Can we just give tanks more slot efficient items?

GigglesO·Jan 21, 2015·19 votes·2,695 views

For the purpose of debate, lets say each gold slot represents a possible value of 4k gold. If the item has 4k gold of stats it is 100% slot efficient.

A few item's slot efficiency's for AD champs not including any passives (besides lifesteal) are. 116.8% The calculation is 4675gold(of stats)/4000gold 99.5% 97% 90%

Tanks have: 100% if you have 6k hp for 60/5 hp regen, which is unrealistic on most champions. 85.8% Itemization? Not many champs can use this item to it's full potential... 72.8% 68.3%

And it only goes down from there.

Tanks, honestly just need more slot efficient tank items.

46 Comments

SmokingPuffinJan 21, 201512 votes

The reason why tank items tend to be cheaper, and therefore less slot efficient, is that Riot wants offense to outscale defense in the late game. If that doesn't happen, games don't end on time, and we end up picking only late game champions.

I don't think tanks need itemization changes at all. The basic problem for the vast majority of tanks is that bruisers are able to do enough of the tanky things while also supplying personal damage output that it's not efficient to bring a pure tank. Basically, the extra utility you get on Nautilus isn't worth giving up the damage and dueling potential you get with Lee Sin.

redniwediSJan 21, 201511 votes

As a bruiser main I really hate this argument, not just because it puts the blame on my chosen role but because it is completely right. Itemization is not where tanks will get the help they need as it also effects roles that do not need assistance.

Tanks need kit overhauls to make them useful without being overbearing, and also without making other roles stronger or weaker in the process.

The WhamboozlerJan 21, 20158 votes

{quoted}

As a bruiser main I really hate this argument, not just because it puts the blame on my chosen role but because it is completely right. Itemization is not where tanks will get the help they need as it also effects roles that do not need assistance.

Tanks need kit overhauls to make them useful without being overbearing, and also without making other roles stronger or weaker in the process.

^ This. The solution isn't "tanks needs to never die". The solution is "tanks need more meaningful ways to impact fights". Tanky CC machines tend to blow their one spell then be useless for a while. Tanks need more utility or more damage to matter. A guy who doesn't die, but doesn't do anything else either is... pretty useless, beyond taking tower aggro during a dive.

Give tanks more options, not more defenses. Give them items that give aura buffs, or items that debuff enemies. Kit changes that make them stronger if they AREN'T focused, so ignoring one to wail on his team turns him into a raid boss. Something to give them more use than that of a fat idiot who takes a few more shots to kill than most but has no other purpose.

Kuroi86Jan 21, 20151 votes

A good idea, but you're talking about something that will take a long time to figure out. Still, it's nice to dream.

Kitten of EvilJan 21, 20151 votes

What if a tank champion had some sort of temporary stat boost upon nearby allies dying?

2nd FiddleJan 21, 20151 votes

This used to be Kayle's passive. Kayle's passives have never really been good.

Kitten of EvilJan 21, 20153 votes

Yeah, seems like they always struggle to balance hybrid champs. But an "avenging allies" passive would work better on a tank than a fighter because if you ignore the tank and kill the allies, then the tank becomes stronger. Alternately, it could scale based on the number of dead ally champions in a certain radius.

2nd FiddleJan 21, 20153 votes

Then you get this problem of having no good options for the opponent: focus the tank -> everyone dies to the adc; focus the adc -> everyone dies to the tank. Some of the earlier tanks(Amumu, Cho'gath, Singed) pulled this off by having strong damage over time effects.

Kitten of EvilJan 23, 20151 votes

It would just necessitate some sort of escape or CC on that tank, after the fight is "over". It's not much different from Kog'maw's passive, which also requires you to get out as fast as possible after you kill him.

Champion SkinJan 21, 20151 votes

You could have the Aura/activate items scale with armor/mr if it is made for tanks... or maybe you could make it work with current health... Either focus the tank or the tank will have a strong and useful aura/effect

NamesRHardJan 21, 20151 votes

I see 2 ways to do this (ignoring the often promised but yet to be realized "fighter rework"):

An item with an active that gives a temporary % boost to armor and MR. Maybe 40 armor and 40 MR with a unique active that increases bonus armor and bonus MR by 50% for 3 seconds. This way you get the most out of it if you're ready building tanky. It wouldn't do much as a single defensive item. Also, th active is short enough to allow counter play but long enough to allow a tank to soak some serious damage if being focused late game.
An item that grants decent stats, and has a unique passive that punishes an enemy for ignoring the tank. I'm thinking either a ramping AOE damage passive or a ramping AOE slow or something like that. It would be much harder to balance though becuase it could make some duelling fighters overbearing.

Raith AlghulJan 21, 20151 votes

an item that allowed tanks to apply a debuff to enemies they were attacking/CCing that allowed allies to deal additional damage might be a good option, similar to Leonas passive but maybe something that had a stacking effect the longer a tank was in the fight.

SmokingPuffinJan 21, 20152 votes

Just to be clear, I was not suggesting that bruisers need nerfs. Bruisers are mostly feeling pretty weakish right now.

redniwediSJan 21, 20151 votes

I personally love how bruisers are right now, I just also don't want anything like "tank help" to come along and put them in a nerfable position.

Kuroi86Jan 21, 20151 votes

Agreed, bruisers are somewhat strong right now with dive comps being popular, but at the same time they aren't unstoppable killing machines like in past seasons.

HotdogsJan 21, 20152 votes

the op is posting about tank items vs ad items not bruisers vs tanks if tank items were more slot efficient it would make "tanks" better relative to bruisers but not much would change until very late game when you max out on items

SEKAIJan 21, 20155 votes

Last time we had that, squisies QQ'ed that tanks take more than 3 AAs to die.

SaevumJan 21, 20155 votes

When you make a very efficient tank item, you can bet bruisers may rush it too. They already (sometimes) build Raduins and Visage/Veil.

Champion SkinJan 21, 20151 votes

Well that's why we need tank items that aren't great by themselves but work well with other tank items like kind of a rabbadon's for tanks (just maybe a bit less good by itself)

Deep Terror NamiJan 21, 20153 votes

Maybe they should add a new item-line which designates you as a tank, the same way there are jungler items (machete) and support items (FotM/Talisman/FQC).

The reason I say this, rather than just "better tank items", is so that non-tanks don't pick them up and be too tanky because it is so efficient. Non-junglers and non-supports don't pick up the aforementioned items for a reason, but they work perfectly fine.

Or maybe this is what you had in mind?

GigglesOJan 21, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valkyrie Witch,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=zc5stBeq,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2015-01-21T06:54:44.602+0000)

Maybe they should add a new item-line which designates you as a tank

so that non-tanks don't pick them up and be too tanky because it is so efficient.

Or maybe this is what you had in mind?

Actually I thought really hard about problem solving this concept of an item that is efficient on just tanks, but not on other classes.

If an item were to only give 20% bonus of total health, magic resist and armor and cost 3500 gold, it would create an item that is roughly 100% gold efficient on players with 3 tank items + new item while being 87% slot efficient... While on dedicated tanks with 4 tank items + new item it would give a gold efficiency of around 125% and a slot efficiency of 110%

This stat increase would make it a must buy on pure tanks (5 tank items +boots), but people that build only 4 tank items (bruisers) wouldn't get the efficiency. Numbers could easily be subjected to change too like giving it a lower %hp but a higher % armor and mr and ect... but keeping it purely % bonus would reward players that heavily invest into defense.

Kuroi86Jan 21, 20151 votes

^^^ Pretty much the best idea I've seen tossed around.

WildzLifeJan 21, 20152 votes

It's gonna be unbalance where tanker will never die item 3035

Lordk0zJan 21, 20155 votes

Tanks aren't supposed to die.

SEKAIJan 21, 20155 votes

Exactly, why should tanks just cc, hopefully get somebody in it then just die. That's just wrong.

Kuroi86Jan 21, 20152 votes

Welcome back to the metagolem, get ready for Riot to nerf tanks harder than ever thanks to this way of thinking.

Sneak DogJan 21, 20152 votes

I too think tanks are a bit weak right now with %penetration being an autobuy for all damage-dealers lategame, having to build two different types of resistances that don't interact with eachother and having only two basic stats that scale with eachother (resistance x health) instead of three like physical damage dealers (ad x as x crit).

However, I don't think your comparisons are fair. Tanks items are intentionally cheaper because tanks have less damage, resulting in fewer kills and more effort to farm. As such, saying that tank items are gold-inefficient compared to a set amount of gold per slot is misleading.

Champion SkinJan 21, 20152 votes

I think tanks should have more items which have more synergy with each other like % increases and such so that the more you have the better so that those bruisers who dip into offense and defense won't get as much out of it

Sneak DogJan 21, 20153 votes

Pretty much, yes. Dipping into defence with just a randuins would be less powerful. Right now, Randuins is the staple defence item because its stats are actually the perfect combination of armor and health and on top of that it gives cold steel. Making this one item a tiny bit less efficient but a combination of tank items more would be a great incentive to focus in tank items.

Knight DevoutJan 21, 20152 votes

If you make tank items better, you don't actually make tanks more viable and more fun, because that doesn't solve the issue where fighting roles like ADC or fighters take one single item and the scenario is back to square 1, with tanks still being squishiers of a adc/fighter with 1 defensive item . If you want tanks to feel better , you need to have more multiplicative resistance, like anticrit, AoE reduction, etc, or multiplicative scalings for defense.

In short, if you have a fed Shyvana picking Botrk/Hydra/Triforce and a 110% effective Randuin, and suddenly becoming unkillable while also being a serious damage threat, you only make tanks who are unable to reach that damage even less relevant. The goal should be that an endgame tank with poor offense scaling is more resilient because "the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts."

As in the example before, you would have a jax with one or two defense item still finding those items cost ineffective, on the other hand the nautilus would be able to push those resistances highier with multiplicative defense scalings . Riot thinks that players are scared of unkillable tanks. actually, a Nautilus with 350 armor and 200 magic resist is scary, but still doable. What they are scared of is a Rengar that leaps out of stealth in the middle of the enemy team while also being able to hold the ground with a single defense item.

Entheos GeonJan 21, 20151 votes

We need tank items that scale with building tanky, this way strong tank items can't just be slapped on a bruiser and be abused.

AtheosisXJan 21, 20151 votes

Armor and magic resist items that scale like Rabadon's would be awesome.

KhristophorosJan 21, 20151 votes

Durability is hard to balance because some champions need to be more or less durable based on what their kit does. Some champs are just unhealthy when allowed to be tanky, and some champs depend on being tanky to function. If you just adjust the items, it adjusts all champions at once. So if you buff all tanky items, maybe you just made Nautilus a lot better, but you also made Irelia better in an unhealthy way and overall the game is worse for it.

So I think a better approach would be to actually go and buff a lot of tanks to have better scaling off the existing items.

Old Man TeetoJan 21, 20151 votes

Squishy on Squishy Bruiser on Squishy Tank on Squishy

Those three damage rates are too damn high.

A Squishy vs Squishy fight should take 4~~5 seconds, typically after 1 core item, it's 1~~2 seconds A Bruiser vs Squishy fight should take 6~~8 seconds, typically after 1 core item, it's 3~~4 seconds. A Tank vs Squishy fight should take 9~~10 seconds, typically after 1 core item, it's 4~~5 seconds.

That's with 1 core item. It gets worse for the first two comparisons as # of items increase, and Tank vs Squishy only increases if that tank can purely devote to a single type of resistance.

*note: This means squishy and bruiser defenses should increase dramatically, and tank defense should increase some but not as greatly.

JJI744Jan 21, 20151 votes

Hm, where are you getting your values? The wiki lists a series of value differences.

From said Wiki:

Warmogs reaches 100% efficiency at something like 1100 HP, not 6000. It's all gravy from there.

Frozen heart is 140% efficient.

Spirit Visage is gold-efficient by default.

Randuin's is the only item not gold efficient, coming in at ~95% efficiency.

IE is just over 100% efficient.

BT is 113%

Trinity is 126&

Hydra is ~110%

GigglesOJan 21, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Hm, where are you getting your values? The wiki lists a series of value differences.

From said Wiki:

Warmogs reaches 100% efficiency at something like 1100 HP, not 6000. It's all gravy from there.

Frozen heart is 140% efficient.

Spirit Visage is gold-efficient by default.

Randuin's is the only item not gold efficient, coming in at ~95% efficiency.

IE is just over 100% efficient.

BT is 113%

Trinity is 126&

Hydra is ~110%

You are talking about gold efficiency gold efficiency is not the same as slot efficiency. Gold efficiency is a measure of how well the item lives up to its cost.

Ad is worth 36 gold / stat increase, and that is gold efficiency.

What I am talking about is how many stats fit into one slot. Say you have a 1 cubic meter box and all you cared about is money, would you rather have 1 cubic meter of gold, or of iron? Gold is worth more, so you would most likely say gold.

So for warmogs to be worth 4,000 gold it would have to give ~ 60hp/5 (in combat) which is the equivalent to 6k hp since it regens 1% of your max hp/5 seconds

Hydra is 110% gold efficient, but it isn't inherently worth as much as a triforce, because a triforce has more stats.

Just to elaborate, you could make a tank item that gives 50 armor, and is 300% gold efficent. That would mean that that piece of armor costs 333 gold, WHAT A STEAL! But if you can't upgrade it... it really just takes up space for an item that could give 100 armor but is only 95% gold efficient. (Thornmail)

Would you rather have the 50 armor or the 100 armor when you reach full build?

HockerJan 21, 20151 votes

As a guy who mains Nasus, I could either selfishly agree with you or I could point out that Tanks are already kind of broken. If the tank items were made more cost-efficient, then EVERY match would end up looking like 3 Tanks (Top, Jung, and Support) 1 ad carry and 1 ap carry. Teamfights would take forever because all it would be about at that point is how fast you can get as tanky. Frankly, you would see the adc helping to get the support fed a bit so that innitiation could happen earlier. Do you really want to see Malph and Ali tower-diving at lvl 6 and walking away with barely a scratch?

SherogarthJan 21, 20152 votes

Yes :D

GigglesOJan 22, 20151 votes

{quoted}

If the tank items were made more cost-efficient...

I'm not saying that tank items should be more cost efficient.

I'm saying they should be more slot efficient.

Tanks need the Deathcap of the AP mages, the Triforce of the AD bruisers, the IEdge of ADCs. They need their god tier item, because Warmogs just doesn't, can't, give them what they need. For warmogs to fill the item slot that tanks need they would have to make it regen more than 1% of their max hp/5. It would have to be around 2-3% of their max hp... but even then you would get bruisers that abuse the extra regeneration. We need a new god tier tank item, one that only really helps heavy tanks, and is ehhh on everyone else.

Raith AlghulJan 21, 20151 votes

Having the items get more gold efficiency when used in combination might be a good way to handle this, like maybe extra armor/MR based on bonus health or something.

The issue I've run into with tanks isn't really in team fights but in lane, they seem to have trouble dueling fighters and bruisers, even if you live longer than a carry you can't deal enough damage to win the fight. Kind of wondering if an item with an isolation passive similar to Kha'zix but scaling off of tank stats would help, extra damage in 1v1 but only offering health/resists/CC in team fights.

SpecterVonBarenJan 21, 20151 votes

I think what others have brought up is correct, tanks need items that reduce the efficiency of the stats other classes buy. Frozen Heart is a good example because it not just gives you armor, but it also gives you its passive to slow down the aa's or the enemy. Randuins used to do something similar in that it helped reduce kiting potential.

So we need more effects like this that help multiply the effectiveness of defenses outside of just health and armor/mr. So maybe items like one that gives mr and increases the cooldowns of an enemy champion if you apply a form of cc to them? Or an item with armor that reduces a percentage of the damage done to you from an aa if it hits some sort of extreme amount (In other words, something to reduce the effectiveness of crit). Or if you see that the enemy has a lot of aoe damage then an aura item that reduces the damage of aoe spells, ect.

GigglesOJan 22, 20151 votes

{quoted}

So we need more effects like this that help multiply the effectiveness of defenses outside of just health and armor/mr. So maybe items like one that gives mr and increases the cooldowns of an enemy champion if you apply a form of cc to them? Or an item with armor that reduces a percentage of the damage done to you from an aa if it hits some sort of extreme amount (In other words, something to reduce the effectiveness of crit). Or if you see that the enemy has a lot of aoe damage then an aura item that reduces the damage of aoe spells, ect.

Unless these scale off of the # of defense stats you have, like zz'rot portal does, they are all easily abuse-able by bruisers.

agbudarJan 22, 20151 votes

yea its not items

rammus was "fine" as a champion when he had a 3 second taunt. but i would argue that he is a bruiser/duelist meant to take down an adc

he is in the same boat as the old never nerfed olaf adc complained about him killing them over the span of 5 agonizing seconds and they could do nothing about it. (yea sorry dude you should not be alone) rammus was in the same boat he also did the same thing to people like zed. any games i saw a zed go midlane i would go rammus to counter him. (back then ad was the meta even more power to rammus for that matter)

like some people have said. the skill sets of tanks need to be GOOD not ok. rammus needs his 3 second taunt. volibear needs his 45% movespeed at lvl 1 nautilus needs a better shield malphite and maokai could use a small buff too.

all these champs that i named work only in the jungle for the most part. have slow clear speeds so are behind in items unless they gank which they COULD because of their kits.

rammus in his glory days was only in it because everyone was STUCK UP on NEEDING to go with a champ like zed/fizz/kass who all need to get pretty close to the adc for them to melt them away.

when mages like lux and morg reined supreme in the midlane rammus was arguably i bit underpowered. unless you flash powerball a decent morg or lux will snare you when you go in for the kill. then spam laugh when they unleash their entire kit on your sorry ass.