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@Riot: can we get some tank items on the rift?

MrSc0tty··9 votes·1,293 views

Let's examine tanks and their itemization.

They're the class straddling the line between bruisers and supports, lacking damage but using crowd control to hold down enemy teammates while absorbing damage. What issues do they suffer?

  1. "uninteractive" lane phase. Tanks just want to farm up and get tanky because they have low kill pressure in lane but any time they can weather harass (Nasus) or not die to enemy engages (Singed) Riot tends to nerf them for the Sin Of The Sustain Support, i.e. Killing you is fun and you are not dying therefore you are anti fun.

  2. shared itemization with the "problem child" class. Oh hey this looks like a great tank item for Nautilus maybe I'll buy it-Aaand it was Nerfed because Jax could use it while 1v5ing and get a pentakill. Needless to say any new tank items gotta not appeal to bruisers, or it'll just get Nerfed.

  3. PENETRATION. If tanks got 2000G items that said "reduce all incoming AD or AP damage by 35% before applying armor" the damage classes would rage to high heaven. And yet, here we are, with two items that reduce tanks' stats by a full third, when arpen already exists as a flat stat AND resistances are diminishing returns already to reduce the power of having a lot.

So way do we need? Let's examine our itemization here.

We've got:

Rod of Ages-pretty great for off-AP tanks like singed and Malphite but it can leave you resistance-less and MUST be a first item, so it's kind of out for junglers.

Randuins Omen: still decent on tanks because most have hard gapclosers and then plenty of cc. If the gold cost were lowered a bit this would be amazing.

Sunfire Cape: kind of the bruiser version of the tankier Randuins. But occasionally bought on tanks for a bit of sustained damage. Not awful, not great.

Locket of the Iron Solari: the support tank item. Tank can't have a good all-round item like Botrk or Zhonyas that would be OP.

Frozen Heart: a cool mix in theory, but gets smashed way too hard by the omnipresent Last Whispers. A no-go most of the time.

Iceborn Gauntlet: the useable version of FH. Personally my favorite tank item for giving your stickiness a little bump

Banshee's Veil: the passive is pretty suboptimal for a tank because they mostly don't care about blocking one single ability buuuut visage got Nerfed so this is it for MR.

Visage: got Nerfed.

So what do we need? What items could be added?

Here are the gaps I see.

  1. MAGIC. FREAKING. RESIST. there are essentially two MR items, nearly identical. Give us the anti-poke item from howling abyss, please please please oh god it would fix so much that's wrong with toplane.

  2. a high impact active "burst" tank item ala Deathfire Grasp or Youmuus. Give it a somewhat stat inefficient mix of health and mana, and give it an active "take 40% less damage and deal 40% less damage for 4 seconds"

  3. a cooldown reducing MR/Mana item that drops the cooldowns of your spells by 1 second every time you apply a non-slow cc effect on an enemy, can only occur once per ability, and once every 10 seconds on any particular champion. (hard to use by bruisers because they often only have 1 form of hard cc unlike say a nautilus who can hook in, ult a different person, and passive root a third.

Add those and IMO you'd see tanks in a far better spot than now.

16 Comments

Cloud Potato8 votes
  1. shared itemization with the "problem child" class. Oh hey this looks like a great tank item for Nautilus maybe I'll buy it-Aaand it was Nerfed because Jax could use it while 1v5ing and get a pentakill. Needless to say any new tank items gotta not appeal to bruisers, or it'll just get Nerfed.

Fix this and you fix Tanks. AD Bruisers have hardly any items, and they use almost none of them (Sunfire Cape and Iceborn Gauntlet are about the only ones that could count). Not only this, but very few Tanks have scaling with Tank stats, which means other classes use their items just as effectively. Both of these problems need to be tackled or else Tank items will blow. The first is not really about Tanks, so let's look at the second.

Tanks need to scale from defensive stats. That much is absolutely certain. They need to use their items better than other roles, like how Marksman can use Infinity Edge better than Assassins. Many passives and actives on Tank items can synergise with certain champion kits, this is not exclusive to Tanks in the slightest. HP, Armor, and Magic Resist scaling is what we need on Tank kits so that Bruisers don't get as much benefit from their items. However, while we're talking about kits, there's something else to address:

  1. "uninteractive" lane phase. Tanks just want to farm up and get tanky because they have low kill pressure in lane but any time they can weather harass (Nasus) or not die to enemy engages (Singed) Riot tends to nerf them for the Sin Of The Sustain Support, i.e. Killing you is fun and you are not dying therefore you are anti fun.

I know this is sarcasm, but it is actually a problem. There is no skill in sitting in lane doing nothing but farming. Champions need to interact with each other. It's a fundamental part of PvP games. Remember when Feral Flare caused everyone to sit in the Jungle all game? It's not something Riot wants in the game. Now to actually talk about the problem:

This is caused by two things. The first is that many Tanks have badly designed kits. Part of this is that many Tanks lack counterplay for melee champions. The other part is that they discourage interaction. Let's take Shen. Shen lacks counterplay because his Q cannot be avoided alongside being long range, and his E is much harder to dodge at close range. Shen discourages interaction by his passive being sped up from being attacked, and his W giving him energy from being destroyed. He has little downtime to exploit. Not only this, but if he is not doing well he is very safe, having poke that heals him if he uses it to kill minions, being able to shield himself, and dash away. Short of absolutely destroying him there is not much you can do to stop him.

Long ramble aside, the second problem is a game wide problem, which is that the tankiness required to survive in a teamfight is way higher than the tankiness you need for laning. If you can live in a teamfight for a decent amount of time you're an unmovable wall in lane. Not only that, but there is plenty of middle ground; facing 2, 3, or 4 champions at once. How do you balance defensive power so that you can survive against multiple champions without being overbearing against less? It's not an easy problem to solve.

So I just typed all that, barely referencing items at all. That's because items aren't the problem with Tanks. Do they need more items? Absolutely. Lots of roles need more items. In fact, I'd say Tanks need Armor items more than MR items, since if you don't want mana you have a grand total of two items (three if you count Thornmail) and all of them have shitty build paths. MR has three items, two of which have good build paths and Locket is fantastic if you care about your team, although it does take forever to build.

Sneak Dog4 votes

Let's first make %penetration not effective against squishies and adcs not burst anyone not a tank, then look at tank itemization? I do think these are the reasons why tank itemization feels bad.

Currently %penetration is just good against just about anyone. If you make this a situational buy for when the person(s) you want to kill stacks resistances, you buff tanks immensely.

Then, adcs should be able to kill tanks in X seconds. Tanks are easily four times as tanky as a squishy. An adc deals the same damage with every shot so an adc will kill the squishy in X/4 seconds. I think the damage of an adc should be ramping (every shot deals more damage than the previous) so you backload it more. You still kill a tank in X seconds, but despite him being 4 times as tanky than the squishy, the squishy dies in X/2 seconds.

This is achievable by, say, replacing critical chance by a stat, lets call it critical strike, that, if you hit a champion, your next attacks will deal x% extra damage, stacks with itself. So you have 10% of this new stat. Your first hit deals 100% damage, second 110%, third 120% etc.

This means the adc actually counters a tank instead of just countering anything that can't kill him.

Mindworm Jim1 votes

I just want to chime in that I think that this critical strike damage ramp-up thing is actually really neat and might have a lot of potential.

skippersd3 votes

You made some interesting points.

-About the burst tank item, on one hand i do agree, on the other hand, Alistar with this item? Or Maokai? The problem of the game ATM is the fact that only %DMG reduction is a tank stat. While it would make some tanks viable, the currently viable tanks would become silly. My take on the item:

  • Gives some HP
  • Gives 10-20% bonus armor/MR
  • Active: 'Inmoveable': For 4 seconds your armor/MR can't be penetrated/reduced, but you lose 20 MS.

About MR in general: Since mages lack %HP damage in general (ok Liandry's does exist, but that's a nieche item), giving out easily acessable MR means that tanks beat AP. The real problem is kog (and varus to some extent) with their %HP magic damage. The anti-poke item would kill off any poke comp, so that's not really gonna happen. At the end of it, a third MR item would be welcome.

Nuclear Corvid3 votes

About MR in general: Since mages lack %HP damage in general (ok Liandry's does exist, but that's a nieche item), giving out easily acessable MR means that tanks beat AP.

So what? Why is it bad for tanks to have a positive match-up versus AP?

The anti-poke item would kill off any poke comp, so that's not really gonna happen. At the end of it, a third MR item would be welcome.

Why would one (maybe two) players on a team being resilient to poke kill the poke comp? Shouldn't tanks be resistant to that anyway?

MrSc0tty2 votes

Putting an untargetable effect on an item would be cool, but imagine how silly champs like Vlad, Fizz and Lissandra would be with this "Zhonyas Hourglass" you're proposing!

Tanks beat burst when fully built-working as intended? Burst>sustained damage>tank>burst is generally how it goes, and sustained damage/penetration mages do in fact exist, such as Fiddlesticks, Casseopia, Vladimir, Lissandra...they currently eat tanks alive why couldnt they still do it?

Knight SoIaire 2 votes

i put my money on reworking tanks into somethinng more usable tank relies on soaking damage and ccing opponents tanky support relies on soaking damage and ccing opponents judging by the fact that tanky supports are actualy played the tank role loses its place and it never actualy had its place, the times when tanks were played were times when we had jungle, and jungling with anythign that requires gold to function didnt work so ppl took tanks, now when jungle is an enviroment equaly fawouring tanks bbruisers and carries, tanks are not picked cause they dont oferr anythign, cc got spreaded to every other role and nobody needs that one cc powerhouse who actualy wastes all the gold you pump into it

you want tank items i want the tank role to be actualy usefull, their main tasks and traits completly cover the description of support role

TecToNiiC2 votes

I love the idea of your "deal 40% less damage for x seconds and take 40% less damage for x seconds."

What route do u take tho? Hp + armor = already enough items Hp + mr = how can you make it different enough I almost think mr + armor would be cool as GA is the only other item that offers this in SR. It could create some interesting combos with warmogs and GA

Unfortunately I am a bruiser main and still think this item would be really strong on a lot of bruisers. I would gladly give up 40% damage on shyvana, jax, and renek to become that much tankier in a teamfight. I think if you take it one step farther and did something like "deal 75% less damage and take 50% less damage for x seconds" you would now have an item that bruisers give up too much by buying and cc tanks would love it as they can still do their job.

MrSc0tty1 votes

I love the idea of your "deal 40% less damage for x seconds and take 40% less damage for x seconds."

What route do u take tho? Hp + armor = already enough items Hp + mr = how can you make it different enough I almost think mr + armor would be cool as GA is the only other item that offers this in SR. It could create some interesting combos with warmogs and GA

Unfortunately I am a bruiser main and still think this item would be really strong on a lot of bruisers. I would gladly give up 40% damage on shyvana, jax, and renek to become that much tankier in a teamfight. I think if you take it one step farther and did something like "deal 75% less damage and take 50% less damage for x seconds" you would now have an item that bruisers give up too much by buying and cc tanks would love it as they can still do their job.

I was thinking MR and Mana ala a Frozen Heart equivalent for MR. That would make it less efficient for the Manaless Shyvanas and Renektons who want to blow their combo and tank up for another combo.

I was thinking straight HP and a bit of CDR (but no regen effects to keep distinct from Warmogs) for the Wombo Combo Cooldown Reset-o-Matic item since the only sources of CDR are on Armor items for tanks unless they want highly inefficient Cleaver.

Ultimately a Tank build wants to consist of:

HP Resistances CDR

With Mana, Tenacity, and maybe utility actives as secondary bonuses. Similar to a support build but with more of a focus on resistances and less on item actives.

Currently we have Frozen Heart, Randuin's Omen, Thornmail, Warmogs, SpiritVeilVisawhateveronesbetteratthemoment and Iceborn Gauntlet as really good solid tank items that tanks usually want.

That's pretty awful considering AD carries have

IE Botrk Bloodthirster PhantomDancer Shiv Runaans Mercurial Maw Executioners Gunblade Last Whisper Zephyr Trinity Force

The damage dealers get so many options they have the luxury of a "trash tier."

67chrome2 votes

PENETRATION. If tanks got 2000G items that said "reduce all incoming AD or AP damage by 35% before applying armor" the damage classes would rage to high heaven. And yet, here we are, with two items that reduce tanks' stats by a full third, when arpen already exists as a flat stat AND resistances are diminishing returns already to reduce the power of having a lot.

54 armor reduces damage taken by 35%. Increasing your HP by 350 when you're at 1000 forces opponents to need 35% more damage to kill you. Frozen Heart's 20% attack speed slow reduces auto-attack damage taken by 20%.

All damage and defense can be translated into a pretty straightforward %increase or decrease.

Also - concerning armor and mr having diminishing returns

they don't. They scale in exactly the same way HP, AD, and AP scale.

This is easiest to see with using fractions. 1/2 damage taken, 50% DR, is 100 armor/mr 1/3 damage taken, ~67% DR, is 200 armor/mr 1/4 damage taken, 75% DR, is 300 armor/mr 1/5 damage taken, 80% DR, is 400 armor/mr 1/6 damage taken, ~83% DR, is 500 armor/mr

If you want to counteract a 100 damage auto-attack being reduced to 1/6th from 500 armor, you can pick up 500 AD.

don't get to caught up in the %numbers tapering out, 99% damage reduction means every attack capable of one-shooting you now needs to be performed 100 times to kill you.

  1. MAGIC. FREAKING. RESIST. there are essentially two MR items, nearly identical. Give us the anti-poke item from howling abyss, please please please oh god it would fix so much that's wrong with toplane.

Banshee's Veil, Spirit Visage, and Locket of the Iron Solari are 3 pretty solid items. Considering they all offer pretty impressive HP/5 you get some respectable anti-poke power with those as well.

As for what's wrong with top lane - Fighters are mostly the class that got the boot their. Shyvana, Renekton, and Jax are very much fighters and not tanks. Maokai on the other hand is very much a tank, and he's considered the best top-lanner at the competitive scene currently.

Generally speaking actual tanks jungle or support as well, most don't go top.

  1. a high impact active "burst" tank item ala Deathfire Grasp or Youmuus.

Omen is that. With it's Cold Steel being almost non-existent now, you really need to use it for the high impact active. And it is very much a tank active, seeing as it gets stronger the more armor and mr you amass.

Also - funfact. When the only 4 gold generation items were Philosopher Stone, Heart of Gold, Kage's Lucky Pick, and Avarice Blade they all upgraded into an item with a pretty solid active, in this case Heart turned into Omen, Kage's Pick into Deatfire, Avarice into Ghostblade, and Philosopher into Shurelya's Reverie.

Talisman of Ascension is essentially the same thing as Reverie now, and Omen and DFG have gone through multiple build-path changes, but Omen still is very much the tank's equivalent of DFG and Ghostblade.

  1. a cooldown reducing MR/Mana item that drops the cooldowns of your spells by 1 second every time you apply a non-slow cc effect on an enemy, can only occur once per ability, and once every 10 seconds on any particular champion. (hard to use by bruisers because they often only have 1 form of hard cc unlike say a nautilus who can hook in, ult a different person, and passive root a third.

Tank's unusually don't have low cooldowns, most are set up more around unleashing a glorious burst of power at the start of a fight. They tend to be set up more around being a big part of engagements that happen once a minute.

Dropping CDS by 1 second isn't useful with that.

Dropping CD's by 1 second is extremely useful when you're, say, Jax - with your entire burst rotation tied to only a 10 second CD. Or Riven.

Also, this item idea is Ryze's wet dream.

Eapenator1 votes

While his comment on penetration is really off, I have to agree with some of his points

I think the guy is trying to make a specific point about tank junglers.

Generally speaking actual tanks jungle or support as well, most don't go top.

But jungle tanks currently stink in the jungle (rammus, sejuani, amumu, nautilus, zac, maokai, etc.)

Why play a tank jungler when I can just play a fighter jungler, bully you so that you don't get any gold and kill you easily. Then, after one damage item, I can go full tank and out tank you for the rest of the game because you don't have any gold to keep up.Of course you can out tank me when you have items, but after the whole early game of being slaughtered, you will never reach that point.

If you give a tank damage so he can clear / duel other junglers, they get put top lane (maokai, zac). If you try to give a tank better abilities to tank and sustain with, they end up top lane (alistar, zac).

Unless the tank was built for the support role (leona, thresh, blitz), why are tanks that were designed to jungle go top lane when they get buffed/improved. Its because fighters are pushing them out of there. Top lane provides a more safer way to place to put your tank so he can farm and do his job. The jungle is currently too dangerous for them to do that.

(also teleport provides the same omnipresent feelings that junglers should have so thats another reason to put tanks top.)

I think the only solutions are to

a) remove as much cc from fights as you can. Keep their mobility, but any unnecessary slows should be removed. This give tank junglers some value to be in the jungle. Also it allows for tanks to peel of fighters and escape, while fighters should be focused on dodging cc and sticking to kill/force the tank out of the jungle with their mobility and damage.

b) Tanks need their own items AND should scale much much MUCH better with them. Like I said before, its all right if that lee sin or elise wants to build a randuins to be a little more tanky that specific game,but if they can pull it off much better than tanks, why play tanks. Spirit golem was a great example of this. Spirit stone was a great item on tanks, but its was an amazing item on fighters. now quill coat (noticeably sub par) forces tanks into a weaker item, while forcing fighters into less items as well, and solidifying their builds

ex. maybe lee sin wanted to build golem first this game instead of elder lizard so he can be a little more tanky. Oh wait, golem no long has spirit stone, now I can only build elder lizard first every time and bully tanks anyways.

If tanks scaled the best with tank items and not the same as every other fighter, at least there would be a reason to pick them.

67chrome1 votes

If tanks scaled the best with tank items and not the same as every other fighter, at least there would be a reason to pick them.

I..don't think that's really the problem with tanks.

In the most basic sense the difference between fighters and tanks is bruisers are tanky DPS, tanks provide CC. They're both just as tanky - they just differ in what mechanics they use to actually be a problem to the enemy team despite building tons of defense.

Concerning fighters in the jungle and tanks in top lane - the further you go back in LoL's history, the worse the jungle income opportunities were, and the more tanks you could actually find in the jungle. This was likely do to 1 major reason:

When the jungle provided little income, having CC not scale with gold at all made tank junglers very relevant. You were still a solid factor end-game due to a 2 second stun being a 2 second stun regardless, where fighters and assassins just couldn't reliable get the gold to make them an asset end-game, as the jungle farm available forced successful ganks for damage to be a factor end-game, where the best gankers would be a decent force regardless. Maokai, Nautilus, and Skarner actually ruled the jungle at a certain point.

Now it's largely the inverse. There's so much gold avalible in jungle farm you're a huge factor if you take it - and tank junglers are so CC heavy and damage light they have serious issues taking it, forcing them to be the ones that need to tip the scales with a solid number of successful ganks.

I don't really see better tank items fixing that. Bruisers like Mundo, Shyvana, and Warwick only need 1 damage item if that and will still deal tons of damage regardless, not to mention CC tanks were king when there was a lack of items on junglers, rather than a solid set.

Mostly I see CC tanks coming back through jungle changes.

Lower the jungle income. Assassin junglers like Kha'Zix, Lee Sin, Elise, Evelynn, and Rengar are pretty dominant right now. Stress their income enough and you could balance out high CC, ~eh clears with high clears, ~eh CC.

You might be able to do something with Golem offering absurd clear speed, tank CC having ratios, etc. to make the primary purpose of tanks ramp them back as well. I just see jungle changes as the easiest and most direct path.

Pryotra1 votes
  1. PENETRATION. If tanks got 2000G items that said "reduce all incoming AD or AP damage by 35% before applying armor" the damage classes would rage to high heaven. And yet, here we are, with two items that reduce tanks' stats by a full third, when arpen already exists as a flat stat AND resistances are diminishing returns already to reduce the power of having a lot.

This Item used to exist, actually. It was called Leviathan, and worked on a similar basis to Mejai's. You got stacks based on kills/assists, lost them on death. Wasn't bought too much, as if a tank was doing their job, they didn't feel they would be building any stacks thanks to dieing. Thing is though, if the the tanks were doing their job, and got 3-5 assissts per teamfight, they would be building the stacks. It made certain tanks unkillable (Tank Cho with this was Hilarious. Your Ult finisher + the stacks = ultra HP buff on kill, and maxing out meant that you got that precious 35% redux on incoming damage.)

COLDasICE GATOR1 votes

In my limited opinion, tanks are irrelevant. With 6 tank items equipped, an opponent with 3 damage items seems to be barely phased by the extra armor, health, regeneration, shields, etc. Items that could add a percentage of max armor, magic resist, or health would be welcome as well as an item that would allow you to take no damage form every 6th basic attack or 6th ability. It might sound a bit unbalancing, but at my lowly level, there is hardly any reason to play a non-support tank, as you will receive far more damage than you can mitigate, especially if the opponent has at least 3 kills already. Maybe a mastery that increased a stat based on accumulated consecutive damage received while in continuous combat. Perhaps a take less damage % from each source of damage up to a 40% reduction rate item or mastery.

MrSc0tty1 votes

Well. At present tanky champs are the most reliable winners in Soloqueue. The few tank items we have work great up until the fourth or fifth item when they become redundant-the champions themselves are fine.

Ever have an AD champ try to focus you as Rammus? Shits hilarious. I've actually 100-0ed people by being autoattacked before.

BLACKB0MBER1 votes

This has been a huge for awhile. The class is trash, can literally be shredded by every other class. I have played league since 2009.

I used to play morde with Warmogs, Sunfire, Thornmail, Force of Nature, Spirit Visage and any boots. I could tank 2-3 people easy late game. Now there is literally no way to live in this game as a tank unless your a troll champ like garen. Say an Amumu with 6 items cant even tank a Yi late.

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