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Let's stop ruining other topics and discuss it here...
IMO, a tank can fall into any number of the following categories:
1. Initiator. A guy who starts fights by closing distance well and then offering up some hard CC on the opposing team forcing them to fight or abandon those who were caught.
Best Examples: Malphite, Amumu, Rammus, Galio
2. Babysitter. A guy who keeps people off of your carry's nuts via support spells and CC. The line between a babysitting tank and a support is pretty vague, but generally I believe that a babysitting tank tries to help his carry by getting between the assailant and their carry while a support tends to stay behind to support the carry.
Best Examples: Alistar, Shen, Taric, Nunu
3. Damage Tank. A guy who is both incredibly sturdy and dishes out good damage. These guys draw fire from the opponent by chasing down carries and putting it in their butt, but tend to have little or weak CC.
Best Examples: Mordekaiser, Garen, Mundo, Nasus
Now, any and all of these characteristics can define a tank in LoL IMO, but we tend to use the term too generally. Frequently in champ select we'll hear shit like, "omg, we need a tank" when really the need is much more specialized than that. Have an Ashe? Ok, not as much need for an initiator. No hard AD carry? Probably don't need a babysitter. Already have 3 carries? Prolly shouldn't be picking a damage tank. etcetcetc. Really when you boil it down, saying Tank just means someone beefy, whereas the roles we really need to fill are much more nuanced than just Tank.
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I strongly disagree with the idea of calling 3. 'tanks' at all because of how misleading it is. They can't CC, they can't peel. What they do is wtfheugdamage
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janna tank skills are so much better than the tanks on 3
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I don't really think "babysitter" or "initiator" define a Tank. It just so happens that a good tank should also be able to do those things. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the OP, idk. "Tanking" in games like this almost always refer to being able to take damage, or having great survivability, or just generally being really tough and hard to kill in a straight up fight. There are plenty of initiators who aren't tanks, etc etc
A good tank should be able to babysit and/or initiate. But those roles aren't exclusive to tanks, and all tanks don't necessarily have one of those 2 roles.
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i think its pretty important to make clear the difference between being a 'tank' and itemizing a char to be a tank. Ezreal with bveil + fon + omen + thornmail is technically a 'tank' in the sense that he can take shitloads of dmg, but hes completely useless (and so i would never classify it as a tank, just a waste of space). A tank has to be able to itemize the majority of his item slots to 'tanking' items and still provide something to the team.
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It doesn't matter if you disagree with calling morde, garen, nasus tanks or not because everyone calls them tanks or "tanky". You can't just change the minds of the general public because your definition is different than theirs.
People that get pissed off about the word tank and its various uses are more annoying than the people that don't understand the difference between tank types.
Heck, maybe there should be a 4th kind of tank class... Rage Tank. These would be your normal annoying characters like teemo/morgana/urgot that instead of built for damage they are built to annoy the piss out of the other team and make them focus the rage tank just because they're angry.
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United States37500 Posts
What a shit topic. People need to get a clue asaply.
3 is a category on its own. "Tanky DPS". Not really a true tank in any sense.
1 is recommended for a tank but not a must. i.e. Alistar
You will get a lot of complaints in solo q if you're the tank but you don't initiate fights. It's somewhat expected of you. Thus, why most Alistars run Flash.
2 is pretty much what is required from a tank. A lot of HP to soak up damage as well as MR/Armor to mitigate all that damage. But most importantly, they need to keep asshats off their carries.
Edit: In response to your examples, Smash: Galio, Taric, Nunu, Morde, Garen, Mundo would not be "tanks" in my textbook.
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On February 04 2011 01:40 Senx wrote:
blitz?
blitz possesses characteristics of all 3, though I'd say he's an initiator first, babysitter second and damage tank third. most tanks fall into multiple categories here.
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On February 04 2011 02:10 NeoIllusions wrote:
What a shit topic. People need to get a clue asaply.
3 is a category on its own. "Tanky DPS". Not really a true tank in any sense.
1 is recommended for a tank but not a must. i.e. Alistar
You will get a lot of complaints in solo q if you're the tank but you don't initiate fights. It's somewhat expected of you. Thus, why most Alistars run Flash.
2 is pretty much what is required from a tank. A lot of HP to soak up damage as well as MR/Armor to mitigate all that damage. But most importantly, they need to keep asshats off their carries.
Edit: In response to your examples, Smash: Galio, Taric, Nunu, Morde, Garen, Mundo would not be "tanks" in my textbook.
tank means different things to different people. I had someone start telling me that Malphite isn't a tank just yesterday. Until the day he died, Utah insisted that post-nerf Shen wasn't a tank. I think stuff like this goes to show you how ambiguous the term tank is and how people should be more clear when talking about "tanks."
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My biggest point of contention with this is Taric. He's pretty tough, certainly comparable to Mundo and Nasus in that department, but he just doesn't feel like a tank to me. The biggest reason, I think, is that his contribution in team fights is more focused towards supporting his teammates than it is towards hampering the enemy team.
Is he tough? If he builds tank, he's not super-tough, but he's tough enough that you probably don't want to focus him.
Does he protect his teammates? Yes; he has a stun, a heal and his armor aura.
Is there any reason an enemy glass cannon wouldn't want to stand next to Taric, nuking his allies?
... not that I can think of. Remember that old video from Shurelia on Zone Control? Most tanks have some form of that; moving up to the enemy tank can be dangerous. Singed will fling you into his team, Alistar will punt you into someplace you don 't want to be, Rammus will taunt you and hit you with Tremors, Garen would silence you, deal a lot of damage with Judgment and threaten to kill you with his ult, Nasus has a nasty damage aura in his ult plus a hard-hitting Q and a very powerful slow, Malphite has damage and MS and AS debuffs...
And Taric? He has a stun, but it's single target and if you're close to him it only lasts one second. He has shatter, but if he built tank then he has no AP and it isn't much of a deterrent. This lack of zone control- of being able to draw a line and make at least the enemy squishies think twice before crossing it- makes it hard for me to see Taric as a tank.
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Ugh. I had already given up on this discussion. It's useless because the whole set of "classes" we commonly use for LoL champs is flawed and not suited for this game.
Imo we need:
melee
ranged
AoE
phys
magic
DPS
burst
tough
initiator
(peeling) tank
map control
teleport
support (heal, auras)
pusher
assassin (anti-squishy)
disable
(not perfect, I might miss a few important roles)
These roles do not overlap (unlike your definitions of support and tank or dps and tank). Every champ can fill multiple of these roles depending on items etc, and usually 2-4 at once.
But I know that it's hopeless to try to get people to accept a new system.
Anyways, regarding the "is Janna a tank" issue: Janna is a tank by 2).
Janna, if built properly, is harder to kill than a ranged DPS during most stages of the game because the ranged DPS usually invests heavily into offense. Janna stays roughly at the same line as her carry, if not a bit in the front. It's better for Janna to take those skillshots than her carry, and she has Cleanse + Ult. W is best served before the enemy is on your DPS.
And where is the difference between protecting your carry by standing in front of him and doing the same by standing behind him? If the effect is the same then it doesn't matter. Or is it important what it looks like? Then I have to agree, Janna doesn't look like a tank at all.
(Malph is not a tank, he's: initiator, tough, melee, magic, AoE, burst, assassin, disable)
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United States37500 Posts
Well, I think your scenarios in the OP said it best. Pick the champion that provides your team the most synergy. That someone is dumb. Uta has a huge impatience streak and always needed an initiator. Shen works best if someone else starts the fight, giving him someone to ulti and taunt off of.
"Tanks" are just such an ambiguous category/name. It's like all champions not a caster and not a DPS is tossed into that group.
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On February 04 2011 02:31 Zato-1 wrote:
My biggest point of contention with this is Taric. He's pretty tough, certainly comparable to Mundo and Nasus in that department, but he just doesn't feel like a tank to me. The biggest reason, I think, is that his contribution in team fights is more focused towards supporting his teammates than it is towards hampering the enemy team.
Is he tough? If he builds tank, he's not super-tough, but he's tough enough that you probably don't want to focus him.
Does he protect his teammates? Yes; he has a stun, a heal, his armor aura and a heal.
Is there any reason an enemy glass cannon wouldn't want to stand next to Taric, nuking his allies?
... not that I can think of. Remember that old video from Shurelia on Zone Control? Most tanks have some form of that; moving up to the enemy tank can be dsngerous. Singed will fling you into his team, Alistar will punt you into someplace you don 't want to be, Rammus will taunt you and hit you with Tremors, Garen would silence you, deal a lot of damage with Judgment and threaten to kill you with his ult, Nasus has a nasty damage aura in his ult plus a hard-hitting Q and a very powerful slow, Malphite has damage and MS and AS debuffs...
And Taric? He has a stun, but it's single target and if you're close to him it only lasts one second. He has shatter, but if he built tank then he has no AP and it isn't much of a deterrent. This lack of zone control- of being able to draw a line and make at least the enemy squishies think twice before crossing it- makes it hard for me to see Taric as a tank.
hmmm, perhaps. Taric toes the line. 2 abilities to hamper the opponents, 2 abilities to support allies. I can see this both ways tbh, but you do raise a valid point with how other tanks seem to be considerably more focused on impacting the opponents than Taric is. He does provide more zone control than you give him credit for (2 second stun -> -30 armor drops a carry very quickly), but I can still see a pretty strong case for classifying Taric as a support rather than a tank. I've always just seen him as both, but that might just be me *shrug*.
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On February 04 2011 02:31 spinesheath wrote:
(Malph is not a tank, he's: initiator, tough, melee, magic, AoE, burst, assassin, disable)
just call it a peeler. saying that a tank isn't a tank unless they can peel rules out a whole ton of characters that are widely accepted as tanks.
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I agree with everything you've said Neo except for:
"Tanks" are just such an ambiguous category/name. It's like all champions not a caster and not a DPS is tossed into that group.
I don't think that the term itself is ambiguous but that people who don't understand what role a tank SHOULD be doing make it ambiguous. In a game like LoL anyone that can take a lot of damage has been considered a tank by people but this is only because the opposing players are poor players imo. They hit the first god damn thing that comes in range of them.
The term "tank" in any game sense should mean that they should be the ones to soak damage so that their allies don't. Ok, that's easy to establish but how in the hell are you going to do that if they just run past you and hit your allies? Well that is where the CC comes in. Perhaps you might make the argument that the characters damage can't be ignored. I would then argue that you then fill the role of being an anti-carry and not a tank at all.
Hard tanks (What you would always like to have):
Alistar, Shen, Rammus, Singed
Soft tanks(What is still very good with certain team comps):
Galio, Malphite, Amumu, Nunu
Beefy DPS/support:
Everyone else
*I'm a firm believer of always taking anything I read with a grain of salt so I would say that those reading my posts should do the same.
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how in the fuck is singed a hard tank????
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On February 04 2011 02:51 Scorcher2k wrote:
The term "tank" in any game sense should mean that they should be the ones to soak damage so that their allies don't. Ok, that's easy to establish but how in the hell are you going to do that if they just run past you and hit your allies? Well that is where the CC comes in. Perhaps you might make the argument that the characters damage can't be ignored. I would then argue that you then fill the role of being an anti-carry and not a tank at all.
To answer your question about them running past you, that simply depends on how good a tank the character is. If you have a shitty tank, they can just completely ignore you. But that just means the character is a "shitty tank", rather than simply "not a tank".
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On February 04 2011 03:00 Sentenal wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2011 02:51 Scorcher2k wrote:
The term "tank" in any game sense should mean that they should be the ones to soak damage so that their allies don't. Ok, that's easy to establish but how in the hell are you going to do that if they just run past you and hit your allies? Well that is where the CC comes in. Perhaps you might make the argument that the characters damage can't be ignored. I would then argue that you then fill the role of being an anti-carry and not a tank at all. To answer your question about them running past you, that simply depends on how good a tank the character is. If you have a shitty tank, they can just completely ignore you. But that just means the character is a "shitty tank", rather than simply "not a tank".
I don't understand what you are implying here. How are you tanking if you aren't protecting your allies? Are you actually like throwing your body in front of them so that they can't run past you?
On February 04 2011 02:52 Mogwai wrote:
how in the fuck is singed a hard tank????
he is hardy as fuck,,,, he can fucking throw someone the fuck away from your team mates,,,, he can throw down a fucking 75% slow in front of your fucking team mates,,,, and he is fast as hell to to be able to get to where he needs to be!!!!!!
But really, how is he not?
*edit for more fuck
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singed is an offtank/caster, closer to vlad than anything, not really a 'tank'
edit: also, i used to think that a char w/o cc didnt really qualify as a tank (0 ability to peel) but have since come to recognize the ability that champs who stick to carries like glue and dont die (olaf and garen come to mind) have a strong case for being considered 'tanks'.
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EPT
