Discussing the roles of a Tank in DotA

well you are instantly going to extremes with drow ranger. :P
she needs an entire organised team to protect her.

but you are confusing a so called 'tank' with a hero who can disrupt or split teamfights. a centaur instead of a riki is not going to make a difference when a tidehunter jumps you, he is not going to 'tank' a ravage. and the enemy shouldnt use their spells on a centaur who has used him combo anyway.

say you are walking through the jungle like you said, you spot a hero out of position or bring him out of position with a batrider, at that moment a hero like brewmaster, clockwerk, disruptor etcetera should jump on or between the other heroes to make sure they cant initiate, putting a centaur between 2 heroes doesnt do anything.

even the team that you showed has the most problems in the laning stage. not in teamfights. the only difference that a sven instead of riki is going to make is against specific hero counters, riki is good against mobile heroes while sven gives lockdown against BKB with sudden blink stuns. so he isnt even going to build that tanky with blink being 100% needed.


if you see good teams play it is all about evading damage and making a hero start on the wrong foot in a fight.
in lategame a 'tank' is even more obsolete since agility carry's become very tanky with ****ton of armor and items like satanic and butterfly.


i would say the closest thing that comes to a tanky 'role' are heroes like necro, bristle, razor and viper. they are early and midgame heroes who come online before there is consistent rightclick damage on their team, so you build them so tanky that they can sursive the initial barrage of spells for such a long time that its not worth even trying for the enemy team.

these are pretty much the deathball slowpush heroes that were so popular at TI4 and are even decently popular now.

I think currently with the common tri core lineups the idea of a tank is as follows:
You have good or great dps AND a good hp pool + some armor and magic resistance. Because you can deal damage the enemy team will want to get rid of you, but because you have good durability you don't die fast.
Good examples are Viper and Razor. Both have good armor values and typically build items to be more tanky, because their skills allow them to deal good damage even without real damage items untill midgame.
A somewhat different tank would be Necrophos. He can deal a ****ton of damage with his ult lategame, block buy back with Aghanim's Scepter AND heal his team in drawn out fights with Death Pulse. That combination of things really force the enemy team to either focus him or run into the risk of getting outlasted in a drawn out teamfight. Since he can be played like that the common build is making him very durable so he can absorb a lot of damage before he goes down. That gives more time for the team to deal damage and possibly shut down the enemy damage dealers.

aand everybody forgot centaur warruner.

seriously, best tank in game, innate escape ability, damage return and huge AoE damage if you dont kill that *******.

Necrophos deals tons of damage, heals tons of health.

people really underestimate Tidehunter as a tank. seriously his purge can debuff some serious ****.fiends grip, Dismember and all of the stuns in the game