Heroes of Newerth: Teamwork and Roles Part 1. Tanking.

So you want to be a tank. You want to eat Engineer's bullets and split them back in his face. You want to sit in Magmus's boosted ult and make him regret the day he PKed into your lane. You want to laugh hardly as madman does nothing more than tickle you while you systematically take out his team. Well that's a bit dramatic but not outside your grasp! In most games a tank can be as invaluable as a fed carry. Here I will get you your first steps to achieving your fatty tanking glory dreams!

Tank Heroes:
A lot of heroes can be built to fill this role. A few being Balphagore, Keeper of the Forest, Kraken, Legionnaire, Electrician, Armadon etc etc. For this post I will be using Balphagore as my point of reference.

This fatty demonic monstrosity is an ideal tank complete with great early game healing (eating corpses), Pushing power with his minions, AOE nukes and a silence to boot. Most tank heroes are generally strength based as they benefit the most from health oriented items, regeneration and stat based items like behemoth heart's health regen boost. However tanks are not limited to strength, agility heroes such as Zephyr or Sand Wraith can fill this role effectively as well as intelligence heroes like Torturer or Soul Reaper. It's not just the hero that makes or breaks the tank, just like a carry a tank is heavily gold dependent to be effective at his job.






You are not born a tank!
You gotta earn every hit point, armor point and regeneration percent. That starts from the second creeps collide. Being fat costs money and when it comes to money you don't want to compete with your carry in a lane. I'd suggest joining up with a ranged support in the long lane (Top for Legion or Bottom for Hellbourne). Middle is a viable choice if you have the chops to hack it. This allows you to go for as many creep kills as possible without your carry yelling at you for noobing it up and gimping his/her GPM. For starting items generally I pick up logger's hatchet, iron buckler and a stack of Runes of Blight. The iron buckler and logger's hatchet can be switched out for more healing at the start if you feel the need to do so, however especially with Balphagore's corpse heal you shouldn't need it.

Long term items:
Helm of the Black Legion will be your first pickup. Using the iron buckler you picked up from the start, a life tube and a behemoth's heart you create this god send early game tanking beast. If you are really kicking ass farming you should be packing one of these babies in or around the 10 minute mark. If you manage the 10 minute pickup, it will literally take 3+ enemy heroes to take you out till about the 18-20 minute mark.  You maybe inclined to ask "Why no boots Mr.CaDiZzle?!" Well my curious reader if you manage to dominate early and pick the helm up quick, you will be the tankiest at this point compared to enemy DPS than at any later point in the game.Enjoy the comforts of reinforced survivability. Farm up the empty lanes, jungle and push some towers. During this time start piecing your second items together, Plated Greaves. It gives you the added bonus of strength, armor and a creep buff that gives them survivability and damage. Almost like it was made specifically for our obese demonic friend. Now it's time for some assessment and choices. Take a gander at the enemy team's magic damage potential. If you would rate it from medium to high I would suggest picking up a shaman's headdress to counter it. If the enemy has tons of magic damage or lots of AOE magic damage you may want to consider upgrading it to a Barrier Idol as well. If the enemy has low range of magic damage skip this and move right along. Toooo the god among tanking items, the Behemoth's heart. If you lock this puppy down in the 30-35 minute range you should be the golden goose tank. In theory it should take the enemy team focus firing you for around 30 seconds to take your fat self out. More than enough time for your team to swoop in and provide some genocidal loving. Everything else from this point can be considered luxury items. However now that you have the health and regen stack armor items like Demonic Brestplate or Frostfield Plate.Hell grab them both! At that point you could take a leisurely stroll through their well if you so choose.

Your Role: Once you feel you have a solid tank build going for the time frame of the game you should be playing your game around some simple objectives.

• Try to be the first one in a fight and the last to leave ( pending death or extremely low health of course.)
• Get right up in the enemies faces SOAK UP AS MUCH DAMAGE AS POSSIBLE.
•  Try to separate the enemies back line (Ranged, Support and Casters) from the front line heroes. A split team is not working as one meshed unit and can create valuable opportunities to take out left behind heroes. 
• But most importantly DON'T BE RAMBO. You're not built for DPS so if you got caught flexing your tanky fat self deep in enemy territory with no help in sight thinking your invincible, you might just get a wicked five man pounding while being disabled and kited like a rodeo bull. So don't do it.