To Tank or not to Tank? Which Lanes Can Tank the Best?

Tanks are great aren't they? Big guys and gals that soak up all that damage for your team and allow you to charge in without taking all the damage that normally results from fights. These are some of the most impactful champions on the rift, providing peel, crowd control, and most importantly, a strong frontline for your team to fall behind.  But before you get to those intense team fights and late game battles, what should your tank be doing? Holding off that pesky bruiser in the top lane? Providing the AD carry with some peel and tank? Sharing their crowd control with all the lanes when they come out of the jungle to gank? Tanks are most commonly seen doing all of those things and more, but which is the most effective? There is no definitive answer whether a tank support, tank jungler or tank top is the best, but here is an evaluation of the benefits to each.

Note: You can have tanks in more than just one of these positions. This is just an observation of the bonuses of putting tanks in certain lanes, and what you are getting from choosing each. You could justify putting tanks in all three of these, and also justify putting tanks in none of these (a bit harder to justify, but it can work).  

Tanks Top Benefits: Top lane tends to be home to some serious damage dealers. Even the tanks deal out serious punishment (See: Dr. Mundo). If there is anything you need in the top lane, it's going to be sustain. Good thing that you playing a tank gives you just that. Besides sustain, you have resistance to solo lane ganks, and the best scaling of all three tank positions.

Sustain is the key to winning lane. Your enemy top laner might have a lot of damage, but if they run out of mana or run low on health, then you get a huge advantage. If you sustain and force the enemy laner to stay longer than they desire, it can force them to be more susceptible to ganks, or leave the lane and give you a significant farm advantage. It also prevents your enemy damage laner from getting ahead snowballing their power early. This prevents that pesky Jax or Fiora from getting strong enough to carry team fights once the mid game arrives. Sustain might not be the answers to all your problems, but think about it this way, if you are doing consistent in lane, farming decently and keeping your enemy laner in place, then your jungler can go and use their resources to influence other lanes.

Speaking of junglers, let’s talk about getting ganked as a tank. While you probably are an expert in vision control and are able to see when the enemy jungler is coming up to gank you, there are times when an enemy will slip through your defenses and come up to try and push you out of lane. As a damage carry, you might have one ability that allows you to simply escape, unless the enemy can close that much distance as well. You will probably have to blow flash to escape. This means you won't have flash to prevent future ganks or roams. As a tank you still are susceptible to ganks, but you have more survivability. You probably have some crowd control to be able to escape, as well as the overall tank to take some damage if need be. This also means you aren't going to burn flash the second you see an enemy jungler, and you will have to be smart about when to flash and when to try and make it out with walking and abilities.

Now you might be thinking that playing tank top means you are taking a back seat to the rest of your lanes, but this could not be further from the truth. Yes you might not win all the engages, and yes you might have to take sustain over damage, but you are the most powerful tank out of these three positions.  You don't have to spend time clearing camps and ganking lanes, or giving all your resources to an AD carry. You get to farm and get advantages that help you.  Just because you are rushing Sunfire Cape instead of Ravenous Hydra does not mean you should back down in the face of a challenge. You will be the frontline for your team in team fights, but nobody ever said you couldn’t have a fed frontline that can dish out as much damage as it can take.

Tanks Jungle Benefits: The jungle has a very diverse cast of characters that tend to inhabit it. Tanks have a special place in the jungle, providing slow clears but higher sustain than their damaging counterparts. They provide early ganks, and higher damaging lanes.

Normally the requirements that a jungler needs to meet for when they gank are a high amount of hp and mana and enough abilities to be able to keep the enemy laner incapacitated long enough to get a kill, or at the very least a flash. This does differ between junglers, but for the most part these are the basic things to look for before you try and engage on a laner or enemy jungler. Now a tank jungler, having more resistances, tends to have better sustain during clears (this does differ between champions, but more times than not this is true). Many damage junglers also need level 6 for efficient ganks (looking at you Diana). A tank jungler can take the brunt of any resistance from a laner, provide crowd control to keep the laner there, and leave to go back into the jungle.

Most teams try and have one person be the tank, and the rest provide damage. There (as stated in the introduction) are benefits to doing any number of tanks on a team, but one thing is for sure. If you have a tank in the jungle, it takes some of the pressure to build and play defensively off of the rest of the team. If your team can use their jungler to provide a frontline, then it allows then laners to build more offensively. This will allow for a stronger mid game, as roams from the mid laner become more potent, splits form the side lanes become faster, and the need for quick team fights and objectives grow. If you have a team with a tank in the sidelanes, you lose a bit of that splitting and early fighting pressure.

Tanks Support Benefits: The benefits to taking a tank support are primarily centered on getting your AD carry as ahead as possible. The benefits are peel for your carry, engage for your carry, and a low resource team member for the later game can stay on top of their game.

Peel is when you remove enemy damage dealers from your AD carry. Whether this means standing in front of your carry, stunning or slowing an enemy, or counter engaging to try and outfight the enemy. This can end well if the fight is coordinated and planned. What starts out as a rescue mission can easily turn into a given double kill to the enemy. So peeling is a bit of a risk/reward business. For ADC's who are not mobile however, peel is a must (new Kog'maw for example, the longer you can keep him from having to move, the better). Also, peeling can have your carry catch up or pull a lead in CS by preventing the enemy from zoning your carry away.

Engaging for your carry is about as risky as peeling (see above), but has just the amount of benefits if done correctly. This normally involves catching an enemy laner out of position, and not only engaging onto them, but applying crowd control, and possibly AOE to the enemy. This allows your carry to safely enter the fight, and have you take most of the damage. It's a good way to keep your carry safe, until you know a fight is going to turn in your direction.

Having a damage support normally requires them to roam later on to try and catch up in farm, to reach their damage potential no later than the other damage carries on the team. Tank supports do not have this issue. While they do provide a great service, they do not need to splitpush and roam to stay ahead. For one, they don't need damage, and the champs used tend to have great tank scaling. While this is no excuse to let them fall off, they do not need to get cs and kills to stay relevant. Also, Relic Shield has remained one of the most consistently good support items in the whole patch revolution of 5.23-6.3.  It allows cs to be shared, and even gives health back to the carry, and eventually a potent shield. Overall you will need to be present in team fights to collect assists for gold, but you are much less dependent on doing well than your damaging counterparts.

I hope this article helps you all in your future games to come! If you guys have any questions about anything you see here, or just want to see more of these articles, follow me on twitter @Buns_and_Roses. Thanks for reading guys, and good luck with your tank picks on the Rift!