Tanky Item Builds in Dota 2 Patch 7.35c

If your job is to tank as much damage as possible in Dota 2 patch 7.35c, then your hero must be properly equipped. Some heroes have natural abilities that allow them to take very little damage and regenerate quickly. Others must heavily invest in armor, magic resistance, HP, and various mobility items.

Tankiness is not just effective HP. It’s your overall ability to survive against the enemy lineup. In some cases, staying alive requires you to buy lots of armor. In other cases, debuff immunity might be the key to winning the match.

This guide covers the elements that you must take into account when building a tank in Dota 2 and the principles you should follow for maximum effectiveness.

What Is a Tank in Dota 2

In Dota 2, a tank is simply a hero that is expected to play on the front line and initiate fights. His job is to be as annoying as possible offensively, but as resistant as possible defensively. This hero is not supposed to die quickly. If he does, the team fight will rarely be won because he’s needed to perform certain duties that lead to enemy deaths.

Consider one of the best-known Dota 2 offlaners, Tidehunter. He blocks a lot of damage, so he’s very hard to kill in the laning phase, and he tends to blink in at the right time to Ravage several enemy heroes. His job is very clear and part of it involves taking damage without dying at the start of a fight.

Key Concepts

The key concepts related to survivability in Dota 2 are listed below:

• Health Points
• Effective HP
• Armor
• Evasion
• Magic Resistance
• Damage Block
• HP regeneration
• Lifesteal
• Spell lifesteal
• Invisibility
• Debuf Immunity
• Mobility

I’ll go through them one by one.

Health Points (HP)

HP represents your hero’s number of health points. When you take damage, you temporarily lose HP. When you get healed or deal damage while having lifesteal or spell lifesteal, you gain HP.

A hero’s HP pool is the maximum number of HP points that they can have. Usually, heroes have between 1500 and 3000 HP during the mid portion of the game. Your raw HP is not the full story though. That HP is lost based on a lot of other factors that can reduce or increase enemy damage.

A hero with 1000 HP might be able to absorb 3000 points of physical damage before dying. So it’s not as simple as it looks. But raw HP does give you an idea of what a hero can withstand before dying.

Effective HP

Effective HP is the real HP that a hero has against physical and magical damage. In other words, it is HP augmented by magic resistance and physical resistance. The latter is provided by armor.

Each point of armor gives your hero around 6% additional effective HP against physical damage. That means that roughly 17 armor will double the effectiveness of your HP against this type of damage.

Your hero also starts with 25% magic resistance. This means that your effective HP against magical damage will be higher than your raw HP. If you buy additional items and end up having 50% magic resistance, your HP will be twice as effective against magical damage, which means that you will be able to absorb 2000 points of magical damage for every 1000 points of HP.

Armor

Armor, as explained above, makes every HP point more durable or more capable of absorbing physical damage. Just 10 armor, which costs around 1100 – 1400 gold, will boost your effective HP by 60%. So if you have 2000 HP, when you buy 10 armor you’re actually buying 1200 HP against physical damage.

This type of knowledge can greatly improve your purchase decisions. If your opponents heavily rely on physical damage and your raw HP is already high enough, instead of investing in additional HP, you could instead invest in armor, in order to fortify that HP and make it more effective.

Evasion

Evasion makes your enemies miss with their basic attacks and it is highly effective in combination with armor. If you have 25% evasion and the enemy does not have a Monkey King Bar, you will completely dodge 1 out of 4 attacks. That’s a total of 25% less damage. And the 75% that remains gets further reduced by armor.

A higher evasion, let’s say 50%, combined with 34 armor, would mean that the enemy damage is reduced by 50% and then by another two-thirds of the remaining 50%. In other words, you’d have around 83% protection against physical damage. That’s absolutely spectacular.

Magic Resistance

Magic resistance simply reduces magical damage by x%. You start with 25% magic resistance, so every spell against you does 25% less damage. If you want to be tankier, you should aim to bring that resistance up to 50%. That way, you’ll only take half the damage.

Damage Block

Some items, such as Pavise or Vanguard, give you damage block. These items block a fixed number of damage points. If the amount of blocked damage is high enough, the item is worth buying. In the case of Pavise, we know for sure that it’s worth buying because the price is low and you get around 600 effective HP for it.

HP regeneration

HP regen is an important element of tankiness because it diminishes the effectiveness of damage and especially of damage over time. If you receive 100 damage per second but have 30 HP regen, the damage dealt against you will be substantially reduced. And if you get 2-3 seconds of respite, you will quickly regenerate even more.

Some heroes, such as Alchemist and Timbersaw, heavily rely on their HP regen to stay alive.

Lifesteal

Lifesteal can be a great way to stay alive if your physical damage output is high enough to give you lots of HP per hit. Heroes like Phantom Assassin, Wraith King, and Chaos Knight can make good use of lifesteal thanks to their critical damage. But even if your hero doesn’t naturally have critical damage or high DPS, you can buy damage items.

Lifestealer, for example, heavily relies on his lifesteal to win games. And if you purchase an Armlet and some other items, such as a Desolator, he can easily maintain his HP in fights and greatly damage his opponents.

Spell Lifesteal

Spell lifesteal works like lifesteal but for magical damage. Heroes with high magical damage output, like Leshrac and Zeus, really benefit from whatever spell lifesteal their items give them.

Invisibility

Although it’s not a direct buff to your effective HP, invisibility can help you avoid being hit and escape from dangerous positions. Heroes like Riki, Bounty Hunter, and Nyx Assassin have abilities that make them invisible. But you can also buy the ability to become invisible by purchasing items like Glimmer Cape and Shadow Blade.

Debuff Immunity

Debuff immunity is offered to you by Black King Bar. This item is a must-buy for most core heroes in most scenarios. You don’t have to rush it, but having it before the 30-minute mark tends to be important. The higher your MMR, the smarter your opponents are going to be. If you don’t have debuff immunity in fights, you will get punished for it.

Mobility

Mobility is indirectly related to tankiness. It makes you more survivable by giving you the ability to avoid getting damaged. You can blink away to disjoint certain projectiles. Or you can move very fast to avoid getting hit by a slower melee opponent. Whatever the case may be, a little bit of extra movement speed and the ability to blink away is very useful in this game.

Durability Items in Dota 2

Here are some of the most important durability items that you should buy to become stronger against enemy damage:

Assault Cuirass

Assault Cuirass gives you +15 armor and 60 attack speed. It also gives your allies +5 armor and +30 attack speed, and it decreases your opponents’ armor by 5 in 1200 radius. This means that if your team has an Assault Cuirass carrier, that hero will create a 60% effective HP difference between his team and the enemy team in big fights.

At the individual level, this item creates a 20 armor or a 120% effective HP difference between yourself and your opponents.

Assault Cuirass costs 5125 gold, which means that it’s a late-game item. However, some heroes can buy it much earlier if they want.

Shiva’s Guard

Shiva’s Guard provides +5 to all attributes, +5 HP regen, and +15 armor. It also decreases enemy attack speed by 45 and enemy HP regen by 25% in a 1200 radius. When activated, it emits a powerful freezing wave that applies debuffs. These debuffs include: 40% movement speed slow for 4s, 15% spell damage amplification for 16s, and 200 damage on impact.

The item costs 5175 gold and it’s a viable alternative to Assault Cuirass.

Heart of Tarrasque

Heart of Tarrasque offers +40 strength and +1.6% HP regen, which is based on your maximum health. In essence, you’re getting 880 HP, a lot of HP regen, and 40 damage if your hero is strength-based. At this rate, it will fully regen your HP in 62 seconds. However, your hero will often have additional HP regen sources, which might lead to a much lower duration.

The price is a Heart is 5200 gold.

Satanic

Satanic offers +25 strength and +25 damage for 5050 gold. It also gives 30% lifesteal and 145% life steal when it is activated. The effect lasts for 6s and you can use it every 30s. Heroes that need a combination of damage and survivability often buy this item in the late game.

Ghost Scepter

Ghost Scepter is the perfect item to buy if you need temporary physical immunity. The effect lasts for 4s and is often sufficient to allow you to blink or teleport away.

Ghost Scepter costs just 1500 gold, making it one of the cheapest items that you can buy to increase your survivability.

Pipe of Insight

Pipe of Insight provides a lot of magic resistance not just to the hero who buys it but also to his team. When using this item, you will have 52.75% magic resistance in total (assuming that your base magic resistance is 25%) while your allies will get a 10% boost to their own magic resistance, plus 2 HP regen.

When Pipe’s Barrier is used, everyone in a 1200 radius gets a magical damage barrier for 12s. That barrier blocks up to 450 magical damage. For 3725 gold, this item offers impressive benefits.

Crimson Guard

Crimson Guard is similar to Pipe, but in relation to physical damage. It blocks 70 damage + 50% of the wearer’s strength. The block chance is 100% and the buff lasts for 8s.

To the hero who buys the item, Crimson offers a lot of other benefits, including +250 HP, 12 HP regen, 8 armor, and 75 / 50 damage block with a proc chance of 60%. For 3725 gold, this is one of the best defensive items that you can buy.

Butterfly

Butterfly is the perfect item to buy when you’re using an agility-based hero and the opponent has revealed his hand, in the sense that he already bought an expensive item that’s not a Monkey King Bar.

Butterfly offers great benefits, including 35% evasion. With that amount of evasion, physical damage will be a much lesser problem than before. Keep in mind, however, that Butterfly is quite expensive, costing 5450 gold.

Glimmer Cape

Glimmer Cape costs 2150 gold and provides 25% magic resistance plus the ability to become invisible for 5s. While invisible, you gain a magic barrier that can block up to 300 damage. You also gain 40 movement speed.

Silver Edge

Silver Edge is another item that gives you the ability to become invisible. But it is quite expensive, costing 5450 gold. However, the benefits are proportional. While invisible, you gain 25% movement speed.

Blade Mail

Blade Mail is one of the most cost-effective items that you can buy on a tank. For 2100 gold, you get +7 armor and a lot of passive and active damage return. This damage return feature will cause enemies to stop hitting you if you’re tanky enough because they will do a lot of that damage to themselves.

Strength-based heroes often buy this item because it gives them all the armor they lack and the ability to protect themselves in difficult situations. Of course, if you’re surrounded by three enemy heroes, they will attack you no matter what. But if you’re in a 1v1 or even a 1v2 situation against squishy heroes, they will have to think twice before attacking you.

The key when using this item is to be aggressive against a small number of heroes that are much squishier than you. If they run away, you keep attacking. If they start fighting back, just activate Damage Return.

Eternal Shroud

Eternal Shroud gives you +14 strength, +250 HP, and +25 magic resistance. It also boosts your ability to regenerate your mana by giving you 20% manasteal, which means that 20% of the spell damage you deal to your opponents restores your mana pool.

This item also gives you magic resistance stacks. The maximum number is 6. For each stack, you receive an additional 4% magic resistance. The buff lasts for 6s. A stack is gained for each 300 spell damage taken.

The cost of this item is 3600 but you receive great defensive capabilities for that cost. However, given that you pay a good amount of that gold for the first passive ability (Shroud), this item is primarily bought by intelligence-based heroes like Zeus and Leshrac.

Heaven’s Halberd

Heaven’s Halberd offers an excellent combination of evasion (25%) strength (20), status resistance (16%), HP regen (+25%), and lifesteal (+25%). Of course, this assumes that you already have some lifesteal to begin with.

The cost of this item is 3500 gold, which is perfectly reasonable for these benefits.

Aeon Disk

Aeon Disk is not a fun item to buy because its cooldown is ridiculously high and it only increases with each use. But sometimes, the ability to be immune to damage for several seconds is critical for success.

Black King Bar

Finally, if you want to be really tanky, you need a BKB. For 4050 gold, you get +10 strength and excellent defense against all sorts of spells that can end your life in seconds. Debuff immunity is essential for most carry heroes, so don’t neglect it.

Header: Valve