Stonewall recently made a video about the decreasing effectiveness of tanks in soloqueue and competitive play.
I figure this thread could discuss whether pure tanks are dying. While it's important to classify what a tank or pure tank is, it's also a large distraction from the bigger discussion and as many of us have seen, usually doesn't end well. Stonewall touches on this.
Stonewall says tanks are champions that can have natural tankiness in their kits and their stats. Tanks rely on their teammates in some way either because they have low damage or their damage is situational.
So
Is the pure tank dying?
If so why? Itemization changes? Shifts in the meta with new champions? Buffs and nerfs? New map?
Is the tank a bad role since they often don't get the recognition for their contributions? (slower farming => lower cs => less gold, and lower damage => less kills => lower kill count)
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.
Part of that is just how you have over a hundred different champions striving to be unique though.
I'd love to be able to say that tanks just initiate fights, but then there's Garen who often relies on a mid or jungler to catch someone. I'd love to say that a tank can't burst anyone down alone without offensive items, but then again, there's Garen with sunfire cape. Categorizations make things a lot simpler to understand but champions are so complex they don't even fit on a continuum ranging from tank to dps. There's differences in playstyles and itemization that can make a champion a tank or a bruiser.
Eg a volibear with wits end and triforce + 2 tanky items might have more damage than a volibear with 4 tanky items. The volibear with the damage items might be able to quickly kill a carry in a 1v1, but the volibear with just tanky stats might not be able to do it quickly meaning the ADC can often escape. Their playstyles are different. The Volibear with damage items can kill towers and push waves faster, but the volibear with full tank items can flash initiate a fight, take the full Syndra combo, and not die so he can get off a few empowered auto attacks and another rotation of spells if the fight drags on.
I do see fewer teamcomps in soloqueue where someone's able to dive a 5 man to initate a fight and live, because everyone wants one offensive item now whether it's Maw or Brutalizer or Triforce and is willing to invest several thousand gold into it.
And these days I'm not sure if it's even worthwhile to just build fully tanky items. Everyone's building black cleaver on Garen and Iiceborned gauntlet + Abyssal Scepter on Malphite. Is that really better than getting a Thornmail on garen, or a Randuins and Banshees on Malphite? http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Malphite http://www.lolking.net/champions/malphite
What happened to multiplicative scaling of (armor and hp) or (mr and hp)?
I haven't watched the video yet but I did check out the comments on the reddit thread earlier. Going to go on a quick rant A few things from that thread -90% of the posts were saying "X champ is viable but X champ is a bruiser not a tank" -Some laughable definitions like "blitzcrank is a fighter/tank" (he's clearly a fucking hooking support) -People have no idea what a tank is supposed to do in teamfights and still have the WoW conception of taunting the enemy boss to take all the damage and protect your team. I read things like "A tank is the biggest counter to assassins because he protects the team" Really? Good luck defending anyone with your taric e or leona Q. -Lots of people calling gnar a tank becuse he doesnt need to build damage to rapestroy everything. Yeah gnar is fucking every role because he's broken -Most of the people immediately look to teamfights and not at the fact that they have trouble in jungle because of poor skirmishing mobility and slow clear, and in top because of getting out dueled by bruisers and outpoked by ranged champions.
I saw some laughable posts of people listing all the "pure tanks" People like malphite and leona were listed and the definition went "Their main job is to initiate and then defend their back line" Really? Malphites movement leeching long range Q Is what you need to stop that Zed? An attack speed slow with a short radius is going to help against a Fizz? Having 40% more armour and AD is going to defend your graves from riven? They were like "I used to love to play malphite and defend my back line" Hint: Malphites kit is designed to fucking knock their shit up and then take a massive dump on their ADC. Leona has probably the worst ADC saving tools of any played support in the game. The reason she has a hard gapcloser, melee stun, and a tankiness boost is so you can sit on someone squishy and your passive procs with whoever else is diving them.
YOU DONT NEED TO BUILD TANK ITEMS TO KEEP THE SQUISHIEST MEMBER OF YOUR TEAM ALIVE. If he is squishier than you and does more damage than you and you are both in range you will never be the target There is a name for champions who mainly protect the carries of the team and build items to help do that. They are called FUCKING SUPPORT CHAMPIONS. Janna can literally knock back the entire enemy team and heal her own team for 600 each, then post a 300 health shield with a free BT worth of AD on a 6 second cooldown, and still have a huge slow and aoe knockup in the bag. Good luck with your malphite and fucking 20% movement leech, which won't be very useful on somebody right next to you.
The reason you build tanky is so that you can hit you spells and CC on high value targets without dying. The enemies ability to contribute their damage to a fight is reliant on them getting in range and casting their spells without getting CC'd and nuked. In this way an effectively unburstable tank will keep many players from being able to do anything until the manage to kill him.
Yes tanks can punish a diving bruiser. The reason why is because the back lines can't dive in, because you will punish them and everyone will turn and instantly kill them and clean up the bruiser later. The backline stays back and the bruiser dies because he engaged when his team wasn't able to follow up meaningfully. If they just walk in range they will not be able to achieve anything and if they waste their own gapclosers they will be dead in the water while your own adc can jump away to safety until the team is ready to collapse on whoever dived in.
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)
If someone dives your ADC he's attempting to stop them from participating by killing them. If you zone an ADC you are temporarily stopping him from doing anything, but if you don't help your team in any other way and your team loses 4v4 you will be collapsed on. (Usually earlier on, the adc is weaker and you can let him damage you while you do something else, later on, the adc is the most important member of the team and as long as your adc does'nt die you will usually win the fight)
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.
Part of that is just how you have over a hundred different champions striving to be unique though.
I'd love to be able to say that tanks just initiate fights, but then there's Garen who often relies on a mid or jungler to catch someone. I'd love to say that a tank can't burst anyone down alone without offensive items, but then again, there's Garen with sunfire cape. Categorizations make things a lot simpler to understand but champions are so complex they don't even fit on a continuum ranging from tank to dps. There's differences in playstyles and itemization that can make a champion a tank or a bruiser.
Eg a volibear with wits end and triforce + 2 tanky items might have more damage than a volibear with 4 tanky items. The volibear with the damage items might be able to quickly kill a carry in a 1v1, but the volibear with just tanky stats might not be able to do it quickly meaning the ADC can often escape. Their playstyles are different. The Volibear with damage items can kill towers and push waves faster, but the volibear with full tank items can flash initiate a fight, take the full Syndra combo, and not die so he can get off a few empowered auto attacks and another rotation of spells if the fight drags on.
I do see fewer teamcomps in soloqueue where someone's able to dive a 5 man to initate a fight and live, because everyone wants one offensive item now whether it's Maw or Brutalizer or Triforce and is willing to invest several thousand gold into it.
And these days I'm not sure if it's even worthwhile to just build fully tanky items. Everyone's building black cleaver on Garen and Iiceborned gauntlet + Abyssal Scepter on Malphite. Is that really better than getting a Thornmail on garen, or a Randuins and Banshees on Malphite? http://www.probuilds.net/champions/Malphite http://www.lolking.net/champions/malphite
What happened to multiplicative scaling of (armor and hp) or (mr and hp)?
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. -Abyssal is a niche pick on malphite, randuins is a much more important item. Abyssal is usually played to improve your personal burst not to help your team. But if you're playing malphite with full spellpen you kind of have to go abyssal. Since double AP comps are popular now you want it a lot more. Iceborn is good because it adds some sustained damage if you can't burst someone. Same with sunfire. Banshees isn't a tank item. Banshees is an item that is only good when a single spell is a big threat to you. How you build is very dependent on the enemy team. You can often forego any damage items and go randuins/sunfire/thornmail on garen and do decent damage. You also have games were you go sunfire/hexdrinker/LW as your first items all of which contribute to your damage. Similarly on malphite, sometimes stacking armour is enough, othertimes your burst is important. Garen fits more under my bruiser definition of a tank (though I still see them as tanks) and malphite more as a "tank" tank
The reason why people don't go full tank, is because if you run in and survive and get away, it doesn't matter if you don't achieve anything meaningful. ADCs have heal. Supports have mikaels and tons of other shit. No damage items won't let you kill anyone. If you instead wait for a good opportunity to jump in so you won't insta die, then you can actually kill someone. In a situation where you can always jump in either you're too fed and they can't do anything or you can't achieve anything and it doesn't matter. There's also multiplicative scaling of DPS and HP. If you have 2x DPS and 2x HP you have a 4x strength in a fight (you take 2x longer to kill and kill in 1/2 time) if you ave 3x dps and 1x hp you have a 3x strength in a fight (you take 1x longer to kill and kill in 1/3 time) this is why adcs tend to lose to bruisers in fights. (also a lot of tanks if they have enough burst) unless of course they can kite forever but I mean in a face to face war It's much harder to go from 2x DPS to 4x DPS than it is to go from 1x HP to 2x HP. A balance is more effective.
EDIT: Looking at that probuilds thing people are also building warmogs, which is terrible on garen because he has so much regen anyway. LW should be like the 3rd or 4th top item. Looks like fed garens are more likely to finish BC and Warmogs too so you'd expect winrates to be higher but it looks like sunfire has a super high winrate when its also the most popular (it's by far the most important garen item but I won't talk much about it here)# I'd imagine people not getting sunfire are either feeding a lot or bad in general so they lose more i guess
-Most of the people immediately look to teamfights and not at the fact that they have trouble in jungle because of poor skirmishing mobility and slow clear, and in top because of getting out dueled by bruisers and outpoked by ranged champions.
They were like "I used to love to play malphite and defend my back line" Hint: Malphites kit is designed to fucking knock their shit up and then take a massive dump on their ADC. Leona has probably the worst ADC saving tools of any played support in the game. The reason she has a hard gapcloser, melee stun, and a tankiness boost is so you can sit on someone squishy and your passive procs with whoever else is diving them.
YOU DONT NEED TO BUILD TANK ITEMS TO KEEP THE SQUISHIEST MEMBER OF YOUR TEAM ALIVE.
There is a name for champions who mainly protect the carries of the team and build items to help do that. They are called FUCKING SUPPORT CHAMPIONS. Janna can literally knock back the entire enemy team and heal her own team for 600 each, then post a 300 health shield with a free BT worth of AD on a 6 second cooldown, and still have a huge slow and aoe knockup in the bag. Good luck with your malphite and fucking 20% movement leech, which won't be very useful on somebody right next to you.
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. -Abyssal is a niche pick on malphite, randuins is a much more important item. Abyssal is usually played to improve your personal burst not to help your team.
A few very good points here. I picked out a few that I definitely agree with.
People are definitely building Garen wtih early brutalizers. It's probably their earliest item on probuilds, and then rather than sell brutalizer they upgrade it to cleaver when convenient to get some armor reduction on the spin.
And on almost all the malphite builds I looked at, people didn't get a Randuins, probably because they thought they were tanky enough or wanted more damage on their rotations.
If you're a bruiser build J4 (hydra lw) and the enemy team has a full tank Malphite, I'd say you do a better job cc'ing as J4 if you just Ult the enemy carries in place and then EQ out compared to the malphite that sticks to your team taking more damage than his team is able to return.
Win rates for items were some of the dumbest stats available in dota. For instance every hero's first item often had a lower win rate than their last because if they got to 6 items then they probably were stomping. The team with Aegis or Rapier or gem had like a 97-99.9% win rate, because who loses while carrying rapier?
Meanwhile wards and boots 1 had low win rates. Guess we shouldn't buy wards or boots.
-Most of the people immediately look to teamfights and not at the fact that they have trouble in jungle because of poor skirmishing mobility and slow clear, and in top because of getting out dueled by bruisers and outpoked by ranged champions.
They were like "I used to love to play malphite and defend my back line" Hint: Malphites kit is designed to fucking knock their shit up and then take a massive dump on their ADC. Leona has probably the worst ADC saving tools of any played support in the game. The reason she has a hard gapcloser, melee stun, and a tankiness boost is so you can sit on someone squishy and your passive procs with whoever else is diving them.
YOU DONT NEED TO BUILD TANK ITEMS TO KEEP THE SQUISHIEST MEMBER OF YOUR TEAM ALIVE.
There is a name for champions who mainly protect the carries of the team and build items to help do that. They are called FUCKING SUPPORT CHAMPIONS. Janna can literally knock back the entire enemy team and heal her own team for 600 each, then post a 300 health shield with a free BT worth of AD on a 6 second cooldown, and still have a huge slow and aoe knockup in the bag. Good luck with your malphite and fucking 20% movement leech, which won't be very useful on somebody right next to you.
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. -Abyssal is a niche pick on malphite, randuins is a much more important item. Abyssal is usually played to improve your personal burst not to help your team.
A few very good points here. I picked out a few that I definitely agree with.
People are definitely building Garen wtih early brutalizers. It's probably their earliest item on probuilds, and then rather than sell brutalizer they upgrade it to cleaver when convenient to get some armor reduction on the spin.
And on almost all the malphite builds I looked at, people didn't get a Randuins, probably because they thought they were tanky enough or wanted more damage on their rotations.
If you're a bruiser build J4 (hydra lw) and the enemy team has a full tank Malphite, I'd say you do a better job cc'ing as J4 if you just Ult the enemy carries in place and then EQ out compared to the malphite that sticks to your team taking more damage than his team is able to return.
I'm actually probably wrong about the randuins because you get Sunfire/FH a lot for armour, and people are playing lots of 2x AP. It's just that in soloq theres lots of all AD comps with riven and zed and yasuo being popular that you can pick malphite and get sunfire/fh/randuins/lw and get a free win. Funny you mention jarvan. I tend to say people build too tanky on jarvan and too damage oriented on renekton. I claim that a jarvan who ults and then EQs out is a waste of space unless you know for sure that the people inside can't get out, and even then you should stayin with them since you want to focus them or EQ after to chase
If malphite is taking more damage than his team is able to return it's either a bad engage or you went too deep. If j4 literally uses all his abilities just to make a jarvan wall he basically has done nothing but the jarvan wal in that fight so your team has to win 4v5 based on that.
It's okay if you can drop a rumble ult or something in there but it sucks usually
brutalizer garen is shitty nearly all the time. You want hexdrinker ot upgraded boots with speed against ranged/ap champs and sunfire against melee. Unless you are stomping a melee AD champion SUPER hard that you don't need any defense stats.
What's dumb about this conversation to me is I feel like "Tank" and "Bruiser" often overlap, and "Bruiser" and "Fighter" often overlap. Riot doesn't even use the word bruiser in their own categorizations.
In general, I think the idea of a "tank" in League is a champion who builds defensive items, and also for some reason makes you attack them despite having a lot of defense.
They can either do that by also doing a lot of damage, like a Jax or a Nasus, meaning they can just run at you and if you don't attack them they will kill you.
Or they can do that by also having so much CC that if you don't get rid of them you won't be able to attack anybody else. I'd say Sejuani and Rammus and Nautilus kinda fall in that category, but Sejuani and Rammus have the ability to do damage by building defensive stats, so they're also kind of the first category anyway.
I agree with Teut that I don't think of a "tank" as back line defense, I think of a tank as somebody who gets into their back line and then stays there as long as possible.
In general it just seems like a dumb conversation. Tanks are obviously not dead. They've just moved from being in the jungle in season 2 to being top lane in season 5, and it's taken Stonewall 3 years to figure that out.
The only tank jungles that have survived are ones who have damage that scales off of defensive stats so that they can clear, which junglers are actually expected to do now, unlike in season 2. There's a reason why Alistar/Malphite jungle is bad, and that's because it is bad.
He is basically a typical "but tanks worked in rpg/mmo I want it to work here too" without thinking about how the game works and what every role is required to bring.Also how is braum not mentioned?He is literally all he described and he is pretty good and a top tier pick.Sure he is support but it is exactly what he described lol.
Yeah spinesheath used to troll everyone definition of a tank and claim that janna is a tank based on the criteria people were agreeing with (had some sketchy definitions of good engage based on jannas CC and flash ult I think though)
Stonewall just likes playing tanks but sucks at them and whines that they arent viable tldr braum is a support and supports are teh boring qqqq jungle or afk
On February 04 2015 06:04 Ketara wrote: In general it just seems like a dumb conversation. Tanks are obviously not dead. They've just moved from being in the jungle in season 2 to being top lane in season 5, and it's taken Stonewall 3 years to figure that out.
The only tank jungles that have survived are ones who have damage that scales off of defensive stats so that they can clear, which junglers are actually expected to do now, unlike in season 2. There's a reason why Alistar/Malphite jungle is bad, and that's because it is bad.
Yeah, that makes some sense. Another factor is that Sejuani and Rammus can't lane. Aside from a handful of soloqueue heroes doing diamond mid AP Sejuani and top lane Rammus, everyone agrees they belong in the jungle so they've been balanced for the jungle. Sejuani's clears are slow but they don't fall off too much compared to other tanks like Malphite.
On February 04 2015 06:30 Ketara wrote: Braum is just about literally the only champion in the game who can tank damage in the classic RPG/MMO sense.
Yasuo's wall can also tank damage then. Yasuo confirmed tank :D
I'm not sure on the damage scaling with offense part Slayer. I'm fairly certain it's not true with Thornmail, I always saw building damage as a way to clear faster, lifesteal back for some sustain between fights, and a way to assassinate squishier targets that used multiplicative scaling, before they could abuse it on you. I guess I'm saying that for the most part a champion that builds full tank can probably outduel the same champion who went with some offensive items, but I can't test it since LoL doesn't have a sandbox mode. Like full tank Garen would probably beat a Garen that had mostly tank items and maw + last whisper if they both used standard builds.
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
That video was largely a waste of time. It didn't discuss anything that valuable, the bulk of the time was splitting hairs over whether or not x champion was a tank.
Tankier champions have probably become less valuable over time, but its because of the removal of Force of Nature, the addition of BotRK, the addition of Liandries, building % max health damage into a ton of newer kits (Gnar, Sion, Sejuani, etc), changing the penetration formulas, Randuins getting significantly weakened, and its usually not anything inherent to their kits. Also new champions being introduced that are obnoxious for long periods of time like Rengar, Khazix, and Yasuo before being toned down.
Even in season 2's hey day a lot of tankier champions would get Atma's Impaler and sometimes a Triforce. I feel like he's talking about some mystical creature that doesn't exist or is Taric.
The video is pretty inconsistent and his thoughts are partially formed. He sets up a definition of what a tank should be. High defensive stats, with good cc, and high damage that's unreliable. Then he says the last tank in the meta was Zac. Need I explain why that's inconsistent and simply wrong?
I really dislike hearing tanks have bad itemization when their itemization is the best. If a damage dealer wants 15 magic pen, it costs 1100 gold. Or 775 combined cost. If a tank wants magic resist it costs 500 gold for 25 mr. What tank/bruiser players want are unkillable champs that can 100-0 anyone in the game. They want to break the game, they don't want actually balance when you hear them moan about bad itemization.
On February 04 2015 06:30 Ketara wrote: Braum is just about literally the only champion in the game who can tank damage in the classic RPG/MMO sense.
If you want to ignore taunts, sure. For example, Shen's taunt cuts 50% of taunted autos against him.
I really think taunt are super underrepresented in this game as a form of CC, with only Shen, Rammus, and Galio possessing them. Oh look, 3 champions people agree at tanks.
Because they were designed and tanks and taunts put into their kit for that reason Taunt is a weaker version of a stun but it's really not much weaker at all, on a tank its effectively just a stun
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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
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).
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
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).
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
competetive games have chars like jarvan, gnar, nunu going all defensive items, is that a tank? I even saw full defensive Sions a lot, im sure.
They just dont have champs with zero damage capabilities because the above char have CC AND dmg. Jumps are also important, you cant zone anymore with things like rammus or udyr by just walking near adcs because they arent afraid of movespeed since they have jump abilities. But a jarvan or gnar can threaten them with theiir own jumps.
Its not tanks that are dead, its champions without jumps and charges etc having a bad time.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/H1LXuFe.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/P0d375Y.png)
I see what you mean though and that'd make you ask if Aatrox/WW are the same because they technically regen too.
