I really, really love playing tanks… said no one ever.

In all fairness, I have a soft spot for both Maokai and Poppy – both of whom were my backups in Season 5 and 6 when I was an Irelia onetrick. However, the reason why I really dislike tanks is because they forced me out of said Irelia-only playstyle due to their annoying habit of being unkillable in lane.

As someone who plays very aggressively and in a very snowball-esque way, the innate survivability of beefier big guys like Dr Mundo and Malphite really does leave a bad taste in my mouth. In fact, just yesterday I was accosted by a marksman in one of my solo queue games – “imagine picking Rumble in tank meta, dog.”

Symptomatic of EUW’s innate toxicity aside, it does beg the question: is this really a tank meta, or are we all just living in Ornn’s toplane kingdom? One of the newer tanks to League of Legends (man, I am old), Ornn is an enigma. Going from pick ban to invisible to somewhat viable to legitimately overpowered in two roles – and pretty damn threatening in two others – does put the Forge God right at the top of top lane priority for the moment.

Let’s take a look at what makes Ornn so strong, and why his compatriots are… somewhat lacking.

Hotfixes hotter than your Sunfire

When Bami’s Cinder was announced to be reworked on the most recent patch, most of the playerbase raised at least one eyebrow in confusion. Ornn was already an issue and already super viable, so buffing one of his core items – and the most gold efficient to upgrade with his passive, but more on that later – would bring him to oppressive levels of strength.

I am a huge fan of the Cinder changes, as it may just be enough to bring my aforementioned favorite tanks back into vogue and subsequently shape the toplane meta to be a little less Sett, Aatrox, and Gangplank sitting in a sidelane forever, and a little more big teamfight engages for the five on five League of Legends gore-fests we’ve come to enjoy.

That being said, Sunfire does have its weaknesses. The item means you cannot freeze nearly as well toplane, and – unless you’re something unkillable, like say an Ornn – this will often leave you vulnerable to being ganked. With tanks back in the meta, however, your eventual death should buy your team 15 to 20 seconds to make a play for Drake or similar.

Line ‘em up, knock ‘em down

Able to match traditional weakside tank abusers like Aatrox and Gangplank in lane (typically they just say thank you for the free lane and outscale/outsustain their counterparts), and even offer a good amount of kill pressure right back onto them – thank you, Brittle – Ornn top is a force to be reckoned with.

Left in isolation, the champion can hold his own against anyone – losing so gracefully that every game he doesn’t go 0/3 in the first 10 minutes in can be considered a small victory for the big ram. It is his teamfight engage from two screens away that really hammers home how oppressive Ornn can be, however, and one fight-defining Call of the Forge God can spell doom for many an unsuspecting enemy.

Played in both sololanes, Ornn has even been seen in the support and jungle roles globally thanks to his consistent teamfight engage, innate bulkiness, and the free stats that he provides for his team.

Gold from lead, leads from gold

Ornn brings an effective 6,000 gold lead to his team simply from being in the game at level 18. This is thanks to the upgrade component of his passive, where he can grant his allies free additional statistics from specific items in their inventories, as well as two items of his own.

Even without this aspect of his kit, Ornn is a force to be reckoned with, so as thematically appropriate as it is this is very problematic. Forgefire Cape, the most gold efficient upgrade thanks to its health and armor, is just fuel to an already threatening fire – so much so that in some matchups Ornn players will opt to build two of these (forsaking the passive on one) for the sheer item efficiency.

Imagine if the other tanks in the game had access to free statistics – not only for them, but for their team as well. When playing tanks, I myself choose to be lowest priority to receive farm post-laning phase – Ornn players can do the same (though EXP is very valuable as he needs levels to upgrade) and lose far less than others in comparison.

Breath of the wild

My main qualm with Ornn in lane is that he has such insane amounts of damage packed into his kit. It was just this week in the LCS that we saw TSM’s toplaner Sergen “Broken Blade” Çelik get a sick solokill thanks to a 50% execute combo from his level 6 Ornn. While champions should definitely be rewarded for hitting all of their spells, Ornn’s Brittle – the damage of which increases with his maximum hit points – deals way too much percentage health damage way too reliably.

Compare this to Maokai, who – in the past – had his W, Twisted Advance, apply his percentage maximum health damage. The unavoidable targeted spell allowed the Twisted Treant to get guaranteed damage down, which was still far less than Ornn’s, and this has now been shifted to his comparatively unreliable E – Sapling Toss.

Poppy is another favorite of mine, but her Q – Hammer Shock – again suffers from a relative lack of % HP damage. Maokai and Poppy both build tank but have their damage augmented by Ability Power and Attack Damage, respectively. Ornn builds tank and has his damage increased by health, something these champions actually implement into their itemisation choices.

Grab the G.O.A.T. by the Ornns

I like seeing tanks back in the meta. But I don’t like seeing one champion stand head and shoulders above the rest in his role (similar to how marksman meta became Aphelios vs Senna, but even more extreme). I think we need to see how the Cinder changes affect the rest of the tanks once this patch hits competitive, but Ornn in his current state is just another ban for red side to worry about.

Oh well, someone had to replace Akali since she got gutted.