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PSA for "Tanks"

K54·2/14/2015, 6:01:06 PM·3 votes·1,310 views

is free this week and what's grinding my gears is this full defensive build with absolutely no AD/ArPen at all!

Unless the champion's damage effectiveness in their passive/abilities scales with defensive stats (health, armor, magic resistance) or enemy's health, you should have some type of offensive item incorporated into your build.

If you want to go full tank (no offensive items), here are a few examples of champions you can do it with and why his Q damage is based off target current health. His E gives flat damage bonus + % missing health. flat damage bonus in his R that benefit his QE as well as his W being AS/LS awesome tank if you farm well with his Q (though I tend to take hyrbid ap/defense since he benefits greatly from AP) Ult is based off enemy's missing health. has passive bleed damage, ult does true damage and stacks with the bleed for double the amount. has damage scaling with armor (though I recommend hybrid mr/ap items if you need AP in certain matches) Q gives you AD, W increases health regen and benefits from passive as well flat damage bonus with Q, W scales with his maximum health and enemies missing health on the rare occassion you come across a full AP team and coincidentally have Galio, by all means stack the hell out that MR (full armor against an AP team doesn't benefit him as much as you'd like though) Q does bonus damage based off max health can get their damage output on ADC/assassin via their ult flat attack damage bonus in W and armor scaling damage in E

When it comes to and I recommend the same with though not necessary, you need to have a lifesteal and an arpen item within your tank build These champions are meant to be "tanky" or "tankish" not full "tank"

When it comes to should at least have a Rabadon's.

Hybrid champions like need a at minimum. I've never even remotely thought about building a before, but if you insist on going "tank build" with a hybrid champ, this is also highly recommended.

For me, I normally only give champions 2 defensive items, 3 if you include or and 1 of the defensive items is normally if enemy has balanced damage team composition. Even then, my last defensive item is probably a hybrid instead of straight defense.

23 Comments

insaiyanbacca2/14/2015, 8:24:39 PM3 votes

hecarm is not hybrid he is ad, nasus doesnt scale well with ap at all, trundle doesnt get regen off his w at least not the last time i played him. and darius should be built with at least a brutalizer and olaf also needs at least 1 damage item. do you even know how these champions work?

LoccoDennis2/14/2015, 7:24:50 PM2 votes

Naut, Nunu, Sej, Leo, and mao need no damage at all.. especially not a rabs.. you get rabs if you build multiple ap items, so not "atleast" as you can get the same ap from other items.

M0b1us2/14/2015, 8:16:25 PM1 votes

Yeah, sorry to say but your tips are greater harm than anything.

Nasus SUCKS with AP. His ult only increases damage with every 100 and his E is primarily used for the armor shred.

Sej, Naut, Leona, Cho, Mao and to a lesser extent Nunu don't need deathcap what-so-ever. Literally it is a waste of space. Only pure AP Nunu could make strong use of it. Abyssal would be 10x better than deathcap on theses champions. Even then there are MUCH better options.

Did you really say get AP on Rammus.... Just don't. There are much better things you can get. Armor blues would even be better than AP blues.

The only 2 champions that you should ever see with a gunblade often are Akali and Morde. You should NEVER build gunblade on Hecarim and Jax benefits so much more from BoRK and Tri. As for rageblade, even fewer champs use it. The last time I saw it was when I was playing a 5 man premade and we did an all S1 team where I was Kayle that built gunblade and rageblade. Hecarim benefits so much more from a tri or gauntlet. Hec is not a hybrid champ, get that idea out of your head.

You have the right idea, that it is often beneficial to build some form of damage. But a lot of your suggestions are just, for lack of a better word, garbage. However you are wrong in thinking that EVERYONE must build some form of damage. Many champions can build full tank and still deal considerable damage because they can itemize so that they have a lot of indirect damage. Sejuani is one of my best jungles and I never build offense on her. I itemize heavily in HP and CDR because of my W and to improve my sticking power. Often my huge bulk and residual damage will make it nearly impossible to get away from me and the residual damage does add up.

AsphodelNext2/14/2015, 11:27:56 PM1 votes

Normally, I build RoA or Rylai's on my AP tanks(Cho'gath, Nautilus, Sejuani) instead of Rabadon's. Rabadon's gives you a lot of AP, sure, but it is expensive, and I'd rather be more balanced towards tankiness then damage, especially since I'm not getting the scaling of a full AP build. Maybe get a Zhonya's, but that's as far as I'll go for AP without just going all the way and playing a slightly tanky AP carry like Ryze or Swain. Tanky supports(Leona, Taric, Ali, Braum) can get by without a damage item, since their main contribution is going to be CC and utility. Sure, 5th or 6th item you can go for some damage, but most supports barely have enough gold to fulfill their primary role and tank without getting killed, while still buying wards.

Ashtar72/15/2015, 4:25:31 PM1 votes

What you're saying could apply to a good ranked team that knows each other and basic LOL strategy. However, solo q is different. If an initiator, like jarvin, doesn't err on the side of tanky, he'll get blown up b/c so often solo q teammates let you down and don't group and back up their tank efffectively. So you need to be more tanky than the ideal to survive long enough to escape back to safety of a turret or teammate. I would say jarvin needs one damage item like hydra or just a tiamet and sunfire, but two solely damage items leaves you too exposed.