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Are Pure Tanks Obsolete? - Page 2

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Ketara
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States15065 Posts
February 03 2015 22:43 GMT
#21
Well, Galio and Rammus the taunt makes sense because their kit also has a way for those taunted autos to do damage / heal them.

And Shen is just an old / outdated champion who needs to be reworked.
http://www.liquidlegends.net/forum/lol-general/502075-patch-61-league-of-legends-general-discussion?page=25#498
sob3k
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States7572 Posts
February 03 2015 23:00 GMT
#22
On February 04 2015 06:52 Slayer91 wrote:
You can do some simple calculations I did these way back in starcraft
a balance of dps hp always beats skewing towards one of the other

the scaling they have together beats the self scaling unless maybe you have something retarded like crit and even then i dont think its enoguh
its not about burst at all id put my money on the LW maw garen any day


Well thats a a bit of an overgeneralization, its a very complex interaction dependent on range and speed and specific damage breakpoints.

In Hungry Hungry Hippos there are no such constraints—one can constantly attempt to collect marbles with one’s hippo, limited only by one’s hippo-levering capabilities.
goiflin
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
Canada1218 Posts
February 04 2015 00:05 GMT
#23
With Sion, at least, at a professional level, you see built with only tank items. He has (relatively) low damage outside of the laning phase, high disruption and capacity to endure damage by an insane margin. But I don't think I'd classify him as a pure tank, insofar as the purpose of the discussion is concerned (he has the capacity to kill you, through his insane HP scaling that lets him murder you before you murder him).

Maokai was pretty popular, and still is picked from time to time, and I'd classify him as a pure tank, since there's a lot of bruisers that out-damage him by quite a large margin. But what does Maokai offer that someone like Malphite/Rammus/Shen doesn't? The ability to be durable when far behind, in my opinion, due to his ultimate. Which is a hallmark of a good competitive level champion (being able to stay relevant while behind).

I think a lot of things have led to a decrease in the amount of champions picked who have high disruption, durability but nil damage. Mostly that bruisers are generally more balanced in what they can perform (gnar has a longer CC duration that most "pure" tanks iirc, rumble does an insane amount of damage while being durable enough to soak, as with lissandra and her invulnerability chain). On top of items such as Blade of the Ruined King and %health damage being included in newer champion kits. You are no longer a threat for simply existing and disrupting a backline: you actually need to be able to KILL the backline to be relevant, when compared to other champions. Otherwise they will simply kill you first, or plain ignore you while positioning in such a way that makes your CC impossible to follow up on.

Therefore, I think the question is not actually "are pure tanks obsolete", since you have a champion like Maokai that does well, or Sion who don't have an insane amount of damage built into his kit, but rather, "are xyz champions who have outdated kits (in light of recent champion design), obsolete". Which is a lot less catchy, and kind of bad for a youtube thumbnail designed to get people to click on your video when they're done watching an LCS highlight reel or whatever.
Alaric
Profile Joined November 2009
France45622 Posts
February 04 2015 00:52 GMT
#24
I'll provide a few sample definitions:
A bruiser is a form of tank who relies mainly on short range abilities and auto attacks to deal damage.
A "pure" tank is a tank who favours (usually long ranged) abilities over auto attacks and favours CC more than damage.
I thought of this on the spot but should cover most peoples definitions nicely.

A tank's job in a teamfight is to give his team an advantage by either directly setting up kills via CC or by preventing the enemy carries from being able to participate in the fight long enough that your team wins based on damage. (either by killing or zoning them)


I lean toward that distinction too: the tank and the bruiser have some kind of sturdiness (and often at least one hard cc) in common, but most of the difference comes from their killing power.
- a bruiser has enough damage to threaten a kill on the squishies, and to actually make that his goal. So he doesn't want to draw attention as much as get in, get his target and survive for the clean-up.
- a tank has low kill threat, but he makes up for it by setting up kills or neutralising you if you try to ignore him anyway.

Riot doesn't define many pure fighters iirc, most of them are fighters/tanks, tanks/fighters, or fighters/assassins anyway. They just lump together "assassins that can get tanky" (hi Riven's E, pre-nerf Kha'Zix R, or just Zed's W's effect on lifesteal), bruisers and "tanks with decent dps" in there.


As far as I'm concerned, "pure tanks" don't do well because their role can more accurately be described as disruptors/enablers. They're dudes who have short-ranged tools to set-up their damage dealers or neutralise yours, hence the need for tankiness to get close enough to use said tools, and not have to run 2 screens away to wait till the next rotation.
The key in disruptor/enabler is that they imply interaction. You rely on your team to follow-up on your plays, while with a damage-dealer you just kill or shove away someone and tada, instant impact. It's harder to coordinate and when you play with strangers you don't know how much you can trust them, and that's the reason they don't fare as well in soloQ.
Why initiate with Malphite and be an ult bot in the lategame, when you can play Gnar, initiate in a similar way and on top of that kill a squishy all by yourself? You don't rely on your team as much, you're autonomous.

And in competitive play, these "pure tanks", apart from specific meta (like when Maokai/Alistar/Gragas were popular, and even then Gragas ended up building some AP usually) simply don't provide as much overall. You can sacrifice a tiny bit of cc to double your killing power: as Teut said with his multiplicative talk, it's better for you.
Power creep gave much better base damage, more "reliable" stuff like %HP damage, and stronger cc through their knock-up spam, to more recent champions. So the champs traditionally seen as "tanks" aren't seen as much not because they're "pure tanks" but because they're generally outclassed.

Rammus doesn't suffer from being a "tank" in the competitive scene, he suffers from not bringing that much once teams group (a slow/knock-up/back wrecks his Q and then he only has Flash to get to you, QSS/Mikaels takes his only, single-target, cc away, and he doesn't have Sion's/Gnar's/new Maokai's damage once said cc is on cd).
Doesn't necessarily mean he's bad, but competitive will usually take the best, not the good, so it doesn't matter how good the 3rd one is (3rd 'cause the 1st is permabanned obv.).


TL;DR: the fuck do you even pay attention to what Stonewall says? I mean, at least he's not Hashinshin, but still.
Cant take LMS hipsters serious.
wei2coolman
Profile Joined November 2010
United States60033 Posts
February 04 2015 01:31 GMT
#25
Does it matter what the classification of bruiser vs tank is? Both their jobs are to be menacing enough that teams feel the needs to target them first before targeting their higher damage output peers.
liftlift > tsm
Ezreal Edgeworth
Profile Joined January 2015
United States21 Posts
February 04 2015 02:08 GMT
#26
The problem with going full tank is you won't be a threat. In the current League of Legends we play, you need to be a damage threat. If you don't have any damage, that means everyone will ignore you. Now, you might question that with some supports that are played a lot and are good such as Braum, Thresh, and other tanky supports that go full tank. The thing with these are they have great utility. While some other pure tanks, like say Malphite don't have that utility, peel. All they really can is ult and slap champs, sometimes could be ignored. Depending on how they build.
sob3k
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States7572 Posts
February 04 2015 05:32 GMT
#27
Well there's a pretty simple issue behind it. As example we have our "pure tank".

He's got a fat load of CC, and defensive steroids.

The issue is that with league this tank has two functions:

1. Lock down the enemy backline so that your divers and AP can kill them.

2. Lock down the enemy divers so your backline can survive.

Both of these functions are entirely based on the amount of CC that the tank can throw out.

If you are an enemy backliner you will try to avoid getting CCed on, but you will also try to avoid attacking the tank because its pretty worthless. With the length of CC in league, these pure tanks blow their entire load in about 2 seconds. There is no reason for anyone to attack them whatsoever, because you wont stop them from using their CC. So their fat defensive steroids are basically worthless.

If you are an enemy diver diving past a pure tank, you especially won't attack them under any circumstances, because you need to save your damage for the enemy carries. So again the "tanky" part of the tank is completely worthless, and their only value is CC.

So why would you pick a tank with CC over just a support or distribute the CC over more of your bruisers or carries? Their innate tankyness is almost worthless, a fact riot has made into a further weakness by making most of them required to enter melee range to use their CC. Whereas many supports can do nearly the same from a nice safe distance and focus on non-worthless damage and team utility itemization.

In Hungry Hungry Hippos there are no such constraints—one can constantly attempt to collect marbles with one’s hippo, limited only by one’s hippo-levering capabilities.
Hyperbola
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
United States2540 Posts
February 04 2015 16:21 GMT
#28
So you're calling Mundo, Trundle, Shyvanna and Renekton obsolete? Because that's basically top lane in a nutshell. You could argue "they're not real tanks" because they do damage and can't taunt but with the exception of a brutalizer these guys build nothing but armor. You'll find a welcome spot for them on any team.
####
Requizen
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States33802 Posts
February 04 2015 17:01 GMT
#29
On February 04 2015 04:35 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
The the discussion will naturally border on bruiser/tank definitions, and I'm fine with that. Within reason, feel free to discuss the topic here.

I just had to laugh. The classic OTGD disclaimer.

I don't know enough about the current metagame to say much, what are the pros picking and building?
It's your boy Guzma!
Gahlo
Profile Joined February 2010
United States35160 Posts
February 04 2015 17:09 GMT
#30
On February 05 2015 02:01 Requizen wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 04 2015 04:35 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
The the discussion will naturally border on bruiser/tank definitions, and I'm fine with that. Within reason, feel free to discuss the topic here.

I just had to laugh. The classic OTGD disclaimer.

I don't know enough about the current metagame to say much, what are the pros picking and building?

In actual professional play the tanks are currently Sion, Gnar (exception of Hexdrinker/Maw is most games) and Maokai(to split hairs, building RoA most of the time.)
Anakko
Profile Joined August 2012
France1934 Posts
February 04 2015 20:39 GMT
#31
So how would you guys qualify Mundo in that conversation? He doesn't have that much cc, but he's possibly the tankiest lategame champion. He sees quite a bit of pro play. Definitely not obsolete. Although he also deals a huge amount of damage without any dmg items, which makes "pure" tank kind of a blurry concept.
TrAce/Cpt Jack for president (or both)
Gahlo
Profile Joined February 2010
United States35160 Posts
February 04 2015 21:08 GMT
#32
On February 05 2015 05:39 Anakko wrote:
So how would you guys qualify Mundo in that conversation? He doesn't have that much cc, but he's possibly the tankiest lategame champion. He sees quite a bit of pro play. Definitely not obsolete. Although he also deals a huge amount of damage without any dmg items, which makes "pure" tank kind of a blurry concept.

I didn't list him because I consider him a fringe pack as opposed to the staple the other 3 are.
Slayer91
Profile Joined February 2006
Ireland23335 Posts
February 04 2015 21:35 GMT
#33
On February 04 2015 08:00 sob3k wrote:
Show nested quote +
On February 04 2015 06:52 Slayer91 wrote:
You can do some simple calculations I did these way back in starcraft
a balance of dps hp always beats skewing towards one of the other

the scaling they have together beats the self scaling unless maybe you have something retarded like crit and even then i dont think its enoguh
its not about burst at all id put my money on the LW maw garen any day


Well thats a a bit of an overgeneralization, its a very complex interaction dependent on range and speed and specific damage breakpoints.



It is. Those factors matter in a real game but in a pure face to face 1v1 where neither side gets insta bursted, dps/hp balance is better than one skewed either way.
ADCs kite because they have a worse dps/hp balance and need to abuse their range as much as possible for example
if they cant kite they usually get rekt pretty hard by any bruiser even if you're kill items.

On February 04 2015 11:08 Ezreal Edgeworth wrote:
The problem with going full tank is you won't be a threat. In the current League of Legends we play, you need to be a damage threat. If you don't have any damage, that means everyone will ignore you. Now, you might question that with some supports that are played a lot and are good such as Braum, Thresh, and other tanky supports that go full tank. The thing with these are they have great utility. While some other pure tanks, like say Malphite don't have that utility, peel. All they really can is ult and slap champs, sometimes could be ignored. Depending on how they build.


this just isn't true. If you have a 5 second aoe stun as big as amumu ult you are a massive threat and you can auto win the game and rely on your team for damage.
also most people don't say tanks are weak in teamfights, its just they have truoble early game so your argument is pretty invalid

On February 05 2015 05:39 Anakko wrote:
So how would you guys qualify Mundo in that conversation? He doesn't have that much cc, but he's possibly the tankiest lategame champion. He sees quite a bit of pro play. Definitely not obsolete. Although he also deals a huge amount of damage without any dmg items, which makes "pure" tank kind of a blurry concept.


by my definition he's pretty much a bruiser, since eh relies a lot on short range and auto attacks to do his damage though his cleaver is long ranged he doesn't provide much cc or burst
Alaric
Profile Joined November 2009
France45622 Posts
February 04 2015 23:18 GMT
#34
Tbh Mundo's autos are more a finisher than anything, physical damage usually accounts for less than 25% of his total damage when I play him, whether from the jungle or lane. They hurt if you hit squishies because comparatively it's an higher amount of damage, but otherwise W+sunfire deals more consistent damage, and the cleaver poke is most of it, the first 1-2 that you land when they're still high HP.

But yeah he's got enough kill power to count as a bruiser then, it's just that he happens to be one of the tankiest bruisers in the game (in terms of ability to soak up damage, since he facetanks it instead of relying on mobility or stuff to avoid it altogether).
Cant take LMS hipsters serious.
Slayer91
Profile Joined February 2006
Ireland23335 Posts
February 04 2015 23:27 GMT
#35
mundo has a lot of mobility from ult
he doesn't have that much EHP he just relies on his ult giving him a lot of regen and movement speed and his lack of need of damage items

mundo deals true damage to himself with his abilities its only fair he has high damage and a strong ult
Alaric
Profile Joined November 2009
France45622 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-02-05 08:57:22
February 05 2015 08:55 GMT
#36
Well over the course of a fight I'd count stuff like Mundo's ult and Nautilus' 2-3 W casts as EHP, so yeah, they're hella tanky. I see what you mean though and that'd make you ask if Aatrox/WW are the same because they technically regen too.

Hence the whole enabler/disruptor and killing power distinction I used myself for tanks and bruisers, these lack the utility so you know they'll want to deal damage anyway.

What I meant about Mundo's mobility is that he can't go in and out as easily as champions like Kha'Zix, Jayce, even Leona, for examples (also Leona's mobility doesn't really let her avoid damage either, save indirectly by being able to move out and still be back in to lockdown when E comes back).
Cant take LMS hipsters serious.
Redox
Profile Joined October 2010
Germany24794 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-02-05 11:51:25
February 05 2015 11:43 GMT
#37
Mundo, Sion, Maokai all do well in competetive when building full tank.

Just watch how tanks carried this game of MSpirit vs Origen:



Sion was super big, Rek'say also went tanky apart from warrior enchant and then a Braum on top of it. Origen simply could not kill anything and consequently lost.
Off-season = best season
BrownBear
Profile Joined March 2010
United States6894 Posts
February 05 2015 17:23 GMT
#38
The idea of a "tank" falls apart the instant you take a stupid AI opponent and replace it with a human. I'm of the opinion that tanks as we think of them don't really exist in LoL. You have champions who become tough to kill and derive power from that, but you don't have traditional tanks.
SUNSFANNED
Slayer91
Profile Joined February 2006
Ireland23335 Posts
Last Edited: 2015-02-05 17:27:58
February 05 2015 17:27 GMT
#39
On February 05 2015 17:55 Alaric wrote:
Well over the course of a fight I'd count stuff like Mundo's ult and Nautilus' 2-3 W casts as EHP, so yeah, they're hella tanky. I see what you mean though and that'd make you ask if Aatrox/WW are the same because they technically regen too.

Hence the whole enabler/disruptor and killing power distinction I used myself for tanks and bruisers, these lack the utility so you know they'll want to deal damage anyway.

What I meant about Mundo's mobility is that he can't go in and out as easily as champions like Kha'Zix, Jayce, even Leona, for examples (also Leona's mobility doesn't really let her avoid damage either, save indirectly by being able to move out and still be back in to lockdown when E comes back).


mundos heal is over duration counts as high EHP but especially pre 16 its not as guaranteed but yeah
ignite is quite dangerous pre 16
Solaris.playgu
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
Sweden480 Posts
February 05 2015 23:33 GMT
#40
On February 06 2015 02:23 BrownBear wrote:
The idea of a "tank" falls apart the instant you take a stupid AI opponent and replace it with a human. I'm of the opinion that tanks as we think of them don't really exist in LoL. You have champions who become tough to kill and derive power from that, but you don't have traditional tanks.


I don't quite see the distinction you're trying to make here, and I certainly don't see the usefulness of it. What is the point you want to make?
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