So, I've seen a few tanky mages in league, and looking at them, I don't see any champion self synergy, especially with champions like 
and 
, except in maybe one or two places. This, and I just don'e generally understand the meta and roles to give a tanky mage. Advice?
Tanky mages fall into two roles: Close Range Burst Mages 
and AP Front Liners .
Close Range Burst Mages generally need their tankiness to operate. Their damage is best designed to kill squishy champions but their range makes it difficult to target squishies during team fights without being on the front lines themselves. Because of this, once they buy enough damage to nuke a squishy in 1 or 2 rotations, they then need the front line defenses necessary to avoid being blown up themselves. The roles they fall into in a generalized meta is to act as the team's mid game carry, getting the burst potential necessary to shut down enemy late game carries before the late game properly rolls around.
AP Front Liners on the other hand are the reverse. Their job is to fill in as the team's tank, supplementing themselves with a lot of built in defensive steroids (Cho Ult, Maokai ult). Because of these steroids however, it takes them much less time and a lot less items for them to reach their defensive power spikes. This generally allows them to invest in bits of AP or CDR to maximize on their active abilities while their raw stats make them suitable frontliners for the team.
Cho'Gath. I've picked him up recently. He's got a very strong laning phase because he can clear minion waves easily with E or W, plus his massive self healing, tankiness, burst damage, and CC to interrupt enemy engagements. His strength is his ability to pressure lane easily healthily and snowball into a high burst damage threat with good AoE CC. His weaknesses is that he's slow and cannot reliably setup dive/kills on the enemy backline. That is a big issue in more coordinated and competitive levels of play, but I aptly believe he is borderline OP and waiting to get noticed. I think Cho is both strong top and mid (especially mid, a lot of mid laners are not used to this matchup). Also jungle now possibly thanks to chilling smite and cinderhulk.
Maokai is a very competitive pick currently as a top lane tank. He has a fairly safe laning phase and great utility later in the game in teamfights. Very easy to play mostly point and click abilities makes him reliable. He's slow like Cho as well, but more reliable; the skills are harder to dodge.
I prefer a mixed AP/tank build on Cho (if I'm fed I go more towards AP). Maokai is generally built pure tank lately.
