User blog comment:Braumissomanly/The current meta and why it sucks...a lot/@comment-1920550-20150409030253

See that's the thing most people don't seem to realize...out of all champion roles, tanks are the ones who create larger landscape changes and allows for the highest amount of team comps and strats to be created. When tanks were weaker, you were instead forced to play more high-mobility, burst-based, jack-of-all trades types champions (the entire assassin class comes to mind, things like Graves, Lucian, Corki, etc), who don't need that much team protection. Because tanks we're weaker, you instead opted for fighters, who don't possess as much durability, lockdown or peel, but instead had higher single target damage and could still survive a decent amount of punishment. In a nutshell, when tanks we're a non-issue, the optimal strat was to play a 4-carry comp and a support who could also act as a half-carry. If one team mate was set back, the other could carry in his place.

Bring in a proper frontline with the an armory to back then up and suddenly new things come to light. Take Vladimir for example, who's been on the rise as of late. He would have never survived in the assassin meta, why? He takes a long time to scale, is extremely weak in the early game due to design flaws and needs a degree of team protection to manage to get his work done even in the lategame. Kog'Maw, another champion who's been on the rise, for the same reasons, hell he's the poster-child of the "Protect the ADC" comps due to his insane damage and fragility. Viktor, Anivia, Karthus, Varus, Twitch, basically hypercarries and teamfight-based champions. Because of the nature of their kits, these champions sacrifice individual power and early pressure and against lane bullies and assassins, they don't stand a chance in the early to mid game, thus requiring for then to have a high-degree of protection that could only be afforded by pure tanks. Now that pure tanks actually have a spot in the sun, these types of champions can also thrive under their protective wing.

Honestly to me the current meta is actually awesome since it's the most open we've had. For the first time all champion classes are in a relatively equal standing and champions who haven't seen major play in 1-2 years are comming back. The current meta does have flaws and tanks may be slightly over-tuned, but unlike the previous assassin (Zed, LB, Fizz, etc) and fighter (Renek, Shyv, Lee, J4, Vi, Lee) meta, tanks don't suffocate other classes to the point of making then useless. Most of the non-played champions ATM, are that way simply because they are under-tuned or in need of a rework, not because they become a liability when you bring an assassin in the mid-lane or an AD-fighter in the jungle. You can still make a fighter/assassin comp like before. The major difference is that now, there are other comps beyond that style, comps that can actually fight then under certain conditions. To me it's more of a growing pains sort of deal, because people had given up on tanks and never imagined they'd returned and after so much time in the shadow, they forgot on how to deal with them.