League of Legends bruisers have incredible two item powerspikes, making tanks irrelevant in the top lane meta

Tanks have been an integral part of the League of Legends meta for quite some time.

My opinion: Pain, what's the point of a true tank anymore :(

— Eugene (@Upocalypse) August 6, 2021

Tanks are the front liners for the team as they help to soak up damage and create space for the friendly carry to farm. Their primary role in team fights is to stand firm and allow the ally ADC to jump into the enemy backline for dealing damage. However, recently it has been observed that the pick rate of tanks in League of Legends has dropped drastically.

This is primarily because the gold required by bruisers to enable them in a League of Legends game is quite low compared to tanks. Apart from that, bruisers and tanks are both played in the top lane.

This makes the the task of tanks even harder on account of certain factors that have been described later on.

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Bruisers offer much more than tanks within League of Legends

Bruisers within League of Legends primarily rely on two specific items that include a mythic item and Sterak’s Gage. The mythics can be either Gore Drinker, Stridebreaker or Divine Sunderer.

All of these items are extremely powerful and provide a significant advantage to bruisers within team fights.

The item description for Goredrinker within League of Legends reads as follows:

“THIRSTING SLASH: Deal 100% AD physical damage to enemies in a 450 radius around you. Heal for 25% AD (+ 10% of your missing health) for each enemy champion hit (15 (reduced by ability haste) second cooldown)”

The item description for Stridebreaker reads as follows:

“HALTING SLASH: Deal 100% AD physical damage to enemies in a 450 radius centered around you and slow them by 40% for 3 seconds. Can be cast while moving (15 (reduced by ability haste) second cooldown)”

And finally, the item description for Divine Sunderer states:

“SPELLBLADE: After using an ability, your next basic attack within 10 seconds deals (melee 12% / ranged 9%) of target's maximum health as bonus physical damage on-hit, with a minimum damage equal to 150% base AD and a maximum damage against monsters equal to 250% base AD. If the target is a champion, heal for (melee 7.8% / ranged 3.6%) of the target's maximum health, with a minimum heal equal to ( melee 97.5% / ranged 60%) base AD (1.5 (begins after using the empowered attack) second cooldown).”

Therefore, it is clear that these allow bruisers to be more aggressive in fights and provide certain advantages which are hard to ignore. Both Goredrinker and Divine Sunderer provide damage as well as allow champions to heal based on the damage inflicted.

Stridebreaker, on the other hand, provides ability haste and movement speed. Apart from that, all of these three items provide attack damage, health and ability haste as some of the base stats.

The second item, Sterak’s Gage, provides a shield whenever a champion’s health pool goes below the 30% mark. This provides sustainability in a team-fight. It also imbues the champion with 400 base health and 50 attack damage, making it even more deadly.

remove steraks goredrinker hard nerf precision nerf inspiration nerf deaths dance nerf every bruiser champ nerf akshan ^____^

— sato (@satx__) August 8, 2021

The problem, however, is that the time it takes for Bruisers to make these items is very little. Currently, Divine Sunderer and Sterak’s Gage are probably the go-to builds due to the former being extremely broken within League of Legends.

It takes approximately 15-20 minutes on average for a bruiser to farm both of these depending on the ability to last hit minions and take objectives.

A tank, on the other hand, has extremely slow farming speeds and requires at least three items, including Bramble Vest, Frostfire Gauntlet and Thornmail, to be viable within a game of League of Legends.

This means that a bruiser will be more impactful in a fight as compared to a tank, as it will be able to join the fights early and spend less time farming.

Even if a bruiser has a poor lane, it will still end up farming both items quite quickly and be effective in a fight. A tank on the other hand will never be able to recover from a poor lane and thus become ineffective as the game progresses.

Therefore, it is quite natural that League of Legends players prefer to play Bruisers more as they are versatile and can perform two tasks at once. This includes both the ability to endure as well as deal huge chunks of damage to the enemy.