Unsung Heroes #1: A Look at Tanking in League of Legends

Unsung Heroes #1: Tanking in League of Legends

The metagame always seems to be shifting, but the need for a front-line that can soak up damage, initiate fights, and shift the battle in their teams favor is constant. Tanking can be a challenging role, will not get you as many kills as a carry or assassin, and can often end with you catching the blame if the game does not go well.

Still, a good tank can win a game, and playing one effectively can put you in a position to “carry” your team to victory. This article will discuss some general information about tanking as a primer for more in-depth looks in the future.

What Is a Tank?

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For the purposes of this article, a tank is essentially any champion with decent base survivability, crowd control capability, and builds mostly defensive items. They should be the first ones to engage, should perform actual “tanking” of turrets and objectives, try to draw enemy attention onto them, and focus on either providing kill opportunities to carries or preventing the carries from dying.

A tank is not determined by the tank tag given by Riot: many champions perform well in a tank role and are not considered as such. More traditional tanks are a good place to start, but once you get the hang of tanking, it is possible to consider branching into unusual tank choices. Be prepared to use these choices in a premade, since solo queue players will be unlikely to accept a non-meta champion choice.

Laning Phase

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The laning phase can be the most difficult part of a tank’s life, or when they shine the most. If you want to tank, being aware of where each particular champion pays off the most in laning phase is key. Jungle tanks, like Alistar or Nautilus, can keep their enemies recoiling in fear throughout the early game.

Top lane tanks vary between steady farming, sneaking to mid for 3-man ganks with a jungler, and pushing an advantage against their opponent. Bottom lane support-tanks are typically there to turn it into a kill lane, quickly feeding your carry when played right.

The lists for each position are not in any specific order. Some of the champions can be played in other positions: for example, Shen can be played in the jungle, but I feel his best position is in top lane. As I go further into detail on specific champions in future articles, I will discuss these lane choices in more detail.

Top Laners: Singed, Shen, Galio, Volibear, Cho’Gath, Pantheon, Jarvan IV, Nasus
Jungle: Alistar, Sejuani, Maokai, Rammus, Nautilus, Amumu, Dr. Mundo, Shyvana, Hecarim
Bottom Support-Tanks: Leona, Blitzcrank

Some of the champions listed show the odd choices I put into the potential tank category. There is also an obvious bias in numbers to top lane and jungle, since bottom lane requires a great combination of forcing advantageous engagements and innate tankiness.

Enemy Composition and Item Choices

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Tanking requires an intimate knowledge of every champion, every item and their capabilities. You should be constantly monitoring enemy item purchases, note highest threats on the enemy team, and watch enemy behavior. A good behavior to practice is always checking your death recaps (since you will almost always die as a tank), and to ask for allies to provide their death recap numbers to you when necessary.

Enemy champion knowledge is used for knowing when and how to apply your crowd control. For an obvious example, if an enemy team has a Katarina, you will want to try to save any hard CC for when she comes in with her ultimate. Time and experience will make most of this knowledge come second-hand, but take some time to review champions in the pre-game lobby or loading screen if you find yourself unsure of what exactly their skills allow them to do.

Lead the Pack

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One of the biggest issues many players suffer when converting to a tank role from carry, assassin, or support roles is the tendency to avoid melee range and taking damage. Players who have experience as fighters suffer the least from this, as fighters are considered “off-tanks.”

You want to place yourself into positions where the enemy team will be tempted as much as possible to engage on you, or for you to force an engagement on them. Play aggressively when you can: even though actual players operate on a more complex “aggro” system, they still operate on one, and you should be trying to manipulate them into attacking you.

If you notice your squishies have a tendency to put themselves in front of you, call them out on it. If you are falling back as the tank, they should not be pushing ahead of you. Some of them will not listen, but avoid angry confrontation if it happens to prevent a breakdown of teamwork.

Take Control

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While not necessary, slipping into a leadership role can make your tanking more effective. You should be controlling when the team decides to fight or run. This is not always possible in solo queue, and in organized teams someone else may be given control. Regardless, the most important idea is to promote coordination.

One problem you will inevitably face as a tank is hyper-aggressive teammates who engage ahead of you. When this happens, you will have to decide whether to run to their help as quickly as possible, or to leave them to their fate. Keep in mind the position of both teams, and whether or not the engagement is advantageous to your team. You might make the person angry if you leave them, but it is your job as a tank to make the decision to engage, and if someone else makes it, they should be aware they might be acting on their own.

Fight for Your Friends

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Tanking is a calling to some, and a bother to others. On either side, remember that tanks are fighting for your team’s victory. They are sacrificing their kill scores, and in many cases their champion’s life, in order to win a fight and ultimately the game. Have respect for these unsung heroes, understand the role they are performing, and you might find yourself winning more often.