I’ve got Anzogh on my alt account as my raid tank. It’s a C2P account so the only maxed 5-stars are Anzogh and Justice so far. I’ve got 3 more waiting on mats. Anyway, because I’m making him my tank. I’m giving him emblems and taking him down the defense + HP path and that is probably counter-intuitive for most players given his abilities. The idea is to maximize his chances of staying alive long enough to fire his SS. Trying to maximize his damage / healing is not my main concern. While it would be nice to get more healing out of him on raid offense, the normal progression of a raid battle reduces his total damage / healing as the raid goes on. Anzogh does the most good at the early parts of a raid when there are lots of enemies to damage. Ideally, the tank position is the perfect place to make the greatest use of his SS. The problem is that his stats are not ideal for a tank. He has really good defense and fairly below average defense. SG likes to make self healers low on HP. With enough emblems, this deficit is overcome. And if you go all-in on making Anzogh a tank, he becomes scary tough. Oddly enough, Anzogh’s elemental link gives red heroes an elemental defense buff vs. blue. This is conveniently useful for a red tank whereas it is pretty much useless in any other situation. Anzogh’s value as tank is to deal enough damage to bring the attackers into a sniper’s one-shot range while also topping off the health of the flanks & wings.
Anzogh at 80+0: 698 Attack, 793 Defense, 1279 HP
Anzogh at 80+20 (defense + HP path): 742 Attack, 909 Defense, 1459 HP
Anzogh at 80+20 (attack oriented path): 835 Attack, 829 Defense, 1392 HP
For comparison, if you give Ares emblems and prioritize defense and HP, he tops out at 710 Attack, 902 Defense, 1560 HP. Santa is still the king of red tanks though, 667 Attack, 948 Defense, 1581 HP when fully emblemed.
In beta, Anzogh first draft was amusingly bad and much of his reputation came from our first impressions of him. The devs eventually buffed him into his current state and while it doesn’t make him the top red tank, he does become above average with about 7 nodes. My alt has him at this point now and his stats are 698 Attack, 829 Defense, 1351 HP. There’s one member of my main’s alliance that has an 80+14 Anzogh as tank. His defense performance is now well above average and I’m convinced that it’s because people are underestimating Anzogh backed by 4 snipers.