Talk:Gnar/@comment-24702767-20140801184105/@comment-5211662-20140803041202

Only an primary assassin must be mobile.

This is the same difference between champions who have tank as primary tag, and as a secondary tag. For example, Malphite, Shen and Zac. They are Tank/Fighter because their defensive attributes are higher than their offensive attributes, and their offensive abilities either scale with resistances (in Malphite's case), with health (in Shen's case) or do damage based on the enemy's health (in Zac's case). This means they can build no damage items and still do decent damage, although obviously not near as much as an offensive champion. Sometimes they even buy some damage items so that they can do a lot more damage (although still not as much as an offensive champion). Their damage scales with defensive stats because they must build defensive items, thus their damage must scale with defense, otherwise they would deal no damage. They also have lots of CC. These two factors combined means that they generally tend to not kill things by themselves, but instead they rely on teammates to do that.

However, Fighter/Tank champions are different. For example, Garen, Darius and Renekton. While they generally are built with lots of defensive items, just like tanks, they have higher offensive attributes than defensive ones. Their offensive abilites scale with damage (AD on their case). For this reason if they build no damage items, they will do no damage, unlike a real tank, because they don't have anything offensive scaling with defense. They must build at least one damage item for this reason, but they don't need to build a lot of damage items, unlike an assassin; one or two offensive items is generally enough and then they can build tank. Unlike a true tank, they also generally have no CC, or only one CC. For these reasons, Fighter/Tank champions tend to kill things themselves, instead of relying on their teammates to do that.

In short, a champion with Tank as their primary tag generally is a champion that is not an offensive threat, instead he has lots of CC and deal little damage, and have some supportive attributes that make them rely on their teammates to kill things. But they are very sturdy and are very disruptive to enemies. If they have tank as their secondary tag, this means that generally they are offensive threats that are somewhat sturdy, but not as much as a true tank. Still, they cannot be ignored because they deal lot of damage.

Of course there are exceptions such as Jarvan IV, which despite being a Tank/Fighter he is generally built with offensive items, and scale better with offense.

Back to the assassin problem; Malzahar and Xerath are assassins because they can kill a target easily and pick off some threats. But they have assassin as their secondary tag because unlike a true assassin, they lack the mobility needed to kill those targets. Instead they must rely on their targets being close to them or proper positioning (a lot more than a real assassin). They have SOME attributes that make for an assassin, not all of them. Just like a Fighter/Tank has some attributes that make for a tank, but not all.