Yes. You know which team have more chances to win? The one who capitalizes more on the enemy mistakes.
You literally described how to win in any moba 
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Not only that, but if your team can’t follow up or isn’t really a team that can dive/hit the backline, it doesn’t really matter if you find the most perfect engage of your life.
People always think tanks with dive tools have to dive, but that’s really not true. You don’t need to dive, ever.
2 things. You dont target a class of heroes. You target the person that is out of position and your team can kill.
A tanks job is to facilitate the team in winning the fight. Some times that is cc a target to be blown up. Some times its ment to be a distraction( aka soak damage/ in thuer face) some times it there to prptect2 your team.
So if the role of the Tank is to create Opportunities for the DPS to take advantage of… what’s the role of the Healer? Should you prioritize keeping the Tank alive vs the DPS? Should everyone be equal in the eyes of the Healer? Are you supposed to use the limited CC available to healers to create Opportunities as well?
This thread has been really helpful so far for me.
Healers are usually the ones who peel for their team with heals/shields/utility and sometimes CC.
It depends. You usually need to have in mind who are the priority heroes on your team that NEED to stay alive. You usually need to keep alive those heroes that actually make your comp work.
Let’s say you have: Muradin, Kaelthas, Raynor, Yrel and you are playing Anduin. If you had to choose 2 people to live + you, which heroes would you save (not counting maps)?
You would want Muradin and Kaelthas alive. Why? Because your comp is definitely a Muradin stun into Anduin root into Kael stun + all the damage you can do. This is your combo in that comp. Kael also brings waveclear, which you will probably need since you are losing teammates and the enemy team will try to push/do camps. Muradin offers better frontline than Yrel in terms of creating opportunities and generating threat.
Sure you should heal everyone if you can, but sometimes you have to make some decisions and some heroes will need to be prioritized in those decisions.
In addition to what Darak said, one thing I strongly recommend is to take every tank at least into Try Mode so you have a good idea of what their kit can do. Most tanks have some form of self-sustain or defensive CDs, so there are a lot of times where it is far more important to heal the Valla or Greymane at half health (no sustain) vs. the Johanna at 25% health who has all her CDs available. Healing is science as much as art, and it can take some experimentation to learn triage.
As far as healer CC is concerned, once again, it depends. If they have a diver and your tank prefers to chase the Li Ming around, save your CC to peel for yourself and your fellow squishies. If your tank is making good engagements, use your CC to follow up and/or ensure the kill. For example, if you are playing Malfurion and your tank is an aggressive Diablo, wait until he has used his combo, and drop a Root at his feet so his victim cannot escape.
i’ll be honest, I don’t get tanking myself. I find it unrewarding and incredibly tedious. So, my understanding of the theory is pretty mild.
But from what I gather, the role of tank depends heavily on team comps. Presumably, each team will have a bruiser who’s job it is to bother the squishies. The question is: does the tank help protect the bruiser or does the tank help protect his on own squishies? If your bruiser can out-dive you, then don’t bother. You’re going to waste have of every fight chasing your bruiser for 6 screens while your squishies die. If your opponents don’t have a lot of dive, your squishies can likely handle their bruiser, so you can focus on helping your own melee. It’s tricky and I frankly don’t get it, but from what I understand the most effective way to tank is to split up the enemy. Force their healer and damage to move in opposite directions while helping prevent their divers from forcing your healer and damage to move in opposite directions. Figure out how to do that and you win every fight.
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If tanking is capitalizing on enemy mistakes, healing is covering for your mistakes so the enemy team can’t capitalize.
You can think of this as healing someone so they don’t get punished, but that doesn’t work with CC’s. Instead think of it as giving your team time. By healing people, you are effectively giving them more time to keep doing their job. By using cc on someone you are giving your team time to do what they need to do, escape, blow the guy up ect.
Because you don’t always need to get them to die, just so that they run out of resources to fight well. Health is a resource you can replinish. And if you can save someone from dying, the enemy team wasted their resources (cooldowns) and their time.
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I agree with what you say, but I like playing Stitches in front like Johanna so you don’t have to pray that your hook hits something useful.
If I use it when they start running, I’m sure to hit.
If I use it to interrupt at point blank, I’m sure to hit.
Yeah but an actually decent assassin or support does all of those things anyway, just some of them to a lesser degree.
I play my tanks annoying (I’m gold) just get in there face while protecting my team.
The main problem with Stitches being played like a normal tank is that the enemy team can just:
- hit you, CC and then you dead and you have no way of getting out
- just walk past you and kill all your backline and you can’t do anything
But they can do that to Arthas or Diablo or Garrosh also, and Devour is a pretty hefty self heal. Stitches can easily have more self healing than any of them, and Putrid Bile has a decently low cooldown and can offer more survival potential. Or just chase, because as far as I’m concerned Stitches excels at basically just sitting on the enemy team.
And walking past you to kill the backline can be an issue, but keep in mind that most people draft a heavy ranged team with Stitches so the entire team can stay back. If you don’t draft that way your back line doesn’t necessarily need to be too vulnerable, and again Putrid Bile becomes a much more powerful defensive choice when you aren’t just looking to hook and eat.
If someone goes past you, you can hook them back.
If too many go past you, you can angle to hook your ally away from them.
He isn’t quite as good at stopping enemies from walking past as Arthas would be, but I think he can mostly compare with Garrosh or Diablo there who are only really great at stopping one enemy.
“Don’t focus tank” and “Focus Morales” are memes for a reason.
It is perfectly ok to attack the tank if that’s the only safe target you can attack, and make them hearth on 5% HP. As good as a kill. Opens up their back line as well.
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The main difference here is that Arthas, Diablo or Garrosh make plays, Stitches don’t. His whole playstyle is around rook. Sure they gave him a mini rework to make him less dependent on landing Qs, but he still is. At least for diamond+, people usually just walk over stitches and his team for an easy win.
There’s also the fact that you need to be a really good Stitches and hit a lot of hooks to make him work well. Also, of course, you need your team to follow up.
There’s a reason why he is quite unpopular.
Only because that is what people constantly CHOOSE to make it revolve around.
Like Jo, he can fart out an unexpected amount of damage if you just try to ignore him.
There is a tank guild 101 by Hoku
Two main things that a tank needs to do:
- CC an out of position target and has your teammate follow up for the kill. The target could be an enemy squishy who places himself/herself as a frontline warrior (you often see them in Silver but it become more rare into higher rank), an enemy diver who dive into your backline (make they pay for threatening your backline) or the enemy tank who is (a little) too far from his/her team.
- protect your backline by CC the enemy diver. You shouldn’t place yourself too far away from your backline. Therefore you can protect them and the healer can heal you.
Diving the backline is usually the bruiser’s job and it should be done after the tank (either side) engages.
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Too add to this, who has mana and who does not? A murry with mana can deal way more damage then a keal that can at best d w. If the fight is almost over and the other team has no health, if murry can kill thier entire team, keal is going to die. That is unless we need his wave clear very badly at base
Hey, while we’re on the topic, what’s the job of a Bruiser? My gut instinct is “somewhere between a Tank and a Melee DPS” but literally all of my gut instincts are wrong, so…
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Good lord, the amount of times I see DPS yell at me for not just diving enemy teams is crazy.
Me: positioning, positioning for engage
DPS: tilts from lack of patience and engages
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