#367 - Into the Nexus: “What the Tank?”
• Garrett • Kyle • NotParadox or Guest
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Reddit made their bed this week pranking each other.
Into the Nexus is the home for your Heroes of the Storm news. This week’s
Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!
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Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track
- Glassankles
- Tom
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Bonanza Tonight!
News
New HOTS Dev
Tami Sigmund: Hello #VisibleWomen! I’m late but wanted to say hello. 😄 I recently joined the team that runs Heroes of the Storm, Warcraft III Reforged, and Starcraft 1 & 2 as a Senior Game Producer at Blizzard. Also a mom to a 5yo and a baby on the way!
Tami previously working at Zynga (Lead Producer) & Riot (Content Producer)
Tami also tweeted saying not to expect HOTS updates on her Twitter account. That she uses it for personal tweetage.
Hello new followers! Just a heads up - I don’t often talk in specifics about my work here, so if you’ve followed for HotS updates you will be disappointed! This is my personal Twitter — just want you to be aware what you’ve signed up for.
Sure sounds like retiring the Classic Team was just a retiring of the name because those are all titles that were under the “Classic” umbrella.
Links
CCL Drama
Links
CCL Season 2 Draft Incoming
April 17, 2021.
Links
Strategy
Art of Tanking: Non-Warrior Tanks
Alarak:
- W-Q is semi reliable but silence stops movement abilities, not movement. Needs extremely rapid follow up CC and damage. Survivability can be questionable, so a hard cleanse is recommended.
Artanis:
- Engage is not reliable, needs a supplementary engage. Ideally run in double support comps that allow him to brawl over fixed points, such as Braxis control points, and you simply never fight outside of that situation unless you already have some other advantage.
Cassia:
- Ranged tanks essentially are backed up by double, or even triple, support and simply fight over fixed points. Cassia, with her armor, has enough EHP and damage to make this realistic. Valkyrie can both engage and punish retreats when used at max range or in chokes.
Chen:
- Barrel is your engage. Otherwise you reduce damage to your team with Withering Fire at 4, to yourself with E talents, and kind of stand there and drink.
Deathwing:
- Has no engage, draft with ideally multiple area effect stuns. Can zone, can punish CC dependent comps, save your R for escaping.
Dehaka:
- Supplementary engage is encouraged. It is very risky to play Hide and Seek. Works well in situations where the tank is not expected to rotate much.
Hogger:
- Hordapult! Little lacking in the health department, almost certainly needs double support. Shockwave with a Medivh or as follow up to a supplementary engage like Dragon’s Arrow has some potential.
Illidan:
- A lot of people are going to think Hunt is a reliable engage and it is… but Illidan isn’t survivable enough, even with double support, without Meta. If you want to run Illidan as a tank replacement you need Meta and the goal is to win fights of attrition. Preferably that start on your side of the map and you chase the enemy team all the way back to theirs. Bait them in and just keep chasing. Everyone needs to be able to keep up. It's a very tough comp to run, even when Illidan is strong. Speed and click damage.
Imperius:
- Engage isn’t reliable, however it is very close. Even a 15% slow makes it nearly reliable. Supplement with a reliable slow or an actual engage and he becomes follow up, which he certainly has the survivability for. Bonus is he does extreme amounts of damage.
Kerrigan:
- Reliable around certain types of terrain. Can be interfered with by CC and knockbacks. More reliable at 10 with Ultralisk. Isn’t great at controlling vision but has wave clear.
Leoric:
- Somewhat limited survivability and Entomb is his only reliable engage. Other than that, top marks in all categories.
Maiev:
- Cage paired with E is a reliable engage. Disc is not. No built-in survivability other than Vault of the Wardens.
Malthael:
- No engage. Can run people down with W teleports, actually quite similar to Illidan but with mana and no Meta.
Medivh:
- I add this one not because Medivh himself is usually considered a “tank” but because he automatically covers ¾ of the things needed for any non-tank tank. He has Seek covered in Raven Form. He has survivability covered in Force of Will and he has a version of engage covered with both Portal and either Heroic. Here is the caveat: his survivability works better if he is not getting hit, so he essentially needs a survivable dummy put in front of him to cast his W on. The classic example is Xul, because it also covers the lack of wave clear Medivh comps often struggle with, but several other heroes on this list work.
Nazeebo:
- No I’m not kidding. Late game has enough health to be survivable. Zones with damage. Wall requires a small slow to reliably be put on people. Probably never optimal but hilarious.
Ragnaros:
- Molten Core. Yes, thats right, his engage is his trait and you need to bait, force, or trick a fight around a building he can D, essentially so he can R from out of vision. If this sounds terrible it's because it is, but it has worked.
Rexxar:
- Despite Rexxar’s W being very similar to ETC’s Q his reliable engage is actually his heroic. The slow and, at 20, root allows you to catch. Survivability is a bit of a mixed bag but vision control arguably might be the best tank. Has a fantastic level 1 for it with infinite uptime and if you mess up with Misha it's like a Murky dying instead of your tank.
Sonya:
- Leap, survivability is based around either limited spin interrupts from enemy team or a lot of extra healing/damage prevention from your team.
Stukov:
- Let people hit you till level 1 procs, massively slow all of with them D, can hit the raw root combo post 13.
Butcher:
- Point and click engage! Don’t die.
Thrall:
- Sunder, especially from flanks.
Uther:
- Q people with Holy Shock to get them low and keep you high. Wait till someone is out of position and E them. Either allow a backliner to go ham with Divine Shield or Divine Storm enemy as they clump. Once you’ve used all your CDs, try to die first.
Xul:
- Point and click root. Needs a gap closer (speed or portal) and some health.
Yrel:
- E into team. W enemy into your team. Not good, but there are worse.
Zarya:
- Bully into choke. Expulsion choke. The end.
Zeratul:
- Void Prison. This is remarkably similar to playing Johanna. Clear waves until you have your heroic. Try to kill people on CD with your heroic. The caveat is fewer heroes can meaningfully and reliably follow up on VP than Blessed Shield, so very draft constrained.
https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/mfohrg/cavalierguests_art_of_the_tank_20/
Emails
ShineEmperor
Question: 100% of my games have been QM. Are QM players worse than League players? What do the logs in HotsLogs have to say about that? (I'm just curious what the data says... big data ftw)
Scaboboboobs
Question for the show: with the recent apparent focus on making fun 20 upgrades for ults (fenix laser, upcoming anduin light bomb), what level 20 upgrades would you love to see?
Outro
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Personal Stuff
Garrett
Kyle
Anime Emails
Zach
Season 2 of Is it Wrong to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon is kind of bad. It deals with the familias and it isn’t until Season3 when they get into intelligent monsters that it gets better and back to the dungeon, but yes season 1 is best.
Please read The Promised Neverland. I have heard mixed on the anime. Also, Full Metal Alchemist is a better manga than anime.
Can easily read it on viz.com for 1.99 a month or something like that.
Glad to hear you like Fooly Cooly. Also, Kill la Kill was a litte weird but good.
Other really good animes for maybe Garret
Samurai Champloo (overarching story with some random episodes along the way)
Cowboy Bebop (space anime with a cool overarching story with amazing music)
For movies my wife refuses to watch the other anime I mentioned but would watch Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. Both are really great.
Spiffjbug
Anime tldr
Bofur: I don’t want to get hurt so ill max out my defense
Log Horizon
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online
Sword Art Online 2 episodes 18-24
Hey Garret and Kyle
I am enjoying the anime bits at the end of the show so I thought I would chime in.
Bofur is my new favorite anime, you will know right away if its for you. Its just fun.
Log Horizon's first season is pretty good as is gun gale online. Those episodes of sao got me in the feels but its not for everyone