voidflame

PURE tanks are out of the meta. Pre-buff Shen, Leona, are examples of 'pure' tanks, because all they do is soak up damage and CC people, and after they're done they do next to nothing.

There was a discussion about this somewhere sometime ago. The meta right now is all about damage. A dps can still kill a full tank in about 5 seconds, so why bother with building completely defensive when you can just outright kill them?

Rammus, Shen, Maokai, Malphite, Singed, Amumu and Galio could all be considered pure tanks, more or less. I regularly see most of them at many different levels of play. Galio and Malphite are more rare since they're counterpicks.

I don't really agree that Leona is a tank. She should be played more like Taric, a tanky support. She doesn't have any really game changing CC and if she doesn't stun with Solar Flare, she doesn't have any good CC to initiate.

+ her damage isn't that strong to make her a serious threat for enemies.

imo solotop Leona is such a waste (Considering you want good items to tank damage, you'll need lots of farm). She's absolutely fine at bot lane.
Same with pre-buff Shen. After the buffs he seems much stronger, so I may appear to be wrong here.

Hey that was totally almost exactly what I said. :P

Pure tanks that deal no damage but take a lot are out of favour for this reason. Much better to get an offtank who can take some beating and stands a chance of killing the AD carry before dying.

^that's where I got it from~

@PsiGuard I meant pure tanks who don't do damage, 'pure' meaning just taking damage, nothing more.

I disagree, pure tanks (granted they need cc to do what im about to say) are still usefull, for example full tank Alistar is still very viable. 2 sources of cc, massive disruption, can technically solo top as a pure tank (so he fits into multiple lanes depending on what you need). While i have moved away from being my groups main tank (large gaps in other roles so i let others do the tanking) I still play tank from time to time, and it still works, and honestly if all things are somewhat even (which they rarely are) a 5 v 5 with one team with a dedicated pure tank vs a team with no real tank (maybe and offtank or 2 at best) team with pure tank will win fight 9 times out of 10.

note: problem with my scenario is things are not always even and a big part of that is people do not understand #1. how to follow their tanks judgment and commit to fights and #2.to not come back after escaping fight to try and "save" the tank just because he was ccing everything in sight so you could get away.

I think if teams learn how to work with their tank and find players willing to be dedicated pure tanks then we may see a meta shift back to having pure tanks (barring riot destroying tanks like they did to support :(.

oh and p.s. Leona is very much usable as a pure tank. Ive had friends who will just casully walk around the jungle with 5 people beating on them and brings there whole team from one side of map to other with no problem. also she is skill shot based, if you master that, you can stun whoever you want at will(big plus in teamfights).

Technically what your describing is a soak (not a common term, but I've heard it used to reference this role), which is closer to Dr. Mundo and Singed. Soaks can take a beating, but they don't have any serious disruption abilities that help them tank for their team. Most true tanks have a taunt, stun, or other hard CC that they can use to initiate and draw focus off of the carries. All champions in League of Legends are going to deal damage, but some like Maokai, Amumu and Malphite are picked in order to initiate and disrupt a team, more than pick off carries.


He's really not.
Tanky support Alistar is viable because he's not very item dependant and can disrupt fights with just some CDR and survivability. He also brings some nice CC and lane sustain to an AD carry.

AP Alistar works because he still has a lot of burst potential even after his nerf. He's very difficult to kill and can fill a tank-type role while still dealing huge amounts of damage to squishies.

AD Alistar is a newer variant I've seen, usually in jungle. He actually has a very high base damage for Sheen or Trinity Force and his CC and ult allow him to attack enemies and tank damage as well as many other tanky DPSers.

Tank Alistar is something that I have never believed to be viable, never seen played at a professional level and never considered as an alternative to better tanks. He already gets a lot of tankiness from his ultimate, he requires a solo lane in order to farm up enough gold to buy expensive tank items, he's very cooldown dependant, he doesn't have much damage output without gearing for it and he basically becomes a big unkillable blob who annoys people every 10 seconds in team fights. In fact, tank Alistar and support Alistar can do the EXACT SAME THING, only tank Alistar needs solo lane farm and support Ali doesn't.

If you want to prove me wrong, explain to me how full tank Alistar is in any way superior to other tanks, how he can win a solo lane and how he isn't simply ignored in team fights OR show me some pro games with an Alistar building full survivability and still having a significant impact on his team's success compared to another tank or a support Alistar. Unless you can do that, I'm convinced that he is "unviable" as a tank.

I don't agree with Moakai, cuz even without some decent ap, he can still do some damage.
His ult supports yur team by decreasing the damage dealt 2 them. and he can throw wards.
In my perspective is

no 'pure' tank

There is no champion that doesn't deal some damage. Maokai generally doesn't gear much for it. Like I said earlier, I mentioned him because he's picked for his CC and ult, not damage output. Galio's in there too, but he can deal quite a bit of damage. That's not why you want him on a team though, you want his lane presence and ult.

Yeah, yu are totaly right