Even against mages, his low hp pool means he’s going down relatively quickly. You might as well use Johanna or Mei
He has up to 60% spell damage reduction. It won’t matter if his pool is considered low for a tank if he only takes 40% spell damage every CD.
Plus he has a shield that can eat up whatever damage does go through.
When going up against AA heroes, I usually take Regen Master, and I love being paired with a Stukov. His level 4 physical armor talent means I don’t have to worry about AAs, as the shield will be enough to soak up what gets through. With move speed at 4, and E, I can easily get in range to pick up the pathogen, and then go back to harassing the enemy team. Uther is another healer who pairs very well with Anub’arak.
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Update: played a couple games using the tips in this thread and I’m not dying nearly as much. I swear I’m attempting to peel and body block as much as I can, but at some point I start to question my teammates…like when I have 4 deaths vs 8-10 for my dps. I can’t do anything about my Imperius teammate going in 1v5 all the time or Tassadar always getting caught out.
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Honestly, that happens on any tank. If the Tass is getting dived on, you can help by Eing onto the diver and/or Cocooning them. But if the Tass is just facechecking bushes and the like, there isn’t much that can be done.
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I’ve been trying to E into the diver or cocoon, which often works, but this Tass was typically gone before the fight even started. No clue what they were doing. Sometimes it seems dps play so far away from the tank you can’t even begin to help them out.
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Now, I don’t know what everyone else’s experience with Anub is (I’m level 58, 55.1% lifetime win rate, 463 games played not counting ai), but I HAVE to give some unpopular advice here…
The two main reasons “everyone” thinks Anub is squishy (some go as far as saying he can’t main tank), is 1: his survival is really balanced around taking Locust Swarm, and 2: most people DO NOT even know how to even use Cocoon correctly.
Cocoon’s major failing is that, in a vacuum, it is ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. You are entirely dependent upon the actions of your team whenever you use it. If your team fails (for whatever reason) you may as well simply not have picked an ult at all, because Cocoon has 0 impact without team play.
https://www.hotslogs.com/Sitewide/HeroDetails?Hero=Anub%27arak
If you select the drop down menu (Refer to the link above) where it says “All Leagues” and then proceed to go through every league from Diamond down through Bronze, one-by-one, and you take a look at Cocoon’s win rate vs Locust Swarm’s win rate, you will notice that Cocoon lags noticeably far behind Locust Swarm, and only really starts to catch up to Locust Swarm when player rank approaches Master.
The main reason for this disparity-- to be fair I’m speculating a bit here-- is that lower rank play is generally much less coordinated. So, when you Cocoon an enemy people ether are not ready for it, don’t notice it, simply have no idea what to do, OR they don’t care and are gonna do their own thing regardless just cuz they can.
Pretty much never use anything “on cooldown”
If the cooldown is up and using it is a good idea, then by all means.
But don’t just use it because you can.
Personally I pick Locust Swarm most of the time.
But you gotta realize a good portion of its strength comes from it healing from non-heroes, unlike Malganis Carrion Swarm (which doesn’t)
So where you use it is more important.
I’d be careful about comments saying “always” or “never” but be aware of the situation before you tunnel into enemies. Make sure you’re not going to be focused down immediately and wish you had it to escape. He can dive, but that doesn’t mean that’s what you should be doing at all times.
Just wait for more balance patches and some map-related adjustments, the meta will eventually change. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to find proper use for a hero that runs with almost permanent spell resist and two baseline stuns. Like Imperius, he needs some kind of a weakness to offset his potential.
Forcefully change the dynamic of the game by making maps more unique and stop with the practice of limited map-pool in ranked mode. All the heroes are in a good spot except many of them are not allowed to shine because most popular of maps only offer a change in tile sets.
If you add some mud pits like the ones we have on AV, suddenly Probius and Gazlowe become much better, because the location can be easily fortified and defended. The Angels with their crowd control cycle on BOE are also a nice example of how you can use certain mechanics to your advantage.
Instead of nit-picking each individual hero and questioning their usefulness, change the game in such a way so the pick and ban priority shifts around on each different map rather than blindly following some streamer’s personal tier list.
The one advantage HOTS has over other titles is the abundance of maps, but sadly unlike with some popular RTS games where the map choice can heavily affect things like the size of economy, rush distance, reliance on air units or even the choice of first hero summoned, it isn’t the case here.
Some people really hated the Anomalies, but at a certain point you simply run out of ideas how to make the game more interesting. My main problem with some of these is how they were completely random and how they they directly affected combat, where the benefits were not equal for all heroes. It would however be completely fine if had the ability to draft accordingly knowing what to expect in the next game.
If I’m going to play in the same sandbox each time, I don’t need a chest full of toys.
Anub’arak really does need some love as currently he really doesn’t fit any role and he’s too weak to substitute for one, and he has no supportive abilities what so ever unless you count his max stun time using both his stun abilities of about 1.25-2 seconds.