When it comes to tanks, there’s a pretty heavy list of things viewed as “requirements” for them to be solo tanks and not just delegated to offtanks or bruisers like the majority of recent tanks have been.
Adding onto this, there’s only about 4 “spots” for a character to spend to do this (Q,W,E,D) most of the time.
Solo tanks are often viewed as “needing” to be able to:
Peel on demand, with the peel being stacked in favor of the hero so its easy and reliable to hit (Diablo’s point and click stuns compared to Blaze’s stun having a windup time being an example)
Have sustain of some sort to make them able to be tanky and stay in a fight (Johanna’s iron skin or Diablo’s feast on fear talent for example)
Be able to safely engage the enemies, and often able to disengage (Diablo and muradin’s charge and leap for example)
A way to gain armor, a shield, or have another active form of damage mitigation (Johanna’s iron skin, Mal’s necro embrace, muradin’s dwarftoss and Tclasp)
that’s a pretty big bill for heroes to have coming in to be able to be viewed as solo tanks, and that’s even BEFORE you get into the “Is fun to play” aspect of them, as well as uniqueness.
How focused on tanking do you want the next solo tank to be, and how do you think their abilities should accomplish this?
You could expand point 4 to include damage reduction, instead of mitigation. In a lot of tanks, this can be used to save a team mate, not just the tank.
IDK about kit wise. But how about Garathos from WARCRAFT 3? Only reason I suggest him, is so I can kick [Removed] some more for being a jerk.
If anyone deserves eternal humiliation, then its him. Had he not been a [Removed] to Kalthus, then a lot of bad things would not have happened.
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Try malganis. pretty hard to get simpler or easier than that. just don’t think you’re a Bruiser who’s goal is to charge in and kill people like so many people play him as and prioritize protection.
I would love to see Reinhardt and Orisa in the game as main tanks, both have plenty to ways to initiate and mitigate damage.
For example, Reinhardt can raise his shield to block incoming damage to himself and allies behind him, and can initiate with his charge and/or his Earthshatter ability.
Of course, this comes at the cost of having no ways to actively heal himself.
High hp, gap close, CC. Wont become tank thats actually a solo laner because these 2 would empower each other (proximity) making each other considerably weaker when separated. That also means you got good reason to peel for your dps
There are a lot of different possible ways armor could be used for new tanks or bruisers.
I’d love to see an “Adaptive Armor/Hide/Carapace” Trait on a new tank, which would probably fit best on an SC2 hero. Every instance of damage you take increases your armor by X amount, stacking up to Y amount, for 4 seconds. This could be balanced easily by adjusting the scaling and maximum armor values. For example, a hero could gain 3 armor per instance of damage up to 15, or 2 per instance up to 20.
Another idea would be for a Bruiser with an inverse armor/damage ratio. More armor = less damage, less armor = more damage. Something like a Trait that toggles between +10 armor and -10% damage or -10 armor and +10% damage, and these values could be increased through talents. It would be sort of a berserker playstyle, forcing you to choose between more damage or more durability. It could also make ill-timed enemy armor reduction or allied armor increase effects backfire a bit.
Garrosh gains 1 armor for every 2% health missing. That opposed to gaining armor from taking any damage, not just a certain amount. Garrosh can also be healed and his armor will decrease, Adaptive Armor would not be affected by healing.
And hey, people have been begging for Tracer counters. How about a guy with a Trait that gains armor every time she deals damage to him?
To be honest, talking about garrosh, surprised his character doesn’t play more similiar to his hearthstone archetype.
Its nice having another tank, but I kind of figured he’d be about “coordinate your abilities to stack armor, with a dps ability that deals more damage based on your armor level” (Like bodycheck is).
I kind of figured he’d be a bruiser based 100% around armor, an the tossing ability would have been for another Orc tank.
That doesn’t counter tracer though-- Tracer’s bad because she can pick off squishies, she still loses a straight fight to any AA DPS hero. She’s not going to dive and attack someone she can’t counter, she’ll go for the squishies who rely on skillshots.
The only true “Counter” to heroes like tracer and genji is a hero that takes them out with CC so the others can punish them (basically point and click abilities like Diablo has or Maiv’s shackles) when she dives the vulnerable heroes, not someone who can shrug off their damage THEMSELF.
