After so many years, League’s venerable tank class is getting updated. While we don’t have many details yet, Riot has mentioned that they’d like to increase vanguard skill floors and give them more unique kits from each other. In addition, there’s likely to be changes made to tank itemization, making it so that tanks - and tanks alone - get the most benefit from armor and magic resistance.
Riot hasn’t even decided on which champions will receive large-scale reworks and which will receive smaller touches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate. Today’s article goes through all eight vanguard champions - and a few others that might get work done - and talks about the kind of changes each one may see.
The Sad Mummy is pretty much the archetype of how vanguards are designed - go in with one of your abilities, apply AoE CC, then just kinda walking around damaging nearby champions. It’s not necessarily bad, especially given that Amumu has two very iconic abilities in Curse of the Sad Mummy and Bandage Toss, but it’s a playstyle that doesn’t contribute much to skill expression. Tantrum at least has an interesting paradigm by allowing Amumu to do more damage the more he takes damage - perhaps that's the direction that the Sad Mummu could be taken in.
Malphite - The biggest problem with Malphite is that he shares almost the same niche as Rammus - an armor-stacking, anti-ADC tank. The key here is that Malphite shuts ADCs out from dealing any damage, while Rammus just makes them hit himself. As such, Malphite could stand to double down on the damage prevention motifs, maybe even by reducing a mage's ability to inflict damage as well.
Maokai - The Twisted Treant’s a weird champion in a few respects. For starters, he doesn’t even really feel like a vanguard - Maokai’s ultimate makes him appear to be more of a warden at first glance. He also doesn’t do anything in particular that’s unique. Watching a Maokai play in the LCS is pretty damn boring, given that he just can’t die and has a targeted gapcloser.
If anything, I feel as though Maokai should be reclassified as a warden and rebalanced as such. Giving him more ally-friendly abilities that help him peel and tuning down his ability to start fights will go a long way towards making Maokai feel unique.
Nautilus - Anchor Man is a pretty awesome champion to watch, unlike Maokai, but could use some help with differentiating himself from other hook champions. Riptide is too reliable a damage source - and slows on top of that - and I’d love to see Naut have to rely more on his Titan’s Wrath-empowered autoattacks.
Rammus - Rammus is THE anti-ADC champion, and I don’t want that to change. However, his ultimate is pretty lackluster, and having a targeted taunt means that it’s tough for Rammus to fail once he’s successfully initiated. The Armordillo could certainly use a new targeting paradigm on Puncturing Taunt (maybe in a small AoE around him?), and may want to find a better ultimate as well - something that plays up his “stop hitting yourself” playstyle, instead of just doing generic magic damage to things.
Sejuani - Other tanks are slow and lumbering, but Sejuani feels much faster than others. She can initiate with Glacial Prison from a range before dashing in with Arctic Assault, or vice-versa, giving her a variety of ways to start fights. As such, I’d love to see Sejuani take the reins as a mobility-based vanguard, denying it from her opponents while dashing around in fights.
Shen - Shen’s a warden, but while tanks are being looked at I figure he could stand a little love. Shen’s rework earlier in the year didn’t really hit all of the marks Riot wanted it to, and his whole spirit blade mechanic just isn’t that interesting. I’d love to see Shen lose the ability and perhaps gain power back in the rest of his kit. And can we get some Shadow Dash buffs? That hitbox is way too narrow for how big of a guy Shen is.
Sion - The big zombie’s a pretty archetypal tank, but I don’t want a thing to change on him. Sion’s basically just a tidal wave of CC in teamfights, and most of his damage relies on skillful targeting and predictions, not just standing next to people. I fully expect Riot to pass Sion over when it comes time to announce the large-scale projects.
Zac - Long-range initiations and bouncing around are what you play Zac for, and I don’t want that to change. The blob’s Q and W, however, are a different matter - they just don’t seem to do much. Unstable Matter’s probably the best place to do some work on Zac, and hopefully gives him a better damage pattern than “walk next to enemies and spam W.” Ideally, I'd love to see Zac become a disruption tank, focused on knocking enemies all over the place instead of just stunning them like other tanks.
Let me know your thoughts and predictions on the tank rework in the comments!
