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Are tanks ever the right choice?

Rindin14·11/29/2018, 6:53:00 AM·1 votes·1,403 views

Now to be clear, I don't mean fighters/bruisers/juggernauts/etc that deal damage and are relatively durable. I'm talking about your pure tanks who hit like wet noodles but have a ton of HP and resistances.

With the over-saturation of true damage, percent-health damage, execution-scaling abilities, and armor/magic resist shredding (looking at you black cleaver), it's become nearly impossible to actually become tanky enough to last very long in a teamfight.

There are plenty of champions who can live long enough to kill you, but this isn't because they are tanky. This is because they have some sort of damage that scales with their tank stats, or enough innate damage/ tankiness that they can afford to build the other and still have more than enough DPS to kill you.

Whether or not this is a problem is a subject for a different post.

My question is, what do we do about champions like Alistar, Braum, Shen, etc? They offer some benefit in terms of their utility, but the difference in CC/utility doesn't seem to be enough to outweigh the amount of raw damage and backline threat that someone like Maokai, Skarner, or Illaoi can present.

Granted it is frustrating to play against an enemy that you can't do meaningful damage to, but this happens anyway with champions that can also output nearly as much damage as squishier fighters and mages. It's less of a problem if you can't damage a champion who presents no real damage threat to you without their teammates.

I think that, due to Riot giving too much damage to champions like Garen, Darius, etc (looking at you Juggernaut patch) they overcorrected and started handing out ways to deal with tanky champions left and right. This left the tanks who don't have innate damage in a rough spot.

So what do you (the collective intelligence of the internet) think about this situation?
Am I missing something? Are pure-tanks viable in certain situations (maybe I am just not working well enough with my teammates) or are they just not playable in the current meta?

7 Comments

mack911211/29/2018, 6:55:35 AM1 votes

tanks are certainly viable but I find only with champs that can take aftershock and you need to be able to know when to utilize it to counteract burst on you.

Warlord Rhinark11/29/2018, 7:46:29 AM1 votes

Bruisers are almost always a better choice from what I can gather.

Looking at the PBE changes, Riot is also turning a lot of previous Tanks (Ornn, Sejuani) into pseudo Bruisers as well.

BlinkZZ18211/29/2018, 7:53:35 AM1 votes

only Sion among all tanks, is viable

Fear the Kayn11/29/2018, 9:02:17 AM1 votes

There really aren’t that many true tanks in the game. Ornn does pretty crazy damage so I put him into the bruiser catagory as well. The truth is most players don’t enjoy walking around as a bullet sponge and do no damage.

sneakydoug11/29/2018, 4:08:29 PM1 votes

Tanks are a good choice if the mid or bottom lander is carrying well and it’s more efficient to have cc on the team than additional damage. Which is the case when you have low income or won’t win your (top) lane.

Ventace11/30/2018, 9:48:17 AM1 votes

Tanks are not really ever as viable anymore because of a misconception. Lots of people say something like 'we need a tank' or 'we have no tank', but what does a tank truly offer? Definitely not damage. What about tankiness? The enemies can just choose to not attack you. You're not a threat anyway. The key is CROWD CONTROL. This is what makes Mao'Kai a strong champion, along with picks like Sion and in some cases Malphite. Tanks are never good because they're tanky - it's because they can crap down tons of CC's over a fight. Bruisers can do that too, but tanks do it more consistently since it takes more time for them to die. If you can just not die instantly, bruisers with CC >> tanks with CC.

There was an ungodly tank meta where some people would even flex with a full team of tanks, but now there's too much high damage, true damage, and recently even SHIELD SHREDDING (Irelia passive 300% damage to shields?) that it'll never happen again.