I’m a bronze tank, I don’t play but am starting to. I am a support main but wanna play tank now. Everyone has been telling me to go Reinhardt. When I do, I can’t stay alive cause our healers are either busy doing damage or feeding. I like Hammond and rein. Please someone tell me what to do.
Try to get onto a tank with self sustain. Like Wrecking Ball or Roadhog. Maybe even Dva.
But be aware of the fact that Roadhog will not work as well in higher ranks. But it should help you to get out of there.
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In bronze Roadhog and Zarya are the way to go.
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Reinhardt is not good in bronze hun. Too much team effort. Try maybe roadhog or Zarya. Zarya to capitalize on others mistake, or your team mates mistakes honestly or roadhog to finalize kills.
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Make sure to mute chat, because as a tank you will get a lot of hate unless you pick meta tanks.
If you want to rank up get really good with solo oriented tanks such as roadhog or ball. Don’t play for the team, play for kills.
Once you reach plat, you may change to a different team oriented tank. Then healers will heal a bit more.
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Well if you want to play tank, you have to remember the old rule. The game is going to suck more often than not.
The higher skill your team is, the higher skill you need to use with tank to keep up. You need to adapt to your teammates more than the individual needs of the map a lot of the times, which means you have to put yourself in harms way often.
Sometimes, your teams will just die and you’ll have to run off. Other times you’ll steamroll the enemy.
Oftentimes you’ll end up facing maybe one to two objective threats, which means you need to focus on one or two players. This is especially true in bronze due to the lack of coordination. Until you climb to silver your best bet is to just adapt to these individual threats and kill them exclusively.
My real advice here is simple. Kill the threats and focus on cleanup after. Sometimes the cleanup IS the threat to capture or defense, so be aware when you’re choosing your tanks.
After you get to silver the healers will become the real threat to the games. One renegade lucio or moira will ruin a match for your team, potentially shifting the entire match into the enemy team’s favor. Your job is to kill them. Their DPS mostly won’t be able to aim so watch out for sym or torb turrets.
After you get to gold the tanks start to become dangerous. So that’s where you’ll really need to start brawling with the enemy tanks. They will likely go Zarya Reinhardt often, using a strategy of BRUTE FORCE through the front door. Though in theory this works effectively, without passive play as well this will result in catastrophe, so don’t adopt it directly for your own use. Use it sparingly, and don’t charge into the enemy team without nano or another protective tank ability, they will kill you almost every time.
Plat is where the DPS start becoming pinpoint and dangerous, but not consistently. It’s a very inconsistent barrage of threat, but it can be quite dangerous if it’s not respected. At this point the tanks are brawly, the dps are fairly dangerous, and the healers are OKAY at their job. So you can play anything you need, and you’ll likely need to consult tutorial videos on how to improve.
Diamond is where the DPS snipers start to take over. You’ll likely face some serious issues climbing past this point in modern ranked and I can’t really help post season 12.
I don’t play ball ever but if you want to improve at the character, watch a yeatle or ball(contenders player) vod. If you want to improve at rein, you can watch a cloneman16, bogur, forgiving, or flats vod. Yeatle has an unranked to gm series for ball which you should watch and Forgiving has an unranked to gm series for rein which you should watch. For general tips, I would say that for reinhardt, you need to play around corners and manage shield. For shield management, let your shield regen if you don’t have to block anything. You can also shield hop aswell which will make it even easier for you to manage shield. When I say play around corners, I mean to play around corners of natural cover. For example, as rein you can play around the corner of the building on the right side on junkertown point defense. A mechanical aspect to rein is to block shatter. If you hear the hammer down voiceline, place your shield in front of the enemy rein so that you can block yourself and your team from shatter. This comes with practice but typically, if the enemy rein is playing aggressive for no reason and hasn’t shattered in awhile, he will probably use shatter. The last thing is playing aggro. If the enemy team is giving you free space, take it. If the enemy team is backing up, shield hop towards them. With enough space, you can just engage them and win. With any character, communication is key. Tracking which ultimates you think the enemy team has is important and telling your team how to position based on the ultimates can also be helpful. On the flipside, you should also combo your own ultimates and tell your team which ones to use. For example, grav+dragon, nano+blade, antinade+grav, grav+ window. These are just a few examples but knowing which ones to combo will help immensely. Knowing when a fight is lost is also important. If you tell your team that the fight is lost and to regroup, that can help you win more games. Even in diamond people still stagger like crazy. There are games lost just off of staggering. Finding a duo partner can also help you. Rein zarya is really good so finding a zarya to duo with might help you out a bit. There is a lot that I haven’t covered but if you have any more questions or want any kind of coaching, I can give you my discord. Hope this helped 
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I recommend playing Sigma if you want to play a shield tank as he does a bit of everything and has good damage output. I play him in silver/gold and he is fine.
Unfortunately people play tanks extremely badly in bronze but don’t let this put you off. They don’t understand the role and the difference between bronze and silver tanks is quite noticeable. So you will find once you are in silver it actually gets easier.
Silver tanks will do basic stuff like take space and work as a team whereas bronze tanks go off on mad flanks or stay at the back of their team with their shield guarding a stationary Bastion. Some of them actively refuse to take space and wait until all the enemies are killed before they move forward. It can be frustrating. The reason for this is that they are scared of taking damage because often there is nobody there to heal them up. This only happens in bronze. In every other rank tanks know that their job is to take damage and for the supports to heal them but in bronze this simple gameplay loop is broken and it leads to strange gameplay and really bad habits. So if you do basic tanking you will definitely win games on the basis that the enemy will be doing strange stuff.
I know this as I dropped into bronze learning Echo. I play with the team and all I need is the tanks to stay alive, take space, stay with the healers and the games are fairly easy to win. The problem is when the team doesn’t stay together and then it becomes much more difficult. Grouping up and co-ordinating ults (you don’t even need to be on comms to do this) is what wins games and people in bronze struggle with this. If the enemy groups up and uses their ults at the right time in bronze you’ve pretty much lost. But this will be rare.
Therefore the most important thing isn’t really which tank you learn but getting people to group up. Tanking is only really possible when people work together and this is the case regardless of rank. Sure some tanks like Hog and Hammond are more “independent” in style but they still have to co-ordinate attacks with their team.
If you want to get out of silver/gold as tank, look at my other post as it is gives a lot of useful information. There are things that silver/gold tanks start doing but there is emphasis on start. They understand that pushing up is important. So, they either constantly charge into the enemy team or never push up because they are afraid of dying. People in low elo don’t understand that if you want to climb you can’t play like a robot( Rein juts holding shield and doing basically nothing else or mercy standing still land just holding heal beam and basically nothing else). If you play like this, you will get hardstuck. You need to have an impact on the game. On another account, I played in low gold on dps. I literally just spammed rockets as pharah and would still win even if I had 4+ counters on the enemy team. I forced the enemy team to go a slightly unfavorable team comp and they still couldn’t counter me. You have to be a constant threat to the enemy team if you want to climb. Supports can also carry. On that same account I like to play moira and can just stomp games by constantly throwing out damage orbs and only healing if I have to. By the end of the game, I will have gold damage, elims, and healing. It is an aggressive playstyle but I can get away with it because it is a lower rank. However, on the topic of aggressive playstyles, you have to think about how to escape if things go bad. Moira has a fade which I always keep handy if I play aggressive. “How does this apply to tanks?” you may ask. Well, as a tank you need to play aggressive but also understand where your team is and where you can retreat to. Monkey can be really good in low ranks for this reason. You drop down from high ground(not using your jump) and then if you need to escape, you use your jump. You can use your bubble to isolate a target and prevent it from getting healing. The enemy team has to deal with you if you are in their backline. The enemy rein at low ranks will retreat and start swinging on you. This will create a bunch of space for your team and you can literally cap a point just off of that. If you want to be a solo carry as tank, try playing offtanks. I would recommend zarya and hog. A high energy zarya will outdamage dps. Because you have bubbles and a lot of health, you can push up like crazy as zarya and get kills. Again, if you need coaching, just give me your discord and we can work something out. 
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Don’t play Rein, I’ve played tank for 4 years and still don’t have a feel for how to properly execute rein. When you play Rein there is way to much stuff to worry about.
•when do I be aggressive
•when do I be a shield
•when do I push in and how hard
•when to give a bit of space
•when does the other rein have slam and • I cant fire strike now or he will put me on my back
•look for good spot to slam
•when do I ask for bubble
•where are my healers
It goes on and on, playing Rein makes my head hurt so much and I’m no good at it.
I like playing Zarya because it’s easy and you can be super impactful. You just gotta learn bubble management, that’s the hard part, but once you get high charge all you gotta worry about it cooking people. And unpopular opinion, grav early in often if your team does have combos, if you can win a fight on a solo or duo grav go for it.
To be honest if your in bronze I well say play hog until you get to gold because ppl in bronze are bad if you want to get out you have to carry yourself after you hit gold you can start playing rien and ball more because they help the team and gl you can do it 
As a Plat Tank Main who started in mid silver, I can tell you that the best Tanks to get out of low ranks (bronze, silver) are Roadhog and Sigma. Roadhog more than Sigma. Roadhog is arguably the most self-oriented hero in the game and really doesn’t require any teamwork, which is lacking in these ranks.
Sigma is also really good because of his versatility. He can bring whatever your team lacks from your other tank. Need more damage? Boom, there you go. Need protection? He’s got a shield.
Rein isn’t a very good pick until at least mid gold. He relies heavy on your healers to pump him up. He only works if he’s constantly getting boosted and healed by your healers.
I can second this - I climbed out of bronze and silver using sigma, but now I’m heading towards mid gold i’m finding zarya a better pick, now that teamwork is starting to become more of a real thing.
Every bronze dps will ask for rein and wont use it as you die pitifully to enemy hog reaper, for bronze take rein if people ask and u have a main heal like ana or moira, if you dont get heals and team doesnt move with you swap to hog or ball. People will hate you for this but they work well solo, if you kill 2 squishies every fight you have done your part.
Get a buddy to pocket you 24/7.
Low elo is all smurfs or bran dead people. Nobody is going to support you.
Thanks, I will check out your other post on climbing with tanks. Mostly I’m a Lucio main and at the moment I’m climbing through gold on console. I‘m finding that climbing with Lucio involves being more aggressive. I’m also improving my aim with his weapon so as to land more shots. He isn’t too complicated team wise as you simply speed everyone in and out depending on how the fight is going.
Out of interest do you think it is possible to climb solo queue with any hero? I have a theory that the lower ranks have their own meta and that the only way to reliably climb involves learning the overpowered heroes at those ranks. For instance it would be way easier to get out of bronze on Moira than Ana. Similarly Reaper would be a more reliable pick than many of the other DPS. Basically heroes with escape mechanisms like you say seem to thrive lower down the ladder as they are more self sustaining and can get away to heal themselves.
Personally I think heroes that rely on speed have a massive advantage over those that don’t. Both because they can escape more easily and because they are harder to hit.
Perhaps. There are one tricks on every hero in every rank and even in contenders. However, I do believe that certain characters are better at certain ranks. Doesn’t mean that you can’t hard carry with others, but it is easier to with certain characters at certain ranks. Moira can quickly get you to diamond on console if you just try and get value with her and learn her mechanics. When I play on my gold alt, I can hard carry games as moira like it is nothing. I just deal damage most of the time unless my team truly needs heals. Zen can also be good if you have cracked aim. Lucio is also good if you know how to get picks with him.
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Just play Hog, that’s a free Plat badge.