The recent change to pre-season 3 brought an unexpected synergy of changes that made tanking a much harder role to fulfill. Three factors stood out to me: The change to Black Cleaver, the increase of Armor cost, and the changes to flat penetration and percentage penetration. In short, Armor got more expensive and less effective. This has been brought up in a few threads, and I'm guessing for most of you this isn't anything new. Riot has acknowledged these facts and is promising to work on it.

What is new is Vi, the next champion after Nami. Here is the preview for her.

Vi has a tank crushing W as shown. Every 3rd attack against an opponent drops their armor by 25% for 4 seconds at level 1(it also has a MS buff element, but we'll ignore that). As an added note, that same attack also deals percentage damage, which counters the current answer to the change to armor: stack hp. Combined with a Black Cleaver (which she is sure to get) and a Last Whisper (which may end up being put on her for overkill), she will absolutely shred tanks. At level 7 with no AS items in the video, she has an AS of 0.74. This means in any sort of trade, her procs off Black Cleaver and a proc off her W will leave a tank with very, very little armor and a quick death.

To move past the point of her tank domination, we can look at the other tools of her kit. She has an impressive closer with her Q that also procs her W. Her E is a bruiser skill, good for adding damage to physical attacks. Her R however, is a haaaard initiate. Not only is it a distance click ability and not a skill shot, it displaces enemies it passes through as well as suppressing the target. That ability is going to just destroy carries with very little chance for counterplay.

As a last little kit note, her passive gives her a percentage health based shield that procs on damaging abilities. While it does have a longer cooldown, it's a great damage soak for an initiator.

Really, I'm left with the feeling that Vi only further pushes the question, "why have a pure tank when you can have a bruiser that brings all the same utility with more damage?" Now I'm not saying the tank role is dead, especially as Riot has acknowledged the problem with Black Cleaver. However, Vi embodies a lot of design ideas that have contributed to the explosive rise of bruisers. She also contributes to mobility creep with another champion that will have little problem with catching carries. Riot does have a while to balance her before release, and I they may even be looking at her kit (though a lot of their balance seems reactive, rather than proactive, which makes sense). This is not me declaring the sky is falling. However, the next few weeks are going to involve a lot of tweaking and balancing of aspects. The players are going to need to wait a bit before the new season is balanced, and this is just one example of that.

TL;DR: The situation with tanks is likely to get worse before it gets better, or at least be a mixed bag. Vi, the next champion, is an extremely powerful champ against tanks and is likely to stomp them for at least a while after release.

Hope it was worth the read.

Unashamed bamp.

Yeah after playing her, I can she can be a problem. She's got high mobility, a hard initiation and great scaling with innate tankiness from her shield. Frankly, I love her design but I think she'll be toned down a bit before she hits live.

i just played vi and i have to say, she has an amazing design and kit. Had kinda a rough early game (against win nhao no less) but come mid game i was able to catch up and beat him one on one.
She IS a great initiator and chaser (especially with furor) and she can soak up respectable damage with her passive (kinda like riven's E). She is though very susceptible to snaring and supression and generally getting focused.
In short, she seemed to be balanced and is very fun to play (need to get used to her Q though). not to mention she's a brawler with an attitude, just awesome lol.

I feel like we're quickly reaching the point where everyone just throws up their hands in their air and says **** it, double assassin teams for every game.

Tanks and bruisers simply can't play the game anymore, and it's only getting worse.

The same could be said for anyone. CC shuts down all champs. She does have immunity to cc during her ult.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see her kit tweaked before or immediately after release. Otherwise, I think she will just completely stomp any comp that has to rely on armor tanking.

Well, at the very least Riot said they're looking at it. I'm not ready to quite give up on tanks in season 3, as obviously there are a lot of balance patches coming. In the meantime, however, I think I'll be trying to build less tanky and more bursty on my Amumu jungle. With the current debuffs to armor, the only way to kill some champs is to just try and kill them before they kill you. At the very least he was always an AP tank. Champs like Malph still have their utility, but champs like Vi bring plenty themselves, while dealing a lot more damage.