I’ve found that 99% of the time, Tyrael is MORE “supportive” than Zarya who’s main thing is the occasional big shield and big damage. Tyrael is all about enabling allies through shields, the occasional terrain (Holy Ground being his only “peel” outside of Judgement which works best as a supportive tool), and move speed with smite.
Even though tyrael has supportive abilities, he is still a tank first. If you ask “would you draft tyrael as a tank or as a support”, the answer is as a tank. You would never draft tyrael as support (well, now someone is going crazy and gonna do that lmao).
Zarya on the other hand, you draft her as support, even though she is tanky. You could use her as main tank, but you usually draft her to support/complement the team and help the carries do their job.
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- Tyrael has self-sustain, zarya does not
- Tyrael has mobility, engage, and escape tools that zarya lacks
- Tyrael has a kit that can have him support from the mid, but his contributions are primarily in the front-line position
zarya is a midline hero that can step up for select moments, but she really can’t linger at the front or she’s going to get isolated, cced, and focused harder than her kit can with stand. While she can empower others, functionally, that’s just resource management, rather than a full-time enabler where zarya has to have some selfish aspects (rather than self-less) or she’s going to end up as dead weight.
Many tanks are generally ‘feared’ for their baseline abilities and have some QoL aspects from talents; tyrael is more defined by his talents, so if people build to ‘support’ “99% of the time” then they’ll have a much harder time ‘tanking’ without the mitigation, sustain, and utility that enables him to do those. That’s part of why talent options are designed to adjust aspects of a hero to actually vary how they play and what they bring to a team, or how they react to or counter, aspects of the enemy side.
It’s not as if Tyrael is alone in the tank/support slot either; ETC and Jo have strong support-like builds that also don’t regulate them into not being ‘tanks’ despite the opportunity costs of them taking those talents/heroics.
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tyrael is not a tank, he cant tank like garrosh, also is not a bruiser, he cant bruising like hohger, but nor a support like medivh, he barely support with 200 or maybe 300 shields?, thats like 1 valla AA… he is just a weird thing in hots, like a chimera
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I do wonder what it would be like if Tyrael became a Support officially. I think it’ll be great to have another Support but he’s such a unique tank that I kinda don’t want it too lol
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He would need a full rework tbh, cause he would suck as support only. His kit is just much more for main tank than anything else. People just really have the wrong idea that a main tank needs hard CC and all those stereotypes.
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Properly what you said here. If the hero cant peel or stun its not a tank in thier eyes. Some bruisers like Imp or Dehaka have some ways to tank for his team even tho they are not tanks but in Imps case he could be drafted as one before his nerf.
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El’Druin is an AoE slow, and can be talented to slow even more. In addition, because of his high mobility, Tyrael is one of the best tanks for body-blocking in the game. People almost always underestimate the power of just using your tanky self to assist allies, or lock down enemies for destruction.
The issue with Tyrael isn’t his kit, but how much his team mates need to know how to work with him. In high level competitive play, especially on EU, he is seen pretty often. People in lower ranks tend to think that a tank is there to “save” them. In higher level play, people realize that a tank is meant to enable them. Tyrael is just as good at this as the other tanks on the roster.
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And he can AoE speed up allies. Enemies being slowed and allies being speed up, it’s basically a root.
Spot on. Could not have said it better myself. Way too many just think tanks are meatshields and are supposed to babysit his team 24/7. I see this so many times. Dmg dealers that cries about he cant do anything in his lane unless his tank is there to help him or dmg dealers that engage first and then blame the tank for not going in like wtf why you need to hurry. You will get them soon enough. No need to yolo them at first sight.
Fan even told one of his supporters about how you properly engage tanks as melee dps. You simply just wait for them to have thier strongest spells that can hurt you on cd then you can freely go on them with no risk of dying.
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