>>532511615
The issue with how Riot handled tanks stems from balancing around esports, and then continues with bandaid fixes on top of festering wounds
When LCS launched in season 3, riot didn't want tank slap fights to be as strong as they were in season 1/2, and they also wanted to get rid of the power of good tank options like bveil/randuins and especially guardian angel. Were these items overpowered? Did this shakeup need to happen? No__
but Riot gutted tank items and introduced dedicated anti tank options like Bork and Liandries that weren't just good at shredding tanks, but were also just so aggressively statted that champs like Lucian dominated with them. Tanks felt utter dogshit so to compensate started giving every single tank means to output more damage to compensate.
It also led to some absolutely fucking crazy metas like the "tank assassin" meta during season...7? Where tanks were just so fucking worthless across the board, and assassins had so much damage to oneshot anybody with zero items. So instead of risking themselves by going full glass cannon, assassins were buying tank items which were still dogshit on anyone else, but it didn't matter for how overloaded they were. Tank Ekko, Fizz, Katarina were dominant but good luck trying to play something like Rammus or Amumu.