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What happened to the early game of Tanks?

SafeSpaceWarrior·5/8/2018, 11:50:53 AM·2 votes·1,160 views

Long post, please bear with me. I see no way to phrase these issues more concisely but I feel they are harming the game so they should be brought up.

Premise:

  1. Not so long ago I read in the dev corner that laning should be "engaging", should last for a while and based on the skill difference one player or the other can emerge from laning phase with an advantage.

  2. Also according to the dev corner every role and each champion has a path that he / she travels and different goals he aims for. A scaling champion needs to farm up, an assassin needs to close out the game before late game etc.

With these two key points in mind I would like to ask Riot Games and the community: **what happened to tanks in season 8? **

Runes reforged and the tank class update involved adjusting the base stats of tanks. In season 8 they are so tanky early game that they can bully bruisers / carries in lane. Champions like Cho'gath / Nasus / Garen / Maokai have received nothing but buffs. Cho no longer loses stacks so it literally does not matter if you kill him or not.

**How it impacts the top lane experience and League in general? **

  1. When a tank goes top lane with Doran's shield and Resolve (casual 750 or around hp) the lane immediately becomes a FARM LANE. Given equal skill, you are not able to kill 1v1 a tank, not even early game. That is not engaging laning. If you force him out of lane, he can easily recall and lose some farm which is not that impactful (see point 4).

  2. Tanks mostly due to their kit are insanely hard to set behind. Riot claims that every role / class has some form of counterplay. This counterplay in case of tanks used to be their early game where they were vulnerable and exploitable. This is no longer the case.

  3. Tanks used to buy tank items to survive laning phase. Why do Nasus players now RUSH Sheen and Triforce with impunity? A champion that has no mobility and needs to scale now rushes an aggressive on-hit item because he is so tanky by stats / kit that he can walk up to you and destroy you early-mid game.

  4. Price of items tanks build (not necessarily tank items mind you). Cho'gath used to build either full tank or AP if he wanted to get kills in lane and actually outplay his opponent. Now the standard rush item is Righteous Glory. This is a bruiser item but due to how tanky Chogath has become (pure stats) he can afford to rush it. Why is Banner of Command 2200 gold when it gives a game-changing active, 60 armor, 30 MR, 10% CDR AND regeneration? Also now that you buffed the early game of tanks why are their items stilll so cheap? It's not like they have problems farming now. A Frozen Heart is still 2700..and I could go on. Most tank items fall into the 3000> range. Why? Tanks are no longer zoned from farm..what justifies these prices? Banner of Command with active is a 144% gold efficient item. What exactly are you thinking here?

**Summary: ** Riot Games claims to be constantly improving the game experience and I believe that to a degree, they address problems more often than not. The game is losing players / streamers and in my opinion it is PARTLY due to the top lane phenomenon which affects other lanes and partly due to how the game "favors" bot lane. However these two problems are intertwined.

Since tanks are nigh invulnerable in the laning phase it becomes the ADC-s task to build itemize against them. (Have you guys noted how top lane bruisers carries stopped building Last Whisper? Not effective anymore on non-dps champions. Another issue). This in turn further emphasizes the dominance of AD carries and DPS damage in the game.

Suggestions:

Riot is looking into AD carries and how to weaken the role / class. This is a mistake in my opinion. AD carries have been important part of the game since release the reason that bot lane is so dominant is not due to how powerful carries are. ADC-s are dominant because Riot overbuffed Supports and Tanks. Any shield / heal support renders the ADC extremely powerful right now. The assassin class update sought to introduce more counterplay to assassins so the class is dead in any coordinated environment (pro play for example). Tanks render top lane a farm lane.

These are the symptoms of a dying game that caters too much to low skill champions (tanks). Suggestions:

  1. Curb the base stats of tanks. Make them weak early game and scale well into late game (how it used to be for at least 5 seasons).

  2. Address problem champions. You (Riot) are so damn engaged in reworks and changing outdated kits it is mind-boggling that you turn a blind eye to tanks. It it bad for tanks and bad for those facing tanks. You got horrible kits here, that involve running at your opponent and nothing else. Garen / Nasus / Chogath all champions that have kits that simply DO NOT work in this meta where you give all newly released champion some forms of mobility / disengage. Your solution has been buffing these champions to a state where they CAN run at you and kill you because of their base stats. This is very harmful for a game that is supposed to be competitive. I stop using my brain when I play these champions. For example Garen now has a 85% damage reduction which can last up to 6 seconds...do I just activate it and run at them?

  3. Stop trying to achieve 50% win rate on champions that have outdated kits. You have no problem keeping down problem champions like Ryze at 44% win rate for months and we have horrible outdated champions like Garen and Nasus and Cho at 49 50% . You need to overtune and actually break their kits to achieve these numbers.

  4. You are releasing / reworking champions in a particular way: they have bruiser / tanks base stats AND high scalings. Case in point is Galio rework / Urgot rework / Yorick rework / Warwick rework. Out of these champions only Galio was a tank. Look at the stats. Urgot armor : 39 – 111.3 MR: 32.1 – 53.4. Those are higher base numbers than Maokai's for example. Why? Warwick (another tank bruiser) has been sitting at a 54% win rate since release, almost unkillable with a Titanic Hydra. Extremely unhealthy for the game to have a jungler that has tanks stats (damage reduction) assassin mobility (two gapclosers) and control mage CC ( fear / suppress). Again...tank stats ruin the fun.

  5. Stop pretending that AD carries are the problem. They are squishy, blow up to anything. Look into supports, look into Ardent Censer (yet again). What you did in Season 7 with this item was a joke, It was a disgrace for the game. But then again..you need to keep ADCs strong otherwise tanks would just kill everything with base stats.

  6. As of 7 March there are 140 released champions in the game. Do you think you should stop pumping them out like clockwork and involve the team in balancing the game?

Thank you all for reading! I know it was a long post but I feel that we must talk about why League is losing players / streamers / popularity. I feel like top lane is part of the problem and I still love this game and find it fun (when I'm not farming 24/7 in a lane that offers no engagement).

14 Comments

Ralanr5/8/2018, 12:45:11 PM7 votes

I don’t mean to be rude, but it is more difficult to take your stance seriously when you list champions like Nasus and Garen as tanks when they are fighters (at least that’s how I interpret your post). So people will assume you also want to harm durable fighters as well.

heroikc5/8/2018, 2:29:14 PM3 votes

I know for a fact that tanks were actually nerfed; look at Ornn and Poppy. They pretty much became unusable in top lane because they no longer have the ability to absorb damage and are falling prey to fighters. Nasus and Garen are fighters, Maokai just jungles (and has that poke), and Chogath is a specialist so he doesn't really fit the standards of most tanks anyway. If you want to complain about tanks, take into account the victims as well.

nelogis5/8/2018, 1:40:29 PM1 votes

When a tank goes top lane with Doran's shield and Resolve (casual 750 or around hp) the lane immediately becomes a FARM LANE. Given equal skill, you are not able to kill 1v1 a tank, not even early game. That is not engaging laning. If you force him out of lane, he can easily recall and lose some farm which is not that impactful (see point 4)

With Conq, a lot more champs have ways to deal with tanks (Stuff like Rene is still trash but that is beside the point). Also I don't know what you are thinking but losing like 3 waves of minion gold and xp pretty much means that the lane is over for you, so it's VERY impactful to make your opponent miss cs.

Tanks mostly due to their kit are insanely hard to set behind. Riot claims that every role / class has some form of counterplay. This counterplay in case of tanks used to be their early game where they were vulnerable and exploitable. This is no longer the case.

That is because tanks generally have more utility based kits. It's like Lissandra, she could be 0/500, her rotation still ccs someone for 3 seconds.

It's the free tankiness they get and the base damage of their abilities (which I will explain further below) that carry them when behind.

Also, tanks did't use to have 120 Armor lvl 1 and damage ontop of that with Afterschock, they just had a shitty shield that was powerful in teamfights. So instead of having a powerful keystone in teamfights, they now have a powerful Keystone at all stages of the game. That also buffed their early game.

Tanks used to buy tank items to survive laning phase. Why do Nasus players now RUSH Sheen and Triforce with impunity? A champion that has no mobility and needs to scale now rushes an aggressive on-hit item because he is so tanky by stats / kit that he can walk up to you and destroy you early-mid game.

First of all, Nasus is not a tank. Second of all, Tanks used to actually buy a damage item first most of the time. ROA used to be a premium top tank item on people like Cho, Malphite, Maokai etc.

The reason they did that is because they dealt no damage and had high scalings. But Riot being Riot thought "nah fuck that, let's throw balance out of the window!" and reduced their scalings and buffed their base damages. Which further buffed their early game and got completely rid of the first damage item buy. So they are able to just go full tank, which buffs their early game even more.

4

Tank items used to be around 3k gold and upwards but riot made it so they are cheaper but provide less stats overall. Warmogs used to be 1K HP for example (though without the mega-regen passive out of combat) and costed 3K.

So they got cheaper because of that and tanks spike harder in mid game now but are weaker in later parts of the game. Also Banner of Command isn't really a tank item and the effect surely isn't "game changing". By that logic ZZ'Rod is a tank item too.

(Have you guys noted how top lane bruisers carries stopped building Last Whisper? Not effective anymore on non-dps champions. Another issue)

No they don't build it anymore because

A) They have Conq now B) Their in-built anti tank mechanics are strong enough (Nasus has 35% armor pen on his E he doesn't need a last whisper he just gets it for free) C) ADC's are doing that job

Which brings me to my next point.

Riot is looking into AD carries and how to weaken the role / class. This is a mistake in my opinion. AD carries have been important part of the game since release the reason that bot lane is so dominant is not due to how powerful carries are. ADC-s are dominant because Riot overbuffed Supports and Tanks. Any shield / heal support renders the ADC extremely powerful right now. The assassin class update sought to introduce more counterplay to assassins so the class is dead in any coordinated environment (pro play for example). Tanks render top lane a farm lane.

No, no and no again. It is a perfect idea to throw ADCs out of their throne. Actually just leave them in the dumbster for the next 6 years so they have a "meta/out of meta" ratio of 50% which would be balanced.

Just because they have been important for ever doesn't mean we shouldn't get rid of that. ADCs have been dominant since for ever, even when supports were shit, even when tanks were shit, even when fucking ADCs were shit they have been dominant and were seen in every match.

Don't you see the problem? If ADCs are strong then tanks need to be strong because otherwise you have no front-line anymore (tank meta season 5). If tanks are strong then bruisers and assassins are shit because they can't do anything/get past these tanks anymore.

So you buff them and assassins now just look at ADCs to one shot them and Bruisers run amok (lethality/juggernaut meta in season 6 and early season 7).

So you buff supports which in return now fuck over assassins and keep the bruiser off of anything and the ADC becomes immortal (Ardent meta).

So what you do is buff tanks so people have enough time to kill ADCs again (start of season 8)...

This is called powercreep and you need to hit this problem from it's roots and that is the ADC. Throw the ADC from it's throne, rebalance the game around the philosophy of not needing an ADC anymore.

Curb the base stats of tanks. Make them weak early game and scale well into late game (how it used to be for at least 5 seasons).

Give them their scalinds back and reduce base damages. Your suggestion is a good idea yeah.

2

That is called powercreep, see above on how to remove that. Garen / Nasus still aren't tanks by the way.

3

I mean... If Nasus has 49.5% WR he is pefectly balanced. Overcreeped but balanced. What I understand tho are problematic champs like Shaco. These champs should be left unviable because there is nigh no counterplay to them.

4

None of those listed champs are actually tanks. WW is the closes thing to a tank.

Galio is a battlemage Urgot Is a Juggernaut and with that, has the highest base scalings in this game (Juggernauts have the best stats in the entire game) Yorick Is a Juggernaut too Warwick I some sort of drain-tank diver, not a full tank.

Warwick rework was 10/10 even balance wise. He slowly climbed his way up to 54% WR over time, that wasn't the case since release or something.

They have better scalings than tanks because they aren't tanks, it's that simple really.

5

Stop acting like this is a good thing! Them being the only tank buster class is bad! REALLY BAD FOR THE GAME HEALTH!

Rework their class and you can balance tanks individually instead of "oh this tank survives 3 seconds longer against ADCs so he is the strongest" This is beyond retarted and the balance team should feel ashamed that they haven't fixed this at all with their mid season update. They made it even WORSE!!

6

This is a very good point! They need to stop bringing out new champions before balancing out the last one released. Kaisa is still broken and needs to be balanced first before releasing another balancing problem. Because the designers are slowly becoming.... rather lazy with the implementation of their designs in league and the consequences following that.

Thank you all for reading! I know it was a long post but I feel that we must talk about why League is losing players / streamers / popularity. I feel like top lane is part of the problem and I still love this game and find it fun (when I'm not farming 24/7 in a lane that offers no engagement).

It's not just top, top just got mass genocided because Riot needed 8 months to add a keystone that should have been in the game since the rune rework.

Jungle is shit Mid is all over the place Bot is retarted Top is trying to recover but the jungler is making this process a long one

This game is out of control and the only way to fix it is to literally mass revert 80% of the game back to an earlier state. Starting with the runes.

Edit: You just got counter-wall of text'd son!

Doge20205/8/2018, 7:35:13 PM1 votes

{quoted}

With these two key points in mind I would like to ask Riot Games and the community: **what happened to tanks in season 8? **

Runes reforged and the tank class update involved adjusting the base stats of tanks. In season 8 they are so tanky early game that they can bully bruisers / carries in lane. Champions like Cho'gath / Nasus / Garen / Maokai have received nothing but buffs. Cho no longer loses stacks so it literally does not matter if you kill him or not.

**How it impacts the top lane experience and League in general? **

  1. When a tank goes top lane with Doran's shield and Resolve (casual 750 or around hp) the lane immediately becomes a FARM LANE. Given equal skill, you are not able to kill 1v1 a tank, not even early game. That is not engaging laning. If you force him out of lane, he can easily recall and lose some farm which is not that impactful (see point 4).

  2. Tanks mostly due to their kit are insanely hard to set behind. Riot claims that every role / class has some form of counterplay. This counterplay in case of tanks used to be their early game where they were vulnerable and exploitable. This is no longer the case.

  3. Tanks used to buy tank items to survive laning phase. Why do Nasus players now RUSH Sheen and Triforce with impunity? A champion that has no mobility and needs to scale now rushes an aggressive on-hit item because he is so tanky by stats / kit that he can walk up to you and destroy you early-mid game.

Since tanks are nigh invulnerable in the laning phase it becomes the ADC-s task to build itemize against them. (Have you guys noted how top lane bruisers carries stopped building Last Whisper? Not effective anymore on non-dps champions. Another issue). This in turn further emphasizes the dominance of AD carries and DPS damage in the game

First tings first, with nasus almost every lane will be a farm lane, and nasus player rush sheen first because, yes he has some ridiculous base stats. But sheen really helps with his 1v1 potential so he can actually fight and win in those early all ins.

And I found out that nasus’s early game is still kinda weak, along with a bunch of other tanks. If you are having trouble against a tank then I would recommend tanking early and gaining a lead on them.

Just a side note Nasus is a Juggernaut and not a tank, yes he builds tanky but when compared to actual tanks like Cho, he is worse. Tanks have little to no gap closers besides summoner 4 because they also have a bunch of CC abilities that help with sticking to and pinning down a target. Meanwhile Nas’ only reliable “CC” is his wither, which is just a slow.

If you really want to try and beat a tank, going Fiora is usually a good choice. She has a bunch of true damage to help deal with said tanks, and she has the power to outdual them. You can also use a more poke based champ like pantheon or Teemo to try and beat anybody top in the early game.