Best League Of Legends Tank Items In 2025

Summary

• Dead Man’s Plate provides speed and damage for tanks, making them mobile threats.
• Thornmail offers anti-heal and damage reflection against basic attacks.
• Abyssal Mask amplifies magic damage and resistance for tanks, boosting team damage.

The Tank role in any game comes with its own unique set of pros and challenges that need to be overcome by the player and their teammates. In League of Legends specifically, players must carefully think about their itemization when choosing their frontliner build, deciding which kinds of resists they need to prioritize or whether they can sneak in some damage in between.

With so many items to choose from and a variety of builds across the champions, it can be quite overwhelming to decide on a specific item on that first recall or which of the precious item slots should be filled by what item. Some items are incredibly useful in niche scenarios, while others are overall strong items that can be picked up in the majority of circumstances and turn the champion from a mild threat into an unstoppable freight train.

8

Dead Man’s Plate

Chase Down The Enemy

• Cost: 2900 Gold
• Stats: 55 Armor, 350 Health, 4% Movement speed
• Unique – Shipwrecker: While moving, generates 7 stacks of Momentum every 0.25 seconds, granting up to 20 bonus movement speed at 100 stacks after 3.75 seconds of moving. Basic attacks consume all stacks to deal 0 – 40 (based on Momentum) (+ 0% – 100% (based on Momentum) base AD) bonus physical damage bonus physical damage on-hit.
• Unique – Unsinkable: Gain 25% slow resist.

Dead Man’s Plate is a simple armor choice for any tanks struggling to close that gap with enemy carries or looking for a way to traverse the map at great speed. By giving the champion a significant boost in speed, the player can be transformed from an immobile non-threat to a speed demon that gets up close in personal, with little to no counterplay.

Champions like Darius as a Bruiser have found plenty of success with this item, but several other characters work perfectly with the added speed, like Cho-gath who can run at the ADC and instantly slow them without even needing to land a skill or Singed, who already loves move speed, being able to sprint around the map and be anywhere he wants at any time. The downside is that it doesn’t provide a huge amount of stats, especially against mages, and is on the higher cost end, so it’s better saved as a second item spike to keep the ball rolling.

7

Thornmail

Returning Fire

• Cost: 2450 Gold
• Stats: 75 Armor, 150 Health
• Unique – Thorns: When struck by a basic attack on-hit, deal 20 (+ 10% bonus armor) magic damage to the attacker and, if they are a champion, inflict them with Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds.

The tank anti-heal item, Thornmail has been a staple Tank item forever. Bramble Vest, the main component, is a good starting item to pick up in certain matchups where the heal cut is necessary, and building it into the cheap yet highly powerful full item can be a crazy swing in 1v1 power and the ability to frontline against heavy AD compositions.

The best part is that the damage continues to scale up with bonus armor, so if the team has very few AP threats or the player picks a champion like Rammus who has some build in armor abilities, the damage can actually become pretty high and can be the difference maker in some tense side-lane fights later on. It is somewhat limited, as there is some counterplay where the enemy can choose to avoid attacking the user, which prevents the heal reduction. In certain matchups, it doesn’t do a whole lot, but it’s cheap and situationally very strong.

6

Abyssal Mask

Weaken Your Foes

• Cost: 2650 Gold
• Stats: 15 Ability Haste, 45 Magic Resistance, Health
• Unique – Unmake: Enemy champions within 700 units of you become cursed, causing them to receive 12% increased magic damage from all sources.

A great magic resistance item, particularly in team comps with a lot of AP damage, Abyssal Mask functions both as a Tank item against mages and also as a damage buff to the player and their team. Having a damage amplifier built into a tank item means that its use case isn’t restricted to just Tank champions. Diana for instance, a powerful AP jungle bruiser, can occasionally sneak this item into her build to increase her damage significantly, while increasing survivability against heavy AP enemies.

At only 2650 gold, it’s a nice item to pick up second or third and has so many synergies with other items that deal magic damage or tanks that might have quite a lot of magic in their kit, but rarely get to see the high damage numbers that this item can provide. While it won’t work every game, when the team has several AP threats on each side, it is a major tool that can change the game drastically for the user and their team.

5

Jak’sho The Protean

Become The Wall

• Cost: 3200 Gold
• Stats: 45 Armor, Magic Resistance, 350 Health
• Unique – Voidborn Resilience: Gain a stack for each second in combat with enemy champions, stacking up to 5 times. At maximum stacks, increase your bonus armor and bonus magic resistance by 30% until the end of combat.

Sometimes the enemy team has a bunch of AD damage, a few mages, and a couple of mixed champions as well, which makes itemizing against them incredibly challenging. Jak’sho solves that problem in one item. Although expensive, it is well worth the price, effectively giving the user over 60 of each resistance to help soak up the mixed damage attacks flying at the team.

Functioning off of bonus stats, it is a great item to buy in the third or later slot, as by that point in the game the player will already have a few armor or magic resistance items and will be looking to join a team fight as an unstoppable wall. It’s an item that is best suited for when the player is the only or one of the only tanky champions on the team and, due to the high cost, it can take a while before the item is completed, so that’s a cost that needs to be weighed on a game-by-game basis.

4

Heartsteel

Cling, Cling, Cling

• Cost: 3000 Gold
• Stats: 900 Health, 100% Base Health Regeneration
• Unique – Colossal Consumption: While within 700 units of an enemy champion, generate a stack on them each second, stacking up to 3 times. Your next basic attack against a target with 3 stacks is empowered to consume them all to deal 70 (+ 6% maximum health) bonus physical damage on-hit and grant you permanent bonus health equal to 8% of that amount (30 second cooldown per target).
• Unique – Goliath: Gain 0% – 30% (based on maximum health) increased size.

One of the most satisfying and fun items in the game, Heartsteel brings a fun mini-game to Summoners Rift that scales up over time and allows the player to rack up thousands of extra health on a single item. It is perfect on champions that have a lot of CC or ones with health scaling abilities like Sion or Mundo, giving them bonus health along with additional stats for their abilities.

It has a very simple and easy build path, which means players won’t be stuck behind expensive components, and it gives certain characters insane burst potential, as the bonus health is hidden behind a massive cling that deals significant damage just by auto-attacking. With no resistances attached, it can make the player surprisingly squishy against certain champions, but it is still a great choice for a lot of Top and Jungle champions.

3

Knight’s Vow

A Sworn Protector

• Cost: 2300 Gold
• Stats: 10 Ability Haste, 40 Armor, 200 Health, 100 Base Health Regeneration
• Unique – Pledge: Designate the target allied champion as being Worthy, forming a tether between you and them. Champions can only be designated as Worthy by one Knight’s Vow at a time. You cannot be designated as Worthy by an ally’s Knight’s Vow (60-second cooldown; 1250 range).
• Unique – Sacrifice: While your Worthy ally is tethered to you, and you are above 30% of your maximum health, redirect 12% of the pre-mitigation physical and magic damage they take to you as the respective damage type. Additionally, you heal for 10% of the post-mitigation damage dealt by your Worthy ally to champions.

Knight’s Vow falls into a very specific category of items in League. Supportive items that assist the team, but are designed for Tanks. The common use case is to pick up the item as a Support like Thresh or Nautilus, against heavy dive compositions to help the ADC live through the high burst, and it can also be swapped mid-fight to tailor the health sharing on the fly.

But the item is not restricted to just Supports. There are many cases where, as a Tank, there might not be much of a need for insanely high health pools or resistances and maybe Mid or Bot are doing exceptionally well. In those cases, which are more than just a few, it is an amazing item that can make the chosen ally insanely tanky, all for a very low price.

2

Hollow Radiance

Waveclear Heaven

• Cost: 2800 Gold
• Stats: 10 Ability Haste, 40 Magic Resistance, 400 Health, 100 Base Health Regeneration
• Unique – Immolate: Taking or dealing damage activates this passive for 3 seconds. Deal 15 (+ 1% bonus health) magic damage every second to enemies within 325 (+ 100% bonus size) units, with the damage being increased by 25% against minions and monsters. This executes minions that would be killed by one more tick of damage.
• Unique – Desolate: Killing a non-champion unit causes an eruption around their death location that deals 30 (+ 2% bonus health) magic damage to enemies within 350 units. Scoring a takedown against an enemy champion within 3 seconds of damaging them causes a larger eruption that deals 60 (+ 4% bonus health) magic damage to enemies within 500 units.

Hollow Radiance is the cooler, better, and more exciting brother of Sunfire Cape, providing magic resistance as opposed to armor and giving champions that might struggle with clearing waves normally, an insane boost to minion destruction. Waves can die in a single ability, which reduces the time spent farming and adds more opportunities to help the Jungler or look for a roam.

It is a great choice for basically any tank, with some favorite users being Galio, Ornn, and Sion who can annihilate an entire wave with the click of a button. And because the damage is not restricted to PvE, it provides a decent damage buff to the player, giving a boost when they are attacking enemy players, and giving some great stats to take on champions of any kind.

1

Unending Despair

Who Needs A Healer?

• Cost: 2800 Gold
• Stats: 10 Ability Haste, 25 Armor, 25 Magic Resistance, 400 Health
• Unique – Anguish: Every 4 seconds after entering combat with champions, sap all enemy champions around you within 650 units to deal magic damage equal to 3% of your bonus health to them and heal yourself equal to 250% of the post-mitigation damage dealt.

One of the biggest changes in the new year and one of the most overpowered item spikes, Unending Despair is pretty much as perfect of a tank item as there gets. Health, both resists, some cooldown reduction and, to top it off, added damage and survivability that feels great, especially on champions that don’t have sustain in their kit.

It can slot in as a great first item, allowing the player to take early skirmishes on objectives thanks to the additional aura healing, or can be saved till a bit later for champions who need a few more core items before they itemize down the Tank route. And while the ability on the item does rely on being up close, even against comps with lots of poke or range, the base stats of the item are more than enough to warrant building it and Tanks almost always come with some lock-down or mobility, making the heal and damage pop regularly, often reaching 1000s by the end of the game.