Tanking in LoL, what? How?

[Winin]

I played a few matches with Blamefulgecko last night and had a blast as support to his tank. But I suck at tanking. I ask because ranged and support classes got snapped up fast every time. I did support also just because I wanted to lane with him and screw the fast clickers.

But it looks like I'm going to have to play tank sometime for real, and when I've tried them in bot matches, I suck. I die a lot and don't seem to be effective. What, exactly does the tank do? Lane with a dps'er? Lane with a support? If I don't have support, I die quickly. But with support, we can't really push. Maybe I'm buying the wrong gear?

Any tank tips? I played the blitzcrank, armordillo, and gargoyle so far. I like ranged support best by the way. Maybe tank/support?

[Slurm]

You might enjoy Nasus. He's not really a support character, but he's a tank with a good ranged aoe for pushing and farming.

Trick with him is to use his siphoning strike as the last hit (kill shot) on as many minions possible to beef it up over the course of the match, so that it does serious damage in the end game.

Note that he's not great at getting kills though, but he does push a lane quite nicely. I keep thinking about picking him up, but I'm enjoying the freebies right now =D

[Rer]

As a tank your primary job is to do 3 things:

Soak up damage (but try to live!)
CC your enemy team or a primary target, allowing your team an enemy kill.
Prevent point #2 from happening to one of your teammates.

Varying on who you're playing you need to buy health, magic resist, and armor based items.
It also varies on your enemy team comp.

So basically: set up kills, soak up damage/CC, protect your mates.

[Winin]

The tough thing seems to be keeping others alive while not dying early and often. I guess I need to runaway more in the early game.

I've thought about Nasus. Nasus-bot has killed me a lot.

[Rer]

Flash plays a large role in giving you more mobility, be it for offensive or defensive purposes. An example being flashing into your enemy team as Galio and ulting. Sadly you wont get it till 12.

[Winin]

I need to find a champ with cc and survivability. If I can grab them or stop them while someone nukes them down, then I'd be happy, I think. I don't want to have to sacrifice each time to do that though. I'll give Blitzcrank a few more games this week. I need Cho'gath to come up for free play.

Taric looks pretty solid, except no CC.

/aside Kog'Maw is awesome.