I don't know if I'd count Volibear as a tank personally - He's kind of halfway between a Tank and a Tanky DPS. His initiation is on the weaker end of things and his peel isn't really all that much better - so he tries to compensate with massive threat over time.

How this really works out? I don't know - but Volibear is much much better when someone *else* creates the opening for *him* - and that's kind of my standard kind of rough estimate for whether you're a tank enough - Are you ludicrously better if someone else creates your opening for you? You're not self-sufficient enough to be a tank then.

Singed for example, has many of the same tools that Volibear has - but he is incredibly self-sufficient - his threat doesn't need him to attack or hold anyone down. His initiation is stronger because he has a ranged slow to get fling with and Singed is incredibly fast.

Singed is a weaker peeler - but he has an almost unstoppable initiation force due to tenacity, free armor/mr and crazy speed.

And this is why Volibear is not a tank.


[edit] ninjaed. Any chance to take the tank tag off him please? More of a bruiser like Cho'gath than full tank imo.

Peel isn't the only thing that should define a tank, it's a combination of the traits you named.

According to your Blitzcrank example Janna would be one hell of a tank because no one will ever reach your carry if she doesn't want it. Her ultimate, the Q and the slow from W give Vayne or Kog'Maw enough time to kill 2-3 targets all by themself.

A full, true tank has at least two of the following:
- ability to soak burst-dmg and to some degree sustained dmg (no champion soaks late-game carry dmg for more than a few seconds)
- peel enemies from the carry
- the ability to initiate a fight
- ability to force the enemy to attack them (either a taunt-like ability or high potential dmg)
- ability to disrupt

Example for true tanks:
Nautilus has strong initiation and strong peel. His (innate) dmg-mitigation isn't that great but if ignored he will do good dmg over time.
Rammus has good initiation and powerful dmg-mitigation along with good dmg over time and a tool to force his enemy to attack him.
Amumu has very strong initiation and good dmg over time however weak (innate) dmg-mitigation and no real peel (either initiate with Q or peel with it, not bot).
Sejuani is a tank in theory but after her ult you can basically either ignore her or blow her up because she has no dmg or peel and no dmg mitigation.

Funny thing is that this would make tanky-dps real tanks as well because in case of Irelia or Wukong or Shyvana you have all the reason to attack them (they jump to your carry and kill him/her) and they have good ways to mitigate dmg (free resist stats) but since they have to itemize for dmg they can't take too much burst...is what I'd like to say but let's face it. Irelia and Shyvana can take almost as much dmg as tanks while blowing up carries because they get items that provide both offense and defense.......
Anyway they are no real tanks because they can't protect their carries directly and often lack powerful initiation.
(Yes, I think the class "tanky dps" as it is now is not that well thought out...Irelia.......)

L2R man, he never said blitz would be a good tank, he just said he would have strong peel with frozen mallet and frozen heart. He'll still have weak initiation with them items. But indeed, his peel is strong with those items.

While you're definitely right in that a combination of traits is what makes a solid tank - I think for this particular example, Janna's ultimate is a bad tank ability. Sure, it gets people off your carry - but it's not actually an opening. Janna's ultimate blows them away and out of your carry's range - so it saves your carry - but it doesn't actually offer them the window to DPS.

By these requirements, I suggest we change Ashe's tag to Tank. Dat initiation and perma-cc afterwords.... too stronk.

Depends on how you use it. The knockback distance is always the same (from experience but I might be wrong) so depending on your position you can blow them far enough to get them away from the carry but keep them in aa-range. Also possible to blow into walls or in some cases closer to the carry. Your Q and E keep them in place to finish the job.
It obviously takes more consideration and better positioning than let's say a combo of blitz QER or a Nautilus QER+attack (funny how both of them use the same shortcuts).

Anyway the point was that the entire combination of her skills make it extremely hard to approach Vayne without dying to her.

We actually put a lot of though into where skills go and the skill order of them.

For example, have you noticed that almost all my character's basic level progression is 'Max W, then max E with one point in Q?' In general, I put a lot of inherent utility on the lowest cooldown skill (Q) - the glue that holds the kit together on the 'W' (power) and then secondary utility on the (E).

There are other build paths for my characters but just due to the way I kind of allot myself 'space' in a kit - I find that a lot of my designs tend to fall in the same way - where the most boring part of the kit is typically what holds their power level together (Naut/Fizz/Riven for example, have pretty bland W's that serve to functionally.. well.. make them *work* as characters.)

Controlling a teamfight

But on Riven people normally max Q second o_o