I think Muradin. Well-rounded abilities, decent talent diversity, therefore solid pick for most situations including and perhaps especially QM where you might not have a healer, a bruiser, etc.
Nice going.
Happy tanking pal.
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Muradin is fantastic and is all about opening opportunities for his teammates.
To initiate i recommend using the fog of war to your advantage instead of bushes for ambushes, 10/10 dentists recommend this.
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I’ll add in some of my insight. According to the game at least, tanking is my strongest role.
I’d say a solid noob tank is johanna. You can more or less spam your skills at enemies and it will do its job. Aside from that, each tank plays a little different and has different strengths. Muradin is the most versatile and is able to adapt to pretty much any situation, but probably is harder to build because of that.
I’m doing very well on W build Diablo. Basically I play him like a melee assassin. Use W to poke and maintain stacks. Always fish for a chance to initiate with Q. If you’re above 70 souls you can dive into 5 people and have a decent chance of surviving it, so you can really do a lot of reckless engages that catch the enemy off guard. However, if I don’t see a kill opportunity after W,Q,W,E,W I usually back down. Your W will cover your escape, especially in the late game or at 100 souls. I will peel my backline when given the option to effectively do so, but usually Diablo works by just being aggressive as all hell. If the enemy ignores you, you can mow them down with your AoE damage. Even if you picked a fight that might not have been ideal, you can probably trade fairly well and since you are deep within enemy lines they will kill you and your team can back off. If you have 100 souls (as you should) you will respawn instantly. If you got a kill, you’ve now got yourself a 4v5 and the world is your oyster. However, dying is still bad. What you want to do is to not die. Gauge the amount of damage your opponent can put out and stay above that. You can heal yourself up afterwards.
Personally I think how you tank varies. I play aggressively on Diablo and that has brought me a ton of wins, but I also play Muradin and Johanna because they can play defensively. In lower ranks people will be very aggressive and make a lot of bad plays. You just need to wait them out - something that Johanna and Muradin excel at. Soak up skillshots aimed at your team, try to deal damage if you can, but save your CC for when the enemy gets out of position so you can single them out. Easiest example is people with charges like Varian. They will charge someone, but if that target backs off they will quickly find themselves separated from their team. A good stun will keep them still as your team gobbles up the free kill. Both of these heroes can be built for a lot of self-sustain, so you can freely take even unnecessary damage and recover. This has the side-effect of working as bait for you opponent. When they decide to kill you and go all in, you do your best to survive and hit them with all the CC you have. If you have a solid mage they can do a ton of damage during this time.
If you feel like your backline is slacking, I recommend Anub’arak. He’s not a particularly strong tank, but you can soak up enough damage with W most of the time. What you really want is to wait for your enemy to get into a position where you can use your ultimate to web one opponent and then dive into a nice squishy target. Especially with Rewind at 20, a E,W,Q (+Q,W,E) combo can kill a weaker target outright. The build I use is E with W damage at 13. This build also gives you a burst shield which should cover you through your aggressive play.
I don’t claim to be a master. I’m only a plat player, but this has served me pretty well and maybe it will provide some helpful ideas.
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This is going to at first sound anti-tanking skills friendly, but hear me out: Play non-tanky champs. Learn who is the squishiest, who has the worst escape mechanics (I’m not even talking about just your squishies! Watch out for your Bruisers, too, like Sonya who have almost no escapes!) Play as all the other champs you can, to learn how much dmg they can punch out, what tanks they can burst, etc.
As for initiating, playing other champs will help as well. Knowing a DW just shot his flame breath out and your team mostly evaded it, rush in! He won’t have another opportunity again for quite a while. Look for places to yourself, go in and target those squishy backline fighters. Sneak around brushes, PING WITH YOUR TEAM TO TELL YOU WHO TO GO AFTER! Don’t just stand there, be a team leader, let them know you’re the one who will lay down your live to get those kills & objectives!