Tigreal — Tank / Roamer

Status: Player guide only. Base stats / skill numbers not yet pulled from in-client. Fill from screenshots on next ADB pull. Specialty: Crowd Control / Initiator

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Player Guide — Hajun (300+ stars, ex-pro roamer)

Source: YouTube ioE0Uzf5KTc (Hajun, "How to Still Win Solo Rank With Tigreal — Macro Guide"), ingested 2026-04-29.

Honest framing

Tigreal is not a great solo-rank hero — heavily team-reliant, needs follow-up. There are better roamers if your only goal is climbing. This guide is about winning anyway through macro, trading, and recognizing win conditions, even when team-fights are losing.

Build & Emblem

• Spell: Flicker (always, for set-up flicker-into-ult).
• Emblem: Tank — Firmness → Pull Yourself Together (CDR on Flicker) → Concussive Blast (early-game extra damage).
• Boots: Tough Boots — CC reduction + magic def for early mage poke.
• Roam item: Encourage first (always), bless rapid boots/tough boots with it. Sell at ~8–9 min and switch to Conceal if your engage role demands it.

Item path

1. Tough Boots + Encourage Roam (early CDR/CC reduction).
2. Dominance Ice — anti-heal vs Alpha/Yu Zhong/Moskov; hybrid def.
3. Radiant Armor vs sustained mage poke (Cyclops in this VOD).
4. Antique Cuirass vs phys-skill damage (Yu Zhong, Alpha).
5. Immortality for sustain + aggressive plays.
6. Chastise Pauldron (situational) vs marksmen — drops attack speed; passive: +20% HP back at <30% HP.
7. Blade Armor as post-Immortality replacement vs crit/AS marksmen.

When to pick Tigreal

Pick into AOE follow-up comps (Xavier, Granger, Belerick all amplify his ult). Don't pick into hyper-mobile / single-target burst comps where his ult provides no team value.

Hard counter

Purify is Tigreal's #1 enemy. Track when each enemy uses it; only commit ult when their purify is on cooldown. The whole "when can I ult Cyclops?" decision flows from this.

Macro — encourage-first roam-item rule

Even on roamers that "need" Conceal/Dire Hit, start with Encourage. Reason: you can't reliably damage opponents in the first 2 minutes, so the conceal-class items don't give you XP from mid-lane minions. Encourage's passive lets you clear/share minion XP while building toward L4. Around 8–9 min, when your presence is established and you start rotating for ganks, swap to Conceal.

Macro — early-game routine

1. Check the EXP-side enemy buff at start. Junglers tend to start EXP-side. Visioning enemies = 30g/each + early XP.
2. After buff check, rotate to mid and clear minions for XP/gold.
3. Disrupt opp jungle camps if safe (reset green creep on enemy side to delay their L4).
4. Take detours around bushes that contain the enemy mage — don't get poked unnecessarily walking through their attack range.

Macro — track enemy spell timings

Knowing who has Purify, who has Flicker dictates your engages. Hajun explicitly used "Cyclops just used Purify" → flicker pull → first blood.

Macro — playing around the carry

In a losing solo rank, find the one teammate who's playing well and make plays around them. This Tigreal game: Granger was the best player → Hajun stopped trying to set Roger and instead fed kills to Granger, who carried.

"Solo rank is a place where teamwork is not expected. If you can create teamwork, you'll do well — you'll have that one thing solo rank isn't supposed to have."

Macro — late-game-scaling team rule

If your draft is late-game-scaling (e.g. Belerick + Xavier mid + Granger), you cannot win turtle fights early. Strategy: give turtle, focus the opposite-side objective. Don't force team-fights on terrain that benefits the enemy comp.

Macro — Lord rule (most important)

Never fight before Lord crashes. Only fight with Lord pushing.

Reason: if you fight before Lord and lose, the enemy clears Lord for free and the lead vanishes. Push with Lord, fight with Lord backing you up. This is the rule Hajun explicitly violated mid-VOD as a teaching example: he engaged before Lord crashed, his team won the fight, but the principle still stands.

Vision discipline

• Stand in bushes adjacent to your damage dealers (ADC, mid mage). If enemies want to engage, they have to come from a known angle and you spot them.
• For Lord, cover entrance bushes (river entry, side jungle, lane wall corners).
• Use ult/flicker-ult only when a good follow-up is present (Granger ult ready, Eudora alive, etc). Don't blow flicker-ult on a 1-for-1 trade.

Engagement timing

"Fights should only be taken when [you have follow-up + your damage dealers are positioned]. Otherwise just zone."

For Tigreal specifically: a "good engage" requires the AOE damage hero to be in range to follow up the ult-stun. Without that, your ult lands but enemies just walk away or kill you for free.