A moment of your time to discuss why Tank Meta is so strong.

OK so I'm seeing a lot of Riot posts talking about nerfing the tank items because they are too good... and I cannot help but wonder how those people get paid with such terrible critical thinking skills. And I don't want this to be another generic Riot bash, but please consider... What specifically makes tank builds so strong right now, in terms of gameplay? Because I have a few ideas.

When it comes to mega tanks, I think the answer is very simple, and boils down to one single problem: itemization. And no, I don't think it's a problem with tank items, which I think have finally brought about a point in the game where tanks cannot simply be ignored in fights as soon as their abilities are on cooldown. It actually feels pretty good to be a tank in fights now, and even in laning phase against other tanks, the traditional noodle fight.

When I say it's a problem of itemization, I mean that there currently isn't much itemization to counter tank builds, and tank builds are the best builds when you can get away with it because they are safe; you don't HAVE to kill your enemies quickly so long as they cannot kill you first. This is an objective based game. If you can't be killed, but your opponent can, albeit slowly, then it's pretty hard to lose. The game's a bit more nuanced than that, but essentially what I mean to say is that playing a tank in a fight, especially a duel, is typically a slow, grinding battle of attrition, hence why lifesteal is such a crucial component in dealing with them.

Let's look at a few of the items crucial to killing tanks:

1. Blade of the Ruined King: the premier tank slayer back when playing tanks was about stacking HP instead of resistances, when Warmogs reigned supreme. Grants a small amount of AD, some attack speed, some lifesteal, and most essentially, an on-hit effect that deals physical damage based on Current HP. This is EXACTLY what autoattackers needed to be able to fight high HP builds, and was supposed to shift tanks more towards buying resistances like armor... but one key problem with that is that most HP items also have high armor values. Or most Armor items feature high HP values, whichever you prefer. Between Deadmans, Sunfire, and Randuins, it's not difficult to top 300 armor and 4000 HP. Which basically means that your high HP build also includes high armor values to counter the counter of your HP build.

2. Last Whisper: Easily the most important change to occur this season that I would argue has single handedly made tanks the best option and rendered ADC almost irrelevant is the change to Last Whisper. Intended as a buff to allow ADCs a way to make themselves relevant against early armor stacking, the change from % Total to % Bonus Armor means that ADCs lose a great deal of their damage at the point in the game where they are intended to shine, when they are beginning to complete the long ramp up of their expensive build. At Level 18, Akali has the lowest base armor in the game at ~86, not counting runes and masteries. Not being able to penetrate that base armor means ADCs are having their gross damage values roughly halved. And that's a squishy assassin, that's not a tank. Pretty sure the base stats on things like Alistar and Amumu were balanced around the existence of % Total Armor, and are dramatically higher. I would contend that so long as Last Whisper and its upgrades remain in this state, the tank meta will continue. So even if ADs can't itemize terribly effectively against tanks, and are forced to rely on their team to keep them at bay while they slowly chip away at them in what feels almost as unsatisfying as an early game teamfight for an ADC, surely magic damage dealers would be the appropriate response? Well...

3. Void Staff & Liandry's Torment: For the same reason that the new Last Whisper items are terrible, if you're playing an AP carry and don't have a Void Staff somewhere in your final build, you're doing it wrong. That at least has retained it's % Total penetration, and has suffered no lack of effectiveness as a result. However, because most mages rely on abilities which have cooldowns much longer than an autoattack, their damage is much less consistent and is countered heavily by the high HP values tanks build anyway in order to tank towers and outlast sustained damage sources, as a mage is no threat to anyone with their abilities on cooldown. For this reason, and because of the effectiveness of Void Staff, as well as both minions and towers dealing physical damage, Magic Resist is a pretty garbage stat to stack on a tank unless you are facing a double or triple AP comp. A single AP, no matter how built, just isn't usually enough threat to warrant it for a tank. This is precisely why Liandry's Torment was devised, if memory serves. Trouble is, it feels absolutely TERRIBLE to build on almost any mage. It doesn't present for any mage the powerspike that Botrk does for some adcs. The only characters that typically build it and see any decent effect from it are mages with DoT, such as Swain or Brand. I would contend that Battlemages like Swain and Vlad should be ideally suited for gradually melting down tanks anyway, and so it makes sense for them to build something like that. But on a traditional mage, such an item feels bad to build when you have to sacrifice the raw instant damage needed to kill priority threats, and STILL don't feel like you're getting noticeable results on their tanks.

So in terms of Itemization, let's talk about solutions.

For Blade of the Ruined King, the best thing I can think to do is increase the on-hit percentage. That damage is still going to be reduced dramatically by a heavy armor build anyway. Still, I don't think this item is in a terrible spot in itself, just that tank itemization can organically counter it, thus rendering it sort of irrelevant.

For Last Whisper, it ABSOLUTELY needs % Total Armor penetration in order to be worth the item slot. It's bad enough that ADC itemization currently results in lower raw damage in the end game due to the reduced damage totals in their itemization, as well as requiring more crit items to reach high crit values. I mean, to put it in perspective, Last Whisper offers something like 30% Bonus Armor penetration, whereas Cleaver caps out at around 30% TOTAL armor penetration. This has made Cleaver a more essential part of the meta than any point other than its initial rework in League of Cleavers. I would contend that Graves' ability to fit this item effectively into his build has a good bit to do with his success. If you're deadset on making it Bonus Armor only, then it needs to be a much higher value. As in at least half. Which of course sounds a bit ridiculous and I wouldn't prefer it.

Now Void Staff I think is totally fine. But Liandry's feels TERRIBLE on anything other than a DoT damage dealer due to the slow, low duration burn. It just doesn't feel like it deals more damage than if you simply built more AP on your mage. Giving the burn AP scaling would only make it an essential item for doing more damage to anyone I think, and would make it absolutely core on any DoT mage in any situation, which of course would be bad. Rather, to increase synergy on casters and prevent an unnecessary buff of DoT mages, I think it would improve the item dramatically if the duration of the burn were increased, dealing more overall damage off single spell casts but not being made markedly more powerful on DoT spells. Alternatively, if the power level of the item IS meeting your expectations and I'm just not seeing it, perhaps there's a way you could make the burn appear more visceral and intimidating? Because currently I feel like it goes unnoticed on anything other than DoT spells. Lastly, I feel like it's worth noting that one of the other reasons it feels bad on mages is that many if not most of them are AoE casters, and the efficiency of the item is reduced for them, despite being the exact kind of champion that most needs its help for dealing with tanks.

Now the last thing I want to talk about is full-tank assassins. This is like the most obvious and glaring issue in the game at the moment, and Riot themselves have mentioned it several times, yet seem completely oblivious to the obvious heart of the problem. Things like Tank Yi, Tank Ekko and Tank Fizz? Let's even take it back into the early years of League and compare them to the posterchild of Morello's passion for balance: Irelia. Irelia was meant to be a diving assassin/fighter (sounding familiar?), with inherent sustain and true damage built into her kit. Flat true damage specifically, which can only ever be so weak as to be irrelevant, or strong enough to be relevant even without other offensive items. It ignores resistances, and thus is either always a threat to enemies with low hp pools, or isn't a threat at all. This meant that she could live longer in fights and thus have more time to dish out more damage if she just built full tank, with one attack speed item thrown in for good measure. This completely up-ended the risk-reward paradigm that assassins are supposed to fulfill, and resulted in a nigh unstoppable late game abomination.
Now back to today. Yi's synergy with relatively cheap on-hit builds means he doesn't need to earn all the gold for an expensive ad/crit heavy build, and can even save some item slots for defensive stats. The current state of Rageblade is probably a larger part of his problem, but that's another discussion entirely. As far as Fizz and Ekko go however, theirs is a simple kit problem: they are too safe and do too much damage without any need for offensive itemization. Ekko literally has a do-over button. Which, fine, it feels terrible to play against but it's not impossible to balance I guess. Shut him down early and he won't scale into late, right? Wrong. That is absolutely how you should be able to deal with assassins of any kind, that's the risk/reward tradeoff. But his base damage is so high on his kit, he can literally win duels without even landing his only skillshot. His passive alone allows him to be a threat to squishies even without any damage items. You can't really shut down a character who only has to build to not die, and who also has insane mobility, hard and 'soft' cc, and a redo button. And yet I see Riot buffing this guy with higher ap ratios in exchange for slightly less base damage... well that's great, except that he is able to build full tank because he needs a net nerf. Having higher AP ratios just means he can build full tank and get better value out of his maybe one AP item. Consider making his passive only relevant damage if he has the ap to back it up. A Champion cannot have that much durability, safety, damage, and utility all at once. There has to be a way to outplay it in order for it to be balanced, and hoping they will outplay themselves doesn't count as counterplay.

And then there's Fizz. All of the same things as above, really. Except worse. Mobile assassins are usually good against skillshot mages because they have more ability to move around their abilities and avoid damage while closing distance. Targeted cc is a hard counter to these champions as they cannot avoid it; a vigilant tank, support, or mage with targeted cc need only position correctly to keep them at bay. In the case of Fizz, however, even IF your ability WOULD have landed, he is able to be completely untargetable WHILE jumping onto your face to burst you with an aoe that can clear an entire creepwave by itself. He can just jump right through the front line and use his second, TARGETED GAP CLOSER NUKE to instantly delete your carries. Standing near a tank is no defense against Fizz. Not only is his kit too overloaded in terms of mobility and safety, but having only two damage abilities on a melee assassin which are ALSO his mobility skills, means for this supposed trade-off, they must be HUGELY high in damage. So high in fact, that he can one-shot most champions having built only a lich bane. So high, that he doesn't even need to build THAT. He can build full tank and still have enough damage to sit on your carry's face and murder him in the middle of their team WHILE being focused, and still escape at any time. That is EXACTLY what an assassin SHOULDN'T be able to do. For Ekko, you could probably shift his numbers around and make him more dependent on a damage build in order to kill things, but Fizz is irredeemably flawed even as a concept and needs his entire kit reworked around a more cohesive design philosophy.

TL;DR: Tank Meta is strong not because of tank items but because of a lack of effective counters, and Assassins who are building full tank and deleting carries need either drastic base damage reductions or kit changes/reworks. Yi just has too much rageblade synergy, as no one built him with only devourer and Botrk and expected to carry with that damage alone.