The Tank Support playstyle is a very committed one while allowing for some mistakes in positioning due to your tankiness. A Tank Support must either commit everything or not engage at all. There is no in between. Therefore, playstyle requires taking into account both your team's and the enemy team's composition and current positions. It requires communication as well to make sure your team will follow up on any engages.

When to Pick a Tank Support

Knowing when to pick a Tank Support is not as easy as it seems. Having a Riven Top and a Nidalee Jungle, does not mean a Tank Support is a must have. It will depend on what the enemy team's composition is as well as your own. A tank Support into a poke heavy team composition might have a very bad time. It is also important to remember that a tank Support will never be as tanky as a Tank Top or Jungle would be, so relying on a Support to be the team's tank is not always the best solution.

So, when should you pick a Tank Support? Let's first look at your ADC. ADCs that synergize well with a tank Support usually benefit from CC due to having poor mobility coupled with high damage, such as Jhin or Ashe. Tank Supports are supposed to be a hard-counter to Sustain Supports such as Soraka, Nami, and Sona. They can also be picked into other Tank Supports. Commonly, some people assume they need a tank Support when their team has no other tank. As stated before, this is not always the case. What is truer is the need to pick a Tank Support is when your team has no engage, which brings us to our next section.

To Peel or Dive?

For the most part, Tank Supports rely on their combo abilities. When burned, however, a Tank Support can provide very little help to the ADC until they are back up. It is therefore important to know when to engage and dive and when to save your abilities for peeling.

Imagine you are Leona. You decide to engage with your Q-E combo pre-level 6. Your ADC follows and one second later, the enemy jungler pounces in, and all you can do is sit and try to auto-attack as you wait for your cooldowns. Engaging without vision of the enemy team's Jungler is one of the simplest mistakes people make on Tank Supports. Be sure to ward and track the enemy Jungler for precisely this reason. Once a Tank Support engages, there is little they can do to protect their ADC. Knowing where your Jungler is can be useful as well (i.e. are they in position to help if needed or are they all the way in Top lane).

The same can be said for teamfights late in a game. Using Leona as an example again, many will burn all her abilities to engage and start a fight, leaving themselves nothing else to peel with for about 6 seconds. This can work if the enemy team has no engage or assassins that can get to your ADC. But if they do, an enemy team waiting for you to burn your CC before a fight can easily take the fight. In summary, knowing to save your CC as a Tank Support can be more valuable to your team then always engaging. It comes down to vision of the enemy team and knowing the enemy team composition and abilities.

Tank Supports have issues being poked out in lane, especially early on in the game. Engaging on a Poke Support like Zyra can leave you very low afterwards. You also do not want to sit around being poked and allow them to get free damage. In this situation, you will want to play passive and wait. Position yourself so you are not getting poked down. Let Zyra use her abilities first, so you know where her plants are located and can avoid them. When her abilities are on cooldown, you may engage to try to pick someone off or trade back some damage, as she will not be able to poke you down.

Runes/Masteries

Runes are changing this pre-season so I will not go in-depth on them. One can easily look up pro-player rune pages for any champion, but a generic page for Tank Supports is as follows:

3x Armor Quints.
9x Armor Marks.
9x Flat Health Seals or Armor Seals.
9x MR Glyphs.

Keystone Mastery selection is split between Courage of the Colossus and Stoneborn Pact. Both are good on Tank Supports and is up to personal preference/playstyle.

Coin vs Relic

With how much gold the Ancient Coin line is giving, many players on Tank Supports are starting Coin over Relic Shield. This is completely viable, but one should keep in mind the loss of battle stats when taking Coin. Play passive until you are able to build up some tank stats!

Talisman of Ascension can provide a great tool for your team to engage, while Face of the Mountain give you another shield to protect your ADC. Choosing one of these two items or the Eye of the _____, comes down to personal preference and how long the game will last. Having that extra item slot (by taking Eye of the ____) for longer lasting games is huge.

Items

Tank Supports have a variety of items at their disposal that allow for building on the game situation. A previous article I wrote on Support items can be seen here. Righteous Glory provides a good tool for engaging. Locket of the Iron Solari now scales off bonus health, making it great for Tank Supports and a solid first item. Although Redemption is not as good on Tank Supports as it is on Supports with a shield or healing, its active still makes it a useful item to have. Zeke's Convergence and Knight's Vow are good ADC binding items. Randuin's Omen, Gargoyle Stoneplate, and Abyssal Mask, while costly, can provide great tankiness and teamfight ability in the late game.

Mobility boots work well on Tank Supports, as their ability to engage can allow for roaming.

In summary, you may be a tank, but the rest of your team (especially your carries) will not be. Do not engage just to engage or force a teamfight. Know your cooldowns and play around them. Play to the situation and game!

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