I think many people will argue he is a tank now that it is an official blizzard classification that tyrael is a tank. And of course he was used as solo tank in pro games (but pro games have very specific strategies, they do weird stuff like murky and abathur, dual support comps and all kinds of funny stuff that doesn’t apply to our games).
Tyrael has no peel, no engage (until level 10 then he gets an engage on a massive cooldown), small hero model so can’t bodyblock effectively.
What do you guys think, how does he function as a tank, much less a solo tank in our normal games?
Tank, his peel is movespeed, a slow, his heroics, shield, and his wall at 13.
He’s hard to kill, enables dive, and can easily be your solo tank provided you are a team comp that can leverage his assets of buffing almost everything about his allied heroes.
The smallness plus his speed actually lets him get in front of people easier. A bigger hitbox just means you can more effectively stand still and block people and block easier when you’re already there to begin with.
Got a question though. If blizzard labelled tyrael a bruiser and I created an similar thread arguing that tyrael is more like a tank, would you guys be saying he’s a bruiser? Lol. Cos I got a feeling the answer is yes
I would put him in a similar category to Arthas: he can be either based on how you build, or play him within a comp, but his strengths can be somewhat niche and aren’t suited to every game. His shields can even help cover the gaps/weaknesses with your choice of healer; ex: Uther is high output on a single target, Tyreal can provide some support for the rest of the team against poke damage.
Tyreal’s biggest strength is that he tends to enable others with the movement speed/slows he provides, shielding for survivability, and body blocks for kills. He used to be considered a hybrid tank/support by the community because of this base kit he has. He hasn’t really lost that, it’s just been rebalanced a few times.
The point of talent system is making a hero able to adapt to various situation.
And Tyrael is can be a Bruiser or Tank, depend on the build you take. However if you put common role model that described as main-secondary, then he’s a Bruiser-Tank.
Bruiser on almost every game has base kit of “survivability” to survive their mission, which sometimes “abit too good” that people start to label it as Tanker.
Well they’re not wrong.
so both bruiser and tank are able to soak damage, just like ranged assassins and melee assassins able to do dmg.
The different is the playstyle
There are a number of heroes formerly known as warriors who can play either role depending on the map, comp, and build. Tyrael, Blaze, Imperius, Arthas, and Varian could all be considered either one depending on how they are played.
I agree with everything Karabars and Manarri said. Tyrael can function as both a competent main tank and an excellent bruiser.
His basic abilities provide slows, teleport, shields, and move speed. His talents also enable some pretty decent self sustain as well as decent damage. He favors more mobility driven team comps with heroes that scale with the proper support (Greymane, Illidan, Kerrigan), however he is very versatile and can function well on both large maps with lots of skirmishing, or small maps with centralized highly contested objectives.
I play him a lot and I’ve found I have the ability to “carry” games with him since he can always be at the right place at the right time and has the capability to chase and confirm kills, very much like a Tracer or Genji. As a tank he does lack the raw cc and unconditional self sustain of the more classic tanks (Muradin, ETC, Johanna). However, overall I feel he fits well into most team compositions and can fulfill both roles as needed.
If they want to make him a Bruiser they’d have to take some of his damage and buff it, and maybe lower his Ehp. He’s got a lot of tools to make him healthier and more controlling but only bonus AA damage really for damage talents.
If you’ll notice, even in that topic kara was receptive to the label if the community/pro scene use Tyrael as such. Since he’s repeating some of the same details used then as now, its almost like that would suggest someone had an argument or evidence that convinced him accordingly.
Its like… people can change their minds and not just resort to lashing out against anyone that disagrees with them… or something
I feel like Cho is a bit of a special case because of matchmaking. The damage output of him and Gall combined as well as their massive HP pool makes it feel awful to not have a tank on your team that can stand up to him, at least for a little while. I know avoiding him is best but that’s not really an option for some objectives so he kinda has to be counted as a tank even if Cho’s kit doesn’t look like a typical tank’s kit.
![:open_mouth:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/open_mouth.png?v=6" ":open_mouth:")