Are you good at tanking?

General Discussion
1

My winrate with tanks have been pretty weak for a while (40-45%). I think the only time I’ve been ‘‘good’’ at tanking was ironically with Arthas pre-change when he had more dmg but less CC (no % speed reduction baseline and stuff).

I play mostly Johanna, sometime Arthas, sometime ETC. With Jo I keep trying to E the ennemy auto attacker and ult at a fine time but I keep losing. Feel like it’s often:

  • When I dive ennemy team to annoy dps, my assassins struggle vs ennemy tank+bruiser. ‘‘Tank, won’t you peel for once?’’

  • When I play more passive, peel for my team, ‘‘Tank, won’t you stop focusing their tank and bruiser?’’

What’s the secret to win as tank? :open_mouth:

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2

Party up with someone you can actually count on to kill people while you tank for them.

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3

Tried and true recipe for winning consistently with almost any tank.

With bad assassins, it’s a hellish role to play. Must decide when to initiate fights, must be at objectives on time, must protect teammates, must bodyblock retreating enemies.

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I main tank but i would not consider myself as a good one because there always is something to learn and tanking becomes more complex the higher you get in ranks and i am far from what would be considered a good rank.

Of course i know some of the theory but i would need to face it first hand and fail times and times again to get it.

Also no offense but i would no consider someone who can only play ETC and johanna as a good overall tank player (of course you can have them as confort picks).
Both are less prone to punishement than most other tanks and 2 mere bans shut you down.

Of course if you occasionnaly play tank and enjoy the role like that there is nothing wrong with it and i hope you get your fun as much as you can.

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5

Fun fact, now when I tank, morons are saying “this mura is not tanking any damage” because they removed the tab from the score screen.

They think the self healing indicates how much damage I took (and second wind wont usually grant more than 20-30k in a match).

Bring back the stat please…

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Look at the enemy team.
If they have good divers, you can stay back more.
If they just have some ranged squishies that suck when someone is in their face like Li-Ming, you can be more aggressive.

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I’m a forced main tank, reached masters with it but then lost intrest to continue on. You need to know your combos and talents. Only with a few tanks the talents are always the same. But for example with Johanna her lvl 1 and 7 define how you gonna play her.

  • You play passive when you are looking for a enemy to be out of position, then you dive upon him
  • If someone dives the backline you ping him and hold the rest back. If you can do something to aid him , lets say a stun then you do it. It sounds cheese but look at your replay to see why you won a lost a teamfight

(Always pick talents which are comfortable for you)

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One day i had a xul try to badmouth me because i was taking focus from their medivh, zuljin and nova allowing him to only deal with their melees and have our zarya for himself but he was still dying and “mura only kill and get away”…

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  1. Don’t dive.
  2. Don’t Chase.
  3. Defence a teammates.
  4. Dodge from an enemy skills as hell.
  5. Keep a spells for defence of teammates.
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First and foremost, you have to have a thick skin to tank. It is easy to blame the tank (and healer) for someone dying, so they will do so, pretty much every time they die. With that said, there is more to tanking than just team fights, and try to learn all aspects of the role. One thing you can do, especially in the lower ranks, is spend more time punishing enemy mistakes than being the one to initiate everything.

JoJo isn’t really designed to be a dive tank, especially since outside of a heroic, she has no good way to reposition quickly, so let your bruiser be the one to harass their DPS. If people accuse you of focusing the enemy tank, just ignore them.

3 Likes
11

Preparation is key.
1 id highly recommend starting in beginner ai. Setup combos and see if they followup. Try to protect them and keep them alive. After playing a few games recognize that the avg assassin main is dumber than that.
2 safety is key. Get a nicely cushioned pillow to lay on the table in front of you. Do 1-3 practice head slams into it carefully before each match.

In all seriousness learn your opponents comps.

Some comps want you to ignore assassins: azmodan, chromie, li ming, valla

Some want you to blindly chase them: sonya, illy, any melee assassin.

Also dont engage without your team with you and get your combos off.

12

Hey man,

Most tanks in the game are ability driven (i.e. they provide little value without their spells). Here’s a step by step guide on how to team fight:

  1. The timing of your engage is important. (Brain focus: formulate a plan)

Don’t go in and take unnecessary damage until all your team are in position and available to follow up on your CC

  1. Engage by cycling through your spell rotation. (Brain focus: execute plan by concentrating on your skill shots)

Whilst it’s preferable to aim for a squishy, it’s totally okay to lock down their tank if that’s your only available option. Got to make something happen.

Without going into too much specific detail, it’s worth noting that some heroes need their mobility spell as part of their engage (like ETC) whilst others can afford to hang onto their mobility for a later time (like Muradin).

  1. With your spells on cooldown, broaden your awareness (brain focus: check the healthbars and positioning of all allies and enemies, start formulating a plan)

Once you’ve used your spells and have resorted to just AA, take stock in knowing that you are now temporarily just dead weight. Use this time of uselessness to re-assess the fight. See below a decision tree to consider:

  • Are you low on health? If yes: retreat
  • Did you kill your target or get them low health? Is it worth finishing the job? If yes: push more aggressively
  • Did the enemy successfully dive past you to harass your backline? If yes: retreat to help them out.

  1. Reposition to make your next move based on your situational awareness exercise from step 3.

  2. Cooldowns are back up, execute next plan. (Brain focus: temporarily ignore big picture team fight awareness to narrow your focus on landing skillshots)

  3. Repeat steps 3 to 6 until job is done

…

Tl;dr: It’s impossible to be aware of everything all the time. As long as your awareness and focus is on a 6 to 12 second cycle in line with your skill cooldowns then you’ll be doing all you can. Mid-fight decision making is half the fun.

Hope that helped.

1 Like
13

I’d like to add that you really want to get a good read on your team, but also be flexible to changes in their playstyle.
A lot of players won’t be very aggressive until they get their ults and/or 16 talents. After that team fighting can become much more chaotic and confusing.

Don’t fall into the 1v3-4 trap. You might get an adrenaline rush and feel very useful keeping almost their entire team busy, but a lot of the time it’s the other way around. A singular dive assassin can easily destroy your backline if they’re not suited for shutting him down. Even if he dies but got a kill/severely weakened your backline by making them blow their cooldowns and taking out some of their HP it’s a good trade on his behalf if his team follows up on, because chances are you used a lot of cooldowns while keeping those 3-4 enemies busy and now you’re powerless to stop them from just rolling over you.

Watch your teammates, see if they struggle against certain enemy players and try to focus on that player if you can.
Never be too focused on playing defensively or offensively, learn well what each situation calls for and try to gauge the possibility of your team winning engagements .

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Tanking is alot like being a bruiser but you have to take alot more initiative and have much higher map awareness.

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For tanking in general, I wrote a very basic overview a while ago. Maybe it will help.

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This reminds me, people are semi-frequently bringing up “stop focusing tank”. They have this odd image of the tank is only there to annoy them and if the tank is ignored then you can focus that damage on everything else. This ironically ignores the fact that if you play like that you more or less do exactly what the tank wants. Tanks make space for their team and put the enemy in situations where the rest of the team has easier ways to deal with them. It’s always jarring and usually equivalent to the “Mocus Morales” memes. The best comparison I can use for the tank that he’s like a shield. Not a literally damage sponge but think of a well-played tank like a HP multiplier. If the tank is present they’ll make it way harder to kill the rest of the team provided they aren’t out of position. While it’s good to grab opportunities that theorizes said opportunities are present so peeps who are frustrated over lost teamfights usually just look at the results.

Tl;dr
Please focus tanks, trap them and ensure they die quickly. That’s the easiest way to breach the frontline and overwhelm the enemy.

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Possibly I’m decent with Johanna.

18

You and everyone else who’s needed to flex tank in draft.

19

Agreed. I dislike tanks like Muradin that dive into the enemy team. I know he’s strong, and rehgar (Diver) is strong, but the heroes I play (raynor and zuljin) are terrible at diving. If I was greymane or valla, that’d be a different story.

All I want when playing zuljin is playing safe like an adc In other mobas: farm (zuljin, not raynor) and poke at the outskirts of a teamfight. I usually hit the tank as he’s the most forward. I did learn to eventually gauge whether diving in further to attack squishier targets paid off, but I still think (despite my team wanting me to dive) playing safe is more important than diving in to try to attack someone other than the tank. Against any good player you should be cc’d and killed if you’re in the middle of a teamfight as a squishy but oh well, keep diving players

20

Assuming you talk about ranked play.

If an ally dies too much, it’s their fault but they’ll blame you. Ignore that.

Jo has great wave clear, that makes her more valuable in 3 lane maps. You should take advantage of that double soaking if possible.

Jo is not a one build hero. You must know your talent choices and pick accordingly.

Jo is a wall tank, not a dive tank. You either peel, wall or engage. You almost never dive. Jo becomes a diver with falling sword, hoping to get to have the lvl 20 upgrade.

Never dive enemy to annoy dps. It’s not what tanks do. If you pick tank play tank. Peel/Wall/Engage.

Leave the diving part to bruisers and melee assassins that will die then blame you.

You mostly wait for an opponent to make a mistake and you CC them, W+Q then maybe R.

Your E is for wave clear or to prevent ranged aa dmg. Don’t randomly E opponent just cause it’s off CD.

Team compositions determines your behavior, if your team pokes a lot you have to be passive, if your team is made of divers you dive. If opponents poke try to engage, if opponents dive be passive and peel.

I usually pick blessed shield and you should really engage(not dive) a TF only when that is available. At level 20 BS stuns all enemy team for 2 seconds, can be game ending.

lvl1 hold your ground. almost always

4sins+7momentum+13hammer+16holy+20blinded.
Standard E build. amazing wave clear, scouting(hammers), peeling.

lvl 4 eternal retaliation
is good on maps with prolonged fights with multiple targets. allow to W over and over again. Shrines, Alterac are good examples.

lvl 7 subdue + lvl 13 roar + lvl 16 fanaticism
This is a very strong combo if you want to engage hard. 2 seconds 80% slow is just like a 2 second root. fanaticism makes your escape easier of your engages go wrong.

lvl 13 Holy Fury
great vs zagara, useless vs anyone else.

lvl 20
BS upgrade is amazing.
Blinded by the light - 25% hp rune to team is also amazing.
Using it on engage it’s likely you will have it off CD again before the end of the TF.
You can prevent many kills with this.

Most importantly, Never dive enemy to annoy dps.