Why Tank Items Are NEVER Allowed To Be Good | League of Legends 

First time I see someone calling thornmail a dps item. Its literally neutralized by the slightest amount of lifesteal or healing in a champion's kit even taking into consideration the healing debuff on it. Its one of the least cost efficient items to build and no one actually finishes it in high elo unless the enemy has several auto attackers or they're at full build.

​@@jakoby256it's neutralized in a duel, sure, but in a teamfight that damage counts

Can you even count how many problens would b soolved if league limited purchaseble itens by class (and before talking about build diversity, they could add some more creative ones this way)

@@mickeynott1456 Only if enemy has multiple auto attackers

@varsVerum To your question "can this be fixed" Yes it can, it can prety easily even, but that requieres a complete item stats rework, as tanks suffer of the same problem ADCs suffer of, which either makes them completly op or completly useles. I explain it first at the ADC example and then how it effects tanks: Everyone saw this 14.10 ADC patch which made ADC super op. well the problem with adc is it never feels good. it either feels super op, ruining the game for everyone els,e or useles, ruining the game for the adc player. THe same goes for tanks. But why is that: ADC (and tanks alter explained) scale different then all other classes in the game. Damage in this Game comes from stats, and in generel every class (Mage, assassin, fighter) gets damage from 3 sources: Flat Damage (AD/AP), Damage repeat Rate (attackspeed/Cooldown reduction) and Penetration (armor/mr Pen) These 3 Stats multiply each other. --> If you buy 100 AD or ap and use a spell that scales with 100% AD/AP (like an autoatatck), then you deal 100 damage more --> if you now buy Attackspeed to attack twice as fast (or cooldown) then you attack twice as often, applieing the 100 AD you bought before twice as often, making it effectivly into 200AD --> now the 100 AD from before are actually 200AD, and if you then buy Penetration to turn the enemy Damage reduction from 75% into 50% dmg reduction, then you do 100% more damage --> turning the effectivly 200AD into 400 --> this means Stats (and with that items) multiply each other. Its a simple formula: THe Damage = (Powerr of an Item * Number of bought Items)^(Number of possible stats) --> simple said: youa re a mage / bruiser/ assassin --> Damage = x^3 with (number of Items)=x Adc are the only clas which alo ahs crit chance. as a result, bcs crit chance also multiplies with other stats (if you have 100% to do double damage your effective 400AD become 800) its the only class with a 4 tiems multiplier for its Damage --> ADC Damage = x^4 --> everyoen that knows math: everything up 4 grows faster then anythign up 3. So to make adcs not stronger then every other class at any time the items on their own must be weaker Thats why if we say the power of an Bruiser item would be 1, then an ADC items would be lower, like for example 0.7 --> with ourt example of before then Bruiser Item would be x^3= damage and ADC would be (0.7*x)^4. --> in reality riot always tries to make ADC have a break point at their 2-3 Itme power spike. this means the Items need to eb this much weaker that until you have 2 or 3 Items youa re weaker, but after that you are stronger, bcs you grow faster cbs the up by 4 vs the up by 3. This system cant work by Design, bcs it means when an ADC is behind, and has less items he is even weake then any other class, and if an adc is ahead he is even more ahead and compeltly broken comapred to any other class. iut also cant be balanced bcs to function the game would need to go a certain time so that adc reaches the 2-3 itme power spike before the game is over (to have impact), but also the game doesnt go to long for adc to reach 5-6 items (so adc isnt to op). and game tiems also vary. it results in frustrating game experiecnes for all palyers. NOW TO TANKS: if you understood the problem with ADC you now understand the problem with tanks: --> as said Damage has always 3 stats that work with each other (except adc which even has 4). Defense in this Game only has 2 Stats that work with each other: Health and Resistance (armor/ MR) --> If you buy 1000 hp you hold out 1000 more Damage --> if you then buy enough armor to reduce the Damage by 50% your 1000 hp are effectivly 2000 HP. --> that means the poowerr of Defense is x^2. as explained before the power of thigns have to be rather similar until a certain point by design to make everything kinda usefull. ADC Items needed to be weaker on their own, to make up for their betetr scaling. thats why having onyl 1 crit item feels bad, but having 5 is op. Well Defense (and with that tank items) have worse scaling as any Damage item, as a result the items on their own need to be strong to be equally strong until a certain breaking point. --> so as example Defense item power = (1.3*x)^2 if we assume Tank items have their break point around 2-3 Items, then that means having 1 or 2 tank items will always be stronger then ahving 1 or 2 offensiv items, but having 5 tank items will alwas be weaker then 5 damage items. thats why Tank items are strong if you onyl have 1 or 2, but bad if you have 5, and also why the first item always feels the strongest. --> it also explains why when tank items are strong its good for Damage dealer to buy 1 Tank item, bcs they power is the best with only 1. So now how to fix it: Change the Damn Stat System of league and make everything with 3 Stats that multiply with each other --> this means Riot would need to remove Crit chance from the Game for ADCs, so make them balancable. a good solution would be to remove crit chance from all crit items and instead balance ADC Items around on hit, as On hit scales with atackspeed and penetration, but not with AD, making it a x^3 system. -->For Tank Items Riot would ned to introduce another 3th tank Stat. Maybe something like critical Defense. lets say a Stat that if you buy it gives you a Chance to decrease taken Damage to 50%. if you then buy lets say 25% "critical defense" chance, you would have a 25% chance to take half daamage. This would multiply with HP and Armor, bcs if you ahve 1khp, and buy as said enougha rmor to reduce damage always by 50%, then you ahve effectiv 2k hp. if you then also buy enough "critical defense" to on average reduce Damage by 50%, then these 2k would become effectivly 4k. it would result in a x^3 defense system. --> as a result Tank items could be balanced and wouldnt need to be stronger then other items on their own anymore, giving less value from buying only 1 item, but giving more value from buying 5. this means Damage builder also cant abuse Tank items as easy by buying only 1 Item, as they would be weaker on their own, and tanks and Champs that build defesne have defens scaling better into the lategame and making defense not useles ina full build game. it would solve the 2 broken classes of League (ADCs and Tanks), which can only ever be balanced by adjusting their stats system in the say i explained, as otherwise their items will always neeed to be stronger or weaker on their own, bcs of their other scaling compared to all other classes in the game.

same here brother, I just want someone to use their whole kit and then I go “that almost tickled”

main problem with that is Ornn is arguably the best scaler for wall of thick defense (both armor and magic res) but he has HP damage on W, Rito probably balances items on this aspect as well then there are Sett mains (I mean he's a bruiser jugg but he uses those items on fun builds) eats 5k damage then deals 3k true damage the other "tanks" are still damage units at the end of the day

The problem is tanks are usually both

The game don't let you anymore, because theres so much anti tank itens in the game

​@@gameguru42392Not just tanks, a lot of champions can do more than he class should and not have an downside

That is literally the definition of SUPPORT items. Not solo carry tanks. And only one class can really ignore the tank with their mobility. Guess who ... yeah ... do i always need to sound like a broken record? ASSASSINS ARE THE PROBLEM

@@amilo5 It's almost as if Tanks are suppossed to Support the team, and not solo carry

tanks should have active items tt can CC ppl, but give crappier stats.

@@26183 yes lets all be cced for 5 minutes straight, we have to accept that pure tanks cant work in this game, either its a truckload of cc or they get some dmg

Support tank items already do this pretty well. Locket and Zeke's are pretty good examples of this. The problem comes in when damage is so high that it trivializes every unique effect a defensive item would have. Maybe if they turned Anivia W/Kayle R/Rell R into items, but that would become super abusable for DPS champs.

But then riot has to think about more than just damage when balancing. And they very clearly can't do that.

I disagree in the sense that making roles to where no matter what you do or how good you play if your damage dealer is behind then there is nothing you can do only makes the game more frustrating, toxic than it already is, and just more unfun as a whole. Plus you would almost never see tanks like Ornn anymore since outside of support nobody wants to feel only as strong as their damage dealer. Everyone would play carry junglers and top laners like Fiora, Darius, Riven, etc. making the game more team reliant sounds good on paper but wouldn’t be positive in practice.

Problem is when it comes to solo que you do have to be able to carry to eliminate your team as a variable as much as possible

@@animeanime7849 you'd be surprised if you saw heroes of the storm, where the dmg carry is required for a balanced fight, but it still feels great and is fun to play. This mostly because champs are unique and fun to play, a global-ranged yuumi, 3 different champs at once (you can control them individually), tanks that can easily outheal 3 champ's worth of dmg as long as the main dps isn't there, well implemented summoners and the list goes on.

Honestly it boils down to league just isn't made or balanced well in the slightest

Love that you played, hots. F goated game

Abyssal mask I'd say us extremely useful on the likes of morde, or anyone who is juggernaut/ap dealing tank. It can be mixed with sunfire because it reduces magic resist making you stronger and dealing more damage with your item. I tend to build it 3rd, and it has always done me wonders

You also hit the nail on the head with this comparison to other MOBA

Plus add to it the narrative that content creators are pushing. Play for yourself, all that matters is you etc. and as long as it is true to some degree there also absolutly no emphasis on "teamwork" somewhere in between both from higher elo players and developer.

I get your point with Micro being important in Dota 2, but that game has much more of an importance on Macro, especially if you don't play micro heroes. The map is larger by default, with tp scrolls being available. You can help your team with the drawback of being unable to return to your lane. Theres an emphasis on efficient farming patterns and avoiding ganks as carries, and theres even smoke of deceit for full team invis ganks.

Mundo builds what he pleases (mostly tank tho)

Yeah. Lower the damage and tanks Get better, while more fair to figth

nah the problem is that tanks have too much base damage. who cares if sion or tahm kench is impossible to kill if they arent a thread outside of their CC?

@@tatzecom exactly. Take the damage down a bunch, so tanks can make more rotations of the CC, they are a menace, but not because of killing in 3 seconds

@@tatzecom exactly. Take the damage down a bunch, so tanks can make more rotations of the CC, they are a menace, but not because of killing in 3 seconds

the way you said was a bit misleading. Makkro has been going for tank damage items for years, before the heartsteel build, he prioritized Thornmail, Sunfire, Abyssal Mask over any pure tank item, i think he has said in one of his stream that an Ornn can't kill is an useless Ornn.

radiant virtue was so insanely unhealthy that's good it's no longer in the game, all the cancerous adc builds that contained this item were crazy to play against (especially the varus one)

@@rej7320 yup conceptually it was a nice tank item but in truth everyone is going to abuse it

@@sonnguyen-iv7gv bro tanks have had this problem since almost day 1 of league long before ornn was a concept. of course he was always building tank dps items.

THIS

THIS Man this is one of the best lessons I've learned while playing with tanks and against Tanks, that they're more like a psychological threat than an actual threat You're scared of the CC, or the slow, but not because the tank can kill you with that, but because the ADC or the JG can and will, if they miss that they can't do anything against you So just jump on the backline, kill the guys that actually do damage and then go back for the tank, just walk past them and go for the ADC And build things like blade of the ruined king, this item WILL be effective even against the one with lower health, you're not losing that much pressure, while also being useful against ones with more life (I know it's basic stuff, but in actual matches it's unironically hard to apply that/ Also I'm not talking about characters like mundo who are glorified bruisers, I'm talking about Braum and stuff)

@@usarhabilidade2697 tanks definitely can kill any squishies by themselves if they land their full rotation though, and if not in one rotation, they have the sticking power to continue to kill them if they don't get peeled. So if you dive past a tank and go for the carries, the tank can also do the same to your carries and prevent them from following your engage and probably kill them ... There's like very few tanks that can't just kill squishies atm, maybe like maokai? Every other tank is a threat if ignored lol

what teaser

@@thanoso2544 aurora

THATS WHAT IM SAYING

Now you can build it together with randuin's omen without wasting gold

@@SirCrusher which was largely a non-issue

Or swapping it so it was % *bonus* health damage, so it countered the Health Tank items you were building, but not your built in natural tankiness

@@sirbobulous this, anti tank should be anti-tank, not an all purpose item.

% damage is a problem (also on items unless they keep it verry lowand verry few) But %health damage on top of true damage is a crime they need to remove 1 and have the other available in items or sertain champs under a condition (like 3th shot on vayne) but not like lillia where her pasive gives a %health bleed effect. Instead of true damage or % health damage lowering armor values or doin magic damage when you do mostly attack damage is the better way to do it.

frankly that wont fix anything. tanks will just be OP again. Particularly HP tanks like sion and cho, who also happen to be battle tanks. Heartsteel would also just be a ticking time bomb even more than it already is. League gives engage and peel to every role for the sake of each role being able to 1vs9 BUT they CANT give the high dps of other roles to tanks or tanks will simply be unstoppable. the result is you have dps roles with the key engage or disengage tools that tanks are suppose to provide. there is simply no reason for tanks to exist in league other than to soak up poorly targeted dps as the key roles of disengage and engage are given to everyone.

and the reason damage is the only thing that matters is because every role has engage tools to make their damage effective. you dont need a malphite ult to start a fight when your team has a morgana or ashe or varus or syndra or yone or irelia or or or everything has bloody engage so why dedicate a entire 5th of the team to engage/disengage tools?

@@petrusv8752 Well, tanks are not only engage and disangage, that's just what they became famous for. In theory you only need to keep enemy atention on you somehow, and survive enough. But you can't survive anymore, and unless you got damage even CC usually won't make the enemy focus on you, so even tanks scale on damage and suddenly it's even worse to have them survive, so we give more damage to keep them relevant... No, it has nothing to do with "a 5th position for CC", and everything to do with bad planning coupled with a unwillingness to make big changes.

yup and this is the only way to solve the problem of classes picking items they shouldnt, class lock them all edit, this way we wont get constant issues with juggernauts and assassins picking each others items all the time, you also dont have to worry about that one specific champ who has has amazing synergy with it butt shouldnt actually take it, like master yi and titanic hydra

And somehow league solve this problem by making assassin tankier than tank without any tank item.

Why isn’t there a reduction in value for tank items for tanks/bruisers vs damage dealers like there’s value reduction for range vs melee with dps items? It would solve many problems I feel.

Same with adc items every fighter can abuse them if they are strong

Singed gang rise up

PROXY PROXY PROXY WOOO

This is why I prefer Smite. Tanks are forced to build tank items. They CAN build DPS but your damage will be horrible

@Mr_Mistah I just wish smite was more innovative. Smite 2 has graphical improvements but mostly minor changes everywhere else. Smite 2 is basically smite 1 updated instead of feeling like a new game

By set bonus... You mean mythic items? or does it have to be in the same "tank" category? Riot should have done that last season.

Riot dont want Tanks to standout not like in Dota in Dota most assasins are afraid of tanks while in LoL its the other way around and also Tank are punished by building Tank because if you stack health %HP damage and Dominiks / Cut Down etc. fk*d you up and if you build resistance % Armor shred, lethality , Magic Penetration and True damage will punish you while you dont see a Mage punished by stacking AP you can build MR but there is no % MR if a mage stacks a 1000+ AP there is no MR that can save you same with DPS if they get huge AD and ASPD + Critical and also Thornmail damage scales in armor not by enemy %AD is also a poor dscision not all Tank are Rammus 😂 if an enemy ADC have huge lifesteal i rather build damage than build tank 1shot them when they are low is easier than gambling a trade on a mobile ADC they will just making you a target dummy by kiting you to death .

League devs just want everything as flashy with damage as possible. Do % increase armor/mr/health with tank items. Now no one but tanks can build those as efficient as them. But then dmg/mobility irelia shit just ignore u and dash straight to ur carry.

@Slowp0w kind of, but like building more pure defensive items, like fon warmogs randuins gives you a percentage reduce in damage taken and could reduce your own damage, while building sunfire iceborn (the magic resist sunfire like item) and titanic hydra could give a higher hp bonus and reduced cds or somethin. All hypothetical, and I would still prefer rebalancing every tank to have scalings for defensive stats that improve the defensive stats, like poppy/sejuani and ofcourse the bonus hp% scaling shields.

It's too op because people are stupid, they will ignore and complain, even old locket is secretly op even with very few ar mr buff.

nope. good concept but 60% dmg reduction is still not enough to save squishes who are over-killed for 3-4X their max HP even IF it was 60% for the individual instead of the team.

was looking for someone mentioning this 😭 i did NOT expect that from vars

No, they have reduced a lot of damage. At the moment, all the hard carries lose AD, Crit, sustains, etc. even mages loses item effects efficiency for some AP stats. Guess what class favor this kind of system? Bruiser. Nobody can kill them, but they can kill everyone back with tons of sustain from their kit. And when they buff the damage, then it goes off the chart and everybody with 2 items can 1v5, even when the enemies have full items. And when they buff sustain, we have Yuumi (check Yuumi Leona vs Illaoi vid), Sylas, Swain, Irelia, etc. raidboss.

@@winslycan1309 nah. They increased durability, only to increase Even more the damage a couple years ago, then they added A LOT more damage at the beggining of this year, then nerfed it a bit

Considering they already have a class system they can mark items to be available to it can be done, make some new items only for the tank classification to have access to and boom can be adjusted a lot easier and not be so lowballed

Gnar, Thresh, Urgot, Swain and Bard are all ranged champions, but also considered to be tanks to some extent. This is my most on the nose example, but my point being that a fair few champions fall into more than one category/class. Locking items out of a class would not only be difficult (like which class does this champ mostly belong to?), but would also severely limit build options. Do you lock Gnar and Urgot out of building Marksman items, do you refuse to let Swain or Bard buy tank items, can Thresh still buy fighter items? A lot of items also fall into several categories. Like Trinity Force is both listed as a Marksman item and a Fighter item, if I'm not mistaken. Sterak's Gage is considered to be both a fighter and a tank item. But at least Master Yi can't buy Ruunan's Hurricane, and for that I am grateful. (I'm not high ELO or a game designer or anything, feel free to correct any mistakes or misconceptions) 😊 Have a great day!

@@MaverickMyth i dont think he was talking about making every single item class-dependant but just add a few new items that can only be bought if you fall into x class

@@srensen3081 Aight. My mistake then. A few more powerful tanky items just for tanks would be nice 😊

CC is already broken af in this game, with many games having 6-10 seconds of hard cc given how often new champs are released with multiple crowd control abilities in their kit. they could absolutely never get away with having 6-10 seconds of no player agency in any other genre of game, and this one frankly also isnt enjoyable or in a healthy state with cc. They cant make a cc boosting item even if they wanted to, because tanks wouldnt be the ones buying it: the assassins and burst champs with cc would be the ones getting it, so they had even more time where you cant reply to their attempts to kill you. That window of "can I survive the burst during cc" is their counterplay, and removing that would break them

lower all dmg in the mean time as well, rn tanks die in a heartbeat

Honestly tank stats should be percentile like attack speed.

@@Noximillien-LHorloger wild rift bring a thing like damage items lowering some hp and bruiser- tank items lowering the champ's ad same for mages in a similar context. That might be good implementation for limiting bruisers.

​​@@kopostusverdigris6341 Yeah but it doesn't feel like THAT much of a downside, of course having 80 less health can be problematic but....late game when a mage can do 1000 damage... 80 HP is literally nothing And If you're a mage, and an assassin jumps on you you're dead either way, so at least build the item that takes 80 HP but gives back 55% more AP and explode the assassin with you I personally think the downsides are so weak that it didn't actually change the game the way people build that much

There would have to been massive across the board needs to all base damg on tanks if u wanted all of this to come through

Nerfs sorry typing on my phone is a pain

@@stalinjustafellowrussianco7440 yeah I haven’t really touched on champion tuning too much. There would DEFINITELY need to be adjustments, but tanks in general should have their flat damage lowered across the board, occasionally replaced by percent health damage. Damage scaling from tank stats is quite overused as a balance mechanic, and would probably need to be adjusted. Especially because it’s usually just health, which is probably the most common stat even ignoring tank items. Overall tanks would probably be doing just as much damage as before, if not more. But more of that damage would be from slugging it out against a beefy frontline, not 1v5 diving a carry. And that last part is the main problem with Ksante imo. He’s sold as a Tank/Bruiser hybrid but his design makes him more of a Diver/Assassin with tank scaling. I have some ideas on how to fix that which would start by removing both the health cap and omnivamp, and maybe giving him some bonus true damage instead of AD. Ironically, I think tanks in general are the class that should be most likely to have true damage - flat, zero additional scaling from gold. Not going to die on this hill though lol.

ikr why build armor when some champs can have 40~50% armor pen + 100 lethality

also people wont just attack tanks for no reason like it works in mmo where things like taunt are a big deal. here you have to make tanks threatening so that people dont just ignore them

a game that did this very well was battlerite, you had to aim EVERYTHING and everyone had a dodge or 2. also supports could deal dmg tho less so everyone was viable

@@Noximillien-LHorloger so I’ve heard. I was more so thinking smite since 90% of abilities and basic attacks are dodgable.

@@Random-yg1fi interesting, sounds fun tho i dont know how good smite is to play nowadays

@@Noximillien-LHorloger it’s definitely not perfect. Crowd control creep has caught up so when you get hit but one thing then you get hit by everything. I still enjoy it, even without friends. I hope smite 2 removes most of the cc

Or at least like puppeteer from black market that can pull enemy champion that you hit with aa toward you.

then assasisn dont work and taunts are very rare for a reason

I think something like an AoE Knight Vow seems more likely (redirecting X% of damage taken by allies to the tank) As giving tanks a hard CC item (taunt) would be incredibly powerful as it would make enemies unable to avoid follow up CC/skillshots

knights vow?