Talk:Thornmail/@comment-25053833-20170301071956/@comment-31203455-20170303110034

Right, well the age old problem is what was the purpose of armour?

ADCs, Fighters and Assassins were building damage, so to counter this, Tanks sacrificed damage and built armour to defend against them.

Problem arose when Riot started pumping more damage into the game. Masteries, Runes, items and more importantly; tanks became dangerous because Riot buffed them to give reason to attack them instead of ignoring them.

So that is the point where things turned cancerous because armour penetration had to come in to compensate. Tanks don't deal enough damage to make up for losing their armour. Worse still, tanks build armour to defend against AD but all armour pen items essentially remove a portion of that armour while also giving more AD.

Also, people technically are building Lethality to shred tanks. The fact that Lethality has become so baseline in builds means there is no need for a dedicated push to build armour pen. You can also add in the fact that it is Lethality, which is armour pen, which penetrates a stat that tanks build.

Lethality is also stupid because of its intentions for assassins, who were to go after squishies anyway who rarely build armour in the first place. Even when they do, damage is currently so high that minimal armour is overwhelmed.

The thing with tank items is the boring simplicity. It's why tanks are so reliable in general. The act of tanking (champions and items) doesn't change because its purpose is so simple. There are very few ways you can respin "don't die" or "mitigate damage" before you start repeating yourself. Damaging is different; far more room to be imaginative.

Also, just because items have been around for a long time, doesn't mean there is something wrong. Granted, some champions are sustained by shear fan-wank but there are some that do not see change as there is no need for it.