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?
He's saying you can't taunt an enemy raid boss for an hour, because this isn't WoW, although admittedly it's not the best way of saying it.
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?
He's saying you can't taunt an enemy raid boss for an hour, because this isn't WoW, although admittedly it's not the best way of saying it.
Ok, I still don't see the point. The term "Tank" doesn't derive from WoW to begin with anyway.
The fact that if you ignore him and try to go past him you're taking free damage and get cc'd and served on a platter (or setting yourself to be in a few seconds if his cooldowns are down). You don't "attack the tank" because you focus him, but usually because he's the only target in range without putting yourself at risk, and attacking a tanky target is better than not attacking at all.
Nautilus is hard to kill after his 3rd item and doesn't do much damage to non-squishies (and none with shield down), so why attack him? Well try to run past him to attack the guys behind, then wonder why you can't reach them/get squashed when Naut sticks to you for free and gets his cd back up.
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?
He's saying you can't taunt an enemy raid boss for an hour, because this isn't WoW, although admittedly it's not the best way of saying it.
Ok, I still don't see the point. The term "Tank" doesn't derive from WoW to begin with anyway.
it derived from MMOs like everquest though right? not for pvp games
Actually, I'm pretty sure it was derived during WW1, when they invented the first tanks and were finally able to break the trench lines by driving a giant, metal vehicle towards them with infantry following close behind.
Here, from our friends over at Wikipedia:
"The tank is the 20th century realization of an ancient concept: that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower."
It would appear to me that the MMO concept of a Tank is a little bit of a bastardization of the word (but really, when you're fighting poorly programmed Aggro AI, you don't NEED the firepower from the tank, you just need the damage soak).
Providing troops with mobile protection AND firepower would indicate to me that the concept of a Bruiser like Renekton or Jarvan might fit the bill. Cho Gath, Braum, and Leona would all be good conceptual matches as well I think.
And I'm pretty sure that derived from the code name Tank Supply Committee. Cistern and resevoir were also considered as code names for the caterpillar machine-gun destroyer. So which champion most resembles a barrel? Gragas. Gragas is the only answer. He is pure tank.
More seriously, I'm not certain rooting that far back into the word's etymology is terribly helpful. Whether they originated with MMO's or not, I think a lot of terms became popularized in the MMO genre and made it over to LoL- Tank, CC, etc.
Win rate on items doesn't mean as much. Completing items indicates you're ahead so its quite obvious that completed items should have >50% win rate. Similarly items which are deeper in the count should have even higher win rates.
You can see this easily by looking at the item win rates on say, Ashe. First item IE has the lowest win rate of completed items at 58%. Second Item Shiv has the second lowest win rate of completed items at 59%. Third item LW has the third lowest win rate at 61%. Third item BT (I.E you're even more ahead and you've got IE and Shiv before they've had a chance to get armor/level up!) has a 64% win rate. Popularity decreases for each one, IE, to Shiv to BT to LW.
Components and Doran's of course have sub 50% win rates because it means you got dumped before you had the time to sell them/complete items.
Similarly this doesn't mean that Cleaver is bad on Garen, just that its not particularly an argument that its good.
That being said i think that last item offensive is just fine on many initiators, especially if the enemy has ways to ignore your tankyness. However, in competitive play it seems super tanks are really big at the moment. And the path of iron means that any tank can really lead his team through the enemy.
On February 08 2015 04:45 Falling wrote: And I'm pretty sure that derived from the code name Tank Supply Committee. Cistern and resevoir were also considered as code names for the caterpillar machine-gun destroyer. So which champion most resembles a barrel? Gragas. Gragas is the only answer. He is pure tank.
More seriously, I'm not certain rooting that far back into the word's etymology is terribly helpful. Whether they originated with MMO's or not, I think a lot of terms became popularized in the MMO genre and made it over to LoL- Tank, CC, etc.
Actually, I think going that far back to study the original concept is incredibly helpful. Especially since many of the concepts of War DO transfer over to this little game we play.The most obvious similarity being that it's people against other people, not people vs pre-programmed, predictable AI.
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.
Its not that much of an overgeneralization. Especially if you start categorizing. A simple way to look at it is via a 1v1 and then start adding complexity
The total damage you do to an enemy is equal to DPS_ALLY(EHP/DPS_E). Maximizing this subject to EHP = Constant + β DPS_ALLY
Or optimal DPS/EHP = the ratio of exchange cost between them
Things get a little more complicated when youstart adding specific item combinations and costs. But in general the idea is that the higher DPS * EHP the better off you are in a 1v1.
Of course league isn't a 1v1. There are five players on each team. Well the short answer is that, if teams are able to choose their targets perfectly that math still holds.
The thing that makes league unique is that teams can't choose their targets perfectly. So lets examine the other situation. Suppose the defending team can perfectly choose who the enemy shoots. In that situation then it makes sense to make each team member progressively less tanky. The member they want attacked first will be almost all tank, the member they want to attack last will be almost all DPS, Members in the middle will be a mix.
Well of course League isn't like that either, its a mix, with different team comps having different abilities to force the enemies to attack the targets they want(also AoE and CC and things which are easy enough to talk about in the abstract).
The question then of "will full tanks ever fall away or are they useless" is more a question of "do team compositions which have a hard time selecting their targets exist?". If they do then clearly tanks aren't useless. ADC's largely have a hard time selecting their targets. Assassins have an easy time selecting their targets. Right now ADC's and Long range poke/siege is super strong (due to baron siege bonus) and assassins are weaker. So tanks are very strong. This is especially true in competitive because teams are better at moving together and positioning well.
Edit2: Didn't address the issue of what damage does to a teams ability to ignore you. The more damage you do, obviously the less a team can ignore you. CC/Slows/ Etc also contribute to this. But the main thing is that even if the enemy team doesn't have a lot of target selection power that doesn't mean that going full tank is the right answer, since their target selection power also depends on your ability to lock them down and absent that damage forces them to deal with you.
edit used to be β (SHIFT 8) DPS_ALLY but the * was creating smiley faces. So i just assumed you knew it was a multiplication
I think tanks are definitely a lot weaker since the last season or two. Itemization is at fault here. Last whisper adds so much shred and it's SO cheap. It gives 40 AD and 35% armor shred(Added up before armor pen.) and it's only 2300 gold.
Runaan's is useless on most ADCs and it costs 2400 gold, while Last Whisper is core on every champion and it costs 100 gold less.
can we just agree that 'tank' is meaningless in a PvP game? everyone who tries to make a point using that term always ends up looking like an idiot. Its a term carried over from god knows where that is poorly defined and really has no meaning in a game like LoL.
Too many random definitions that are better served using terms like peel, beefy(tanky), soft/hard CC, etc.
like braum is beefy/peel leona is beefy/initiate nunu is beefy/peel/initiate (admittedly weaker at both because he's more versatile)
so which is a tank? does it ever matter? if you can't define something properly can you even really cry about it being obsolete?
I don't think the concept of a "pure tank" ever held much credibility, for reasons people have already mentioned. This isn't PvE; you can't rely on dumb AI to target the guy only building defense. Every popular "tank" in LoL brings something more to the table than just a damage soak.
The best example is probably Sion. A meta, defensive build, combined with his W shield and health bonus, will make him very difficult to displace if he gets to your back line. Once he's there, he'll be knocking up or stunning your carry, reducing his or her DPS with frozen heart, and still deal a healthy amount of damage from W active and Sunfire Cape.
J4 is similar. He can slow, knockup, damage, and otherwise disrupt your carries. Same can be said for Mundo. Or Garen, or Nautilus or Malphite. Their tankiness enables them to get into and stay inside of your backline. They don't draw aggro by abusing poor AI, but because their CC/Damage combination demands attention - you can't ignore them.
As somebody else said, the best peeling supports very often aren't tanks, with Janna being the perfect example. IMO, the role of the tank isn't to directly peel, but to dive in and wreck havoc.
On February 08 2015 17:42 Kaneh wrote: can we just agree that 'tank' is meaningless in a PvP game? everyone who tries to make a point using that term always ends up looking like an idiot. Its a term carried over from god knows where that is poorly defined and really has no meaning in a game like LoL.
Too many random definitions that are better served using terms like peel, beefy(tanky), soft/hard CC, etc.
like braum is beefy/peel leona is beefy/initiate nunu is beefy/peel/initiate (admittedly weaker at both because he's more versatile)
so which is a tank? does it ever matter? if you can't define something properly can you even really cry about it being obsolete?
the term isnt meaningless, just people have weird conceptions from other games and they bring them all together with everyone elses to have some weird mutant thing if we had a proper definition it would be fine
pretty much all melees without insane scaling with ap or ad are tanks in my book
On February 04 2015 05:19 Slayer91 wrote: As the absolute authority on garen as well as the only person playing him, and also being a malphite player -NOBODY IS BUILDING BLACK CLEAVER ON GAREN. Anyone who is doesn't know what they are doing. (They probably also rush brutalizer in lane) I very often build thornmail on garen.
So, do you want to say that progamers dont know what they are dong? And by "progamers" I mean not only 2-3 guys, but almost every guy who played garen. If you gonna see this http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Garen, you will see that almost every player went for fast brutalizer and only then to a cape/visage.
Also, youre saying that items like randuin or solar is much better then just "defensive" items because they help your team. I agree, but then youre saying that youre often go for thormail at garen which is purely defensive item. After this words I was like "wtf, this guy is pretending to be a garen expert, but he doesnt follow even his own rules".
no professional gamers play garen at least in the LCS or anywhere where it matters it was already explained why probuilds is unreliable spirit visage is nearly always just terrible on garen
thornmail isn't purely defensive the whole reason you buy it is because it feedbacks ADC damage to them the point is you have a limited burst so if they can lifesteal enough you can't kill them
thornmail+sunfire means you can out damage them even if you are both out of cds
randuins isn't a pure defensive item because it provides a slow helping you stay in range locket is a defensive item and it helps your team but i rarely get it
He says he goes for Thornmail, not that he rushes Thornmail as his first defensive item. If we had a Janna already and I was Nautilus against a Lucian, you can be sure I'll get Thornmail at some point just because I want him to fear me and I won't be the one defending my squishies from LB or something.