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Does anyone else feel like Riot doesn't know how to handle Tanks anymore?

Forhonor321·11/13/2018, 2:53:16 PM·106 votes·24,095 views

Let's just do a quick review on some tanks this past season(s) and some changes coming to others:

- lost his unstoppable (which to me made him unique) because it was making him too powerful, but now regaining it in loss of his shield, but more importantly getting an insane boost to his Brittle and Q damage. (think there was a post about doing 73% health damage with these buffs)

- before her mini rework was OK. Afterwards was doing insane damage, got nerfed, continued to get nerfed due to her power in pro play then fell out (still got nerfed). Now losing some CC in favor of more damage to most of her abilities.

- basically has fallen out of most play from my experience after a while.

- changed his damage from sustain in W to burst in E from what I recall and now is just...where is he?

I know there are more tanks that other people can give examples of and there's more details that I'm not going over for the ones I listed, but this is just the pattern I'm constantly seeing with tanks. They constantly feel like these champs, almost specifically the Vanguards, need to be dealing damage rather than providing good combat CC. Why though?

Why does Ornn need to be dealing crap amounts of brittle damage? Why does Sej, after the failure of her rework, need to lose CC in order to get more damage? Wasn't that the main complaint about her rework?

I don't know, it just feels like Riot doesn't know how to handle these kind of champs and they just try to shift them over to more damage dealer roles while still labeling them as "tanks" when they can almost deal as much damage as a fighter or assassin can (maybe not as fast as them, but just as much).

Discuss, talk, do whatever on this subject. I'm just going to be in the corner and start thinking about all the ways season 9 will somehow go south, because League just feels that way nowadays to me.

150 Comments

Death by Glamour11/13/2018, 3:48:12 PM77 votes

they seem to be morphing into semi mobile bruisers and the old semi mobile bruisers are transforming into assasins

Aionius11/13/2018, 2:59:14 PM50 votes

It's the reason I said Season 5 is the most balanced between Seasons 5-8. Tanks, Fighters, Assassins, Mages, and ADCs were what they were supposed to be. Sure you had your strong oddities like Tank Ekko , but they were only broken in effectiveness towards actually being able to tank and peel. It aint no Inting Sion bs where you can feed and still win because you can chug turrets, and be worthless to the enemy as far as kills, then there's Tank Viktor who had more range, can kite, and has more sustain than Tank Ekko ever had, all the while doing more or the same damage. Season 8 is the worst in balance period.

The Whamboozler11/13/2018, 7:10:22 PM25 votes

I'd say it's more that Riot doesn't know what they're doing with the game OVERALL, so they've been juggling power back and forth between role archetypes for a while now. Tanks are buff, then ADC's are buff, then mages are buff, etc etc. If they do it often enough it feels like the game is evolving and people who main a role are encouraged to just stick it out until they're on the upswing again... but things never actually get balanced well and the game is never actually in a decent state overall.

GigglesO11/13/2018, 6:22:17 PM22 votes

Tanks invalid assassins, so they decided that tanks should be fighters I guess. They basically remove rotational balance too then.

It’s the same thing we saw with adcs moving into burst champions because otherwise assassins invalidate adcs. Again by turning everything into high damage we remove rotational balance.

I would dare to say it’s why everyone is so angry with the current game and why mobility is winning games. Mobility champions have no real trade off from any other class since everyone has similar time to kill.

GundayMonday11/13/2018, 3:12:17 PM19 votes

Yeah, I love playing tanks and helping my team. S8 was not fun. Hope Riot figures it out.

sixths11/13/2018, 6:44:46 PM9 votes

Their problem imo is for some reason people think tanks need to be able to scrap against bruisers and clear the jungle easily. If people (and riot) could just accept the identity of tanks as low damage hard-to-kill utility champs (that end up doing decent enough damage just because they take longer to kill) I think it would solve most problems. But then people say "not fair I can't take a tank into a jungle" and "not fair a champ that is built to kill tanks outdamages me in lane" so tanks get damage buffs and either are broken or get their utility and survivability nerfed to compensate and become bruisers.

NoIWontBuySkins11/13/2018, 7:06:49 PM8 votes

Yes but they cannot balance period

Sire Hippington11/13/2018, 11:13:45 PM6 votes

Anymore? I don't feel like they ever did past S4...Actually, since S6 i hardly feel like they know how to handle anything in this game...

SobeDragon11/13/2018, 8:04:12 PM5 votes

Hey remember all those posts like 3-4 years ago warning about power creep and as they add more champions and rework they are going to have to put more power into older champions? And how as they do this they will add more and more bad designs like a champion who is permenently untargetable in shroud as long as they don't cast anything like Akali Or can put up a wall every 15 seconds that negates everything thrown at it like Yasuo. Why wouldn't it only negate the first item thrown at it? Then you could put more into his damage, maybe reduce the amount of dashes or make it so the dashes have a way longer cooldowns for Yasuo who can multi stack dashes on multiple people and still two shot people. How can you balance a game when there are toxic design choices in your champions is a better question in my opinion. You can't tell me a champion with AA resets, Multiple dashes, huge stun range that can hit an entire team, an ult that disables enemy champions and reduces damage taken and has a w that greatly reduces damage taken.

You want a prime example of Riots Balance? Anivia. They removed her "toxic lane domination" by removing her E/R combo in lane. It was her primary way of trading in lane. Now you gotta land multiple spells to even trade properly. Meanwhile champions like Zed can move in and out and even 100 to 0 her easily if she misses her spells, but if she lands hers, it doesn't kill him.

Balance can be awful with these games because one champion can literally break the meta and completely flip the balance.

Done2511/13/2018, 4:34:16 PM4 votes

You want to really know? It's because most people suck at team work. In pro play they can squeeze 110% effectiveness out of tank CC. Everyone else though? They barely know how to CS, less alone how to CC.

DeusVult11/13/2018, 6:28:12 PM3 votes

Nautilus is fine as he is. I wouldnt call his E burst either. It does 175 damage at max rank, unless you get hit by 2 waves (which you would have to walk into) which would deal 262.5 damage. Add 15% once he completes Abyssal. Thats not a ton of damage, and Naut builds no Mpen.

Naut is what tanks should be. Good CC. Good survivability. Damage is low, but adds up if they can get off multiple rotations of their kit during a fight. (for Naut, this is Q, E, auto, W-auto reset, Ult, more W autos, another E off of CD. Sunfire on top of that. Not a ton of burst, but if you let him onto your backline and get all of this off, he will deal damage.)

fire26311/13/2018, 8:48:56 PM3 votes

It's just for pro play

Thing about pro play is they work as a team, and are able to use the tankiness and cc of tanks to their fullest extent, and combine it with damage of adc. In soloq, people don't know how to work together, so no one likes tanks as much as they can't carry if there's no one on their team that's actually doing damage. I guess the point of this is to make it so tanks can somewhat carry in soloq and make them viable, but then while doing that just removing the term tank. Idk, ask riot

Strawberrycocoa11/13/2018, 10:37:24 PM3 votes

The problem with tanks is that their job is shutting Big Plays down, and Riot has shown a very biased stance over the last few years against anything that isn't flashy Big Plays. They seem to prefer everything being a bloodsport arena instead of tactical combat, which means more burst and less lockdown, which means Tanks become bruisersassins.

K3ars3n11/14/2018, 1:23:11 PM2 votes

{quoted}

Let's just do a quick review on some tanks this past season(s) and some changes coming to others:

- lost his unstoppable (which to me made him unique) because it was making him too powerful, but now regaining it in loss of his shield, but more importantly getting an insane boost to his Brittle and Q damage. (think there was a post about doing 73% health damage with these buffs)

- before her mini rework was OK. Afterwards was doing insane damage, got nerfed, continued to get nerfed due to her power in pro play then fell out (still got nerfed). Now losing some CC in favor of more damage to most of her abilities.

- basically has fallen out of most play from my experience after a while.

- changed his damage from sustain in W to burst in E from what I recall and now is just...where is he?

I know there are more tanks that other people can give examples of and there's more details that I'm not going over for the ones I listed, but this is just the pattern I'm constantly seeing with tanks. They constantly feel like these champs, almost specifically the Vanguards, need to be dealing damage rather than providing good combat CC. Why though?

Why does Ornn need to be dealing crap amounts of brittle damage? Why does Sej, after the failure of her rework, need to lose CC in order to get more damage? Wasn't that the main complaint about her rework?

I don't know, it just feels like Riot doesn't know how to handle these kind of champs and they just try to shift them over to more damage dealer roles while still labeling them as "tanks" when they can almost deal as much damage as a fighter or assassin can (maybe not as fast as them, but just as much).

Discuss, talk, do whatever on this subject. I'm just going to be in the corner and start thinking about all the ways season 9 will somehow go south, because League just feels that way nowadays to me.

The problem with tank identity is as simple as it was for supports.

People want to feel like they are having an impact and most folks are too dumb to realize a tank going 0/7/34 with a ton of lockdown and peel for their carries was the driving force of the win. Supports wanted to feel the same.
Riot is too dumb to grant people vision of these things so JUST LIKE THEY DID WITH SUPPORTS, they are just giving them more damage, Presto!

TheSingularity11/13/2018, 9:43:18 PM2 votes

I wholeheartedly agree and have a gp+ post that should be up by the end of the week addressing tanks as a class, and how to fix them.

The biggest issues outside of the champs themselves imo are runes, pro play and itemization

The Highest Noon11/13/2018, 4:06:51 PM1 votes

Wait, I have a loaded reply but first I need some clarification from you. Is your problem with tanks themselves or just that champion changes are all over the place? Those are completely different issues far more complex than you're letting on. Not every champ with every class will play the same way, because not every champ of every class solely exists in that class. There's a reason why, to my last memory, a champion had about three or four classes to their name. Some tanks were casters, some were bruisers. Some casters were assassins, some were rangers. Some assassins were sustainers, others were rangers. Some mix of them all. Some tanks value CC, some tanks value damage control in some way.