Tanks are used to disrupt the enemy team with their presence and crowd control (CC) or to protect their teammates by frontlining and CC:ing for them. Either way, creates space and time for their teammates so that they can deal their damage.
The build path a tank wants to go is the one that allows them to take up as much space as possible for their carries — this may be frontlining or diving the opponents’ backline. Tanks mainly use items specific for tanks, as Bruiser items give flat AD and scale with AD and Tanks have low base AD scaling and build next to none. Tanks scale mainly with bonus health and resistances and these are their main stats together with movement speed and ability haste
At its core — aggressive or defensive — a tank will be close to and probably targeted by several opponents, requiring heavy investment in survival. But what damage sources you will be damaged by and what disruptive passives/actives help you and your team best should be accounted for in itemization.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways for Tank Itemization:
- Tanks want to disrupt the enemy and make way for their own team
- They scale with either bonus health or resistances
- The main stats Tanks want to build are health, resistances, ability haste, and potentially movement speed.
- Often underrated is healing which in terms of effective health becomes a lot stronger with extra health and resistances
It is not as fun to tank with strangers, download the Z League app if you are looking for teammates to play with.
Damage Sources
What damage sources the opponents overall have is a good indicator, not just what damage source the characters do thematically but to have a rough estimate of the AD to AP damage distribution the opponents have. As most champions do a mix. You should also assess what damage you will take at certain times in the game, what you need to build for the laning/jungling phase will most likely be different from teamfights and mid to late game.
For example, for team fights, it is best to also know what sort of damage you take. If the opponent only has a burst mage for AP damage, then you don’t really need to invest in MR. So it is good to know what damage sources will most likely damage you during a fight and if they are threatening to you.
Resistance Scaling and Balancing
Important to know is that resistances scale negatively exponentially — meaning that earlier resistances reduce more damage taken. As resistances are percentage based, they are more effective the larger health pool that you have. Therefore, only stacking one of a stat is a bad idea, even against relatively little AP damage it can be worth having at least some source of magic resist.
There is also a case to be made for balancing resistances — building one resistance boots and then going first item after mythic of the other resistance makes you very tanky at two items.
Opponents can also build things that specifically do extra damage against tanks and their stat distributions. Like magic penetration, armor penetration, true damage, and maximum health or bonus health damage. So it is worth keeping a tab on the opponents builds — an ADC with a Lord Dominics Regard is much more threatening to a tank.
There are also specific champions that are way more of a threat to tanks than others of the same class — examples are Cassiopeia, Aurelion Sol, and Vayne. Some items can specifically reduce the damage of such targets like Frozen Heart, Randuin’s Omen, and Anathemas Chains.
Support Items
An underappreciated aspect of tanking is healing/Enchanter and support items, sometimes the best defensive stats in terms of effective health is healing and as your job as a tank is to give time and space for your teammates, supportive items should be foremost on your mind. Items like Knights Vow, Zeke’s Convergence, and Locket of the Iron Solari are underrated for Tanks. They are incredibly cheap as they are support tank items. Knights Vow for example, is a 10 to 20% post-mitigation damage reduction for your main carry for 2300 gold — an incredible item for teamfights.
Healing items in Redemption and Moonstone are really good for tanks that scale with AP and characters with shields/heals, they are even better if you pair them together, or Redemption with Radiant Virtue as it improves its heal. You just have to make sure that you have some actual defensive stats as well or healing is not that strong in terms of effective health.
Overall, if you are simply going to front line for your team, you don’t really need movement speed and is instead good to just build for flat survivability, item haste and items that reduce the opponents damage generally like Frozen Heart and Randuins as well as items that aid your team like Radiant Virtue.
If you are going to dive into the enemy team, you want to be able to survive the damage of their backline and have stats that allow you to stick to your targets. So you have to take into account how you will be playing out fights.
