User blog comment:Zilverdael/Seperate itemsets and why they are good/@comment-24905320-20140616103305/@comment-6281696-20140616121218

I don't consider Udyr a tank, I don't consider most "tanks" tanks in lol really. The vast majority consists of glorified bruisers. Very few of them work based on defense, though some do have 1 or 2 abilities that are of increadible use defensivly. E.g. take mundo, his ultimate and passive are defensive, everything else is pure offense. That's not the kit of a tank, that's the kit of a bruiser. Compare it to say Leona, everything she does focusses on keeping her alive or preventing an enemy from attacking, that's the kit of a tank.

As for the rest, yea you got it pretty much correct. However, the point isn't to discourage stat balancing. Bruisers will always want a mix of defense and offense. The issue I have with bruisers, or glass canons like yasuo, is that currently their defense is comparable to, if not better than, that of proper tanks while their damage is extremely high. For example the other day I was playing as Thresh and the other team had a lee sin, our builds were surprisingly mirrored except that I had a ruby sightstone and he had a Hydra's. Our effective health differed by about 10% in my favor, but his damage from AA's alone was already about double mine. If you'd take into account lifesteal & skills his effective health might actually overtake mine & his damage would be far beyond anything I could do. There's currently no real advantage for proper tanks over Bruisers. That 10% increase in defense isn't going to make up for the 300% decrease in offense. Similarly, with full builds, most bruisers can fairly easily kill the glass canons, because there you have the inverse issue, that slight advantage damagewise isn't going to help you overcome the fact that you don't even have half his effective health.

I'd like the bruisers to basicly get acces to lesser items, so that if you choose to go for these kind of builds you will at least be at a significant disadvantage compared to the full build. Simply put a bruiser should be a jack of all trades, master of none. Currently they are jacks of all trades, master of all..