Tips For Tanks And Bruisers

Great tips for anyone aspiring to play as a bruiser or tank in the current meta** regardless of where you are on the ladder.**

1.) Sustain

Tanks melt if they sit in the middle of teamfights, regardless of what they build. Effective HP can only get so effective right now, thus the best strategy is to dance around carries and negate the damage you need to take with sustain. Tanks and bruisers need to be able to do more than soak hits anyway, and being able to shrug them off over time is a good place to start. Focus on grabbing whatever sustain you can get your hands on for your build so that you're able to do this as frequently as possible, regardless of how long you've been away from the base. Some champions like and have good sustain hard-wired into their kits, but most others will need a bit of help.

The Recovery mastery, of course, is core on any melee champions for early game, and if you've dipped into the Utility tree then Strength of Spirit and Culinary Master are worthwhile masteries as well. HP regen/lvl seals will have a big impact on most of your games as they will help keep you alive and well while you're laning, between fights, when your team is sieging or when your towers are being sieged upon. The Perseverance and Second Wind masteries are great for this reason as well. For early game, having especially high base armor and MR is about as good as having good sustain as you will negate a lot of damage that you would have otherwise needed to recover.

As for items, is especially good right now as it gives melee champions a lot of things they can make use of, including regen. and are good for when you know you'll be eating a lot of harass, and amplifies any other sustain you have while giving you even more of it and all of the MR you'll typically ever need most games. gives 100% base regen as well. None of the regen from any of these things are extraordinarily cost effective by themselves but together they are exactly what you want as a bruiser or tank.

2.) Ninja Tabi/Reinforced Armor/275+ armor

Pick one and have it, every game. Everyone and everything in League of Legends has autoattacks, and at least one champion on each team can crit for a lot, at a range, and very often. Every AD champion trying to kill you will buy or , and sometimes , so ensuring that even the most devastating autoattacks will always deal 10% less damage to you - or that most of the damage will be mitigated regardless - is a real boon for your tankiness. Never put off having more armor if you think you might need it.

3.) Mobility

Rephrasing what I said before: no one can be a lategame juggernaut right now, unless they have a move that literally says that they are a juggernaut. Meaning you can't get away with wading through AoEs and autos while you engage other champions anymore. Whenever you can dodge skillshots or make the trips between you and them shorter, do it. Any item is a simple answer to this for AD melees, especially with the recent buff to , but don't buy them until you've finished all of your defense items. MS quints and the Alacrity enchantment are solid on anyone. Some item actives can help you engage more quickly, such as , and , but entirely relying on any one item active for your mobility is risky. If you don't like any of those options or if you REALLY like moving fast, is a good buy as well, given that you can make up for the lost resistances from not choosing or .

4.) Baselines

I'm not best player - heck, I'm not even within the best 100k players yet - but I've taken the time to understand cost-effective tankiness. *As a tank or bruiser you need to have at least 225+ armor, 100+ magic resist, ~3k health and the equivalent of 100 hp regen of sustain by the time you finish your build. ** Typically you'll have much more than that, of course, but you want to make sure you have at LEAST as much as what I've listed here by level 18, every game. Never completely disregard a resistance - Mages may buy or , other bruisers and tanks may buy , marksmen might have strong magic damage abilities or buy , and anyone can get a if they want one. The enemy team might even be packing multiple and other forms of Grievous Wounds and true damage as well; the point is that your champion's face *needs to be able to handle anything that swings at it, no matter how random it might be. Again, never ever disregard a form of resistance.

5.) Early Game In a Solo Lane

No longer do bruisers and tanks dominate solo lanes - alas, assassins and ranged carries have taken their place. However, beefy melees can accumulate stats better than anyone and it can get scary in 1v1 scenarios. Never be discouraged by what a ranged champion can do at levels 1-3. It's best to simply CS and level up in order to initiate teamfights and tank objectives later on instead of compete with their early assertiveness; all you need to do in order to be successful is to make it through laning phase. Indeed, there are a plethora of popular laners and junglers out there that are more than happy to make your life miserable** if you don't start the game with all of these things:**

• Solid sustain aside from your starting items
• 13+ points of bonus Armor
• 45+ MR or 360+ MS
• or , if your opponent is ranged AD or has ranged AD harass
• 650+ HP

These stats aren't meant to scare you - they are simply the base requirements. Imagine a pair of gigantic signs on Summoner's Rift surrounding toplane and midlane that says "You Must Be This Tall To Enter As A Bruiser or Tank". Acknowledge the signs you'll have a good time. So long as you meet these base requirements and can last-hit well enough at level 1, laning phase is a cinch. And if you get big enough or your jungler drops by you might get a few kills as well.

That's about it! I can give you at least decent advice if you want help building certain champions so feel free to ask. I really like bruisers and tanks and would like to see more people do well with them.