How Tos

Mobile Legends: How to play and position as a Tank

Mobile Legends: How to play and position as a Tank

As a tank, you want to make sure that you push the first wave, and get access to level 4 quickly. Oftentimes, with tanks, the best "defense" is a good "offense", so you want to make sure that you do everything you can to push the minions, get all the EXP, and then back away to buy some items, and continue applying pressure.

Once you are way ahead, you want to start helping out the rest of the teammates, by ganking their lanes. Use the bushes to have the element of surprise on your side, and have greater chances of getting a kill.

This article is part of our Mobile Legends guide series, you can find the rest of our role guides over on our Mobile Legends Hub

Advantages:

- Very high defenses
- Can survive most situations, especially if a Support is nearby to help them.
- Are part of the team's "core"
- Can gank

Disadvantages:

- Don't have kill pressure
- Can't carry a game on their own
- Rely heavily on the team, and on team fights (and winning them)

How to position yourself as a Tank:

When you play Tank, your role will be to mitigate some (ideally most) of the damage that your team will take. You want to get in the front line and use your skills to try and "hold the fort" until the damage dealers on your team chip away at the enemy units.

When your HP will start dropping, your Support should heal/shield you, but if they can't do that, you will have to retreat a little bit (so you won't die), try to regen if you can, and then go help your team (if the teamfight is still going).

Note: A tank could even set up an engage underneath enemy towers, by taking tower aggro and allowing the damage dealers to destroy the opponent in their "safe" zone.

What to build: 

When you play Tank, you want to check the enemy team's composition and how strong they currently are (if they're fed or not). The standard builds include a lot of HP, Armor and Magic Resistance, but you should also try to get HP Regen. The items specifically depend on what the enemy's building, so you want to get more Armor if they have a lot of Physical DPS, or a lot more Magic Resist if they've got a strong Mage. 

HP and HP Regen work great no matter the situation because they will give you a greater health pool to stay alive. 

What Tank to play in Mobile Legends:

The meta is always changing, so you should try to pick a hero that is strong in the current patch. Make sure you check out the Mobile Legends tier list to keep up with the latest top-tier Tanks! 

Conclusion:

- A tank's main role is to peel for the damage dealers, but more than that [see the next point].

- Tank units' purpose is more than acting as a "meatshield". They could provide buffs for allies, could present great engage opportunities, and even deal some damage.

- If a tank positions badly in a teamfight, it could totally destroy an otherwise winnable fight for the team.

- Tanks shouldn't ALWAYS engage. They need to assess situations and make calls depending on whether they are able to fight or not. (and ideally, the team should follow these calls).

To get better at the game, make sure you read our Mobile Legends guide, where you can find all the basics of the game!

Cristina Mesesan
Cristina Mesesan
Cristina is a lifelong gamer who also loves digital art, she's worked as an animator and tried some game level designing in Unity. Her biggest passion is pixel games (Stardew, To the Moon), and she adores writing and sharing her knowledge about games.