Who doesn’t love to carry? You get to build pure damage, watch an opponent’s health bars melt from your auto attacks and spells, and blame your team when you get dived and killed. But some players enjoy a different role and play style than watching opponents die in droves before them. They’d rather be the people wiping the smug expression off the other carry’s face, locking them down and making them watch in horror as your team’s Darius bears down on them.

These people are the tanks; they stack tons of health, armor, and magic resist, and charge into the enemy team, laughing off whatever is thrown at them as they knock opponents up, away, or into their own team. In my next two articles, I’ll be catering to those who prefer to soak up damage and live to tell about it. So here’s part one of my guide to playing tanks in League of Legends!

What is a Tank?

Any champion can buy a ton of health, armor, and magic resistance, and “be tanky”. However, true tanks are champions whose kits naturally work well with building almost pure defense, with maybe one or two hybrid offensive items. There are three things that define a tank, and I contrast champions who meet these qualifications to be true tanks with bruisers who build tank stats without being actual tanks.

The first part of being a tank is having defensive abilities. Getting lots of health and resistances through items can only get one so far, and it takes having built-in defensive stats to push a champion to the level of tank. A few good examples are Volibear, with his health-regenerating passive, Leona’s free armor and magic resistance from her Eclipse, and Malphite’s extra health and armor from his passive and Brutal Strikes. One important point is that Malphite and Volibear’s defensive abilities scale. The more health Volibear has, the more his passive regenerates; the more armor Malphite has, the more he gains from activating Brutal Strikes.

Crowd Control is the second important part of being a tank, and what defines many of these champions. Malphite’s unstoppable force is an AOE knock-up, Rammus has a three-second taunt, and Volibear slows enemies and flings them into his team. Obviously all tanks have a different form of crowd control, but there is a difference between their CC and that of other champions. A tank’s CC is hard CC. While they may have a slow or a silence to complement their abilities, all of them can displace or lock down a single opponent, or stun or knock up a large group of opponents. Additionally, they need to get in close to do this. Malphite physically flings himself into the enemy team with his Unstoppable Force. Rammus and Nautilus need to be in melee range to taunt or snare their opponent. All tanks have both hard CC and the need to get up close to use it.

The final piece of defining a tank is a bit more nuanced, but boils down to why you wouldn’t want to build mostly damage on them. An obvious part of that is the fact they need to be up close to use their abilities, but so do many bruisers like Darius or Jax. So why do tanks more often build “hybrid” damage items like Iceborn Gauntlet and Sunfire Cape instead of Trinity Force and Blade of the Ruined King? For some, it’s in their scaling. Building AP or AD just wouldn’t do much for them as the little bit of extra damage they get isn’t as important as living longer. This usually coincides with having high base damages, especially on their ultimate. Leona and Malphite are both champions who just don’t get that much extra damage from building AP, and thus are better off being tankier. The other reason is that many of them tend to be more about persistent damage. Shen gains bonus damage on an auto attack every couple of seconds (this bonus damage also scales with his maximum health) and thus can put out a lot of damage over time. Volibear’s ultimate makes his auto attacks do magic damage that chains to nearby enemies, and every three auto-attacks Volibear can activate his Frenzy to do bonus damage. Champions like Shen and Volibear thus benefit from building defensive items to allow them to do this persistent damage for as long as possible.

Playing a Tank

So here’s the meat of this article, and this is the section I will split into two parts. The first part will be about teamfighting with tanks, while the second will break down laning with tanks. While this may seem backwards, teamfighting is where tanks really shine, and understanding what you’re working towards will be important for laning. I will cover the laning phase with tanks in part two of this article, as tanks can play multiple roles in the laning phase and below I break down teamfighting with tanks.

Goal: Let my People Carry

The primary goal of any tank, and the thing you should keep in the back of your head all the time, is that you’re trying to stop your opponents from touching your carries. There’s a number of ways to do this, depending on your kit: initiating, peeling, and locking down.

Initiating is one of the simplest concepts to wrap your head around if you have a tank designed for it. Four people clumped up? Unstoppable Force, perfect initiate, let your team do the rest. Amumu and Malphite are examples of tanks with abilities that are very powerful and easy to use initiates. Other tanks have more nuanced initiates that are no less powerful, but often harder to use and understand. If you see your enemy’s AD carry sitting in front of their team, and you’re playing Singed or Volibear, activate Ghost and charge towards them. If you successfully flip them towards your team, there’s probably going to be a bruiser on your team very eager to smash that smug jerk’s face in. This kind of displacement is as much an initiate as Amumu using Curse of the Sad Mummy on half of the enemy team, it’s just harder to execute on.

Initiating is a very important part of many tank’s roles because it causes chaos in the enemy ranks. You’ve either just CC’d a large group of your opponents, buying your team time to get in position or unload a bunch of AOE abilities, or you’ve just displaced their carry and forced them to focus on self-defense for a precious few seconds. One thing to remember, especially in solo queue, is that a perfect initiate means nothing if your team isn’t ready to follow up on it. When playing an initiator, make sure to communicate to your team you’re looking to go in, so they’re ready to go in right behind you.

Peeling is a word that gets thrown around a lot and can be difficult to understand and execute on for less experienced players. The most basic idea behind peeling is preventing carry divers from carry diving. In the same way that Singed or Volibear are serving someone up for their team, peeling is all about stopping those two from getting near your carry to toss them. But tanks are usually the least of your worries.

Assassins like Kha’zix and Zed and Bruisers like Lee Sin and Jax have gap closers and are going to jump on your carry’s face and try to melt them. Peeling often falls on the support, especially tank supports like Leona and Taric. However, anyone with hard CC can peel, and if you’re having a rough game and you still haven’t gotten many of your items yet, it’s probably a good idea to hang back and help your carry out. Rammus, Nautilus and Jarvan can all peel very well, and with the potential to get behind that all junglers have, you should be ready to use any of them to peel if things haven’t been going well for you in the jungle.

Locking down is an easy concept to understand but requires focus in teamfights. The simplest idea behind the concept is removing someone from the fight with CC. Only tanks with specific kits can do this, but the ability to do it means that you can pull someone completely out of a fight while the rest of your team cleans up.

A very simple (but rarely seen) example of locking down is Warwick’s Infinite Duress. For almost 2 seconds both Warwick and his target do nothing as Warwick slashes at their face. It doesn’t do a lot of damage, and it isn’t a true initiate because if someone CC’s Warwick during the duration he will stop, but if you wait for a fight to start and then jump on anyone important on the opposing team, you’ve knocked them out of the fight for a while. Locking down differs from peeling in this regard in that it doesn’t matter who you target (although it’s probably bad to go for the opponent’s tank or support), it can be a bruiser going for your carry (peeling) or the opposing carry (initiating).

Rammus’ Puncturing Taunt is also an excellent lockdown, and Nautilus can combine his various forms of hard CC to take someone out of a fight for a little while. The ability to lock someone down is incredibly powerful, but needs to be well-timed. Before the fight even breaks out you should have a plan in your head of who you want to lock down, and also who you may need to if they become a threat (you plan on going for their carry, but then Darius flashes next to your carry).

In my next article I’ll break down the different styles of tanks and how they fit into the laning phase. Until then, good luck to every tank player peeling, initiating and locking down the enemy and paving the way to victory!