109 Comments
AlienPrimate78 votesThen you watch a tank vs tank battle and realize they don't actually do that much damage but the people claiming they do a lot of damage just have absolutely no defenses against their small damage.
PDE5 Inhib11 votesThis is true. I would like to point something out, though. While you may say, "Tanks should do a lot of damage to squishies because they build no defense", wouldn't it also be true to say, "Carries should be able to tank damage from tanks because they build not a single damage item"?
That being said, people that typically complain about tanks are those than can't farm well enough to keep up with them. Because damage will typical outscale defense.
AlienPrimate20 votesSaying tanks don't build a single damage item is a lie though. Almost every tank builds at least one of these items and most tanks build 2 or 3 of these items. CDR is also an offensive stat for champions that rely on abilities to do damage so items like frozen heart and spirit visage could be considered offensive items for a tank.
If you have an ap tank fighting an adc who has 
in their build the adc has a good chance of winning a 1v1 fight. They aren't meant to fight 1v1 fights though so they don't typically build those items.
Troll for Trump4 votesYes, but, mages who rush 
to get Zhonyas still get destroyed by AD champs.
Though I'd blame that on mages not having many good defensive items. (except just raw hp)
Auz the Ripper2 votesAdditionally, armor penetration is pretty easy to get
SpecterVonBaren2 votesYou'd be surprised how many Vel'Koz games I've won because I got Frozen Heart instead of Hourglass.
Troll for Trump1 votesMost mages can't build Frozen Heart, or it's really inefficient. Mostlikely the latter, with the exception of the ones that scale off mana. You can build it on Vel, but it's inefficient, and makes you more useless later. You just have a better chance of surviving lane, which you also could've done if you took a defensive summoner or play more safer (vel is great at passively pushing with W)
SpecterVonBaren4 votesI am quite aware of that. I know that the reason it works for Vel is because of his passive and high base damage (And it wouldn't be my first item anyway unless I was losing lane horribly), I just wanted to point out that Zhonyas is such a poor item right now that rushing a Frozen Heart is better.
PDE5 Inhib1 votesWell they can't make the item strong enough to deal with ADCs or Zed/Yasuo wouldn't be as fun to play.
junglerboy162 votesAnd we can't have that now can we.
Niyumi9 votesSo if an ADC built one defensive item, should they be nigh invulnerable? Same idea.
CubedJustice3 votesThey are, to an extent. An ADC with say, spirit visage as a sixth item isn't really at any risk of dying against a maokai built normally.
Pierce The Veal1 votesThey are, to an extent. An ADC with say, spirit visage as a sixth item isn't really at any risk of dying against a maokai built normally.
Pretty true. It's a good think adcs aren't building tabi+spirit visage and full damage after that, otherwise they would be the dueling gods. Bloodthirster, Phantom dancer, infinity edge, and lord dominiks, ninja tabi, and spirit visage? That adc son of a bitch isn't going down anytime soon.
I now have an inspiration for a yasuo build, thanks guys.
EndlessSorcerer1 votesTrying to kill a competent ADC with Banshee's Veil and/or Mercurial Scimitar can be quite difficult for a tank who deals primarily magic damage. It makes them rather difficult to lock down while greatly mitigating whatever damage you deal (abilities, Thornmail, Sunfire Cape, etc).
One could argue that Mercurial Scimitar is like a defensive item, but you could easily replace it with Blade of the Ruined King or Bloodthirster.
Pierce The Veal1 votesSaying tanks don't build a single damage item is a lie though. Almost every tank builds at least one of these items and most tanks build 2 or 3 of these items. CDR is also an offensive stat for champions that rely on abilities to do damage so items like frozen heart and spirit visage could be considered offensive items for a tank.
If you have an ap tank fighting an adc who has
To be fair, most tanks don't build pure tank items, but stuff like titanic, thornmail, and other high damage items. I highly doubt adcs can duel a champion with thornmail, titanic hydra, sunfire cape, and another armor+ health item (last slot being spirit visage or banshees usually). Even if the adc has those tank killing items. Adcs have like what, 3000 effective hp? Tanks have, even after armor pen, around 9000-10000 effective hp, and deal much more than a third of an adc's damage if they're itemizing for it, which means many tanks can in fact duel an adc.
Verandure2 votesA implies B Does not guarantee that B implies A
They're contrapositives.
In this case; B, therefore A is false because were it true that squishies could absorb damage from tanks without a problem, then it would necessarily be the case that the tank is redundant. A tank being unable to distract or otherwise incapacitate the squishy means that the tank is irrelevant to the fight.
It does not necessarily have to be the case if you feel that the role of tank is unnecessary to the game; however, since tanks are a part of the balance paradigm, it stands that they need to be able to fulfill their role through threat of damage and crowd control.
A implies B is true, in this case, because a tank has to be able to be a threat to squishies in order to maintain value.
There's a lot more nuance to the tank v carry balance, like the scaling that you already alluded to.
PDE5 Inhib3 votesI'm not saying it's out of balance. I think League is best when tanks are strong because they can counter assassins. I said that the people who typically complain "omg nurf tanks" are those than can't cs well, so they fall behind the power curve.
My point was just to say that I think the argument of "adcs build no defense so they die" is very flawed.
Elikain2 votesThat's a relative standpoint. Watching a tank vs tank battle - they don't do anything to each other because they have all the defense, don't care about each other's CC and take no damage because of their large HPs. When you watch an ADC die in 5 hits to a tank, than that's an issue. The worst offenders are tank bruisers, like Fiora used to be.
Choaru3 votesWet noodle fight :D
Elikain3 votesBasically, yea. Watching tanks duke it out is like watching them fight with wet noodles. However, examining what their definition of a wet noodle is is closer to a heavy duty chain-like barbed wire for a squishy. Their builds are full of on-hit damage, defense and HP, passive item damage + their abilities. I'm not saying that they can't be countered, i'm saying that armor and HP scale all to easily in their favor early game and that delaying the carries' build is always a good call to make.
Pierce The Veal1 votesThen you watch a tank vs tank battle and realize they don't actually do that much damage but the people claiming they do a lot of damage just have absolutely no defenses against their small damage.
Then you see a Mundo hit an autoattack for 1000 damage and laugh at how puny his damage was.
CitadelOfIce16 votesYou know, I'm actually fine with tanks dealing reasonable damage as long as they don't have high mobility. They need damage because if they aren't a threat why would you bother hitting them? What I'm not okay with is them getting that damage for free because there ratios are too high. That way there is some degree of give and tank. You want a heavy hitter, wont be as hard to kill. Want a invulnerable wall, won't hit that hard. Honestly what I think kills LoL tanks for me is the fact that a lot of "meta" ones have high mobility on top of naturally high damage, and thats not right. Things like Cho'Gath are fine, they don't really move that fast, but are very hard to kill and will rip your face off and force feed it to your buddy. Gragas is another example of a good tank. Hes hard to kill and has good mobility, but sacrifices damage. Things that break the game are Tanks like Ekko who has insane mobility, can build almost full tank and still gets really really good AP of a handful of low-cost items that potentially still give tank stats. You can have 2 of the 3 tank attribute but if a champion can have all three in good standing theirs a real problem.
OneSmoothDude1 votesWell said.
That's kind of the reason Ekko is so ridiculous right now and Graves was so ridiculous for awhile (having access to damage, tankiness, and mobility). Ekko will surely be addressed in this week's patch, and beyond that, I believe Riot hinted at changes to defensive/offense itemization in the upcoming mid-year update here.
Also, for those interested, in this thread Meddler gives a LOT of information about upcoming changes they want to implement in just over two weeks!
Melledoneus3 votesGraves is still ridiculous.
SpecterVonBaren7 votesEkko isn't a tank though, the issue isn't tanks, it's non tanks building tank and still having so much damage that they can still maul someone to death. There's just too much damage in the game right now.
ragnos2392 votesEkko isn't a tank though, the issue isn't tanks, it's non tanks building tank and still having so much damage that they can still maul someone to death. There's just too much damage in the game right now.
This. The meta is in this weird place where people like fizz and ekko can successfully just build tank items (most damage focused item I've seen on one of them lately is a RoA or an abyssal, maybe an iceborn) and I've seen tanks focus on more hybrid-y items (RoA and such) and be able to do a lot of damage while still being a pain to take down. I get that carries are more late game focused, in theory, than other champions but I don't know what there is to do when a supposed assassin or tank pops out of a bush and kills you in a few hits while your autos just plink off of their one armor item.
PDE5 Inhib6 votes2 minutes later and I'm still waiting for something to happen
Damn Laughing Fish set my expectations to high for you
ßurst4 votesHow are you supposed to take them out? with ground attack aircraft's, and they way your looking at it it would seem those are bruisers, but even bruisers can't compete against them.
Sulghunter37 votesGround attack aircraft?
= ? = http://www44.atwiki.jp/7weapons2?cmd=upload&act=open&pageid=1&file=a-10_thunderbolt_2.jpg
AthenasVendetta3 votesI cry when I see those beautiful aircraft... I would love to see a newer one.
Randomonium7 votesThe A-10 is one of the most amazing aircraft ever build, its a shame they'll be retired soon.
skyknyt31 votestechnically wouldn't she be...
a harrier? [slayer-jinx-wink]
BewareTheDepths3 votesDayum phreak....no one asked you anything. Get out >_>
SpecterVonBaren7 votesI still have no idea why Phreak doesn't post on his company's own boards when we have far more puns than Reddit.
BewareTheDepths7 votesHe doesnt want us to phreak out when we will see his terrible puns.
Skias1 votesWe just need better AP tank busting options and the problem would be solved.
RyzeRework1 votesBesides the fact that ap users a have am easier time against tanks and better tank busting items
Skias5 votes[{quoted}](name=Blank jungler,realm=NA,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=ojjgNaU8,comment-id=00050000,timestamp=2016-04-18T05:28:35.051+0000)
Besides the fact that ap users a have am easier time against tanks and better tank busting items
Liandries and Void Staff are both horrid. Armor pen is on practically every item and Botrk is infinitely better at its job then Liandries. Theres a reason ADCs win games and Rumble loses.
RyzeRework1 votesHow many adcs buy armor pen???
DarkRitual5 votesLast Whisper and access to crits, in addition to BotRK do so much more dps. Problem is mages are less dps based, so they have less sustained damage, which is hiw you kill tanks (or just be Fiora)
SoMNia2 votes...All of them??? Are you trolling right now?
RyzeRework1 votesLol the only pen item an adc would buy is maw pen is also pretty useless when you have 300 bonus armor and with a last whisper you'd only go through bonus armor some tanks have high base armor.. for tanks there's 2 mr options compared to the many of armor options its easy to hit 300 armor but its hard to hit 200mr. Which a void staff is 35 percent total armor and then pen items give 15 pen a piece not only that but pen items are useful on any mage but a champion like ezreal doesn't benefit from ghostblade.
SoMNia3 votes...Right. Trolling it is. But just in case you're at all serious:
The criteria for surviving a caster are much different from those for surviving an autoattacker. An autoattacking ADC will kill a tank before a mage is able to start a second spell rotation, because their autoattack has a half-second cooldown. Meanwhile, the mage has to go through three rotations to finish the job.
By the way, the high armor items that make it "easy" to get 300 total armor also grant 0 health and are somewhat situationally useful. A tank is likely to have maybe 200-250 armor unless they're purposefully stacking it (similarly, they will probably not have more than ~160 MR). And just so we're clear, if a tank has 300 bonus armor, Lord Dominik's Regards will be a 60% increase in damage output against them. It's not remotely "useless", and every ADC with any sense will build it every time there is a tank stacking armor. Even at normal tank armor levels, it's ~45% extra damage. Even at "ADC bought GA" levels, it's a ~13% increase. If the enemy builds basically any armor, Last Whisper beats any flat pen. There's no reason not to build it, unless you want to do something gimmicky like 100% crit or 50% life steal. Don't do something gimmicky. Buy armor pen.
Oh, and Blade of the Ruined King is a better tank-buster than any AP item, even after the on-hit nerf.
RyzeRework1 votesyes but a mage can blow an adc up with 2-3 spells at full build at a far range so before the adc can attack the tanks he would die
SoMNia3 votes...Unless the tank and support on the ADC's team can peel properly. Yes, I know. These are fundamentals of the game. Whichever team can rock-paper-scissors their way through a teamfight better wins. That's how it works.
The point, though, was that despite your claims, ADCs are better tank-busters than mages, and that is by design. With that in mind, I somewhat disagree with the parent comment here: we don't need better AP tank-busting items. Mages aren't as good at killing tanks, and they're not meant to be.
RyzeRework1 votesI feel like the mages meant to kill tanks fast do it good. Obviously a syndra isn't going to one shot a tank. But champions like Cass Ryze vlad karthus and karma have a very easy time against tanks... mostly the sustain portions of their kits.. you get 30 spell pen then 20 Mr reduction with 35percent mpen I feel like that's enough mpen alone to do true damage to anyone not a tank
Skias2 votes...Unless the tank and support on the ADC's team can peel properly. Yes, I know. These are fundamentals of the game. Whichever team can rock-paper-scissors their way through a teamfight better wins. That's how it works.
The point, though, was that despite your claims, ADCs are better tank-busters than mages, and that is by design. With that in mind, I somewhat disagree with the parent comment here: we don't need better AP tank-busting items. Mages aren't as good at killing tanks, and they're not meant to be.
Problem with your point is everyone is a tank. Assassins, skirmishers, tanks, bruisers, adcs. So you either nerf tank items and make them most costly, or give ap carries a method to fight back. Its ridiculous to see every match dominated by AD and Tanks only, while nearly every AP carry is completely ineffective.
SoMNia1 votesWell, do you mean AP carry, or do you specifically mean AP casters? Someone like Elise (if built bruiser) has little problem with tanks, because her engagement pattern includes a lot of sustained damage. The autoattacks are the main thing. Low cooldown attacks with no resource cost are the things that beat tanks. If you have a bursty mage who has cooldowns to deal with, of course they're going to struggle with targets that survive their burst.
That said, they have been nerfing the hybrid/bruiser items (Titanic Hydra, Sterak's Gage, Maw of Malmortius, and now Iceborn Gauntlet). I get the feeling real tank items (i.e. Frozen Heart and the like) aren't the things you have a problem with.
Skias1 votesWell, do you mean AP carry, or do you specifically mean AP casters? Someone like Elise (if built bruiser) has little problem with tanks, because her engagement pattern includes a lot of sustained damage. The autoattacks are the main thing. Low cooldown attacks with no resource cost are the things that beat tanks. If you have a bursty mage who has cooldowns to deal with, of course they're going to struggle with targets that survive their burst.
That said, they have been nerfing the hybrid/bruiser items (Titanic Hydra, Sterak's Gage, Maw of Malmortius, and now Iceborn Gauntlet). I get the feeling real tank items (i.e. Frozen Heart and the like) aren't the things you have a problem with.
Dps based dot mages like Rumble.
Skias1 votes...Right. Trolling it is. But just in case you're at all serious:
The criteria for surviving a caster are much different from those for surviving an autoattacker. An autoattacking ADC will kill a tank before a mage is able to start a second spell rotation, because their autoattack has a half-second cooldown. Meanwhile, the mage has to go through three rotations to finish the job.
By the way, the high armor items that make it "easy" to get 300 total armor also grant 0 health and are somewhat situationally useful. A tank is likely to have maybe 200-250 armor unless they're purposefully stacking it (similarly, they will probably not have more than ~160 MR). And just so we're clear, if a tank has 300 bonus armor, Lord Dominik's Regards will be a 60% increase in damage output against them. It's not remotely "useless", and every ADC with any sense will build it every time there is a tank stacking armor. Even at normal tank armor levels, it's ~45% extra damage. Even at "ADC bought GA" levels, it's a ~13% increase. If the enemy builds basically any armor, Last Whisper beats any flat pen. There's no reason not to build it, unless you want to do something gimmicky like 100% crit or 50% life steal. Don't do something gimmicky. Buy armor pen.
Oh, and Blade of the Ruined King is a better tank-buster than any AP item, even after the on-hit nerf.
Yeah exactly. We've all seen how well Rumble is performing at the moment, with his complete reliance on Liandries. Hes one of the worst tops st the moment because void staff/Liandries doesnt do shit. Ap champs have bad itemization but even worse itemization against tanks. Problem, were in the "everyone is a tank meta" because hybrid offense/defense tank items are too efficient. Need to nerf the shit out of tank items.
More from [ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous
Open Letter to Parents of League of Legends Players
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous860 comments
2,611
votes
Rewards for positive play
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous19,712 comments
1,337
votes
I don't like Boards
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous324 comments
809
votes
STOP ALLOWING LEVEL 1 ACCOUNTS TO SEND FRIEND REQUESTS!!!
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous291 comments
679
votes
Wanting to do something special for an awesome friend. Riot, please help? <3
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous220 comments
614
votes
People that are telling others to kill themselves has to stop! Please help me get this noticed!
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous605 comments
600
votes
More by 1 800 GGTOOEZ
A single pixel of Nami's gigantic ult touches the very edge of Yasuo's W
Gameplay278 comments
382
votes
Ekko currently at 83% ban rate.
Gameplay180 comments
316
votes
Riot must be a wonderful place to work for.
Gameplay131 comments
307
votes
"We destroyed the cooldown on Lucian's E because he could dash around endlessly"
Gameplay169 comments
246
votes
I reported the enemy Cassiopeia.
[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous29 comments
240
votes
New starting item suggestion: Doran's Lube
Gameplay54 comments
195
votes