

True "Tanking"

Window "Tanking"

Threat "Tanking"

The Punchline

Alright, we're back after what feels like forever with the next part of my tank guide. The first part was mainly focused on positioning so this time, we're going to move on to another concept I've found people generally struggle with. That is....Wait for it...Ok ok, I know several of you are now thinking that I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, and you'd be half right, but let's face it, the majority of tanks in Heroes of the Storm aren't actually that... tanky.Sure a Johanna or Muradin can live through everything plus the kitchen sink when played right, but what about Anub'arak? Arthas? ETC? Very few tanks will live when faced with sustained fire, especially when you add abilities like Tychus' Minigun and Greymane's Cursed Bullet to the mix. Tanking isn't always as simple as just taking damage. The idea of the tank is basically to prevent teammates from coming under fire by the enemy team, but there are actually a lot of ways this can be done other than throwing your body at the enemy team over and over.There are several different ways you can "tank" damage (note: for the rest of this article, I will use "tank" to designate the act of preventing your team from taking damage, and tank to designate the act of taking damage yourself.) I've separated the rest of this guide into 3 main categories of "tanking," each arranged with the heroes that best exemplify that strategy and when to use them. I've also provided a meme for each category to make sure the point gets through. (Memes courtesy of Workhorse. ILY)Without further ado, let's get this show on the roadThis is what everyone thinks of when they think of tanking. A big fatso at the frontline eating damage and not batting an eye. Truth be told, there are many circumstances where this is best for you team, but only on one main condition:You live.Let's just back up one second though and cover exactly why this is useful.When the enemy is hitting you, they are not hitting your teammates. Ideally, the are also using cooldowns, which they can no longer use on your teammates until they come back up. This creates a window which your teammates can use to deal damage with little to no threat on them. The bigger the cooldowns used, the greater the threat to you, but the greater the window for your teammates.What does this tell you? If you and your teammates are not using these windows, you're not tanking, you're just feeding. Your teammates either need to be able to hit the enemy while you're tanking or to be able to go in afterwards once cooldowns are down. Note, longer cooldowns can even let you reset and go in after. If the enemy blows a major ult and doesn't get a kill, disengaging, getting healthy, and then rengaging can be ideal. In any case, you are eating this damage and these cooldowns the old fashioned way: by taking them in the face.Now at lower levels, players will often just expend these cooldowns willy nilly on the first thing they see, but at higher levels, enemies will keep their cooldowns in reserve unless you force them out. That's why all of the tanks I listed have at least SOME offensive talent in their ktis that let you put on threat. This strategy needs to make sure that you punish the enemy if they do not focus you. If the enemy is trigger happy, all the better, but if they're playing more reserved and saving everything for that Genji to go in, you need to force their hand.Finally, it's important to note that each of these tanks has their limits. Johanna is tanky as heck, but only when her trait is up. Muradin is easily focused down if both Avatar and Dwarf Toss are down. Diablo has like, 3 health bars when he has an 100 soul tap running. Know your limits with each of these heroes and know that even each of these heroes will die if locked down and hit by all 5 enemy heroes for a while (provided the enemy drafted at least some damage.) In some cases, it might just be impossible to True Tank against the enemy. Maybe they have Varian, Greymane, Li-ming, and Stukov and walking up just means Taunt into Cursed Bullet into dead. These things happen and you need to be able to adjust in these cases.This doesn't mean don't play a tank. That's never the lesson. This means you need to put a bit more thought into how exactly you're going to tank. Maybe it means standing close enough to your support to get cleansed. Maybe it means you hide in a bush and engage on the Stukov instead when they get close, breaking their whole combo down. We'll cover these options in the next section, but definitely remember, if the enemy team can't kill you, punish and force them to make you back off. Give them only as much respect as they deserve."Don't need to tank damage... if they enemy always dies within your cc chain"No, this is not like window shopping. Instead, this is "tanking" by using certain windows of tankiness in heroes that are not innately tanky. To explain this best, let's use an example:Let's say you are playing Anub'arak.You see the enemy support over extended in the lane and E in to engage. Your E lands and you get big shield from Subterranean Shield. The enemy is slowed and you manage to land a followup Q on not just the enemy support, but the enemy dps as well. You pop your W to give yourself even more shield and continue to attack the enemy. You feel like a complete God with 700+ health in shields, 50 spell armor because Nerubian Amor popped, and the enemy has been stunned for the past 1.5 seconds. What can the enemy do in the face of such tankiness!Then those few seconds are over. The high fades as you realize you're now a stranded, low damage character with less health than a melee assassin, no dash ability, and a gigantic hitbox that seems to get body blocked by everything and their mother.Quite the shift no?This is a common error I see in a lot of Anub'arak players and probably why so few low level tank players find success with the hero. When it comes down to it, Anub'arak is not that tanky... when his cooldowns are down. While his cooldowns are up, Anub'arak is actually pretty dang resilient and near impossible to focus down.Playing Anub'arak effectively means using these windows of tankiness to their max, and then gtfo'ing when they're down. We discussed this a bit in the last section about knowing limits, but heroes like ETC and Anub'arak experience these shifts MUCH more dramatically than heroes like Muradin and Johanna.To put this is plain terms, if you Power Slide or Burrowed Charge in as either of these heroes, the target you're going for either needs to die within that window or the enemy needs to have too little threat to punish you going in. I know what you're thinking:"So you're saying don't Powerslide or Burrowed Charge in unless I'm in a super advantageous position?"Yes"But then when am I suppoed to use these abilities in teamfights?"The more you play heroes, the more you'll realize there are less committal ways to use certain abilities. ETC can slide parallel to his team to avoid ending up in the middle of the enemy squad. Anub'arak can use his Q's to threaten the enemy team and save his E to E out if the enemy ever turns on him.Not to mention, remember last section where I mentioned that holding abilities can often limit what the enemy dps can do? That applies here as well. If you never Powerslide, that enemy Illidan can't Q into your team without eating a full stun into your team's damage. That enemy Genji can't E onto your support without taking your full stun chain. If you use these abilities to go into the enemy team, not only do you put yourself at risk, but you give these heroes a free pass to do as they please."So I'm just supposed to play like a B*tch?"Not at all, if you see an opportunity to get a kill, go for it 110%, but understanding this fine line between when you're in an advantageous position and when you're just using cooldowns for nothing is the key. You need to be able to swap gears between being out and going in at the drop of a hat.The best example I can think of came recently from a little game called Battlerite. Characters in Battlerite have a certain number of "defensive cooldowns," things like dashes, shields, parries, etc... When an enemy hero has all their defensives up, focusing them is impossible. Many new players make the same mistake of using their defensives to get closer to the enemy or reposition, only to realize that using them means they no longer have anything they can do if the enemy turns on them. This is true in HotS as well, for all heroes. An Anub'arak with his E up is significantly more resilient to focus than an Anub with his E down, just as a Li-ming is much more evasive with her E up then a Li-ming that just E'ed in for damage. I'm not saying you can't use these abilities offensively, but just realize that if you do, you either need to get value out of it during your "window of tankiness" or you need to be getting out the second you miss.If you don't think you can do either, well then, maybe you shouldn't be going in in the first place."Stop moving to attack me again... I dare you, I double dare you!"The best way to think of Threat "Tanking" is to think of yourself as those big bodyguards behind a crimelord. You're not doing anything, but you're letting everyone in the room know that you're ready to bust their heads if they even THINK about doing anything.Unless you're from Overwatch, just about every character in this game stops moving when attacking or casting abilities. This means there are small windows of vulnerability whenever someone tries to do something offensive. As a threat tank, you are looking to punish those moments.If done correctly, the enemy won't actually be able to stop moving to hit you without fearing for their life. If you just run at someone as Garrosh, often they can't actually stop to attack you or you'll catch them, so they instead have to just run away from you. While enemies are running, they're not hitting you or your teammates. In fact, heroes like Garrosh and Stitches take way less damage than they should just because people are too scared to make themselves vulnerable hitting them.This strategy takes on even more mind games when using techniques from my last tank guide, namely Gating and other bush play. The enemy can't walk up and hit your carry because they never know if you're just waiting in that bush for them to overextend. If they respect you, congrats, you're doing your job and your carry has 0 threat on them. If they don't, well, then the fun part happens and you end up with 5 kills 2 minutes in.Unlike the other two parts of this guide, Threat "Tanking" actually isn't taking damage at all. It's making the enemy too afraid to do damage in the first place and actively looking to punish them if they try. This means, similar to "Window Tanking," cooldowns are very important. Once you throw as Garrosh or miss a Stitches hook, your threat no longer exists. The enemy is free to walk up and harass you free of punishment.Threat tanking is best against smaller numbers of enemies since it's harder to threat a larger group, especially when your cc's are single target like Garrosh. It's also best when even the enemy tank is killable. In these casese though, applying constant threat is the best way to make space for your teammates. Just remember not to waste cooldowns or dismount when you don't need to, or else your threat dissipates.While I separated each of these types by tank, truthfully, all tanks can do any of these. Anub with Locust Swarm can tank an enemy team and Muradin can constantly threaten kills with the right comp. In fact, even the tankiest tanks basically have "windows of tankiness," with their cooldowns and talents, these windows are just much longer. Most people think of Johanna as unkillable, but I promise she dies like any other hero if you catch her with her trait down.Truth be told, all "tanking" should be thought of in these windows and threats that you can utilize as a tank. Simply taking damage and cooldowns can be useful, but proper engages can render the enemy dead before they can even use those cooldowns in the first place. Maybe that sounds a bit too ideal, and there are definitely windows where I try to eat cooldowns for my team as a tank, but these situations are few and far between. These are me pre-tapping as 100 soul Diablo and just doing anything to use my tap health bar. These are me knowing that the enemy is all-in on a Varian kill comp and my Tracer just needs Taunt to be down before doing anything. Often, these are more exposing a failure in the enemy's team comp than a mainline strategy I utilize.The main thing I want you to take away from this, and all of my guides, is that there is far FAR more to tanking than simply sitting at the front of your team and eating damage. That damage taken stat is lying to you. Taking more damage does not mean you're a better tank.As a tank, your job is to enable your allies while disabling your enemies. You do best when you're setting up allies to succeed and setting up enemies to fail. It may feel good to dive into the core of the enemy team and eating everything they have, but it's all meaningless if your teammates can use what you're providing them. For the best tanks, it feels like everything they do results in a kill. They're either out of sight/range or all the way in, and I'll tell you what, it's freaking terrifying to play against.