I'm genuinely curious as to what changes in the game have caused this surge of assassins and squishy fighters to suddenly adopt and abuse tanky builds? When I first started playing a few years back, there were none of these tank Fizz or tank Yasuo shenanigans and the only people actively building heavy tank builds were tanks. So what's changed over the years to allow tanky non-tanks to suddenly become a thing?
Reikken1 votesit's not sudden
Tank fizz has (almost) always been a thing. It was around when I playing Dominion 2-3 years ago.
Kiharon1 votesIn general terms, it comes down to whether you can do your job better by building tank items or damage items.
Building straight damage will increase your damage, but will leave you to die pretty quickly to counter attacks or poke.
Building tank (full or partial) will increase your damage from a single rotation, but may keep you alive long enough to do a second (or third or more) rotation. If those extra rotations total more damage than the damage you would do with a single full offense build rotation, you have a better build. Alternatively, even if you do less damage, it may still be enough to kill the target while leaving you alive. Even if you don't manage to completely kill the target, sometimes getting out alive and going 0-0 is better than going 1-1.
