Just the thought of another tank meta makes League of Legends players tremble in fear. The idea of these five thousand health behemoths one-shotting your ADC is terrifying. Sadly, that is the case in 2025, but one player believes they have cracked the code to kill these tanks.
Tanks at certain points in League history have been too problematic for the game. There were the dreaded periods between 2016 and 2017 where tanks were simply unkillable. The ROX Tigers base defense against Albus Nox Luna, where Poppy and Trundle felt like end-game bosses, comes to mind. Then there was the Banner of Command meta, where tank top laners were left alone on their island to split with the buffed-up minions.
According to the stat site Leagueofgraphs, more than half of the best top laners (highest rate) are tanks in Emerald and above. Champions like Poppy, K’Sante, Tahm Kench, and Cho’Gath have all seen a lot of success without much to counter them. So how do you stop them? One player seems to have a solution.
Reddit user iamkwang posed a potential solution to certain classes having a tough time dealing with tanks in League. “A popular build path before was getting both Black Cleaver and Serylda’s on Assassin/Brusiers but now you have to either buy one or the other… maybe allow champions to buy both again instead of being locked in one or another might help.”
In the past, Assassins were able to build two items that would stack to provide armor penetration and armor reduction. Those items are Black Cleaver and Serylda’s Grudge. Black Cleaver provided a six percent armor reduction for each stack (max five), while Serylda’s Grudge gave +30 percent armor penetration. This meant Assassins and Bruisers could build these two items as a counter to tanks. In the past, players could stack these items, but Riot changed this, forcing them to choose one or the other.
The scary prospect for players is that off-meta champion builds could be rearing their ugly heads again, making things worse for Bruisers and tanks. Tank LeBlanc has appeared more often, so much so that it is one of the off-meta recommended builds on Mobalytics, which sees LeBlanc build items such as Hollow Radiance, Iceborn Gauntlet, and Thornmail.
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