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I need help finding a tank's place in this new season

kolpy99··17 votes·1,843 views

I usually main tanking, or at least semi-tanky characters. I may just be building wrong, but I can't seem to find where a tank belongs in this new season.

Most of the time, if I'm a semi-tanky character, people have no problem killing me as easily as they do ADC's... Because more characters are getting more mobility, it feels like tanks are actually easier to kill than any other position in the game.

Then, when I play a full tank character, with more than one person on me I can usually last a good 6 seconds if they do a bit of damage.

For example, I played against a Jinx, I was building full tank as Rek'Sai, and even though, at the time, she only had an infinity edge, and i had 160 armor, she could kill me so easily.

It's making me wonder, are items like item 3035 and item 3135 too easy to build? It feels like full damage comps are viable now, and I really think they shouldn't be.

Or are items that give resistances not making you tanky enough?

If I'm completely wrong about this and I'm just building wrong I'd appreciate some feedback.

I just think that tanks need a little love in this new season cough cough magic resist items cough cough

35 Comments

Wise Squirrel17 votes

This is LCS big plays season. There is no room for "boring tanks" according to Riot.

You will have much better luck playing as one of the new generation ADCs (Lucian or Jinx).

I also miss the age of tanks, merely a thing of the past now.

Vertanium2 votes

at least they are buffing my two favorite tanks. Shen Zac but both of them can pull of some crazy plays, so now I see why.

Unho1y Intent8 votes

Yes. Especially in the jungle. Unfortunately, as we saw early last season, renekton, shyvana, and mundo were able to get absurdly tanky to the point that you couldn't play any other champs against them top lane. It's difficult to balance the choice of a tank vs carry-style champion for top/jungle, and I'm not sure what it will take to fix that.

AbodyHUN6663 votes

But the problem is Rene and Shyv are more like tanky DPS. We need a way to enable tanks who mostly just bring CC to a fight.

Teridax687 votes

I think there are two underlying problems here:

  • Bruiser design: A lot of older tanky champions are simply not optimally designed, and fall into a binary situation where they're either overwhelming against all ranged champions (which used to be the case a little earlier in Season 4, before marksman itemization got changed) or unable to approach them properly. RekSai is fine, since she has ways of dealing with kiting despite being fairly kiteable (she's also not really meant to go full tank), but champions like Darius , Olaf and Yorick are way too focused on dueling other melee champions through the raw power of their base stats and damage, and not enough on making interesting use of abilities to handle anyone. It's also one of the reasons why a lot of top laners have trouble dealing with ranged champions in lane (they can't handle kiting well).
  • Marksman itemization: ADC itemization is way too focused on piling on as many synergistic stats as possible for maximum DPS, and not enough on providing alternate forms of power. What this means is that marksmen with inbuilt survivability (i.e. mobility in most cases, and occasionally tons of CC) get to deal massive damage late game with few tradeoffs, while those who have fewer tools for self-protection in combat (KogMaw , Twitch , MissFortune , etc.) usually can't survive long enough to make use of their other strengths. Penetration ties into this, as it's not in very good shape (why does flat penetration work better on targets with low armor?) and is used more as an all-around damage amplifier than an actual deterrent to extreme resistance stacking. While most marksmen are in good shape, their items need to be less stat-centric and more focused on providing diverse gameplay options (marksman itemization currently offers very little choice, and is heavily dependent on stat sticks like item 3031 and item 3035 ). Ideally, the DPS provided by marksmen shouldn't eclipse the burst of mages or assassins as it tends to do now, but in exchange for less damage they should be able to itemize for gameplay options that would cater to their strengths or cover their weaknesses.
Jamnon2 votes

How does one bait reds to address this problem? @Meddler

Teridax681 votes

@Morello @RiotScruffy @Heimerdinger

Am I doing this right?

Old Man Teeto6 votes

Tank's have the least impact in the game currently by such a margin that they're not worth bringing.

If you're character can't validly build to kill the enemy team with damage, even if it's mixed tank/damage, you might as well hang up your coat.

Riot phased tanks out so that assassins and burst mages could be in two lanes rather than just one.

Big Nasty Mèat5 votes

If tanks are going to make a comeback, the tankiness needs to come from their kits and not items. When defensive items are very strong, the game stagnates (league of warmogs). Leona and Rammus are probably the best examples of functional tanks in the current game. Good initiators with lots of disruption and strong defensive steroids. Item based tanks like Shen and Naut really just don't cut it right now.

Jamnon1 votes

Totally agree.

Not much to add to that, sorry.

67chrome4 votes

Most of the time, if I'm a semi-tanky character, people have no problem killing me as easily as they do ADC's.

Tanky doesn't immediately mean hardest to kill.

It just means hard to kill in a very short period of time with lots of direct hits.

Mobility, range, crowd-control, minions, stealth, terraforming, healing, clairvoyance, and a wide range of other mechanics can make a champion just as hard to kill as durability.

For example, I played against a Jinx, I was building full tank as Rek'Sai, and even though, at the time, she only had an infinity edge, and i had 160 armor, she could kill me so easily.

Rek'Sai doesn't exactly strike me as a tank. She doesn't have many qualities that scale that well with raw durability. She's more about outnumbering or out-maunvering her opponents than she is face-tanking.

You tend to want massive CC (like Leona status, not Riven's latency spike). Or you want a derp-tastic amount of in-built, impossible to counter damage (Like Nasus - Infinite stacking Q, potential 300 AD steroid from his ultimate, 40 armor/mr shred AoE, and 5% max HP aura).

In both cases - you build mega-tank, you're a massive pain in the butt despite only investing in being impossible to kill.

Also, in regards to loosing out vs. an ADC: defense on a tank and damage on a damage roll are almost exclusively reliant on gold/itemization. If you're behind in gold as a tank or fighter, you're not going to be able to tank much damage. If you're behind in gold as a mage, marksman, or assassin - you're not going to deal much damage.

And by that - Alistar and Leona are literally it for actually being able to initiate a fight 1 major item down on their opponents, and that was a risky enough proposition Leona didn't see any competitive play when that's what average support incomes were.

Vayne and Kog'Maw basically have pea shooters if they're down a major item, %HP damage be damned.

It's making me wonder, are items like item 3035 and item 3135 too easy to build? It feels like full damage comps are viable now, and I really think they shouldn't be. Or are items that give resistances not making you tanky enough?

Last Whisper and Void Staff have always been in the game, so the meta changing in regards to tanks really has nothing to do with those.

Somewhat recent Nerf to Randuin's and Warden's %AS slow and %MS slow, possibly. Though you still saw a lot of Mao top.

I just think that tanks need a little love in this new season

Tanks still work really well as supports at the moment.

Braum, Leona, Blitzcrank, ~Thresh - those tanks are rocking it. If you want to play a tank you can go bot-lane support.

Warwick has also been doing unusually well, and he's on the tanky DPS side. Jungle is going through a lot of changes at the moment, changes that could potentially benefit a lot of tank junglers as well. Udyr, also tanky DPS, is likely benefiting from the jungle difficulty ramp-up much more than most. Udyr and WW are among the select few champions you can actually jungle with without runes, masteries, and a leash.

cough cough magic resist items cough cough

MR items are very solid at the moment.

Big thing to keep in mind is 1 AP sure as heck doesn't equal 1 MR. You only need 100 MR to reach 50% damage reduction, you need closer to 450 AP to deal double damage. Also - base damage on full QWER rotations tend to deal 50~60% of a champion's base HP, so you need to go glass-cannon to even 100%-->0% a squishy. Grab a BV, Locket, or Visage on a reasonably tanky champion along with some HP and you cause serious problems to magic-damage champions. Also, you get a ton of HP/5 to deal with their pew-pew harass.

Big thing to keep in mind as a tank vs. heavy magic champion is basically this: tanks aren't tanky if there effective HP drops to the same level as a squishies. Don't eat Zigg's bombs or Nidalee spears to take one for the team - doing that completely nullifies the advantages of buying all your tank items in the first place.

Skias5 votes

I disagree. I feel that flat and % pen and magic resist are both in a terrible position.

Boswick3 votes

LW and Void have been part of the problem since riot changed the penetration formula in s3 and made them much more effective. Tanks haven't really been good save a select few since s2.

WooBeeWoo4 votes

the fact that poking the front line tank a few times while (especially with a few aa from the adc) while you wait for a good intiate takes you out of the fight is so dam stupid. Its really hard to play full tanks and a lot of semi tanks get kited easily. It sucks because I think the majority of players play damage roles and so anyone like me (favorite champ is Naut) that loves full tanking is super out of the loop. Like Naut has no position right now. He is so easily to dominate in any role (jung you get invaded and you die, supp there are much better options, mid and top is basically feeding) so it blows right now.

Kuroi863 votes

A tank lasting six seconds can do more than an ADC that lasts one second.

There is room for improvement in the quality of life of tanks, but they are hardly useless.

The all in potential for some tanks is simply too strong for an "all damage comp" should they lack any real initiation.

Dryditch11 votes

To put the complaint another way (Tank main who also plays lifesteal junglers), As a tank, you don't FEEL useful in a game.

I don't mind getting one-shot if it means my team has gotten away or used that half second to kill the ADC or Assassin. More often than not, though, my death means absolutely nothing for my team. Drop a quick CC on me, it's back up by the time I'm dead and the chase is on again. Burn a combo, stay back for three seconds so the CDs are back up, then kill again.

Damage is too damn high, and the role of a tank (while important) is just not visibly valuable enough. No one gives the tank props, just like no one gives the support props for setting up a play unless it's thresh or blitz.

kolpy998 votes

My point was, i wish we could go back to saying "Oh shit, it's the tank, lets get out of here" instead of "Oh, his teammates are about 500 units behind him, lets kill him before they can walk here, even though they're two seconds away"

And the fact how its now "okay" to focus the tank, because it doesnt take much away from teamfights I dont remember the last time i got yelled at for not focusing the adc

AbodyHUN6664 votes

it's so true, no wonder Maokai and Ali were so popular, only they can work as the old tanks due to their damage reduction.

SecretAgentHulk2 votes

Maybe not so much tanks should be stronger as shred items should be weaker. BotRK really needs a nerf.

Jamnon2 votes

The problem is item 3153 and item 3151 shut down tanks hard and actually make any investments into resists/armor worth less over time.

My advice? Try playing as Singed. He punishes mobility hard.

Aurelius Maximus2 votes

I keep having replies to type but i start typing and realize it's gonna be a whole essay and I don't feel like doing that.

Just know that there are other tank mains out there that still feel valuable and make it so.

My advice is rethink what you are doing. I still walk in and start fights on my terms and walk out alive and I main naut, which alot of people think is garbage right now (He isn't though)

tanks are fine

Tis a nice day1 votes

Add an extra 100-200 gold for the %pen items?

junglerboy161 votes

Tanks should be stronger, but really? playing tank Rek'sai is like playing tank Tryndamere. Rek'sai is almost an assassin (she just needs one or two defensive items, everything else is damage).

Laughing Fish1 votes

There needs to be at least one more MR/Armor hybrid item. item 3026 is simply not enough. Also, with there being so many ultra-mobile fighters, I think tanks needs more items that slow the enemy.

Nagoh Shan1 votes

The main issue I'm noticing is that tanks are, by design, not allowed to win a lane.

Tanks are intended to die. The stated goal of a tank is to take as much CC, and damage cooldowns to themselves as possible before they actually do. This ignores the sustained DPS damage model, or the AoE damage model, but that's a different discussion. This means as tanks and bruisers scale, tanks don't get equivalent damage/survivability ratio as bruisiers. They get a modicum more survivability for drastically less damage. So, even if I do get first blood on Riven, I'm coming back with a few armor items and pots, and she's got a brutalizer and can now all-in me if I try to get a single CS. Because a tank is expected to die, they will, and that means they cant win lane past a certain point, because their scaling requires team assistance.

Taking Sion for example, good base damages, but almost no item based scaling. He has to build tanky, or he'll be shredded, but any damage item he gets will only benefit two abilities at most. AD scaling his Q and R while AP scales his W and E, so damage itemization is always inefficient. Also since tank killer items still work vs non-tanks, the lane opponent can still threaten other members of a team, while Tank itemization is almost a punishment system.

When they described Soraka a while back, they mentioned that dealing damage is fun, so undoing damage must be the opposite of fun, and I think that mindset bleeds into tanks a bit. Dealing damage is fun, so preventing damage is preventing fun.

If I could make any change, it would be to make Penetration, both percentage and flat, not apply to "Natural" armor or MR. Natural armor or MR would be defined as Base Armor/MR + runes + masteries. What you start the game with, and what you get as you level. Then Tank killer items would be effective vs Tanks, but that Lucian/Jinx that built crit will be able to beat you because your itemization doesn't gain you any damage vs theirs, and they will gain a lot of damage vs you, while being weaker against a tanky type of character Who only takes 200 damage from their 1850 damage crit.

mack91121 votes

I personally play Zac jungle and find little trouble contributing to teams. I think as a tank you have to remember you have a different goal. Not to just tank damage when diving towers but to disrupt your opposing team through engages. You won't win a 1 vs 1 against a riven probably but in a team fight the amount of disruption you provide can be invaluable.

FantasySniper1 votes

People keep on blaming the items, when every time they make no mention what they were doing while they were taking damage.

How about trying to not take any damage at all? Use CC and don't get in their range, make sure your team is around to kill/CC-lock your target before they continue wearing you down.

Half the time, people are too stupid to even build LW or VS and tanks roam free because your team will blow everything trying to kill them with no success, most of the time during teamfights.

Tanks are not designed to be immortal, why is everyone pretending that they should be allowed to walk in and out fights with little punishment?

Dryditch1 votes

Uh... What was I doing while taking damage? Making sure my ADC stayed alive for a half second longer, or protecting my turret for another second so the rest of the team COULD show up... doesn't mean they do.

Plus, when your team's gone, the enemy team or one enemy champ may decide you look tasty and take a quick kill off ya... before you can get away because your money's not in movespeed, but in defensive stats.

A tank is meant to soak up damage... not be immortal, but definitely to take more than a quick spell rotation to kill. See my reply above for the reason tanks feel weak.

FantasySniper1 votes

It's not even worth it to try and take down a tank unless your champion is of the few who can do it with ease and consistency with relative safety. Or you have others who can effectively assist the takedown. Then it's kind of difficult to fight back against the guy that's supposed to be right behind the tank.

I've seen too many tanks run away scott-free because someone stupid thought they could kill them fast enough and over-extended.

Dryditch1 votes

You really don't understand how "tanks" work.

Unless you're either super-fed as a support or have been left alone in top lane, the likelihood is that you won't be tanky enough to survive anyone with the slightest bit of CC.

Leona, Maokai, Amumu, Alistar, Rammus, and MAYBE Galio (against AP heavy team comps) are really the only tanks who you don't want to be trying to solo. Unfortunately, those six do not comprise the entire tank class, and many of us really love other tanks.

Malphite, for instance, can be melted to nothing by any assassin with a BotRK, or disintegrated by a mage with a DFG. The same is said for Volibear or any other health-based tank.

It's not much about being one "of the few" who can take down tanks... it's about the tank being one "of the few" who can get away after a short cd assassin burst.

FantasySniper1 votes

Zac, Mundo, Cho, Volibear, Singed, Braum, and Shen are all more tanks you don't want to mess with unless you are very sure they're alone. Darius too, although I think he's considered more of a bruiser than a tank. Same with Nasus. Assassins never easily take down a tank without true damage or %health based attacks. There are few, Zed and Ahri being among them, who can actually pull it off within a reasonable time-frame.

Malphite and Volibear are still huge threats with their team behind them, even if they can't duel. (Although Voli is still quite capable as a dueler)

The point I'm making is that you won't kill them easily and it takes so long to do it, that you need to be absolutely sure it's safe to. Otherwise, you're just wasting your time outside of taking maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of their health while leaving yourself open.

SmokingPuffin1 votes

For example, I played against a Jinx, I was building full tank as Rek'Sai, and even though, at the time, she only had an infinity edge, and i had 160 armor, she could kill me so easily.

It's making me wonder, are items like item 3035 and item 3135 too easy to build? It feels like full damage comps are viable now, and I really think they shouldn't be.

If a Jinx without LW is shredding you quickly, probably LW is not the problem in this case.

The problem with LW is that it's too good at killing non-tanks, so it becomes a core every game item rather than a "I need to kill an armor stacking tank" item.

Or are items that give resistances not making you tanky enough?

This feels more likely. It's also possible that Rek'Sai isn't naturally tanky enough and you have to pick someone with a built-in defensive steroid to feel tanky against glass cannon opponents.

I just think that tanks need a little love in this new season

Certainly the tank class is poorly represented in competitive play. Only a couple see regular play.

cough cough magic resist items cough cough

I think MR is working fine right now. Maybe could use a couple more options, but I don't fear mages on tanks. Actually I tend to skimp on MR items to get more armor because I'm scared of ADCs and assassins.

Pyro1 votes

You might find this project interesting.

Bresn1 votes

Nasus Op.

mikemil2231 votes

tanks, to me, do need a little more durability, but they need less dmg. Mundo is the only champ i know that you cant just build dmg and do more dmg than dmg champs. if a tanks responsibility is to tank, why can they kill just as easily? they should lower the dmg output of tanks since you cant build an adc full tank and still do more dmg than anyone else but you can build a tank full dmg and do more dmg than anyone else plus be slightly tankier than squishies too. like xin can go full dmg and still be tankier than any squishy champ, or go full tank and tank everything plus still melt squishy champs. ( i know xin isnt a full tank and my example sucks and might not even make sense, but im too tired to think of a good example). but you kinda get what i mean right? vi's q does 300 base dmg at max but you can go full dmg and it will melt people or full tank and still do the dmg of any other dmg champ. so i cant decide on my vote so ima just eeny meeny miny moe ( however thats spelled lol), because yes they do need more durability, but lots of them also need damage nerfs. especially leona. idk how many times ive gone leona with just triforce and thornmail and if i land everything i can dive an adc at full hp and kill them and just walk away. not even flash away or anything but just walk away. or in lane have relic and go all in on adc and get them to half hp alone with no dmg items. im aware that early game certain things are stronger than they are late game but even mid-late game leonas base dmg is high enough that full tank leo can still do the same dmg to someone like an adc. fulll tank leo plus fro mallet so they cant run. takes long but they have no chance against you for some dumb reason. just lower some tank's base dmg and make a distinct difference between tanks and carry champs instead of the only difference being that some are ranged and melee.

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