User blog comment:Deshiba/Solo Queue: Skewed perceptions./@comment-6170572-20130804041744

While I agree on many of the points you said about tanks, I disagree on how you are using the word. The way that I learned is that 'tank' is not actually a true role, it's something that you do. Tank merely means that you can take punishment.

Initiaters are a different deal though. Leona, Malph, Sej, Mundo, J4, etc. can all initiate. Sometimes that requires hard CC, sometimes it doesn't. In this manner, Rumble is an initiater (long-range Equalizers can lock down teams), and so is Mundo - you build him so tanky that they can't do anything when you walk through all the CC to the backline. Xin Zhao is definitely an initiater - his gap-closer has an AoE slow, but the real juicy bit is he has a displacement ult. The tank steroid is only a bonus - a well placed Xin ult is a Monsoon in the middle of the enemy team, but you get to pick who stays with you. Cue AP mid or assasin, it's a 5v4 before you know it.

Another system of classifying who's a tank and who is not is CD's and the CC associated with them. Bruisers/fighters get lower cooldowns as they rank most abilities, while tanks tend not too. A Cho'gath Rupture has the same CD unless you have CDR - most items that have this precious resource make you tanky. The items synergize. In this system, Xin, J4, and Vi exist in a special class - bruiser tanks. They have hard cc on abilities that have cooldowns that go down, as well as armor shreds, and max hp damage. This allows them to build anywhere from glass-cannon (imagine dueling a Leona with super high assassin damage), to mid range (best of both worlds, large amounts of damage with tank stats and cc), or full tank (decent damage added on top of tank). They are a Bruiser +.

Btw, Xin has two forms of hard CC.