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

throughout League's history tanks have had a storyed past going through many different periods of equal glory and failure just like everyone else but what they've become mainly known for over the years is how randomly they go from being non-existent to the most dominating class in the game and then regressing back to non-existence equally as fast the other classes go through more extended lengthes of dominance before they eventually get faced up marksmen for instance May struggle with endless turbulence when it comes to items but there's always an attempt to maintain their Equity at any point in time on many occasions though the very moment tanks begin to show any signs of strength they get snuffed out faster than jackm and they find out how old they get snuffed out faster than I've seen any other class get the booth and most of the time it's not even like they're trying to tune them back tanks are straight up either completely disregarded from The Meta or present in at least three of the five roles when looking at the class in retrospect there are a ton of issues with it currently the running narrative with tanks is that they're stuck in a catch22 where their durability is practically meaningless on account of all the tank busting and HP shredding in the game yet anytime they're given leeway and surviving damage for more than a few seconds they trample over everyone which is just as bad if not worse I've made tons of videos pertaining to vanguards and wardens during my tenure but I've have yet to actually make one discussing tank items in particular which in my opinion has arguably the highest influence on the game's item system at large so today we'll be going over the problem with tank items in League of Legends on the subject of tanky items let's talk about today's sponsor Rich wallet by now I'm sure most of you are aware of the brand but for those who don't Rich wallet is known for among other things their minimalist wallets which are made from highly durable 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Day coming very soon they have a big sale running until June 15th with huge discounts potentially getting up to 40% off perfect time to get something for your old man if you haven't already use my link on screen and take advantage of the sale right now it's also in the description below thanks again to Rich wall for sponsoring the video but for now back to talking about tank items just as Champions are sectioned off into categories based on play style or win condition items are designated within the shop based on the class most likely to buy them fighter items are usually characterized by an equal combination of damage and survivability Mage items can be noticed based on ability power assassin items are identified through lethality and ADC item usually denotes crit chains tank items are anything comprising a combination of exclusively Health armor and Magic resist which is the main distinction to make between a tank item and a nontank item while death dance ster gauge and Rod of Ages have a defensive connotation to them because they possess either attack damage or ability power they're functionally not regarded as tank items even if they have the objective of reinforcing one survivability for something to belong to this group it has to strictly have only defensive stats what differentiates tank items from just about every other item category is also the central problem with it when you think of fighter items the vast majority of them Place emphasis on keeping you in the fight for as long as possible with the implication that you cannot last your opponent looking at black cleer STX suned sky Triforce and eclipse what do these items all have in common they all work best in drawn out fights black CER reaches full strength after the target sustains five instances of physical damage making it relatively backloaded in strength ster gives you tenacity and a massive Shield when dropping below half HP meant to serve as a Las ditch effort to get one or two more rotations out of your abilities sun or Sky Triforce and Eclipse are all proc based items naturally the longer you're in combat for the more healing spell blade and shields you get respectively there's a Shar concept amongst all of them there are of course nuances in how they go about their OB but whether you're a fighter Mage assassin or Marksman items are geared towards a specific end goal all of which being to kill your opponent by any means necessary tank items on the other hand are more ambiguous in this department often times being unclear as to what the actual goal of their items are this is somewhat reflective of the split nature of the class itself both in terms of the two diverging subgroups vanguards and wardens and also the overall mission of the class as a whole the longest running dilemma of Tanks is that League tries to employ an experience closely adhering to the Trinity of classes tank support and DPS the a strategy meant to be the most consistent and secure way to defeat a boss dungeon one have you in MMOs but this game's not an MMO it's a MOA pitting five players against five players all of whom can choose what character they want to play in MMOs the reason the tank support and DPS approach works so well is because the content Remains the Same allowing for players to formulate the most optimal way to ensure Victory you have the tank blocking all the damage the DPS dealing all the damage and the support healing the tank while buffing the DPS to hold everything together this doesn't work in lean because the content in this case the aage iies do not remain constant one game you could be fighting a team with two tanks two DPS and One support another game you could be confronting a team of 5 DPS it can fluctuate from one scenario to another of the three classes I'd argue supports are the most crucial for Success on a conceptual level but in practice the only class that's actually necessary to win is a damage dealer since only they can advance the game State you can have all the tanks in the world and all the healers in the world but with no damage you can never clear the boss or dungeon same applies to leak for you to advance the game State you have to deal damage supports and tanks can enable the DPS to attack more safely and efficiently but the DPS is the only class able to make progress at the end of the day tanks are the least quote unquote necessary to achieve victory in leag supports come next but most if not all of them can bolster offensive capabilities making them ever so slightly more valuable that is why the goal of a tank is unclear in an Ideal World their only job would be to soak up damage to the team and maybe apply crowd control effects which is what the classes intended to do by Design but with the game being constructed to allow any player to play any champion they need to account for the possibility that tanks will have to take matters into their own hands while simultaneously performing the task they're originally meant for in other words tank items have to be prepared to do multiple things of the class to make the class playable there are two types of tank items the offensive ones and the defensive ones offensive tank items provide Health armor and or magic resist along with the passive meant to increase damage output the most notable specimen is a long running Sunfire keep which is now known as Sunfire egis this item grants an AA wall in combat dealing magic damage over time to nearby enemy often the very first purchase for almost every tank Sunfire AIDS and wave clear and DPS at the same time given the expectation that tanks will be able to stay in combat for long stretches therefore racking up tons of damage through sunfire's burn the offensive item Branch usually has at least half a dozen options to choose from arguably the two most iconic DPS tank items after Sunfire would be iceborn Gauntlet and Thorn M iceborn deals bonus damage through Spell blade causing your next basic attack to effectively deal double damage while it deals the lowest amount of damage out of any Spell blade item it's offset by Tank supplying it several times over the course of a fight especially with the help of the slowing field that accompanies in Thorn mail deals damage by having any basic attack return a flat amount of damage to the attacker an ideal purchase against Champions that auto attack which if you really think about it is like 3/4 of the cast defensive tank items as a Dundon SS sounds are items that explicitly prioritize bolstering survivability offering no internal boost to the holder's DPS that will be random in Zolman Spirit Visage chucka warms and so on for tanks with armor heal or magic resist scaling like Mali Tom kench and Gallo these items do increase their damage but that's a property of the champion not the items themselves incidentally defensive tank items are purchased less often compared to offensive tank items surviving massive amounts of damage could be the reason your team wins the game but it isn't always likewise crowd controlling enemies could be the reason your team wins the game but it isn't always however killing your opponents is virtually always the reason your team wins the game the reason you can get Towers objectives and eventually the Nexus is cuz your team's alive and their team is dead by that train of thought DPS tank items like Sunfire Thorn maill and what not will always contribute to your success whereas defense tank items may not moreover the supplemental effects of tank items are weird and that many of them are highly situational yet even when the situation calls for it it's seldom efficient to buy that item unless it's insanely overtuned but that leads to another major issue a tank items so let's cover the first one every item category has one or two purchases that people almost forget they exist during the Mythic item era I don't think a single person bought silver Mir dot there aren't that many Mages who buy Cosmic drive but tanks have a ton of items that are barely purchased no one buys a bell mask you might see randoms being built for like a tank's last item hardly anyone bought anathemus chains even during the peak of Hall breaker warlog is also fairly uncommon although by the time you see this the warlog buff will be here so maybe that might change the reason for that is tank items are a reactive purchase not a proactive one when you build a damage item you build it to achieve something it doesn't matter who's on the enemy team you buy the item for you on paper tank items are built as a means of responding to something you buy not for you but to deal with someone on the enemy team often defensive items are always applicable against the enemy team when a champion builds ghost blade they're not thinking of oh I'm going to use this item against just the enemy Caitlyn no you're going to use this item to murder everyone not just the Caitlyn meanwhile you build items like randuins specifically to deal with something on the enemy team but it's almost a guaranteed that set purchase won't apply to the entire enemy team randuins will only be fully efficient against the enemy jinx it won't be that good against non Christ strike Champs and certainly not against AP Champs same for items like force of nature it gives you a metric ton of magic resist and move speed but that will only really work against AP Champs with continuous damage or tanks with high amounts of crowd control tank items are situational not just in terms of their stats but also they're passes therefore they're never efficient at dealing with the entire team want to take a guess of which tank items are the exception to this that's right DPS tank items damage doesn't care who's on the enemy team defense does every tank in their mother Builds on fire or Hollow Radiance and then Thorn ma or iceborn since those items do have the chance to apply to everyone in the game hence why you only Find situational tank items being taken last for second to last but by then team fights boil down to whichever dumbass gets caught anyway for most of games defense is valuable because it cannot be ignored if you want to kill the enemy backline you have to first break through the front line but in League unless they have a taunt there's nothing forcing you to attack the enemy side you could just walk past them and go for more important targets then turn back onto can after you're done DPS tank items are the only way for you to force the enemy team to deal with you first since in that case you can and will kill them if they don't essentially tanks build damage items as a result of those items being all covering responses leaving most of the other items to be neglected unless they're either gold efficient or loaded with stats but the reason they can't be allowed to have either is because of the reactive nature of tank items I'll say this again tank items are built as a response to Something in other words they're built with the intent to cancel something out want to know why this is a problem anyone can build them not just tanks have you noticed that tank items are extremely gold and efficient when you go on the gold efficiency page on the wiki and check the table at the bottom almost every tank item has a negative gold deficiency when factoring base stats in isolation ranging anywhere between 80 to 90% very few tank items have a gold deficiency above 100 certainly not the ones that were abuse targets at one point or another tank items don't make for good General purchases but they make for extremely good counter ones ironically more for DPS Champs I mentioned earlier that tanks bu stuff like randuins or F only towards the end when they can actually make some decent use out of it but when it reaches that point they still get chainsawed by any half decent tank Buster on the enemy team with how prolific defense bypass measures are in this gamee tank stats tend to have diminishing returns DPS ch not only gain more damage from building items but their access to tank busting items and whatnot also diminish the value of further purchases if there was an equivalent to extra damage items not mattering against the tank it would likely be if there was a tank item that reduced damage by a percentage like the old F passive that reduced all incoming magic damage by 25% or something now that was a busted item in any case tank items are kept inefficient base St wise to force people to rely on the passive for actual gold efficiency but we just established that few item passes if any can actually applied to the entire team outside of damage once what happens when a tank item applies to the entire team and is gold deficient non- tanks start building it you guys remember when jocka first came out and you started seeing Champs like a call and aelia take it that's because it gave armor Health magic resist ability haste and then gave more armor and Magic resist and then gave even more armor and Magic resist that came with an AOE 3% Max ultr this was one of the few tank items in the game that worked against everyone since unlike its Pierce where it counted a specific type of damage or had a specific benefit Chu sha just gave a metric ton of armor and Magic resist one would think that chu Show is more valuable for tanks who can get more out of that 10% but like I said the first and second tank items give the most benefit whereas the third fourth and fifth ones don't give as much another reason for this is that tanks need time to kill you which is why they need defense to survive long enough to get through more rotations TPS jams only need a few more seconds to wipe you out making that one random tank item they bu that much more important overall tanks are being screwed by their item system in every wish way possible they can't be all purpose or else they get abused by nontank Champions they're not good purchases because they're too situational to ever be fully efficient and most teams can break past them anyway but they can't be gold efficient either otherwise they become too good a shutting down Champions early on like how Frozen Hart and kind of Gren were this year with tanks as a class being inherently unnecessary to achieve vior in the geme that leaves them with only one option to buy DPS tank items like Sunfire Thor Mill and whatnot they have no choice but to build damage if they want to exert any substantial pressure since damage is the only thing that matters in this game when tanks start doing a lot of damage though that becomes a cons considerable problem since why would you ever play a squishy Champion when you can play a tank that deals the same amount of damage while being unkillable you can see how this is a Loos Lo situation for tanks no matter what right can this be fixed hard to say it's a product of years years and years of the matter progressing and developing into what it's become today the only way to break them out of this cycle would be to literally change the mentality of the player base or to implement A system that forces players to play a certain class tanks are obligatory against bosses and MMOs on account of either most of their attacks one-shotting a DPS party or the boss simply having too much HP for a full DPS team to clear before they get to attack in League of Legends you can and often are encouraged to play the kill them before they kill us wion and it's not like being tanky and being high damage are mutually exclusive scores of Champions are often both where they can survive lots of punishment and deal lots of punishment in return ultimately tanks and by extension their items are second class in the packing order and so whenever they reach a point of dominance they're immediately shut down just to preserve what little sense of balance the game has left the only way they can Ed is to attempt to become damage dealers themselves as evident by them prioritizing items that deal damage or increase offensive pressure rather than exclusively make them more tanky what do you guys think about tank items do you believe I'm being too pessimistic about them or do you agree with my points I welcome you to share your thoughts in the comments for now if you enjoy the video it would be great if you give it a like And subscribe don't forget to follow me on Twitter at vars join my Discord server and check out my other tank discussion videos if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care here [Music]

Channel: Vars

Views: 86,041

Keywords: vars, varsverum, league of legends, lol, vars lol, league of legends gameplay, lol discussion, vars league of legends, why no one plays, lol why no one plays, lol items, lol tank items, lol tanks, lol tank items 2024, lol tank items season 14, lol new tank items, the problem with tanks, lol tanks season 14, lol problem, lol problems with the game, the problem with league of legends, league of legends tanks, lol tanks do too much damage, lol new items

Id: UEPEZyWYbEo

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Thu May 30 2024