Team Composition - Tank Builds Armor/Resist Stacking

My last post I wrote about which are good tanks for teams. In this post I will follow up by explaining what you need to think about when you build a tank instead of an exact item build. I think I've made a similar post in the past about building a tank but I am going to post again about whatever is on my mind even if some of the information is a repeat.

In this post I do not want to get too into specifics with building a certain tank. But rather discuss what you want to think about when it comes to item selections and how to play a tank.

Building a Tank:
The most important aspect of building a tank is survivability and pulling aggro.

First off I want to talk about survivabilty. You want to have a lot of damage reduction because of several factors which I will list.

1. Your support will keep you up. So by having extra reduction you multiply the effects of their spell. Like Morgana/Janna's shield calculates in your reduction before it absorbs damage.

2. Having damage reduction basically increases the effectiveness of the heals cast on you.

3. Having armor is a lot more effective at tanking nashor rather than HP stacking.

Items that gives the most survivability are:
Ninja Tabi, Mercury Threads, Banshees Veil, Aegis of Legion, Guardian Angel, Frozen Heart and other situational items.

As you've noticed I did not mention warmogs armor, which is generally a very good item later in the game but easily overshadowed when you or your team has heals. I just feel that at low level the addition survivability added from armor and magic resist from items such as aegis and guardians angel you get so much more survivabilty. Just simply getting any of the two will increase your survivabilty by about 30%-50%. Then if you factor in heals and shields then the survivabilty goes up a lot more.

Anyhow as the tank you want to focus on how to counter the other teams damage. You want to identify how many casters and how many physical dps's are on the other team and build your tank accordingly. If you see heavy DPS focus more on Tabi, Aegis, GA, Wardeners Mail. If you see a lot of Casters focus on Mercury, Aegis, Banshee, GA. A chalice of Harmony is great if you are mana dependant and want to defend against casters.

Next Time, I will write about how to pull aggro and maintain it.