Tanks and the Pre-Season

First of all, I am mainly a Tank Champ player. (Naut, Zac, Cho, Malp) This preseason seems to basically ending any chance of playing a "Tank" in a damage soaking style. You can still be the Crowd Control, Engager, Peeler but not an actaully damage soak in the way with old seasons.

1. ADC itemization: coming in sooner means that armor doesn't give you the same window mid game to just ingore the ADC while control the Sin's and Mages. Now ADC needed to have more effect mid game vs the Tanky Juggernauts, which i feel that the giant slayer and/or better version of BotRK could have handled without have to a cheaper . This is actually what is a great design vs these Juggernaut champs. Reducing the their incoming Damage mean they either have to build more damage or become a tank. Changes are ok with the incoming earlier but still doesn't make up for the change. Now including the extra Giant Slayer new item we are even in a worse spot because they will kill us faster than before. I don't mind the that they added because I feel if i go full Tank I really shouldn't be killing the carries at any fast rate or at all but now I can't even soak damage for even close to the same amount of time.

2. Mastery Changes: The new mastery are awful for tanks. All 3 of the 18 point almost useless ( 300 Health plus small HP regen when sieging, stealing less 3 percent of my HP, which is like 120-150 HP every 4 seconds is a joke compared to DPS, 8% Damage reducation which is prob the best atm still isn't even close to what the new Damage output is like. Now we look at the new Ferocity Tree. The Warlord's Bloodlust which is completely crazy in in current state. Deathfire Touch which is basically another .2 AP ratio on all skills, now this doesn't stack but still a nice added bonus to DPS, and the Battle of Fervor of battle which I feel is very strong in some cases.

3. Game Pacing: Tank's have slower wave clear and kill pressure in lanes in general. With the new Rift Herald placing importance on having strong top lane control. Tank Top/Junglers will have a harder time controlling this buff or contesting this objective. If they lose this objective they have almost no shot of protecting the tower afterward due to the already weaker wave clear.

From what I can tell from these preseason changes that their will be almost no way to play a damage soaking style champ. What this means is i will have to go to more offensive style of builds like AP Zac, AP Malp instead of the tank style. Not that building tank stats are bad but you can't use your ability to zone with your HP for extra rotation of spells or CC. I feel this is an intended change that makes top lane less of a slap fight and allows for ADC to do more before they hit the LW points vs Tanky Fighters. Hopefully Riot reads this and explains that this is their intended goal or that they actually have a plan to Tanks to be able to last for more than 2 seconds longer than their fighter counterparts since our kill pressure is much lower.

TLDR - The preseaon changes basically prevent tank style damage soaking to be relevant for any amount of time unlike seasons prior. This forces the tanks to build more damage orientated because you won't be able to out last long enough compared to fighter classes.