Tanks are one of the more undervalued roles in League of Legends. Everyone is always excited to play the flashy new assassin, or the carry that can shred teams apart with proper positioning, but when it comes to tanks, the fireworks just don't go off. Ever since the "Age of Mundo" (and Shyvana) back in Season Three, tanks haven't been able to hold the limelight for a variety of reasons. BoRK had its percentage damage buffed, the tank tree in masteries was nerfed, and so many of the new champions either had access to true or percentage damage (or just built it through items). Soon, champions such as Nidalee, Rumble, and Renekton dominated the lane, pushing out the usual tanks due to their ability bully the weak laning tanks out of lane or in order to become a major source of damage for the team.

However, the glorious Rito has noticed this problem, and with Season Five we have found a HUGE resurgence of tanks back into the meta! Sion and Maokai have become major top lane picks, tank junglers have seen the light of day once more, and even Nautilus has found his very own home as a support! Buffs to notable tank champions (such as Nautilus) have given them enough of an edge to creep back into people's champion pools, and with the new tank jungle item, Cinderhulk, jungle tanks don't completely fall off in the late game.

Enough of the history lesson, here's what you're going to need to know when playing a tank:

Credit to Akmin of DeviantArt for Sion picture.

Know Your Job-

If you're like me in the slightest, when you start a game of LoL, you're hoping to be mowing down champions and laying down some punishment. If you play a tank, you have to be able to realize that you will not be doing that much damage. Sure, you can play a bruiser like Vi or Xin and say you do damage, but that means you aren't playing a full tank, at which point this guide would be mostly irrelevant. Anyways, back to the point.

Your laning phase will be the time when you do the most damage. Tanks have high base damages, but low scaling. (Usually). For example, one of the reasons Sion became so popular was because of the usefullness of his E, Roar of the Slayer. Its base damage was high enough to serve as a safe waveclear ability AND poke. By maxing E first in lane, Sion could whittle down opponents merely through using it whenever it came of CD and using the slow to combo the rest of his abilities. Mundo's cleaver hits hardest at the early levels, when the enemy has no magic resist built. I can list these off, but you get the gist. During the laning phase, if you play smart, you can do a decent amount of damage. However, this changes quickly as the game progresses.

During the mid and late game, chances are that you'll be smacking people with a wet noodle. You won't do much damage, BUT this does not mean you're no longer important. You might not hurt anymore, but now you can start your real job.

Like a true man, your job is not to deal damage, but to take damage. Be the perfect barrier between your carries and your puny enemies! Skill shots shall harmlessly bounce off of your superior stature! Any silly hostiles shall be stunned by your overbearing presence! That and your CC. But in all seriousness, when a fight begins, your job isn't always to hunt down the enemy squishies. Your carries need you to protect them.

Skarner image courtesy of Sakashiiii from DeviantArt.

The Tanking Tango

Fighting as a tank, depending on the champion, varies between timed rotations of engagement to full on CC lock-up and focus. Here are three basic steps to fighting with Tanks.-

1. Initiate:

Tanks (and bruisers) are the only roles appropriate for engaging. Squishier champions may have abilities with massive CC, but they normally lack any appropriate form of surviving this initial burst if anything goes awry. These champions, unless nothing else is available, should save these spells for a secondary engage to follow up the tank. When you initiate as a tank, you want to focus on exploiting poor positioning of the enemy team rather than flat out dive the backline. If you choose to force an engage, you risk creating poor positioning on your own team's part as they attempt to follow you up, only to get counter-engaged on by the enemy frontline. A successful initiation would involve you, the tank, clearing a path to the enemy squishies, locking them up with CC, and resulting in a positional advantage for your team, with your backline in reach to deal damage, but not in danger of the enemy frontline.

2. Rotate:

You engaged, you got your CC off on the enemy carry. This is the point where you reevaluate your situation. You want to look at where your team is, and try to figure out how much damage you can safely take. If your team is running in to help out, you can try to stay in just a little bit longer, but you can also temporarily fall back in order to avoid taking needless damage during your cooldowns. I learned a lot about this technique through playing as Skarner. You can run in to lay down some Crystal Venom stacks on enemies, and then ult a squishy to drag to your team, but don't get so caught up in the engage that you let yourself get kited or focused. You can keep fighting until you get low, then fall back and wait for your shield to come back up, in which you would dive right back in to get off more CC. Just like initiation, this changes depending on your champion. But the main point of a rotation step is to break any tunneling you may be falling victim to.

3. Peel:

Once you initiate for your team, and the big fighting begins, one of the most commonly made mistakes by tanks is staying on the enemy carries for too long. Yes, you are supposed to get crowd control off on them when you first begin fighting, but once the enemy's frontline begins to target your own backline, you need to back off and peel. Remember, if you're playing a full tank, your damage is lackluster at best by the late game. Sure, you may be able to fend off the enemy carries, or even kill them, but that entire time you're doing so, you leave your own carries vulnerable to the enemy frontline. Protecting your carries is your number one priority, and if they keep dying because they get rushed down by the enemy frontline, you're doing something wrong.

Remember that tanks aren't your convential "push-button-and-win" champions. You need to think strategically about how you're shutting down the enemy's damage sources, while at the same time protecting your own. This is not easy, in fact, I think it's one of the hardest things to do in the game. You have to prevent other people from dying and rely on them to do damage for you. Not an easy thing to do, but a vital piece of a winning team, and a very legitimate way of carrying games.

Any thoughts? I'm open for discussion and comments!