welcome-banner
All News
article-headline

Taunt varian winrate has been bad for a while

It lags far behind the winrate of twinblades. The reason probably is that taunt varian tries to be a tank but is not that great at being a tank. In fact he has less CC than bruisers like imperius, rexxar, xul etc, while having half their damage output.

Compare the CC of varian and imperius:

  1. Varian has a single target stun on a 16 second cooldown and a single target slow on a 12 second cooldown.

  2. Imperius has an AOE stun on a 10 second cooldown (and the cooldown can be reduced by a level 1 talent) and an AOE slow on a 8 second cooldown.

So what compensation does taunt varian get for being half a tank? It's not like he has waveclear (which rexxar and xul does). He has no other utility. Taunt varian doesn't have great damage (certainly less than bruisers like imperius or rexxar).

Playing taunt varian is like playing half a hero. I remember Fan saying during his stream that taunt is bad and should only be picked in niche situations (e.g. vs tracer/genji etc). The only really great thing about taunt varian is that it is a reliable stun that cannot miss. Everything else about taunt varian is just plain bad. So if you can actually hit your skillshots as a tank (e.g. muradin, ETC), you are basically playing a far superior taunt varian with AOE stuns, AOE slows, and way lower cooldowns on the stuns and slows (and I don't think muradin has less damage than taunt varian either).

Can taunt varian get a slight damage buff so that varian can fully embrace his role as a bruiser? Or if blizz really wants him as a tank with taunt, reduce the cooldown on taunt. 16 seconds is an outdated relic from a bygone era, it is far too long.

 

(Varian also has other joke talents like like his lion fang talents, especially the one at level 7 but I guess that may be better suited for another thread)

All Esports

Entertainment

GosuBattles

Account