not sure what else im supposed to do really, i have thought about going black cleaver > tank , and also ibg > spiritvisage, but im not sure how much better those will fare. Maybe ill try some other stuff out right now.

Guyy FieriMay 18, 20171 votes

For tanks it is totally arbitrary for what you build. The first thing you have to prioritize is survivability. If you're on poppy you honestly simply can't afford to build greedy and go for what is ultimately a damage oriented item in BC or IBG. You need health and armor/mr. You should prioritize based on what you need. Playing against Fiora, Yi, Yasuo, Vayne, etc. you need an early Randuins Omen. Against Rumble Ryze or Azir, maybe think about that new Adaptive Helm.

Just you really want to make sure that generally, barring weird instances where you against all ap or all ad, that on tanks you have one armor/health item and one mr/health item. From there, you can add in your items like Frozen heart, IBG, Gargoyle stoneplate, thornmail, etc. The thing is that if you go for all armor early, you have no health to back it up and mages melt you.

The Yetii RiderMay 19, 20172 votes

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For tanks it is totally arbitrary for what you build. The first thing you have to prioritize is survivability. If you're on poppy you honestly simply can't afford to build greedy and go for what is ultimately a damage oriented item in BC or IBG. You need health and armor/mr. You should prioritize based on what you need. Playing against Fiora, Yi, Yasuo, Vayne, etc. you need an early Randuins Omen. Against Rumble Ryze or Azir, maybe think about that new Adaptive Helm.

Just you really want to make sure that generally, barring weird instances where you against all ap or all ad, that on tanks you have one armor/health item and one mr/health item. From there, you can add in your items like Frozen heart, IBG, Gargoyle stoneplate, thornmail, etc. The thing is that if you go for all armor early, you have no health to back it up and mages melt you.

An early Randuins? 2900 gold on 350 health? You will be food for the enemy mid laner.

ErockandrollMay 18, 20179 votes

{quoted}

Then tanks cant be played in lane can they?

Tanks need lane presence in order to be viable.

I don't like only being able to farm in lane, it's boring. I want to be able to interact with my lane opponent meaningfully, which is impossible right now.

Refresh my memory, this was mostly in reference to the Sunfire nerfs right? Cause I would call BS on sunfire allowing you to interact with the lane opponent, in a meaningful way. Cause really, that's just extra pressure coming from one item, not particularity interacting with a Tanks kit, and not leaving much counter play, except staying a safe distance away. And this is also where you get the weird tank builds from Fizz/ekko. Because they offer the mix of damage and defense, completely unrelated to the champion, so it's pretty much effective on anyone.

Honestly, Tanks should be a lot more reliant on their own abilities to hold their own in lane. And such rush items should help them facilitate that. And since Tanks are ability focused, we're talking caster items. The catalyst items are pretty good for most Tank/AP hybrids, though AD focused tanks like Sion can really only use Righteous Glory, which is an item I don't feel is slot efficient enough for the solo laner. In the past, my go to Tank item was Frozen Heart, though it doesn't have the same omf that it use to. So at the moment, I will probably go with ICB. That will give you a good chunk of Mana, CDR and Armor, while giving you a utility that can help manage the minion wave as well slow down your opponent.

kasfasMay 18, 20173 votes

Sunfire itself wasn't interactive, but it allowed tanks to interact with their opponents better. That's what I'm looking for, an item that allows tanks to have more agency over their lane.

On another note I've been running steraks for the most part. It's the best tank item you can really get right now other than stoneplate.

Something else, tank fizz still exists. These champions aren't abusing the items, they are abusing their kits which were not thoroughly designed.

The Yetii RiderMay 18, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Sunfire itself wasn't interactive, but it allowed tanks to interact with their opponents better. That's ehat I'm looking for, an item that allows tanks to have more agency over their lane.

On another note I've been running steraks for the most part. It's the best tank item you can really get right now other than stoneplate.

Something else, tank fizz still exists. These champions aren't abusing the items, they are abusing their kits which were not thoroughly designed.

If you want more interaction, there's always Iceborn Gauntlet.

kasfasMay 18, 20174 votes

IBG has no hp, which makes it less good in general and useless in ap matchups.

We need an item that is general, and has lane power. Thus RG with its good stats, could be it, if it had a better active.

The Yetii RiderMay 18, 20171 votes

If you are a tank top laner facing an AP you would rush Spirit Visage, that's not an issue.

We don't need an item that is general, that was the point of the tank update. Tank items are too general, and when they are general, they become powerful when built by divers and juggernauts.

And Righteous Glory is exactly the type of item a diver would rush if it was good, since it: you guessed it, helps you dive.

kasfasMay 18, 20175 votes

What about hybrid champs, champs with true damage or champs with armour pen?

There isnt any item to build against them anymore, and that needs to change.

And yes, we DO need a general item, At least one. One that if you build can always, or very nearly always be effective.

If that isn't a thing that we should do, we should also nerf morello's, triforce, black cleaver, Roa, and the whole host of CORE leaning items for specific groups of champions.

The Yetii RiderMay 18, 20172 votes

If there is a single item you can build against hybrid champs, it takes away the reason to play a hybrid champ. In that situation, the person playing the hybrid champ deserves the system's sympathy more than the tank player does, because the hybrid champ will have much more difficulty scaling well.

Champs with armor pen - The counter to lethality is armor. Lethality is designed to deal increased damage to champions who build low or no armor. Even with a full lethality build you can only get 80ish armor penetration, that's not enough enough to cut through Frozen Heart on its own, let alone the three other items the tank would have by then.

The exception to this is The Black Cleaver, and The Black Cleaver is a duelist's item to punish tanks. This is why tanks shouldn't lane, because duelists have an item specifically designed to punish them. It would be incredibly counterproductive for Riot to create an item designed to fight against The Black Cleaver, when The Black Cleaver is designed to fight against tanks.

Dealing with true damage is easy, you just build health. Warmog's is good for that.

kasfasMay 18, 20172 votes

Firstly, tanks tend to have the same problem with true damage now as they do hybrid and pen, ignoring resistances. Additionally with armour pen i was mostly referring to GP Gangplank and Darius Darius who both have it built in (also vi , but she isn't played top).

If these champions can ignore resistances, which is where more of the power budget of tanks is now, they make laning unfun.

Also keep in mind that if we itemize for lane we get demolished by damage of the opposing type to that of our lane.

Basically, we need an item that helps against a bunch of damage sources to start out with, then have each item we buy afterwards be dedicated to the scenario. We can't have that right now because we need to maximize our effective health against every damage source at once, and no item does that effectively except warmog's item 3083 and RG item 3800 , both of which have actives that aren't useful for laning.

And so we end up with builds that exlude all items without over 425 hp unless the case becomes so specific that the items are not shit.

If RG item 3800 or any one particular item, I just chose this because it isn't used much and has a good statline for laning, were better at providing general tankiness (or in this case of RG a better active/passive than current), but not having any specific strengths the niches of other items have more value overall due to the owner having enough tankiness to take other types of damage while also taking care of the specific damage type they wanted to counter.

The Yetii RiderMay 18, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Basically, we need an item that helps against a bunch of damage sources to start out with, then have each item we buy afterwards be dedicated to the scenario. We can't have that right now because we need to maximize our effective health against every damage source at once, and no item does that effectively except warmog's and RG , both of which have actives that aren't useful for laning.

No, you don't. This entire argument is based on a faulty premise, and that premise is that it is healthy to have tanks in top lane and that Riot should be taking steps to promote tanks in top lane. You have not made a single point towards this combination of lane and role, and Riot seems to fervently disagree with you based on the lane bullies you have described and the itemization they have that is supposed to punish tanky champions and shove them out of top lane.

kasfasMay 18, 20176 votes

Except you forget to mention the fact that tanks have been designed for top, balanced around top, and played around top since the game started.

Tanks DO BELONG TOP, it just so happens that right now they aren't good there and that is my problem. They need to have an item that allows them to function better top.

And if you are so adamant about playing a game where tanks don't go top find somewhere else to go, because tanks are top laners.

A direct quote from the most recent patch notes:

"With saplings powered down in the early game, we wanted to be sure Maokai still has the strength he needs to make it through the jungle AND TOP LANE. We’re upping the impact of his melee-range tools to give him the means to hold his own mid-combat."

The Yetii RiderMay 19, 20171 votes

{quoted}

Except you forget to mention the fact that tanks have been designed for top, balanced around top, and played around top since the game started.

Tanks DO BELONG TOP, it just so happens that right now they aren't good there and that is my problem. They need to have an item that allows them to function better top.

And if you are so adamant about playing a game where tanks don't go top find somewhere else to go, because tanks are top laners.

A direct quote from the most recent patch notes:

"With saplings powered down in the early game, we wanted to be sure Maokai still has the strength he needs to make it through the jungle AND TOP LANE. We’re upping the impact of his melee-range tools to give him the means to hold his own mid-combat."

Amumu, Sejuani, Gragas, Nunu, Leona, Alistar, Braum, Zac, Thresh, Rek'Sai, Ivern...the very very large majority of tanks are not designed for top. They are not balanced around top. The ONLY tanks that see play in top lane are Gnar, Maokai, Malphite, Poppy and Sion. That tiny fraction of the League does not warrant its own item when that item will be poached and abused by divers and juggernauts.