Why Tank Items Are NEVER Allowed To Be Good | League of Legends
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
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Out of all the item systems in League of Legends, tank items have to arguably be the most difficult to balance on account of all the unique challenges they face that DPS classes don't. Today we'll be discussing the problem with tank items, and what factors result in their current condition.
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#leagueoflegends #lol #tanks
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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.
Man, i just want to be unkillable wall, i don't want to be tanky damager
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
Vars hit the nail on the head with the simple phrase "damage is the only thing that matters in the game", but i think its a good idea to compare how damage is done in other MOBAs as well.
In Heroes of the Storm, supports are all healers and are arguably more important than damage dealers, since with one good support you will win most fights through attrition. Damage isn't very high, and even with a good burst combo a healer can bail out mistakes. The difference in having a healer and not having a healer is staggering, and most tanks can heal themselves as well.
In Smite, the metas shift between dive and front-to-back fights. Tanks have more auras and team-support items to choose from as well as reduced damage dealt debuffs to apply, making them a priority target in almost every meta, whether they are a support or a solo laner.
In Dota 2, crowd control and setup is more important than sustained dps, since the duration of CC effects can be up to 5 seconds long, and some characters can have massive AOE ultimates with crowd control. The game has more focus on micro than macro, but the long CC durations help with macro play.
Comparing all of this to League, its clear to see that League has more emphasis on personal damage and personal tankiness. For better or worse, League of Legends rewards selfish playstyles more than any other MOBA; thats why even though Abyssal Mask is a very good tank support item, no one builds it because the default mentality is to always help yourself more than your team.
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.
If leagues philosophy wasnt "everyone needs a chance to carry" they might be able to balance tanks
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
I mean, you’re vid is basically spot on. If you look at the challenger Ornn one trick Makkr0, the dude has recently been prioritizing completing dps Tank items or Heartsteel (lack of a better option for an upgrade that scales). His argument is that being a meat shield isn’t really possible anymore and that being able to scale with Heartsteel damage exerts much more pressure. Imma be honest I think they should just add Radiant Virtue back into the game, that was basically the one time tanks were able to play like actual tanks.
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.
Also, is not like always a team could just past over a tank and focus more valuable targets, thats a cause of movement powercreep
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
The problems are:
-fighters scale with tank items just as well as tanks (arguably better if you factor in any "regen")
-damage is so high in the game that tank items need to be strong to compete
There.
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
Tanks are suppossed to be the team frontline, but since the enemy team can just ignore the tanks, then tank items should make them un-ignorable, have them provide team buffs, auras, cc, zoning, you know, team oriented items, literally anything but damage
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.
The answer is, people hate being cc'ed for 5 seconds by a tank, so they'd rather get deleted in 0.5 seconds to check their tik toks while being dead
At this point I don't see a way to fix this problem without getting rid of most % damage from most champions all at once.
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.
Removing the rock solid passive from Randuins was criminal honestly.
THATS WHAT IM SAYING
Now you can build it together with randuin's omen without wasting gold
@@SirCrusher which was largely a non-issue
i agree with you, and we come back to the main issue: Everything does too much damage, because damage became the only thing that matters.
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.
I got into tanks first because I wanted to learn how to play the game and not die instantly in a burst and then I fell in love with Leona and Nautilus in 2014 and then everything else was a wrap from there. But then I still ended up being a filthy Singed mane
Singed gang rise up
PROXY
PROXY
PROXY
WOOO
The problem with tank items is that non tanks can build them, too.
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
As a tank player the issue with them is that you're just not allowed to frontline. And that's what tanks are good for, disrupting the enemy team and blocking/absorbing damage. But Riot constantly insists on making them do damage and its killing the class because that's just not what they're meant to do. The resists are too low, item damage is too high, and you will get blown up before being able to contribute much to a fight. Until Riot allows tanks to matter again they'll cease to exist outside the support role which is the only place they're good right now.
I completely agree. I don't understand why tanks are the only class in the game that dont scale with their own items (_almost_ always). If you buy heal and shield power on fizz, it will be a useless stat because its not meant for your champion. If you buy ap on caitlyn, or ap on renekton, that will likewise be useless. Certain items are meant for certain champions. But for some reason tanks are the exception.
My favorite part is whenever a tank item overperforms. Riot nerfs the tanks, and then the items. So that the tanks are stuck being weaker, while also having to build an item that is also weak because it's the only choice they have
In RPG the most protective armour either directly diminish support/dps power or straight up can't even be worn by them but in lol everyone can buy anything. So the powerful defensive items that would make tank survive 1v5 can be used to make the mage survive long enough to 1v9 the whole game. I can't see any other solution beside items being soft or hard restricted to the tanks or sweeping changes throughout the whole game.
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
easy band-aid fix: grab knight's vow, buff the passive, make it AOE and call it a tank item. now you can't just ignore the tank or you'll only be dealing 60% of the dmg.
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.
I commented this in another one of Vars' videos about tanks a while ago but it still remains true that there's so much damage in the game that as soon as they attach any real defensive stats to a champion they'll immediately become broken (see: K'Sante). "Tank" items are a massive indicator of that. The ones that give pure defensive stats are way undertuned compared to more off-tank items that give some combination of HP and AD to the point where they're only worth getting in niche circumstances against certain team comps. League is reaching DOTA levels of "well tanks don't technically exist"
To add to thornmail's popularity. It the only life steal reduction tank item. That further make it important to have. As another way to fight off a tank, is to out life steal their damage. More of a fighter thing but still happens a lot.
9:06 why did that weirdly catch me off guard soo much 😭
was looking for someone mentioning this 😭 i did NOT expect that from vars
Riot removing MR + Armor combo on all items except Jaksho was a huge mistake
Runaan's Huricane cannot be bought if you're playing a champ like Master Yi and can only be bought if you have a ranged attack. So then what they should do is make the tank items that would be good enough where then you would see non tanks buying them and make them exclusive to tank champions just like Runaan's. Why is it ok for ADCs/ranged to have an exclusive item but not Tanks?
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 😊
One thing I find interesting is that tank sups have gotten BETTER since the new adc items with sups like thresh,naut,rell,and leona dominating the sup meta because they have great lockdown for enemy adc's and peel for your adc which is more important then ever now that the adc is more valuable then it has been in a while.
For current league, the best way to play tank from my experience is buying 1-2 damage items, that damage can be anything not only just tank damage, and this actually have better survivability as well. Fully defensive item will make you somehow squishier.
Spot on video. I remember the days when you built sunfire on Renekton 1st item. As a toplaner I play tanks too, but like u said when u build a completely defensive item you are basically relying on your teammates to do the damage and that can end up being very frustrating. Dominate your lane, but unable to carry so you are forced to build sunfire/gauntlet/thornmail/heartsteel..
Love a Mundo game when u get past early, insane damage potential and of course the malphite counter pick to so many popular toplaners or players that play adc top. You can feel their frustration with every Q and knowing the inevitable result of the lane.
Never in my life did excpect vars(the most family freindly and wholesome league creator) doing a jax joke
One way I imagine could discourage other classes from building tank items is if they granted percent-stat bonuses instead of flat stats, like Sunfire giving 20% bonus of your base HP.
The Problem is Riot dont seem to respect or dont want Tanks to standout not like Dota ,
Tank items are so expensive
Titanic 3300
Warmogs 3000
and the painful part is Tank is punished by being Tank because if you stack Health % HP damage and Runes and item passives like Dominiks and Cut down punish you
you cannot see a Mage punished by stacking AP
nor a DPS ( Assasin/ADR/Fighter) punished by stacking AD which is becomes more unstoppable in the lategame when gets ahead .
thornmail damage scales with armor not the % of enemy AD so only few champs like Rammus and Malphite are the only champions can abuse it .
and also just Remove Ksante and Heartsteel 😂😂😂
Ksante is an anomaly why a Tank has a mobility and damage output like ADC sustain as Tank while building Tank item that other Tank cannot even .
and Heartsteel is a Assasin item disguises as Tank item , most tank cannot even chase an ADC to get a stack very few tank build this item Katarina and Akali seems to benefit Heartsteel more
I've been saying for years to remove a solid 5-10 percent of all damage in the game across the board
Make anti-tank items anti-tank based on max health/resistance. So basically useless against another squishy but good against unkillable Sion
Give tank item passives something that helps the team survive (Radiant Virtue as an example). In addition make tank items percent based stat wise instead of flat so that tanks get more out of them and lock other roles out of them (if they want the most out of that item). Then of course lots of math would be needed to make them balanced
Buff turrets. Giga buff inner turrets since even an ADC can ignore them and pretend to be a Tryndamere
Lock some marksman items to be ranged only and then buff them
I occasionally build bruiser items on tanks or even support items. Mundo benifits alot from a variety of items. Knights vow, locket, steraks gage, anathemas chains, deaths dance
It’s weird that Abyssal Mask isn’t bought as much, cause 9 times out of 10 there’s always gonna be at least 1 mage on your team and if you’re a tank you’ll basically always have Sunfire - both situations where Abyssal Mask should be a really good pickup
I think a worthwhile game test would be to cut the gold cost of everything (except starter items), increase sell prices, and keep gold income the same (small to negligible nerf)
The intent would be to provide timing opportunities to purchase powerful situational items, and then sell them for combo based (rabadons, IE) dps items later (possibly encouraging the capstone item like zephyr, except it actually does something this time)
This can also push back on how much farming needs to be done (reaching first item at 7-9 minutes instead of 11-13 while deathless against high kill pressure lane), while also not removing its importance and the skill expression of hitting high cs/m (9-10/m)
I think the best approach for tank items is to use the same mechanic as the Warmog's passive, were you need a certain ammount of bonus health for the passive to trigger. You could do this to nerf the efficiency these items would have on non tank champions. Then you could do more meaningful passives so the tanks could have more gameplay expression throug items.
I think putting more rabbadon’s style tank items could definitely help them out. This would force you to commit the rest of your build to the tank items to gain access to the actual value of the item. This and items that could increase the duration of your vc abilities seem to be the only way to me that tanks can avoid becoming just juggernaut 2.
Jax main joke made
Personally I'm almost in love with the way League handled this. It's amalgamation of almost all systems. If you want, you can just build recommended items and play towards what your champion was supposed to do by developers and if you're feeling fancy you can build whatever you want and change your playstyle accordingly and reach somewhere near the intended design powerlevel. The descriptions like damage dealer, healer and tank aren't completely useless, but i like them as sliding scales more than rigid immovable pieces, which thus results in much more open ended option for this seemingly monotone (same map, same objectives, same minions, towers and monsters) game (not only a lot of unique and different champions and roles, but also the builds...)
Varss you’re content on all your channels is such amazing quality and topics!! I love hearing you talk about the things I think about but more in depth and with a greater game sense than me. I’m a nerd for builds, stats and character combinations, and no one talks about them like you with such a deep understanding of just games in general. But especially the games I play! Keep it up, I look forward to your videos like it’s a weekly released show!
3:15 that leona flashing and hitting quinn with the fizz ult XD
I think riot is currently experimenting with items in general, theres an item in arena that enhances cc duration and anathema's change use to do that too before it go removed but im not sure that gonna be supee healthy for the game.
Maybe making the tanks the best source of cc with a lot of tankiness and damage to minions could work
I think what's quite impressive is that playing both AS and AGAINST tanks feels like shit a lot of the time
Paraphrasing, "Tanks won't build situational tank items till late game. And by then team fights boil down to which dumbass gets caught out first."
Sir, you have perfectly explained late game Moba to me when I wasn't even looking for it. As a tank player, I am in awe of your sage words.
Needing some kind of offensive output is definitely a thing. I played full Tank Master Yi with a lot of ability haste items so I could permanently reduce damage by 55% literally all the time while also healing if the enemy didn't have any cc to interrupt Master Yi's Meditate. But guess what, people will just ignore you in any teamfight. So the only way you could be useful is by splitpushing but even then there's not much preventing your opponent from just defending by waveclearing if you don't have any damage, forcing you to build damage items like sunfire, thornmail etc.
tank Ekko still haunts me till this day, only thing which scares me more is release zoe.
Vars' calm casual: "No b****!" Slew me, love the educational vids with a touch of your randomly placed humor~
Thats a good point. In the early stages of league not a lot of dps characters had hard cc or atleast didnot last long. Now days we have assassins with hard cc divers with hard (frontal) cc (not like old irelia who had to have less %health in order to stun) making cc more available and tanks less of a play enabeler.
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Still like always yone is the true meness in leage they realy need to rework him making more of his abillities single target. Or an ult with a condition like his brother.
There was a different person who talked about an issue that AP items faced, and to an extent still face today, with item poaching. It happens every time there's a major rework to the item system, or even particular itema. Sundered Sky had that issue fairly recently, Goredrinker before, but the big AP items that had this issue were Liandry's Torment and Demonic Embrace, where at their peak strength any champion with AP scaling would build them for the most part because they were just that gold efficient and had little opportunity cost.
Tank items face a similar, arguably worse issue, as Vars mentioned. Because any champion theoretically benefits from increased durability if a tank item is good it gets poached by basically every other class.
It's really sad, to be honest. I love tanks and have since I started playing in Season 6. But nowadays because damage is king, tanks don't get to feel tanky and just feel like less mobile bruisers with more CC, but longer cooldowns, and lower DPS.
Maybe make all tank items stack with the champion's base stats, that way naturally squishy champs will not be able to take advantage of them?
What i personally really dislike is that, a lot of champions building a tank item just become unkillable while also dealing a lot of damage, extra bad on assassins like akali. Then tanks themselves also feel like they do too much damage, being able to burst you down nearly as fast as anyone else while also feeling unkillable. A way to solve the first problem would be to nerf all tank items, but then giving all tank items a multiplicative bonus based on how many tank items you have. So 1 tank item is very ineficient and doesnt do much, so you need to build more to actually become tanky. For tanks themselves this is fine as tbh, a lot of top laners dont even want to fight them anyway. They just want to push and roam because tanks buy 1 item and become unfightable. So this delays that, making them more fun to play against, and then they get to become tankier than they are now as the game goes on. Meanwhile non tanks who build those items have to significantly lower their damage output to become tankier which most of the time wont be worth it. This makes them stick more to their own class of items too.
They should make tank items kind of like hurricane where you need to be a tank or a fighter to use them
Vars swearing more is like a mental whiplash lmao
What if they made objectives cut through armor and healing so that the only way to take objectives, like baron and the drakes, is to have a tank absorb the damage or have more Tam members burst it down? Because right now its.kinda silly that most jungles can 1v1 the drake at level 5
They could change the stats growth of champions making it so that tank gain more armour and magic resistance but with less hp, and do the opposite with bruisers; then items, abilities and/or runes scaling with armor would also be nice to see ~
In the end, i just want the old sunfire cape that activates after every attack... I miss my attack speed cho 😢
Hot take, just bring in class restrictions like rpgs have for gear. It would make things better for the game so every class can have broken items for their class and not have something for them used in a weird way. You could even have a system like runes where when you get into a match you have to choose a starting class based off the way the shop sorts items. Maybe even a level where you can "multiclass" into another classes items
i had been reading the comments and i think that is surprisingly how some people can be so close-minded about thinking that tanks need to do damage and accepting it, when is prove by other mobas than tank can be a threat by other methods than doing damage, giving buffs and hard cc to allies is a thing that cant be ignore, and saying that doing that is turning the tanks into mere supports i think is wrong, the most notable difference has to be how the vanguards are able to disrupt the backlane, and be annoying, meanwhile the warden should be more focused on peeling the backlane and pushing or controling any class like assasin that tries to eliminate the more squishy champs.
i think that if the tank items are around responding enemies, they should be even more situational, being able to deal with any kind of enemy, like is not a mistery why nobody wants to play tank top when the enemy can counter pick something like fiora and you wouldnt be able to play the game anymore
and for saying that tanks need high base damage to be able to wave clear, thats simple, since the beginning the sunfire did had enhanced damage against minions and monster, why not do the same to the tank damaging abilities so they can more easily farm
A big problem is traditionally the premise of a tank is they don’t die and don’t do a lot of damage but they have either ways to soak damage passively or prevent it with CC.
With how fast paced LoL is there won’t ever be a time where they feel balanced. They’ll either be too oppressive (Sunfire/IBG S5 comes to mind) or they are just there as a distraction.
Tanks usually have to have some sort of utility that makes them work in a vacuum in their match ups. Poppy v Fiora is a good example.
I think that what traditionally carried tanks in LoL wasn’t generally any of the above but was more - they had ok base damages meaning they’d spike faster than their lane opponents at certain levels and their abilities would carry them though.
Riot also probably has a fear of creating another tank meta. But they could make tanks strong if they made adc stronger too.
The other issue with tanks are they tend to be immobile, everyone seems to have 2 dashes, a reset for that dash and then some % health damage with absurd scaling that makes it difficult for tanks to actually do their job
What about an item that redirects damage from nearby teammates towards you? That way a tank would become a high priority target, because, unless you kill him, you won't be able to deal significant damage to his team during team fights.
knights vow?
What about the fact that armor and mr have diminishing returns? Building more tank items makes them decrease in gold efficiency.
Tanks nowadays NEED to deal damage and have waveclear (sometimes almost exclusively from items) to have any impact on the game. In my opinion this is because the days when a tank could stand in front of the backline and be a brick wall are gone. There is so much movement in the kits of champions nowadays that tanks cannot deal with, ESPECIALLY in the assassin class. I'd say somewhere around Qiyana's release is where assassins started to be able to circumvent anyone trying to defend their backline. This makes the role of tanks essentially useless unless they bring something else to the table, in this case damage and/or splitpushing.
What if certain tanks items had max health requirements? Like you need to have a minimum max health to buy or have access to the tank items stats and passive.
This always been a problem since the begining non tank champions abusing tanks items yet tanks get the blame not those champs I think the best thing is for the items be restricted to champs who have the tank class yes it'll limit freedom of purchasing item but it's small price to pay to reduce the stress of annoying meta like tank Varus or Ekko
I said it before and I will say it once more, the major reason why league of legends Tanks are in that weird state is not because Lol is the game where everybody can pick anything, but because Riot has been patching the game in a way that everybody can solo carry for years.
Nowadays League doesn't even feel like a 5v5 game but more like 3 1v1's and a single 2v2 all played on one arena.
An average match lenght is about 25-35 minutes and laning phase in most of the games is about 12-15 minutes. It's a literal half of the game where most of the lanes don't interact woth each other. The only roles that can impact different lanes actively are jungle and support. Mid can have some impact via roaming but it's also not always because it depends on the matchup(for example you can't roam as Veigar when playing vs Talon or even try to follow up on his roams). But top or AD carry will never meets each other for the entire first half of the match.
And since Riot made it that way, now they have to give you, as a toplaner enough dmg to be able to carry the game even if your bot loses lane because they took away any possinility if you helping your AD carry to win the lane.
If you compare the amount of teamwork needed in league to other grand MOBAS(dota 2 and Heroes of the storm) you will see what I'm talking about.
Tanks in dota 2 deal just enough dmg to be oppressive on lane so they can contest it and for it to be relevant till the end of midgame, however in midgame this damage is relevant, it's not a lot, it's just enough to make your enemy feel that they are being attacked. Why are tanks viable in dota then? Because in dota if you don't have a tanky engager who can jump on enemy hard carry and CC them, you won't be able to win 90% of your games. However, in dota you also cannot really win without a hard late game carry who needs all of the resources in the world in order to get scaled to late game, you also can't really win without strong early game supports/mages who will help you contest lanes and make some ganks in early game with the sheer power of early game dmg if their abilities. And you probably won't be able to win a game without a midlaner who can roam and gank every 2/3 minutes starting at minute 6.
In league if your toplaner picks an AD carry and they win lane, you win the game because he is fed and he carries and if somebody is well fed, teamcomps don't mean shit.
In dota it doesn't matter how fed you are, if you lack your engager you are screwed(keep in mind that supports cannot really be tanks there because past early game they dob't have enough lvls and gold for tank items).
Another example, heroes if the storm, tanks deal literally 0 dmg since lvl 1 there(except for 2 of them which has been categorized as tanks by blizzard for some reason but their kit, playstyle and numbers fit bruiser class much more).
Why are tanks usefull in HoTS then? Same reason as in dota, if you dob't have your engager, you are screwed.
If you don't have somebody who will peel your backline from enemy assassins, you are screwed.
If you don't have somebody who can tank neutral objectives while capturing them, you are screwed.
And the same goes for other roles too. No healer? Your team has no sustain in fights, you are screwed. No dps carry? No dmg, you are screwed.
No bruiser? Your team has no offlaner which means all of you will be behind in exp, you are screwed.
In both, dota and HoTs every role has it's job it has to fullfill in order to achieve victory. The winner team is simply the one with more people who did their job correctly(of course without countting counterpicks, synergies in ability kits etc. Etc.)
Meanwhile league of legends is just a huge money show where the Winner is the one who deals the most dmg no matter what role does he play.
And because of that community mentality is also fcked. It's much less common to find somebody in your dota match who complains about an accidental kill steal. Everybody is just happy that your team scored a takedown.
In hots there isn't a single player who complains about that because exp from kills is shared evenly among teammates.
There is much less crybabies eith protagonist mentality who start throwing immediately after they lose their lane because they don't care about a win but just about being the one who carries the game.
Etc. Etc.
Riot games is fcked up company
give tanks team buffs auras cc or whatever that isnt damage, that scale off of their existing tank (bonus) stats in order to rule out non tanks buying them. idk if this fixes it but its at least worth a try
Alright so I am going to put this as a bit more of a counter point. Vars I believe you are completely right when looking at the items and class from the perspective you see them. Up front you are right that the items stats are usually not very good flat and you are looking for the passives. And the passives are situational. But I would like to put my perspective on how I see the items.
Your job as the tank is not to be killing and one shotting the enemy. It's to take damage. And the counter for a bad tank IS to just ignore them.
A good tank player's skill is to give as much time for their TEAM to do damage. It's to make yourself UNABLE to be ignored.
So you are correct in how you see the defensive tank items.
When you look at the more offensive ones, I think you are a bit off the mark.
Take Sunfire and Hallow Radiance. Those items are not meant to just make you a high damage killing machine in team fights. Most tanks actually buy those because Tanks usually are notoriously weak at pushing waves. Which is why Hallow Radiance is honestly the superior of the two currently. You need that macro pressure. And in team fights both punishes the enemy for being close to you giving you some okay Zoning pressure.
Same thing with Thornmail and Iceborn Gauntlet. Do not AA me and do not get caught by me.
When you are playing as a tank and looking at tank items you have to assess the value of the passives based on TIME.
The enemy has 2 or 3 crit damage dealers? Randuins = live longer so team has more time to do damage.
Your team has a bunch of magic damage dealers? Abyssal Mask = Enemies live shorter.
Enemies have high Move speed champs? Iceborn/ Randuins = slower enemy takes more time to get to your squishies
Enemies have very high poke? Warmogs/ Kaenic = Meat shield for the squishies to live longer. And so on.
It's the same principles when you look at what it means to be a good tank in Raiding too. It's just SIGNIFICANTLY easier in raiding because well... The fights in raids will never be as dynamic as LoL.
Looking at all of the tanks through that lens you can see why some tanks just keep becoming meta or even have just been meta forever in Pro play. Most of them are very well designed in doing this job... It's also why K'Sante is the WORST DESIGNED "TANK" IN THE GAME! K'Sante is not a tank! He is an over bloated bruiser that gets to be both super tanky AND super damagey.
To everyone that reads all this. Thank you and I hope you have a nice day.
IF Every tank could have ecales like ornn, malphit/galio. It would be Bettencourt for ballancing damage and resistense
I think the fundamental flaw in this video is assuming tanks build damage items because it’s optimal instead of because people like doing damage. Even when u lock in a tank u want to do damage. The damage sunfire cape offers you is negligible and in a teamfight will only really be reaching their frontline the majority of the time. If you’re buying sunfire it’s either to help you clear, or cuz u like seeing numbers pop up on ur screen periodically
i'm not into league that much anymore but i think that another really big issue is the abundance of true damage / % max health damage in the game and sometimes even both at once on a single character.
You know for a fact as a tank that if you go MR you will get shredded by the machine gun of crits that is the ennemy kog'maw . If you build armor the AP jax / malphite / zac jungle will camp you all game. If you build both Vel'koz will have a field day going through your armor right to your "low" bas health with true damage. Build health and now %max health damage comes in. SOMEHOW manage to build all of it, and the vayne top will just nuke you with %max health true damage barely slower than she would kill a lvl 1 roaming yuumi.
Basically, as a tank you can never be sure that a game will let you even play. While everything else always has an answer, be it more damage, enough survivability to not be one shot before i can one shot or armor pen to one shot the tank that built against me faster.
I will say that damage as a tank makes you a threat they have to focus but tanks lack the tools to force people onto them like in mmo
The problem is that late game tanks with heart steel + either bloodmail or rift become serious damage threats
In one my skarner games I had 3 tanks items and my last 2 were bloodmail and titanic hydra and I had 400 as almost, I could one combo the squishies
This just shows more how busted ksante is, because he makes all tank items that affect all enemies when he goes all out
almost never see anyone build randuins. only time you would build it is if enemy team had adc, yas and yone. I feel like it's active should store up damage from physical damage taken and then it's active shockwave can release that damage, increasing damage and radius depending on your hp and armor
There’s a pretty obvious if complicated answer here.
1. Stop giving tank items extra damage and make them better for tanking.
2. Lower base damage across the roster except for champions not meant to scale late game (Miss Fortune, Draven, Darius, Heimerdinger, Lee Sin, Elise).
3. Give tanks innate resistance multipliers, and non-damage scaling based on tank stats, maybe minor damage scaling (like Malphite W)
4. Reduce applicability and access to tank shredding (I.e. put it onto supports, artillery mages, and bruisers to amplify the damage of the actual carries) but add more variety so that it’s possible to fully spec into tank busting
5. Lower assassin damage in general but amplify below-threshold damage (below 50%, below 30, etc.)
If tanks wouldnt be able to one/two shot squishys it be fun
I wouldnt mind a wall but when that way falls over and kills u it kinda sucks
Offensive items do care whos the ennemy tho, especially choosing wich offensive stats you go, crit, on hit, lethality or items like black cleaver, maw.
Its mostly if ennemy are tank vs damage dealera tho, not what type of. Damage they do
I think they should give area damage absorbtion passives to true tanks , similar range to mordekaiser passive
Honestly, if the entire damage of every role wouldnt be so ridiculously high that they could afford to buy tank items and still oneshot you, then that would fix one major issue already. Not saying we need another tank meta, but also not saying the current damage trends should continue
I think Riot should classify champions at this point and create a synergy system. For example, a tank could get 100% efficiency out of a tank item, a bruiser 90-100%, a slayer 70%, a marksman or assassin 50%.This game is becoming too big and it's impossible to keep all options open to all champs at this point. And Riot nerfs champs/items/runes when they arent playing how Riot wants them to anyway. Obviously there would need to be more champ classifications but since the problem is other classes abusing the items then nerf the items for the other classes. Then you could have tank items that actually make tanks tanky and offer things like impactful auras, something like old mao ult. Maybe ramping auras, which increase damage of champs in an area or increase damage to enemies in an area over time. If you ignore the tank while the tank is in combat the whole team can get bonus stats. These could be actives with reasonably long cd's to give skill expression. Now you have to choose because the tank is creating team damage even though they arent the ones one shotting you until the aura ramps up. I also think that the tankiness should be more item based than buffs to champs so that a tank doing well and one doing poorly have a clear difference in impact. I think Riot NEEDS to bring back the actual feel of champ classes. Not every class should have one shot damage, not everyone should be tanky. I think assassins and slayers are the only ones getting the archetypal experience the expect with mobility and glass cannon builds. Everyone else feels like theyre just trying to accomplish the same thing on less equipped champs. I think Riot needs to bring in some level of restriction and more specific buffs and nerfs to champ interactions rather than sweeping changes which make the one broken interaction on one champ create worse QOL for 20 others.
Line up was ADC, Burst Mage, Battle Mage, Tank.
Love your videos use all 3 of your channels as background videos for work much love 🙏🏻
Mundo being a juggernaut that builds all tank items will never help with the community calling him a tank when he's more like Illaoi.
In a game where the most playable game mode is -Solo- Queue and where you need to deal damage to make progress, every champion should be able to output meaningful damage. The way to balance the game shouldn't be around damage, but around zone of influence (ZOI).
Zone of Influence is, as the name suggests, the zone in which the player can influence. In other words, it is the range in which a champion can threat an opponent champion.
League has champions with low ZOI, with high ZOI and with mobile ZOI, as well as the in-betweens. The most typical champion archetypes of lZOI, hZOI and mZOI are, respectively, juggernauts, artillery mages and assassins, but every champion can be measured by their range, mobility and durability without ever factoring in their damage output.
- hZOI beats lZOI because hZOI can threat lZOI before they can fight back due to their range advantage.
- mZOI beats beats hZOI because their mobility allows to make hZOI's range advantage obsolete.
- lZOI beats mZOI because lZOI have the durability to outlast their opponents.
Again, you can see here that damage isn't a factor. This treatment allows the player to not feel bad to play a champion just because it doesn't matter how well you play, you won't be able to make enough progress in the game where you are unable to win it.
A lot of situational items of other classes gave same defansive stat as some tank items only value to tank items are their pasives but damage is so high that it became meaningless even penetration item were require you to some condition now they just gave %40 penetration
I feel like tanks should do less damage but more crowd control and damage mitigation, and then maybe implement items to reward consistent crowd controls and damage mitigation with bonus damage when dealing crowd controls or dps scaling on damage mitigated/absorbed by shields during the fight.
Only give them the unkillable damage dealer threat status as a reward for actually tanking properly and playing more strategically instead of a free "Haha Me Strong Me Go Brrrrr" ticket for just existing during the right balancing patch. But sadly this would probably require a lot of balancing across all of the champions.
Shoutout to heartsteel which is an offensive defensive item
Actually, thornmail does depend on the enemy team, so does iceborn, unless they are your core items, and the whole reason we got an MR sunfire is that it felt bad to build in when going vs AP. The only item that truly doesn’t care about the enemy team is jak sho, because it will always do the same thing, no matter who you are against, except for maybe true damage dealers like vayne, camille, or fiora.
Also, I disagree that tanks build sunfire, because then they force you to deal with them by virtue of doing damage to you, I think tanks force you to deal with them by virtue of having CC, getting locked for 4s during a teamfight means almost certain death, not tanking 4s of sunfire aegis
Tanks are not supposed to deal damage
Rammus and k'sante: OK
0:32 so funny, never heard that joke
as a tank player, the main thing that i hate is tanks that deal damege, i don't want that, i wanna just be imortal with no damege at all, the only thank that i play that deals no damege is nunu, he only deals damege if you build ap or if you hit a full charged ult or snowball
I feel like phreak has actually talked about tank items in his patch run down. I hope if vars ever watches this.
Somehow tank items feel weak in summoners rift but when you go up against a Tahm kench or Alistar in ARAM they become completely unkillable unless it's a 5v1
I think its hilarious when I erase a carry with my Sejuani with only Sheen and Bami's
I really wish Randuins omen was changed, Iceborn and Stride breaker already slow
Randuins active is so negligible imo, would be better of if it was removed and stats and passive buffed, to be THE anti crit item.
The problem with tanks is two things
people will just ignore the tank if they lack damage or scary cc
There items are "Splashable" on other champions not intended for them. remember when Frost fire gauntlet Ak and Senna where a thing cause they lost nothing for buying them ? or back when half the champs in the game ran goredrinker cause it was just *that* good ?
%max health damage should be off base health and not include bonus health, so it can still be strong but not render HP items irrelevant
More than half of the tank items are just damage over time stat sticks.
I wish tank items were more interesting and powerful but in a unique way that enhances their designs.
Tanks should have a spellshield item because they're the first to enter into a fight (and it sounds OP because the game is extremely unbalanced, but in a healthy game, spellshields are waaaay more fair)
An item that makes all your shields to explode after they break or the effect finishes
Items that make your cc stronger (They deleted anathema's for some reason)
An item that makes magic projectiles to be less effective or something like that
Items that reflect 10% of any true damage source (so tanks don't lose the game in champion select)
Literally anything... But right now we have:
Sunfire
Sunfire 2
Sunfire 3, the return of sunfire
Sunfire 4 that actually doesn't do damage by itself (abyssal mask)
Not really Sunfire because it reflects damage but it still feels like a DoT effect (thornmail)
I don’t want to be damage, I want to be frontline space maker who eats damage for breakfast. Riot is obsessed with making everyone do thousands of DPS but I’d rather take more health than more damage. I never feel tanky anymore, even big tanks like malphite and tahm feel like burst mages. Mobility creep is also part of the problem, everyone but tanks are so fast it’s impossible to hold a frontline and make soace
you cant just a be a wall tho, people will just ignore you in fights, you have to give them reasons to focus you. and yes sadly dmg is way overtuned right now so that adds to the problem. this isnt a mmo where you tank creeps who will happily focus tanks all day.
The "dps" items are bought early, and you can't stack them past the first two, which means you nerd to become more tanks, but the stat wall nature of tanks means that means what little you have is meaningless so you're reliant on back line ups or other iniarors to help follow up on your engage. Then the issue current is that same dps you need the enemy has, so they will cc you out the fight or kill you, which leads to a question, why play sej instead of Vi? Both have a knock up and single target cc ultimate the only difference is one will kill you in one rotation and the other will auto you and maybe cc you again to het the kill taken by the dps. The issue isn't the items but that Riot doesn't give the champs who build them enough synergy with their own items.
The problem with league is everything has damage multiplier but no defensive multiplier, when a champ has barrier or healing skills, they use AP/AD multiplier not def/health multiplier making def stats unnecessary for survival an example is riven S3, Yone S2, Akshan passive, Diana S2 uses AD scaling for survivability, If we make that kind of skill scale with def stat it will make people choose if they want more offense or defense. The other problem is offensive items have defensive capabilities like Eclipse, DD, Zhonya's, Riftmaker making defensive item even more obsolete "why do I need to buy defense when I can buy offense AND defense at the same time" riot need to make player choose whether they need damage or survivability
Vainglory (RIP) categorize item in their game into 4; Weapon power (AD) damage, Crystal power (AP) damage, Def, Utility (boots, ward); both damage item will never have defensive capabilities and def and utility item will never have offensive.
VG also have scaling in their CCs abilities using defensive stats, for example cc only last 0.5s stun but it gets increased up to 2.5s with 5 health item, this also makes carry cc not as valuable as tank cc, heal and shield scales with health makes carry heal not as valuable as support heals, unlike morgana where she can root you for 3s and kill you at the same time
Would Randuin's Omen work against the enemy lux/sylas with shadowflame? 🤔9:22
The fundamental problem is that they try to make tanks tanky by adding items that let anyone be tanky, instead of just giving tanks the stats they need to be tanky.
If Swain had more health than Kat did, and more resistances built into his kit, then Tank Kat would be less viable than Tank Swain instead of the other way around. Instead, whenever Riot wants Swain to be actually tanky, they give Tank Kat an indirect buff, because they can't figure out that tank stats should go on tanks instead of everyone.