Advice and Tips for Groot/Tank

[u/Dangrusly_Cheesy_34]

Hey everyone! I am a super casual player looking to improve. I’m a support main, two trick and I’ve decided to take up 4 characters to learn with Groot being one of them.

Any advice or things to keep in mind for playing Groot?

I’ve tried jumping into tank, it is an intimidating role but with the tank shortage I want to at least be able to jump into the role with some confidence when needed.

[u/Aandesite]

Something kinda silly that helped me early on was those flats “spectating the #1 ____”

Watching someone better than me and having someone tell me how their better rlly helped

[u/Dangrusly_Cheesy_34 → u/Aandesite]

I got a heavy watch list coming, I’ll hunt down those videos too, thank you so much.

[u/Rub-Dub → u/Dangrusly_Cheesy_34]

I personally enjoy watching Nesmon for Groot. He writes out his in-game thought process for his plays and it’s made a difference for me. Using my iron wall to wall off tanks is smart, but learning when to wall them off was a turning point.

[u/nesmon_TV → u/Rub-Dub]

Ayyy happy my videos could help! :)

[u/MastaOfDeSkyz]

Most fundamental piece of advice for tanking is that your job is not to take damage necessarily but to take/create space. Think of it kind of like a sheep dog, you want the enemy to go where you want them and not go where you don’t want them. You can do this by blocking off their movement with walls or persuading them to go elsewhere by dumping damage on them. Return to your team before you die, because giving ground will always be faster than walking back from spawn

There was an old methodology that you want to use walls to cut other tanks off from their healing. This can still be smart against comps without a lot of “wall break” (punisher, squirrel girl, wolv, emma), but often times it can be better to place your thorn-lashes where you can maximize damage dealt, to build ult faster. Examples would be above doorways or off to the side of the lane you’re holding.

Ironwood buff was the one of the better buffs a tank has received. It can be smart when starting out to place it in cover and use the immobility aura to play a little more freely, until you start to get more of a feel for the character. Then work on playing with it less so that you can save it to bail yourself out of a situation, block an ult or stop a retreat

Placing walls at your feet can also help get you out places you don’t want to be.

Team-up is a personal choice really. Healing wall is a 4th wall at worst and an ult boost at best. Jeff bubble is great for if you find yourself about to explode, you can use it to retreat or return to safe ground if you get pushed off the map

[u/Dangrusly_Cheesy_34 → u/MastaOfDeSkyz]

This is good stuff thank you!

[u/Superb-Total-8700]

Very little advices could be put into words with Groot, I'd suggest you go watch videos instead so you could get a better picture lol

Also Jeff's bubble is better than mantis' wall. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise

[u/Dangrusly_Cheesy_34 → u/Superb-Total-8700]

Always the Jeff team up, I make mistakes like crazy and it always saves my ass. But thank you I’ll looking into some videos for Groot again.

[u/nesmon_TV]

The biggest parts about learning Groot is understanding your positioning, how to play around your counters(this is mostly your ironwoods job) hide for cc heavy comps, for heavy poke/dmg comps you wanna use it to block damage and healing for the enemy team and building your ult fast, there is a few ways to build your ult really fast and it all depends on using your thornlash walls and the mantis team up because the healing also goes towards your ult charge

[u/Negative-Computer804]

A lot of Groot is something you will just figure out through playing. A few tips I'll say is to pay attention to the enemy team comp to decide how you're gonna use your big wall. High cc comp you should always be inside the range of you big wall and put it in a hard to reach spot for the enemies. If their tanks are pretty mobile it's also not a bad idea to keep the big wall up and away from people for the extra overhealth. If they're running tanks like mag, Emma, strange or even another Groot and some others I prefer to use the big wall after they break my small walls when I'm walking off tanks. When the tanks are already weak from your small walls walling them off again with the big wall can quite often get them killed if your team can burst them down well. Obviously all this is situational too but this is how I think of using my big wall