User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-5588011-20140618183850/@comment-6281696-20140620220939

The issue is that currently bruisers get to do more damage AND have very very similar effective health because they can combine both high end offense & defense. There aren't many true tanks to begin with and the few that do exist are effectivly outclassed by bruisers because of that. The only one that currently exists that actually works well is Braum and that's because he both has a massive defensive bonus, actually allowing him to differ from bruisers defense wise significantly & the ability to force people to fight him. Virtually everything else is build as a glorified bruiser, utility-bot or just not really used at all.

As for the lack of damage on tanks. The point is not to have them outdamage bruisers, but it'd be nice if their damage was relevant. As an example, once had a match with Thresh vs a Nasus, both very tanky builds, but nasus was slightly more offensive. Now somewhere in late game we happened to be the only two surviving after a fight and he started pushing a lane near a tower, just AA'ing. I started attacking him to chase him off in hopes of protecting the tower. My AA's didn't even get through his defenses + lifesteal without the empowered attacks from his Q. So he slowly pushed and eventually took the tower at the end of which he had lost like 5% HP because towers dont work with lifesteal. THAT is the problem, and it is well, stupid.. By all accounts hitting him for 10-20 seconds should at least put a dent in his HP....

I don't think this can really be fixed as long as bruisers have acces to tank sets as they'l always abuse it. If you improve tank items you'l most likely just end up with even tankier bruisers. At least as long as tank builds dont require all six items to be defensive. THe only possibility is something that was suggested here, something that skyrockets your defense, but makes your inherent offense basicly non-existant forcing you to rely on stuff like sunfire. However that has its own problems, namely first it'l mean tanks get even less relevant damage & 2 if you do that properly people like mundo who have massive heals will effectivly become immortal.

On the note of sightstone, the thing is awefull slot-wise. And when you buy it it is hilariously gold-inefficient. Yes 15-30 minutes down the line it becomes a free item depending on how much wards you throw around, but sacrificing an entire slot for well, a rubycrystal is a waste. And when you buy it it just feels like a gold sink because of the initial inefficiency. Fixing it would be relativly simple though. First, make the initial item less gold inefficient (say make it 500 gold) and second, give a third upgrade that makes it into an actually usefull item, but is ridiculously expensive and only worthwhile after idunno 25 wards or something. It now doesn't feel like such a waste when you buy it initially, and it can actually be turned into something usefull late game so it doesn't just sorta sit there occupying a slot simply because you have no choice in the matter.

The biggest issue a lot of these support items have is that support itemisation, especially as a tank, focusses on getting hilariously bad items in exchange for some (decent) utility. Instead of getting decent, but not the best, items that also give utility. Just take ardent censer, 10 to 1 that'l be popular on thresh despite the fact the stats are awefull for him, and can be gained in a million other places, and it requires him to waste the whole pulling aspect of his lantern, simply because it's "more" utility.