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Hey there, this is my first guide, so constructive criticism is welcome. I am doing a guide on tanking because I've seen not many people understand the concept of tanking. If there is something you think I misinterpreted in this guide please tell me and I will try to research and fix it as soon as possible, so without further ado let's begin.
Pros
Good for players that love to rush into fights
Pretty funny seeing people trying to kill you
in vain
You can tower dive with more safety and comfort
You feel like a badass when you tank the titan
You are a major factor in the over all outcome of the game
Cons
For the reason stated above, if you screw up, you can be dooming your team
You have to initiate fights whenever possible
Usually you're pretty targeted
Might fall behind because you should leave farming to jungler (More on this in Laning Section)
Expensive builds
I recommend starting with the usual 
Mark of the Vanguard and 
Reinforced Greaves
Physical Lane
:
Here are some items that you should get in Physical Lane;
Mystical Mark: What I feel is a must get is this item. I would recommend hardly substituting this item unless you have a really squishy team, in which you might want to get 
Sovereignty. This provides a nice health boost, gives 65 physical defense which is higher than the penetration of 4 Focused Voidblades, and a really neat passive dealing 40 magical damage for each enemy in a 15 ft. radius which is good because all tanks are melee.
Ankh of the Bear: A nice item if you are Jousting. It provides a decent amount of health and physical defense. True, it is better if you are bruising, but if you're gonna tank the titan, you might as well get some attack for it.
Breastplate of Valor: I cannot express my love for this item. It gives 75 Phys. Protection, 550 Mana, and 25% CDR when maxed. It is good for gods like 
Bacchus or 
Hades that are very mana hungry and at the same time are more spammable.
For 
Loki and 
Bakasura and Hunters: I recommend for them to get 
Hide of the Nemean Lion or 
Midgardian Mail since most of the time they are going to be attacking you with basic attacks.
Magical Lane
:
Here are some items you should get in Magical Lane;
Magi's Blessing: True very low defenses and a meh health adition, but what makes this so precious is its passive. IMO, it is the thing most mages fear, cc immunity. Yep, 
Poseidon wets his bed and 
Anubis wishes he was dead when they see this item. And the best part is that is not only limited to Magical, so thanks to the new patch these are abilities, but not limited to, that are made damageless because of this item: 
Grasping Hands, 
Fields Of Love, 
Mummify, 
Whirlpool, 
Impale, and 
Calydonian Boar.
Stone of Gaia: Good item when you are pretty targeted and you want to avoid returning to base. It also gives you an okay-ish magical defense and good HPS, not a must get but I recommend getting it for hard hitters like 
Zeus or 
Freya.
Runic Shield: I recommend this even if you don't get Stone of Gaia because the primary reason you want to get this is for the Magic Defense. It also gives you +30 magical protection for 5 seconds every 20 seconds if you get hit by an ability. The only underside to this is that even if you get hit by a Physical Ability, this item's passive is still activated.
For tanks, laning is one of their most important roles. The roles of a laning tank are simple. Help your hunter get the blue buff every time it respawns, you might want to get 
Hand of the Gods to make this go by faster. Then, as you proceed to your lane you could do one of two things depending what part of the game are you in. If it is early game, you might want to use your dash or leap to lower your the minions' health so your hunter can last-shot them. If it is mid game, you want to use your dash or leap on the enemy hunter for two reasons; first one is that since you're more tanky than early game so you can kinda ignore the minions and second of all you don't want to waste your time trying to kill the enemy tank. REMEMBER, your hunter is the one who should be farming and getting the kills, unless they're in base or they're helping another lane. Finally end game, all I can say is that your role here is to tank towers, phoenixes, and the titan if your team runs out of minions. Also, here you can take more risks such as tower diving and leaping straight into your enemy because of your tankiness. That is why I said in Cons: "You have to inititate fights", but don't be stupid because I've seen tanks get cocky and leap right into a team that has the Fire Giant Buff.
S tier
: Truly who I feel is the epitome of tanking, and I'll tell you why. First of all, she has SO much good mobility with her dash. Her 3 or dash helps reduce the minions' health for the hunter to last-shot them. Her taunt is awesome for helping your hunter finish off enemies. Oh and her ult, oh sweet lord her ult, it has nice damage output which helps take off some health again for your hunter (although I find I use it to help my mid lane a lot, but whatever.) Her passive is kinda meh-ish, but I guess it's ok for waveclearing (remember that waveclearing is only ok if your hunter is in base or in another lane.)
: Although I have not played Geb personally, by seeing other people play I can tell he is a good tank. First the mobility with his 1 is amazing and awesome for initiating fights. His passive is good against enemy hunters that have items like 
Deathbringer and 
Malice. His 2 is a good opportunity to combo with his 1, although I bet many of you have seen this already. His 3 is perfect for getting your hunter out of there in sticky situations. His ult is really good for initiation. You just roll in there, pop your ult, and get your whole team or your hunter in there to beat them up badly. His ult also ensures you don't ks a teammate since it is a percentage of their current health.
: His passive is not over the top, best passive ever, but it's good. His 1 is very good for collecting up your enemies for your hunter and deals pretty nice fore-damage. His 2 is good for dealing fore-damage and if timed just right before his 1, you'll be throwing a more-than half dead god at your hunter. His 3 is a nice damage/healing reduction/lifesteal move that works well on teamfights. His 4 is superb at slowing down his enemies (pretty nice if you combined it with Cupid's ult) it is also a good ult for: escaping for his cc immunity, mana regen. if you were running low on it, and yet another initiaion tool.
: Even though I classified him in A tier, I have to admit that he's my favorite tank. His 1 is good for initiation. His 2 is good for when you are team fighting so you give a little buff to your team. His 3 is has good cc and can do decent damage even if you are tanking completely. I find his ult to be a double-edged sword. It can be awesome if you have teammates that have a use for such an ult (a famous duo I've seen is Zeus and 
Odin ults.) At the same time though, if he has no one like that, you can try your luck and getting some of your own team in there (although I don't recommend it if you've caught 2 people with high cc.), but it is pretty useless doing it by yourself since you probably don't have enough damage output and would probably be a waste of time while the enemy team kills your tankless team. My other rant about him is that even though his 1 is perfect for ganking, I find that his mobility is terrible, he is really slow and that's when I have Reinforced Greaves on him. My last rant is that he has such a good waveclear. Which is bad, because as I have said like 423,535,175 times, you need to let your hunter farm more than you.
: A very epic tank , a very nice god with a stun, cool passive, and a slow. I might even include him on S tier if it wasn't for one thing, his infamous mana usage. You might be like you might be like: "LOL wut? That's not bad u nub." Actually, it is really bad, if your hunter says "VAA VAA VAA" they probably mean that they want you to jump in there and screw them up. Yet if you have low mana that could mean two things: you recall then they push your hunter into the tower, in which then their tank proceeds to take on the tower to kill your mate; the other option is to stay and attack, but then your attack would be delayed and most probably fail. Apart from that, he is a marvelous god to play with his natural tankiness and apparently Hi-Rez either raised his base mana or lowered his mana usage.
: A very nice god with a pull, stun, and natural heal. I only have one main rant against him. His damage output is VERY high for a tank imo. He would do better as a solo lane bruiser were he can't outfarm or outfeed the hunter without it being a concern, and just to avoid sounding repetitive I find this true for Tyr, Guan Yu, Hades, and Ares.
: A very nice tank with a passive debuff and an ultimate slow(quite literally.) Ymir is really good for group fight as many people know, he can do one of two things to gather up his team against enemies. First, you can use his 1 to trap your opponents when they're about to return to the jungle. You can also use his 3 to freeze them and it is quite cheap. With a measly 80 mana cost, 2.25s stun, and 210 damage, I find this ability a rare jewel. Unfortunately, like Odin, I find him quite slow, and whereas Odin has a leap, Ymir has no leap or dash, which makes him a terribe initiator. Which
: Probably the squishiest one here, I guess I can't really blame him, I mean after all he was built like a mage. I really don't recommend tanking with him and once you get to level 25 you will start to notice people hate Hades duo since he has a damage kit. Most of his moves cause you to kill and farm rapidly, which by now I shouldn't have to explain that it is bad. A terrible, TERRIBLE support so just stick with mid for him.
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: I put them in them same spot because I would give them the same critique. A good bruiser that can have their tanking moments but are built more for damage, a.k.a bruising. They belong in solo lane and can tank the titan efficiently enough to survive and deal a lot of damage to it at the same time. Again, I classified them in C because they are geared towards damage so they would not belong tanking with the others.
: Maybe it's because I lost interest in him, but I see Ares in a space beyond tanking that I like to call "quasi-tanking." He has not too much waveclear and he is geared towards damage. He can tank efficiently, yet he feels like someone that wants to get all the kills. I really don't know where to place him, but for now my gut is giving me a bad feeling about him.
I would like to thank smite.gamepedia.com and smitefire.com for providing much of the infomation that was used in making this guide. I would also like to thank TormentedTurnip for inspiring to make my Tier section and helping me with coding. If you would like another section, I'll make one if at least 7 people can agree to it.
4/14/2014- Changed Bacchus Tier Listing and added a bit more info on him
5/16/14- Added 2 things to Pros/Cons section
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Also, Hand of the gods is not something that you should possibly get. It's something that you should definitely get. Not only can it help wave clear, which isn't really a big deal for us as tanks, but when upgraded to wrath of the gods, it can help us KIll Gold Fury and Fire Giant.. more importantly though, along with junglers, tanks are some of the best suited to stealing gold fury and fire giant kills from the other team, since they can usually dash or jump in when the FG is at low health, and survive some attacks from the opposing team long enough to activate their Wrath.
Also you should mention, that tank support doesn't just hang out in duo lane all day. when the pusher (Hunter or Mage) gets high enough level that they can quickly clear minions by themselves, it's a good idea for a tank to start roving and protecting the rest of their team. This is another reason why Athena is a top tier tank. She can always be where she's needed most.
#Immarebel
#Ihatehashtags
#hypocrite
Make it nicer to look at :)!
Sorry if this made no sense, I'm writing hurredly in my bus and although I know it more than some native speakers, no type of English is my first language
I would argue the exact same thing for Tyr. His fearless is an AMAZING cc, his protection stance gives him passive protections, and his power cleave in that guard stance gives him sustain. He can absolutely tank in a fight for long periods of time.
Guan Yu and Wukong are at the moment the most powerful support gods if played in the right way. Dont understand why they are in C Tier.
The other reason I put Wukong and Guan Yu so low because I'm talking about tanking here. If I wanted to talk about supports, I could've added
think that tanking is a subcategory of supports. Most
of the things in the Pros/Cons section don't apply to then. I'm talking about TANKING, taking hits, diving and getting all the damage, etc. How to play high-defense characters
Ok I see, well I appreciate another tank guide,because more people need to know about it, or others who potentially would like tank need a way to get good at it. As for this guide, to put it bluntly, it needs work, and I don't mean clean it up, work. I mean you should tank more extensively and possibly even watch some high level tank play, (assuming you don't, if you do then I of course am an ***, but I digress). the reason i say all of this is because some of this advice and opinions, I don't wan't to say they're wrong, I just think.... that maybe there is some more that you need to know or experience that perhaps will change your outlook in this guide, its kinda skewed and I consider myself a high level tank.
So for starters, I disagree with your tier list, it doesn't matter why I do, I have my reasons you have yours, all I ask is that again try checking out some high level conquest tournaments and go from there, also try to play league conquest a lot more (I know its bs sometimes but if you stumble upon someone playing a high level tank at bronze level, you might see some **** that might change your mind about things)
I have so much I could say but I honestly believe that this is a "have to see for your self" kind of situation.
If you do these things and get back to me, I would love to help and hear your second opinion (assuming that you will give me your first and original opinion immediately tonight or something)
1# play adc more, you can watch other tanks (hopefully good ones, and possibly learn from them)
2# when you play adc, look for PIRATE SKIN SOBEKS! I swear every time I see a pirate skin sobek, they are the **** and do everything a tank should TEXTBOOK style.
3# ask the tanks why they do what they do (especially pirate sobeks) and look at their build/starting items. A lot of high level tanks get [Watchers Gift] and [Midas boots] it's not because MoV or tank boots is stupid, its because I high level tank is very mobile and many times roam for a variety of reasons, leaving an adc by himself assuming he can play safe. (probably message them after the game)
4# Watch tournaments. (Redundant phrase is Redundant....sry)
5# READ THIS CAREFULLY! LIKE THE WHOLE THING DUUUDE! ITS CASH!
seriously though, this is like the bible of tanking, I am naturally a good tank and I play with a team that is very competitive, and when I looked at this guide, it helped me get a lot better and understand tanks better, I guarantee it will help you too! It is important to note that a lot about this guide conflicts with you're current ideology of tanking, I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, but check it out, try it, contemplate and some critical thinking, hell, PM the author, he's a great tank. https://www.smitefire.com/smite/guide/one-god-to-tank-them-all-3267?page=2#comments
there is probably more I can say but, idk, just try these things out or just tell me I'm stupid and don't know ****, just please read that guide at the very least.
Goodluck, hope to hear from you soon, happy tanking =)
(if I came off as a jerk, I'm sorry DX )
PM me if you ever wanna dissect my tank brain.
Ok I will try what you told me and play more add, but didn't they switch the 22% out of combat speed to Greaves which would make the tank better at roaming?
@RazeMage: I will do what you say and try to go as tanky as possible with Bacchus, but honestly from experience I have killed 2 full health Bacchus when I was tanking as Athena.
@Setolino: The thing is that as I explained in my Laning section, you don't wanna rob your adc of kills and their movesets are too damage-based. With their abilities I can see a lot of unintended is because their abilities do more damage than most of the other gods here.
So for starters, I disagree with your tier list, it doesn't matter why I do, I have my reasons you have yours, all I ask is that again try checking out some high level conquest tournaments and go from there, also try to play league conquest a lot more (I know its bs sometimes but if you stumble upon someone playing a high level tank at bronze level, you might see some **** that might change your mind about things)
I have so much I could say but I honestly believe that this is a "have to see for your self" kind of situation.
If you do these things and get back to me, I would love to help and hear your second opinion (assuming that you will give me your first and original opinion immediately tonight or something)
1# play adc more, you can watch other tanks (hopefully good ones, and possibly learn from them)
2# when you play adc, look for PIRATE SKIN SOBEKS! I swear every time I see a pirate skin sobek, they are the **** and do everything a tank should TEXTBOOK style.
3# ask the tanks why they do what they do (especially pirate sobeks) and look at their build/starting items. A lot of high level tanks get [Watchers Gift] and [Midas boots] it's not because MoV or tank boots is stupid, its because I high level tank is very mobile and many times roam for a variety of reasons, leaving an adc by himself assuming he can play safe. (probably message them after the game)
4# Watch tournaments. (Redundant phrase is Redundant....sry)
5# READ THIS CAREFULLY! LIKE THE WHOLE THING DUUUDE! ITS CASH!
seriously though, this is like the bible of tanking, I am naturally a good tank and I play with a team that is very competitive, and when I looked at this guide, it helped me get a lot better and understand tanks better, I guarantee it will help you too! It is important to note that a lot about this guide conflicts with you're current ideology of tanking, I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, but check it out, try it, contemplate and some critical thinking, hell, PM the author, he's a great tank. https://www.smitefire.com/smite/guide/one-god-to-tank-them-all-3267?page=2#comments
there is probably more I can say but, idk, just try these things out or just tell me I'm stupid and don't know ****, just please read that guide at the very least.
Goodluck, hope to hear from you soon, happy tanking =)
(if I came off as a jerk, I'm sorry DX )
PM me if you ever wanna dissect my tank brain.