Stone Wall / Video Games

Beat Em Up

• Captain Silver from Battle Circuit. His power-up deals with him and everyone getting a huge defense boost, but it doesn't power his nor anyone else's offense in anyway.

Collectible Card Games

• Hearthstone:
  • Most Taunt minions are statted like this. Since the entire point of Taunt is protecting your other minions and Hero, this makes sense. Ones that aren't statted like this are never played unless they have another effect. Compare the popular and strong Sen'jin Shieldmasta to Evil Heckler, a card that costs the same and has more total stats, but lower health. Evil Heckler never saw play outside of the Arena.
  • Journey to Un'goro added a set of three tar beasts (Tar Creeper, Tar Lurker, and Tar Lord) that enforce this. They're purposefully overstatted Taunt minions... but only on the opponent's turn. On your turn, they all have a measly 1 attack, leaving them basically worthless for trading.
  • Control Warrior, Mage and Priest decks turn their own hero into one of these. They maintain massive amounts of health or armor and focus on keeping the opponent's board clear, without actually bothering to damage the opponent. They ultimately subvert this by the end of the game by closing it out with some kind of finisher, but until that point they play this to a tee.
  • Priests in general have this as their enforced playstyle. They're great at keeping their minions alive and their health topped off with their arsenal of heals, defensive buffs, and removals, but most Priest minions don't have the highest Attack and they lack direct burst damage options. In 2020, their Basic and Classic card sets received a major overhaul to move the class away from one-turn-kill combo decks by taking away most of their options to deal direct hero damage.
• KanColle: Wa-class transport ships have pathetic firepower, outright nonexistent in their most basic form. However, even the basic form has higher HP than a heavy cruiser, while the stronger forms have HP on par with battleships.
• Elements has one unit named "Armagio" who has 1 attack point, but 25 health points (the highest of any normal unit in the game). Its ability "Gravity Pull" lets it figuratively turn itself into a shield by directing damage the would go against the player onto itself instead.
• Culdcept: Wall cards had either little or no attack power depending on their element. However, not only were they cheap to put on a board, they were very tough and often had special abilities to improve their survival rate (ie regeneration or temporary increase of health during a battle).
• Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes: Both sides have one class and a least one Hero that specialises in this. Their fighters sacrifice attack power for high health (with some having armour that reduces damage), and their tricks increase the health stat, as well as providing other forms of protection.
  • The Plants have the Guardian class, which has many nuts that are unable to attack but have the Team Up trait that allows them to be placed in front of other plants.
    • Wall Knight combines the Guardian class with the Solar class, giving him healing abilities, extra sun with which to build his defences and even a few more Team Up plants to block lanes with in addition to multiple instant kill cards such as Lawnmower and Tactical Cuke. His Signature Superpower makes him immune to all damage for 1 turn, and his other superpowers either add a high health plant to defend a lane of your choosing or heal all existing plants.
    • Citron combines the Guardian class with the Smarty class, giving him many abilities that weaken the opposing zombies or prevent them from attacking altogether. His Signature Superpower makes all of his plants immune to damage for 1 turn, and his other superpowers either strengthen the defence of one lane or weaken an opposing zombie.
  • The Zombies have the Hearty class, which also has access to healing abilities.
    • Rustbolt combines the Hearty class with the Brainy class, giving him extra brains with which to build his defences. His Signature Superpower reduces the attack power of a plant of your choosing, and his other superpowers greatly increase the health of a zombie of your choosing or heal himself by a large amount.
• Shadowverse: Many Havencraft followers have higher defense than attack, along with a lot of card effects that raise more defense than attack.
• In Teppen (2019), green decks specialize at survival tactics by shielding and healing units afield. Green Heroes have special abilities that facilitate this, such as Mega Man X's Charge Shot (buffs fielded units so they gain +1 attack when healed), Chun-Li's Kikoushou (grants all fielded units a shield), and Felyne's Shieldspire (heals a unit and reduces any damage of 3 or less to 1).

Fighting Game

• Many fighting games in the '90s had computer controlled AI that embodied this trope - not capable of much in the way of flashy combos or individual character tactics, they instead elect to read the player's inputs and either block everything they throw out, or counter with an attack that lands one frame sooner. Capcom games were notorious for this, as were the infamously cheap Mortal Kombat games.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • R.O.B. is a very heavy character, and he has one of the best recoveries (he can fly), making him abnormally difficult to knock out. He also has two projectiles, with his Eye Beams and gyros, which means he has an easy time with keeping his distance from the opponent. However, his attacks are far weaker than you'd expect of someone his weight, and most R.O.B. players focus on slowly chipping away at the opponent.
  • Activating Monado Shield turns Shulk into the heaviest character in the game for a few seconds, making it hard to send him flying; however, this comes at the cost of his offensive attacks.
  • Ultimate has spirits that can bolster defense, the most extreme example being the Absolutely Safe Capsule from Mother 3 which maximizes defense with no boost at all to offense. There is also a Brick Wall Dojo that any primary spirit can visit to shift towards this.
  • Also in Ultimate, the Dragon Quest Hero has the spell "Kaclang". When cast, it renders the Hero almost completely impervious to damage. Unfortunately, he cannot move, jump, or attack while the spell is active, nor can he cancel the spell prematurely, forcing him to wait for the spell to end before he can act again. Also, a Kaclang'd Hero has one critical weakness: another Hero can use Metal Slash to kill him instantly.
• Street Fighter:
  • Guile's traditional playstyle is very rigid: you throw Sonic Booms across the stage and wait for your opponent to jump, then punish with a Flash Kick. You still want to be moving on your opponent as Guile has some good moves to open up someone up close but by and large, it's a very patient game when it comes to Guile because his attacks force him to charge his specials before executing them, requiring time.
  • Dhalsim is very slow moving, has low health, his attacks don't do much damage and when used improperly leave him wide open to attack, causing most players to pass him up entirely. However, used well he is an absolute beast - he has excellent zoning tools, can counter virtually anything his opponent does and is extremely hard to pin down (moreso in later revisions where he gets a teleport move). He relies on being smarter than his opponent and using their aggression against them, not being stronger or faster.
  • Q from Street Fighter III. Often considered a bottom-tier character, Q has one major thing going for him: his high stamina. He can also increase it by taunting. And the increase is applied on each of the first three taunts he does in a round. Once he's taunted thrice, his health is almost doubled. At that point the match changes from "opponent juggles Q into oblivion" to "Q takes everything thrown at him and chips the opponent to death with Dashing Punches".
• Advanced Variable Geo 2 gives us Judoka Kyouko Kirishima, whose normal attacks are very conventional and lack the punch of those of the other characters. However, she takes somewhat less damage than most characters, and is balanced out with an array of high-power counters.
• Another four years later saw SNK make a true "Counter Wall" in the form of Seth. Even more defensive than Kasumi Todoh, Seth's low-output, unimpressive normal and special attacks are made up for by a noticeable amount of defensive and high-output counters... among which is a counter-based Limit Break which hits hard.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy:Exdeath is one of the most extreme cases, given that his moveset revolves mostly around Counter Attacks. Essentially, what an Exdeath player wants to do is stand in one place and nullify or deflect anything the opponent throws at him, using a non-counter move only if the opponent tries not attacking him or as a finisher. Think Wobbuffet placed into a 3-D fighting game context.
• Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat is probably the Trope Maker for turtle fighters. Sub-Zero players are widely known and often reviled for assertively setting up damaging Ice Clone traps and waiting for their opponents to make their move. This is especially true in MK4, where Sub-Zero has most of his other tactics nerfed, but this one is left untouched.
• Good Gods in Black & White 2 are these. Fitting of their 'Good' nature, these Gods use strong walls to discourage (and, because of the AI, utterly stop)) enemy militaries from attacking. The downside of this is the (general) inability to kill said enemy troops, but the occasional Fireball doesn't dent your Good Rating.
• Iceman in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 does not take Scratch Damage while blocking 99% of the attacks in the game (barring War Machine's Missiles for some reason), and can easily throw a quick low damage projectile at any opening given, allowing a skilled player to slowly chip away at opponents' health and/or wait out the clock.
• Tenten in the Naruto Storm series, but especially Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations, is a bizarre example of this: one of her special moves is to lay mines surrounding herself, which is intended to keep opponents from coming close. She doesn't have to move from her spot, as she can fight entirely through projectiles (including some rather lengthy projectile combos). In true Stone Wall fashion, she has the lowest damage output of the entire series.
• 'Giant' style wrestlers in Fire Pro Wrestling. The Giant fighting style has very low Affinity level in every stat but Punch and Rough — they can't even perform power moves or lariats efficiently in spite of their size, and tire quickly unless their moveset is heavy on Punch and/or Rough moves. However, the Giant defensive style is very guarded and difficult to crack; early in a match, they can't be thrown even with the simplest takedowns, and have to be worn down gradually with strikes and submissions. Also, the lack of effective offensive weapons means there are a lot of points left to put into defense for Create-A-Wrestlers.

First Person Shooters

• In classic Doom, this role falls to most non-hitscan enemies. They have better defenses than the zombie chaingunners and shotgunners, but lack their undodgeable attacks. The Pinky in particular has above-average health, but is restricted to a rather slow melee attack, making it borderline harmless in a one-on-one fight as long as the player keeps backing up. Fanmade maps tend to use these enemies as meatshields, forcing the player to either get around them or blast through them before the chaingunners chew through their health.
• Half-Life:
  • The Zombies are a good example of this in the Half-Life franchise. They may not be strong, but their toughness overall is rather high, except whenever it comes to shooting the Headcrabs off of them, which is a close enough weakness that Zombies normally have in common in various media.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • For the Meat Shield version, a Heavy Weapons Guy with Natascha equipped can be one of these. For the price of lower firepower, anyone caught by these bullets will get slowed down, resulting in anything between a minor annoyance to a complete death trap depending on the circumstances. Additionally, the Natascha negates 20% the damage taken when the Heavy is below 50% health. Add a Medic into the equation, constantly healing the Heavy from any damage he might pick up from a lucky shot, and you've got a solid wall.
  • A heavy carrying the Fists of Steel and being healed by a Medic can be almost unkillable, but is reduced to melee attacks if he wants to keep the protection. The Fists of Steel also subvert this to a degree, since they make its wearer take twice as much damage from melee attacks.
  • An Eyelander (or reskins) and Chargin' Targe wielding demoman being healed by a medic. The Charging' Targe providing resistance to fire and explosive damage and the eyelander healing the demoman and increasing his speed and health upon killing enemies. The downside is not being able to equip the stickybomb launcher, making him unable to lay traps and limiting his ability to kill enemies at range.
  • Tanks in Mann Vs. Machine don't have any offensive capability other than inching towards your base carrying a bomb, but they take impressive amounts of punishment. To get the achievement for killing it within 20 seconds of it spawning, the recommended method is five wrangled sentries pointed exclusively at the thing.
  • Also in MvM, the Scout, oddly, becomes this, in the inverse of his usual game role. His scattergun is designed to handle one-on-one situations while up-close with the enemy, making it decidedly lackluster unless fully upgraded at beating back the hordes. But he's as fast as ever, faster still if upgraded properly, and unlike other classes, when he picks up money, his health increases, and can go above his limit. A particularly nimble scout can have something like 600 health. On top of that, many players swap out the pistol for the Mad Milk (which gives everyone Life Drain on the splashed enemies) and the bat for the Fan-Of-War (which does almost no damage but lets everyone do more damage to attacked enemies), further reducing his offensive power in exchange for support and versatility.
  • A common Soldier setup is to combine the Black Box (a rocket launcher with reduced clip size and a Life Drain effect) with the Concheror (passive health regeneration, can activate a team buff that gives everyone in the area increased speed and Life Drain), and often adding in the Escape Plan for good measure (melee weapon that boosts speed when at low health), resulting in a character that regains health at absurd speed, at the cost of having little more than three rockets to work with for offense. It's informally nicknamed "The Bad Box" due to its association with poor players using it as a crutch and being very frustrating to play against.
• Shield Operators in Rainbow Six Siege sacrifice their ability to carry a primary weapon for the defense of a ballistic shield, which cannot be penetrated by any normal gunfire at all. They wield handguns alongside the shield, but cannot fire them accurately without moving the shield away from their face to aim. Therefore their offensive power is very poor outside of extreme close range, but they are also nigh-unkillable from the front without exceptional aim (to target the hand extended to hold their gun) or the use of explosives or Smoke's gas. A melee attack, as well as being electrocuted by Bandit, will cause them to lower their shields momentarily, allowing a follow-up attack. Montagne, however, takes the cake, as he is a shield operator whose special ability allows him to extend his shield down and outwards, fully covering him from the front and sides at the cost of his ability to attack.
• The AAV7A1 AMTRAC in Battlefield 3. It has a weapon virtually useless against armor that has an extremely sluggish rotation rate. However it has extremely good armor that can withstand 5 packs of C4 being detonated at once (other vehicles are fully destroyed with 3) and can function as a spawn point for the entire team which allows it to indirectly take down Tanks just by getting the tank to focus on it while the endless spawning team mates focus on taking it down.
• Overwatch: Reinhardt is one of two characters who does not have a ranged weapon and despite it being a giant space-age hammer, its damage output isn't too stellar. His only ranged attack has a cooldown and his strongest attack is a hard-to-aim charge (that also has a cooldown). But to make up for this, he has a ton of health (most of it being armor) and he can deploy a front-facing barrier that can absorb massive amounts of damage and is big enough cover any teammate that's behind him.
  Reinhardt: "Don't worry, my friend! I am your shield!"
• Among the Heroes of Star Wars: Battlefront 30-5, Leia and Palpatine serve as this. They have high health, the ability to block incoming fire and (in some modes) healing pick-ups, but their defensive abilities leave them with a rather one-dimensional offensive moveset.
• Paladins:
  • Fernando has the almost the lowest attack of any champion, but his defense is unmatched. With the most HP of any champion (By comparison, most heroes only have around 2-3 thousand HP.) and packing a shield that can withstand even more, and you also have cards that allow you to boost his health even further. This is enough to withstand any ultimate bar the Dragon Punch, and even then Fernando's own ultimate will stop the Dragon Punch cold
  • Inara's main weapon fires three slow projectiles that don't deal much damage unless you can hit with all of them. Her only other form of offense is her Warder's Field, which slowly deals damage to enemies in an area and slows them down, serving more to subtly encourage them to stay away from the point than to kill them. However, she also has the ability to deploy rock walls that not only block enemy projectiles, but also vision and movement, and she can temporarily buff her Damage Reduction, so her defensive abilities more than make up for her poor damage output.
  • Terminus' only ranged attack is a small energy blast that deals little damage on its own. However, in addition to having a minimum of 4000 health, he can project a field in front of himself that can soak up unlimited damage for a short time—which actually gives him extra charges of his ranged attack for potentially devastating (but still uncommon and reliant on enemies shooting at him when the power is active) damage bursts.
  • Yagorath has extremely high HP and passive Damage Reduction, which she can boost even farther by using Hardening (which temporarily disables all her other abilities). However, this comes at the cost of her not even being able to move most of the time, and her only offensive abilities are a short-range acid spray, a limited supply of long-range spikes that have a long cooldown (although she can have many charges of them at once), the aforementioned Hardening (which deals area damage once the effect ends), and her Ultimate (which lets her eat an enemy for a One-Hit Kill and grants her an extra HP meter while she's eating, although depleting that extra HP will interrupt the ability).
• Vermintide II: Bardin's Ironbreaker career begins with Damage Reduction, extra Stamina for blocking attacks, a special ability that draws aggro and enhances both of the above, a No-Sell power, access to shields for extra defense, and high Hit Points. Many of its Talents boost his defenses even further.
• Apex Legends:
  • Wattson creates electrical fences to either defend her squad, or trap opponents. Said fences suppress incoming projectiles, protecting from explosions and air strikes. Unfortunately without a weapon, only her barriers could keep her opponents away.
  • Gibraltar has an armshield that can block incoming damage when aiming and can deploy a dome shield that blocks all incoming damage. However, while his dome blocks all incoming damage, neither he nor his squadmates could also fire out of it.

MMORPGs

• Tanks in World of Warcraft avert the trope, often ending up at or near the top of the damage dealing for their group. This is because, in World of Warcraft, much of a tank's threat generation is caused by damage output, and the tank often spends most of the fight attacking multiple enemies with close-range area-effect attacks to hold threat.
• The tanking classes in EverQuest, which include paladins, shadow knights, and warriors, play this trope straight. While the damage output of these classes is respectable, their primary focus is in holding the attention of the enemy. As such, their ability to deal damage is underplayed in favor of improving their damage-taking abilities.
• In City of Heroes and City of Villains, one defensive choice for Tanker/Brute is Stone Armor. There's a power in that set called "Granite Armor", which turns you into a special character model (a living stone statue type of thing). While you have that active, you have somewhere between 15% and 25.2% Defense against all but Psionics, 37.5% and 63.7% damage reduction against all but Psionics, and high resistance to all status effects. The tradeoff is that you do 30% less damage, take three times longer to recharge across the board, run less than a third your normal speed and cannot jump. Add in a few more defensive powers, and a well-built Stone Armor tank can survive almost anything in the game.
• In Final Fantasy's MMOs, Paladins are a constant example.
  • Final Fantasy XI gives the Paladin high vitality, high defense, and a great array of defensive and curative powers (combined with skills to Draw Aggro) to ensure that while they can't smite evil especially hard, they can keep their team up and endure everything the enemy can throw their way, while making sure it all comes their way.
  • Paladins in Final Fantasy XIV are unique in that, after Level 50, they are the only job that can use one-handed weapons and shields; Black and White Mages switched to exclusive two-handed weapons for Heavensward, and all other jobs have used two-handed weapons from the get-go. As a consequence, the Paladin's damage-dealing capacity is a bit underwhelming even compared to fellow their fellow Tank jobs Warrior, Dark Knight, and Gunbreaker. When it comes to sheer survival, however, the Paladin is hard to beat: they have very high defense in comparison to other tanks, and their skillset is centered around damage mitigation and staying alive long enough for their teammates to fell the enemy and win the fight.
• EVE Online:
  • Due to the balancing factors present in the game's fitting system, any ship that is fitted for maximum defense is going to sacrifice maneuverability, speed, and damage output in order to achieve the most defensive ability. Some ships, such as the Drake, the Rokh, the Prophecy, and others are actually designed around the concept of surviving a fight by having a hard shell while only having moderate damage capabilities, while ships like the Dominix and the Armageddon, which can rely on remote drones to deal damage rather than their own weapons, can afford to dedicate more power and resources towards defensive modules. Some of these designs are even used as "bait ships" — ships that have tremendous damage-soaking ability in exchange for being ponderously slow and practically toothless, but still retaining the ability to warp-scramble attackers (thus keeping them from fleeing). Of course, the whole point is to trick a group into attacking your nigh-invulnerable ship, then calling in your friends to ambush them.
  • The recent patch to Mining Barges and Exhumers has transformed several mining ships into Stone Walls. While all Exhumers grant a 5% bonus to shield resistances per level of Mining Barge skill (which you need to have maxed out just to fly an Exhumer), the Skiff takes it one step further by also adding a 5% bonus to Shield Hitpoints per level of Mining Barge. It also has more mid-slots than any other Exhumer, and since it only has to equip one mining laser, has the most extra CPU and Powergrid for fitting shield modules. This allows the Skiff to fit a buffer tank that can exceed 90,000 effective hitpoints. However, since it is a mining ship, it has poor handling and virtually no offensive capabilities other than drones.
• Paragons in Guild Wars. Warriors are loaded with defensive skills, but their offense is at least halfway decent. Paragons, however, have armor that's on par with a warrior, can carry a shield for extra defense, and are absolutely packed with defensive skills and partywide defensive buffs. Killing a Paragon who knows what he's doing is an exercise in frustration. They aren't very dangerous though, and their offense is mildly annoying at best.
• In Phantasy Star Online, the RAcaseal has the highest Defense, second-to-highest HP, and pretty high Evasion. The result of this is being a godly tank. However, their damage output is nothing to write home about.
• Wizard101:
  • The Ice school is the only class that can equip gear with resistance to all attacks (other than crowns gear.) Even though later gear allows other schools to equip similar gear, Ice still has the best resistance. Ice has the weakest attack spells, but many defense-based spells, and can even steal defensive charms and slow healing effects from enemies. They also have the highest health of all the schools.
  • The Life school's damage output is equal to Ice's, but they make up for it with their ability to heal themselves and their teammates. They also have the spell Spirit Armor, which negates up to 400 damage from attacks. They also have very good health (if not to Ice's extent).
• AceOnline has the M-Gear. It shtick is stacking as much defense as it can to wither enemy attacks. A properly leveled M-Gear can hold off an attack by as many as thirty assailants at once without so much as breaking a sweat. Its crushing lack of attack power though, is more of an annoyance when level grinding, because enemy mobs give paltry amounts of EXP that killing many of them quickly is the only way to effectively level up.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

• League of Legends: Multiple characters, including Braum, Nautilus, Leona, and Maokai, have pretty bad damage scaling, but astonishing durability. They're often a popular choice for support roles: the low damage output means they don't need to worry about last-hitting too many minions and thus preventing their carry from getting gold, while the durability lets them soak up damage that might otherwise endanger that carry. Ones with nasty crowd control abilities can even contribute a fair bit in teamfights - Cho'gath is particularly notable for this given how much effort it takes to put him down in the late-game.

Platform Games

• The Iron Golem in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is no different from any other golem-esque enemy, aside from the fact that its defense is so ridiculously high that it'll only take 1 damage from any attack (on the flip-side, however, it doesn't have a lot of HP, making getting in a ton of individual weak hits the optimal strategy against it).
• Cuphead: The Heart charm turns the playable characters into this, reducing damage output in exchange for an extra heart. The Double Heart charm nerfs your damage even more in exchange for one more additional heart (two total).
• Freedom Planet 2 turns Milla into one of these. She still has the lowest health of any character (though not quite as severe as in the first game) and the slowest movement speed overall, but she gets two powerful defensive abilities - a shield that reflects bullets back at her opponent and a dodge that grants her roughly a quarter-second of invincibility frames as well as charging her strongest attack. Boss battles with her rely heavily on learning their moves, dodging or blocking them and then striking when an opening presents itself.
• Kirby: The Stone ability, at least in the earliest games. Turning into a stone renders Kirby immune to just about any damage, but its only attack relies on Kirby doing this midair to smash enemies on the way down. And if he's flying, he needs to release air before using the ability, which can complicate things in certain cases. Return to Dream Land minimized this by giving Kirby an uppercut attack to use without transforming.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels has the Buzzy Beetle, which in these games are functionally identical to the Koopa, and therefore aren't an active threat to players like the Lakitu or Hammer Bros. However, their immunity to fireballs makes them very tricky, if not impossible, to dispose of. Later games would avert this by giving them additional ways of attacking the player, while simultaneously giving them additional weaknesses such as the spin jump or Yoshi's tongue.
  • Super Mario Bros. 3: The Tanuki suit has a mode that turns Mario to stone. You can't be hurt, but you can't jump on enemies^note You can land on them, though, which will kill a few otherwise invincible obstacles or use the tail-swat attack.
  • Games from Super Mario 64 onward have the occasional Bully enemy, which can neither harm or be harmed directly: they ram into Mario and company in the hopes of pushing them into a Bottomless Pit, Lava Pit; etc., which is also how they themselves are defeated.
• Olaf of The Lost Vikings is a very basic example of the Shielding variety (with an actual shield, no less!). He can't attack at all, but he can block any attack. Simply place him in front of an enemy to absorb all of its attacks while Baleog takes it out.
• In the main adventure, Shovel Knight's love interest Shield Knight is initially presented as this. Her physical defenses are not best than any character and she doesn't attack, but she sports a shield bigger than she is to withstand incredible punishment, including the final boss's desperation attack, and she often jumps in the air so the protagonist will use her shield as a platform. However, this is only in the main campaign: in Specter of Torment flashback battle, Specter Knight discovers at his expense that Shield Knight knows how to use her shield as an offensive weapon, something you can try for your own benefit in Showdown.

Racing Games

• Mario Kart:
  • Mario Kart: Double Dash!!:
    • Piranha Pipes and Boo Pipes have the best off-road for heavyweight vehicles and while the former has a good top speed, the latter's acceleration is comparable to lightweights. However, they suck where their counterpart shines and both mini-turbos are mediocre.
    • Waluigi Racer is a moderate example: it is the second heaviest middleweight car with Turbo Yoshi and its off-road is comparable to the lightest vehicles, but its top speed and acceleration are only average and its mini-turbos are mediocre.
  • Mario Kart Wii has a whole class that can be considered this, and some exceptions:
    • The heavier starter vehicles^Examplesthe heavyweight kart Offroader and its counterpart Wario Bike have the worst top speed of their respective leagues and a horrible drift, but great weight^ExplanationWario Bike is the heaviest bike in the game while Offroader is the second heaviest vehicle in the whole-game, good mini-turbo and off-road (though it's not as good as the specialized vehicles below), and the best acceleration and handling of heavyweights.
    • Off-road vehicles^Examplesthe lightweight kart Tiny Titan, its bike counterpart Magikruiser, the middleweight kart Super Blooper and its bike counterpart Dolphin Dasher share many similarities: they have subpar acceleration, handling and mini-turbo for their classes, and their drift stat the lamest. Their weight is also variable, as they ever can be the heavier or lighter of their weight classes^ExplanationTiny Titan is the heaviest kart, Magikruiser is the second heaviest small bike, and Dolphin Dasher is the heaviest middleweight bike, while Super Blooper actually is the lightest middleweight kart, but benefits a smaller hitbox to compensate. However, their top speed is decent, and most importantly, their speciality prevents them from losing too much power when pushed off-road while making them more stable on slippy environments like N64 Sherbet Land ice or DS Desert Hills sand. This feature can also be used on GBA Shy Guy Beach, where water is something between normal road and off-road, slowing down other vehicles: a character with an off-road bonus on these vehicles can actually drift and use boosts where others would be paralyzed, giving them a low but exceptional recovery power. Also, the bikes in this category benefit inside drift, reducing their statistic disadvantage and actually allowing them to take sharp turns more precisely than others regardless of the road.
    • The heavyweight bike Phantom and the Piranha Prowler kart are both special cases, considering they subvert the category above. While the former is the off-road champion for heavyweights and their worst drifter^note Its off-road equals Dolphin Dasher's while its drift actually is the worst for any vehicle in the game, the rest of its stats actually is more comparable to the middleweight bike Zip Zip: Phantom's acceleration and handling are the second-to-best of its category and its mini-turbo is the third, but it only has subpar top speed and weight for its league. Unlike the previous bikes, it only performs outside drift, making it one of the most imprecise vehicles in the game in sharp corners. On the other hand, Piranha Prowler matches all the stats^note it actually is the heaviest vehicle in the whole game but the off-road and the drift, which are too bad or not bad enough to enter in this category.
  • Mario Kart 7 has stats for characters, vehicles bodies, tires and gliders. This makes some vehicles closer to this trope than the conventional Mighty Glacier. Tiny Tug is a fairly controllable kart with a decent acceleration, a good weight to protect itself and is among the most resistants to off-road. However, its mini-turbo are mediocre and its (land) top speed below average (it has the best underwater top speed, however). Cact-X has the same off-road advantage and is more controllable, but is lighter and slower.
  • Mario Kart 8
    • The game has the Metal class characters, Metal Mario and Pink Gold Peach: while they are the same height as their respective counterparts, they are as slow to start and as heavy as Bowser and share their miserable traction. However, their top speed only reaches Cruiser levels (like Waluigi) but the counterpart is that they are as controllable as them. Deluxe amplifies this trope by making them as controllable as lightest Cruisers, making their top speed a compromise between them and the heaviest Cruisers, and by giving them a bit more acceleration and more traction. All of this while having middleweight sized vehicles with the hitbox that comes with it in both versions.
    • In the Booster Course Pass, Petey Piranha makes his great return with the same stats as the Metal class, but as a large character: while his big size makes him more vulnerable to attacks, he has the longest invincibility time to compensate.
    • In Deluxe, Tanooki Kart, Koopa Clown and Master Cycle Zero are a bit slow concerning acceleration and top speed, but have a decent weight, good controls and the best traction: Monster, Hot Monster and Ancient Tires make them heavier and more stable, but less controllable, while Off-Road, Retro Off-Road and Triforce Tires make them faster in every way (except mini-turbo), but still hard to control.
• In Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, characters with overall low speed stats (1 or 2 speed) can use their high acceleration to quickly gain speed, recover from attacks, and correct driving errors much more quickly than faster racers. They also tend to have above average Drift Spark Rates for their weight class. Despite this, and true to their norm, they have lower top speeds overall and need to rely more greatly on drifting, boosting, and knocking away other racers to overtake opponents and stay ahead.

Real Time Strategy

• AI War: Fleet Command:
  • Wormhole Guardposts have four million hit points, which exceeds some of the biggest ships both you and the AI can throw at each other. It has an attack value of 2.
  • The Botnet Golems are pretty terrible for an actual offense on enemy territory, since they can't even touch anything immune to Reclamation damage, so they're useless even against a bog-standard Guard Post. However, almost every unit used in any attack is vulnerable to Reclamation, and the sheer amount the Golem's Insanity Beam puts out is so absurdly huge it can chew up whole waves by itself, and spit them all out hostile to the AI. A well-placed Botnet Golem can swallow an entire Cross-Planet Attack and return it to its sender in hostile form.
  • Bubble forcefields tend to pull everything in this direction, completely soaking up all damage for everything they protect but halving all damage coming from within them; until it falls, attack is nerfed, but defense is near-perfect. Mobile forcefields such as those found on Spire ships, riot control starships, forcefield guardians and AI forcefields don't have this damage penalty however.
  • The sequel's Macrophage harvesters aren't particularly damaging, but thanks to their attacks stealing HP, a protective buff that cuts all damage coming from long range, and simply enormous HP and shields, they are absurdly durable. A single harvester can tie up a whole fleet for a decent while, chipping and whittling them down the whole time.
  • Also in the sequel are the Ablative Trolls. Unique for a swarming type strikecraft, they're exceedingly durable, at the expense of some attack power, so they're much less likely to die from a single grenade weapon
• Command & Conquer:
  • In Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Command & Conquer: Red Alert games, the Armored Personnel Carrier has heavy armor, but only a light machine gun. Though it is meant to carry troops around the field, it is almost always used as a stone wall unit.
  • In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, the war miner, though mainly a resource harvester, is armed with a small machine gun, but has enough armor to defeat tanks on a one-on-one battle. Same with the slave miner in the Yuri's Revenge expansion pack. Also in the YR expansion, the Allies have access to the Battle Fortress, which is the the most heavily-armored unit in the game and is armed with a light machine gun, though it can be garrisoned with five infantry, who can shoot out of the vehicle, making it one of the best units in terms of armor and firepower, hence turning it into a Mighty Glacier when fully loaded.
  • The Allied Assault Destroyer in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is heavy, slow, and packs a not-terribly-impressive gun for its cost. However, it has impressive armor to begin with, and its special ability both increases its durability and redirects projectiles from nearby allied units to the destroyer, at the cost of not being able to shoot at all. (It can, however, still crush things, including many light vehicles.)
• Netstorm has several towers whose only function is to absorb the enemy shots, with no attack whatsoever. Technically, any building would suffice, but the towers automatically switch the attention to themselves and usually have higher HP. The Bulwark takes the trope up to eleven (and the price is appropriate).
• This is how Sins of the Prophets implements the Halcyon-class (not to be confused with the Autumn-class pioneered by the Pillar of Autumn) — it has pathetic firepower for how late it is available, but it has almost capital ship-level durability.
• The British Commonwealth from Company of Heroes pretty much relies on defense for their modus operandi. Their abilities allow you to create trenches, emplacements, and provide defensive buffs. For an example of units, the Royal Engineer's Churchill tank can be their best example. While they're sluggish and have a weak cannon, they're well-armored on all sides that reduces penetration.
• Divide and Conquer:
  • The Dwarves have been split into three factions from Third Age and of the three, Khazad-Dum fits this to a tee. While Erebor focuses on extremely strong axe-wielding heavy infantry and Ered Luin focuses on pike-and-shot tactics with crossbows, Khazad-Dum doubles-down on defensive warfare with dwarven legionnaire infantry boasting some of the highest armour and shield values of the game — at the expense of lower offensive power and lack of tactical flexibility, having to call upon mercenaries for their cavalry options.
  • Bree-land's Merchant Guard unit are the only polehammer-wielding troops in Middle Earth and while heavily-armoured, they have below-average attack for end-game elite infantry and they also have no shield and low defence skill. While they will shrug off and defeat most counterpart infantry, anything with Armor Piercing Attacks will chew through them, especially armour-piercing ranged units.
• The Dwarfs in Total War: Warhammer have a vast variety of heavily-armoured melee troops backed up with devastating crossbows, gunners, cannons and even flamethrowers. However, they have no cavalry at all and their infantry are extremely slow, the only exception being the completely unarmoured and vulnerable Slayers. Strategically speaking the Dwarfs are poorly suited to chasing down and outmanoeuvring the enemy and instead are better off holding their ground and daring the enemy to come to them.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon:
  • The Tug is the toughest sloop-sized ship in the game by far, as it has 1110 HP, over twice as much as a Warsloop (550 HP) and over 3 times as much as the Torpedo Boat (350 HP), however, the Tug is also the poorest armed ship available to the Royal Navy, as it is only equipped with 1 medium gun and 2 light guns (which is even less than the Warsloop's 1 light and 4 medium guns), the Tug is also very slow for such a small ship, moving at only half the speed of a Torpedo Boat. Although the Tug lacks firepower and speed, it makes up for it in being the second cheapest ship available to the Royal Navy, costing only 30 Victory Points compared to their third cheapest ship, the Warsloop (which costs 40 Victory Points) and by the fact that the Tug's engines are powerful enough to tow a Weapon Barge, without much trouble, which can compensate for the Tug's lack of firepower.
  • The Imperial and Pirate Tenders, both have a high HP count of 2800 HP and 2845 HP respectively, but are very poorly armed for a ship of their size, with the Imperial Tender only being equipped with 4 medium guns and the Pirate Tender with 4 medium guns and 1 light gun.
• Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne has the Nightelves' Mountain Giant who are indeed made of stone. They have an astonishing 1600 hitpoints, similar to a Town Hall structure, but attack slowly and for unimpressive damage. Their defenses can be boosted with Hardened Skin to reduce damage taken by 12 units, and Resistant Skin to mitigate spells cast upon them. Their "medium" armor-type is well rounded too resisting many damage types, and only receiving extra damage from "normal" attacks (most melee attacks). Their taunt move takes advantage of their colossal endurance by forcing enemies around them to target them instead of the more frail Nightelf units.
• StarCraft II has the Terran Planetary Fortress. It's a fortified Command Center so massive, it is unable to lift off with its Atlas Boosters like other Command Center variants, and has a massive 1500 Hit Points. It can be upgraded to 5 armor points, making it just shy of the Terran Battlecruiser's 6-armor maximum, and nearby SCVs can postpone mining to quickly repair the Fortress when it's under attack. However, while the Twin Ibex cannons may give the impression of power, they're only sufficient against holding off a small attack, and need proper support to last longer against a larger, properly coordinated attack. Siege Engines will be able to take on a Fortress without reprisal, which is another major reason why the Terran army needs to support them.
• Sins of a Solar Empire has Titan class ships, which can both take punishment and dish it out, but the Tec Loyalist faction's Ankylon Titan embodies this trope to the next level. Compared to all other titans, it's arguably the weakest in terms of raw damage, doesn't have any flashy abilities, and is the smallest titan, but it more than makes up for that by the sheer staying power it has. Boasting the highest base health of all titans AND health gained per level, and tied for highest armor and armor gained for level, you'll be shooting at this thing for a while. Throw in its Group Shield ability to reduce incoming damage by upwards of 80%, massive HP regen from Furious Defense, and reducing the enemy's attack speed with Inspire and Impare, and it can become practically invincible.

Rhythm Game

• In Patapon 3 Guardira class and Slogturtle have weak attacks, but they hold a massive shield which blocks most of the attacks and helps to cover the other units near them.

Roguelike

• In Ancient Domains of Mystery, the Ancient Stone Beast is an example of this. Though it's the boss of the Earth Temple, it deals far far less damage than its slaves, the earth elementals and stone grues. Being a Stone Wall, it has a PV ^note Protective Value, a number which is reduced from all damage done on it, short of Magic and specific weapons of 60, and over 1k HP.
• 100 Rogues has the White Knight monster class. While upgrading a certain skill makes its damage output better, almost its entire skill tree is dedicated to making it tougher than before.
• In Dwarf Fortress, you can equip your dwarves with dual shields. This gives them two chances to block any attack. In adventure mode, it is possible to wield hundreds of shield at a time, making the adventurer nearly impervious to attacks. Needless to say, though, shields aren't great for attacking with.
• One of the challenges in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth turns you into one of these. You do subpar damage and you're pitifully slow, but you start off with seven red heart containers ^note For comparison, the character with the highest starting HP total only has four heart containers as well as a mask that can sometimes nullify shots from the front. This can be brought up to eleven by gaining even more heart containers as well as using protection orbitals (such as the Big Fan).
• The Knight class in One Way Heroics is the most defense-oriented, having the Great Wall skill that greatly boosts their defense as long as stand in place and blocking twice as much damage as other classes when using a shield. Their damage isn't stellar compared to other classes, of course, and standing in place when there's an Advancing Wall of Doom right behind you is risky, but enemies will have a hard time killing you even if you're slow in killing them back.
• A viable tactic in Slay the Spire is to stack up tons of defensive cards and steadily chip away at your opponent with attacks that synergize well with that setup - either using your buffed defense to attack (Body Slam, Blizzard) or moves that bypass it entirely (Pressure Points, Poison).

Role Playing Games

• Bleeding Sun: Kenzou has less physical attack than Yori, but he has high defense growth and can generate a barrier around himself.
• Deltarune:
  • While Lancer starts as your battle tutorial, he reveals to be a tougher opponent when teaming up with Susie, but he’s still playing around nonetheless. However, when she fights him after his betrayal and he refuses to attack, he happens to be extremely resistant.
  • Another example is Spamton NEO on the Weird Route: during his Duel Boss fight against Kris, he drops his attack and increases his defense before losing his last HP. During this fight, he only makes a weak attack, but even Kris' most powerful move is powerless against him. This doesn't apply to ice magic, however.
  • This also applies to Spamton's personal Mooks, the Pipis: they are so resistant that even a maxed out party who focuses on one of them can't kill them, but they don't have any attack outside of their weak Suicide Attack.
• Dragon Quest:
  • In Dragon Quest III, Priests have few offensive spells and low power attack, but excellent defense. Thieves in the remakes are also deceptively sturdy; their Agility stat adds to their Defense, making them surprisingly good tanks compared to their counterparts in most other role playing games. Their low HP gets to be a liability once spellcasting enemies show up, though.
  • The Paladin class of Dragon Quest IX are this trope. Their attack is merely passable, but ye God is their defense high. Past level 45 they'll only take Scratch Damage from physical attacks, and if you teach them the shield skill Magic Mirror they'll be completely immune to magical attacks, which means if you use their Forbearance ability— which takes damage for the entire party— your adventuring party is nigh-untouchable. Even before they learn all those high level abilities they're exceptionally useful since they learn the defense-boosting Kabuff spell and magic defense-boosting Magic Barrier spell at fairly low levels. They are defensive beasts.
  • Hendrik in Dragon Quest XI is one of these; he wears the heaviest armor, has high innate HP and Defense, and several skills to bolster his defenses even more, including Forbearance, which draws ALL damage towards him for one turn (even from attacks that target everyone in the party). His attack power is ultimately mediocre no matter what weapons he uses, though.
• Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue: The Hero Prince has high defense and HP along with several defensive skills, but he has the lowest damage potential of the party.
• Heroes of the Seasons: Characters with the Tank class have abilities to Draw Aggro or increase the defense of themselves or the party, but they tend to have weaker offensive capabilities than Support and Nuker characters.
• Many, many Pokémon, in varying degrees — not only between offense and defense, but the game's special and physical attack classifications.
  • Perhaps the most extreme example of this trope in the entire series is Shuckle, a Bug/Rock type Pokémon that not only has the highest Defense (tied with Mega Steelix and Mega Aggron) and Special Defense stats of out of any Pokémon in the game, but also sports some of the lowest HP, Attack, Special Attack, and Speed.
  • The queen of the example belongs to Cresselia. Her HP is ridiculously high, with an amazing Defense and Special Defense stat to back her up as well as having access to several fantastic status moves, making it impossible for most Pokemon to take Cresselia down with just one hit, even if it deals super effective damage to her. However, her offensive stats are average, even by the standards of non-Legendaries.
  • Two good examples are Umbreon and Mandibuzz, which is unusual for Dark-types. Their Defense and Special Defense are incredibly high and they have very good HP as well, but their offensive stats are low. Both do learn Foul Play, a move that uses the target's Attack stat when dealing damage and have access to a wide variety of useful status moves.
  • The best-known example is Blissey, who has absurdly high HP (with a maximum of 714 points, the game's highest) and Special Defense, as well as healing moves. The item Leftovers, which heals 1/16 of the holder's maximum HP each turn, is incredibly effective here, as well as the move Softboiled, which restores up to 50% of the user's maximum HP. Even with her abysmal Defense stat, Blissey's enormous HP allows her to take a few physical moves. And forget about status moves — not only can Blissey heal them with Heal Bell or Aromatherapy, her ability Natural Cure removes any status when she switches out. Finally, the moves Double Team and Minimize, which increase the user's evasion, can compound Blissey's defensive strategy by making her hard to hit in the first place. Her stellar defenses come at the cost of speed and damage with below-average Special Attack, bad Speed, and outright abysmal Physical Attack (which maxes out at 10, one of the lowest in the entire series).
  • Wobbuffet has an absurdly high HP, but it cannot attack by itself. It has to rely on taking attacks and retaliates with either Counter and Mirror Coat. Since Wobbuffet has Shadow Tag, which prevents the opponent from switching out, it's very risky to attack it. A Mirror Match was Unintentionally Unwinnable in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, since no player could switch out and they couldn't attack. This was rectified in future generations so if two Pokémon with Shadow Tag were to face each other in battle, they can switch out freely.
  • Aegislash in its Shield Forme possesses excellent defensive stats that even Legendary Pokemon may have a hard time dealing with it, along with its Secret Art King's Shield. Which not only blocks attacks, but also sharply lowers the target's Attack if it dares to make direct contact with it. Its offensive stats are pretty awful though, which isn't important as Aegislash can switch to Blade Forme whenever it uses an attacking move.
  • Bastiodon's defenses are both incredibly high, and its offensive stats are both very low, though it has access to one move that gives it some offensive capability, Metal Burst, a counter-attacking move. It does have two double weaknesses, to Fighting and Ground, but it has the ability Sturdy, meaning it can't be knocked out with one hit. It also gets bonus points for being a literal stone wall, having a castle wall for a face.
  • Toxapex boasts an incredible base 152 Defense and 142 Special Defense, plenty of resistances due to its Water/Poison type, can heal itself at will or when it switches out, making it incredibly difficult to take out without relying on stat boosts (these can be removed with Haze however), can learn a move that boosts both its defenses, and has a Secret Art that blocks attacks and poisons whatever makes direct contact, but its offenses are quite lacking. It does have an ability that guarantees critical hits on poisoned enemies, but even then it's not much of an offensive powerhouse.
  • Pyukumuku has solid defenses with 130 on each side, and it can have an ability that ignores stat boosts, but it is completely incapable of attacking and is in a three-way tie for the slowest Pokémon in the series. Fortunately, it learns a few useful support and debuff moves to make it somewhat worthwhile, and it can heal itself.
  • Cosmoem is a more extreme example, as its defenses are one point higher than Pyukumuku's, and it can buff itself with Cosmic Power and take advantage of Eviolite, but it can't do anything to an enemy period because it only learns three moves, all of which only affect itself.
  • Lugia's offensive stats are lousy for a Legendary Pokémon, but it has high HP and Defense, and its Special Defense is massive even by Legendary standards. It also boasts two strong defensive abilities: its standard ability Pressure increases the opponent's PP usage, meaning they'll probably run out of moves before Lugia runs out of health, and its hidden ability Multiscale reduces the damage it takes at full health. Furthermore, it can heal easily using either Roost or Recover, and can Whirlwind enemies out of battle to remove stat boosts or enable switching again, making it Nigh-Invulnerable against brute force.
  • Out of the Sinnoh lake trio, Uxie is built like this. It has Defense and Special Defense of 130 each, but subpar offenses of 75. Unusually for this trope, its Speed is actually pretty decent at 95.
  • Rock- and Steel- type Pokémon are generally designed as impressive damage sponges, especially the latter which resists over half the types in the game and is immune to Poison. Normal attacks don't faze them as much as other types, they boast the greatest defences even if they don't hit like a Fire or Fighting type would in terms of raw power. Ice-types are also often designed as this, but they really shouldn't be as the increased defenses don't quite make up for their mountain of weaknesses and the fact that their only defensive utility is having a sole resistance against itself and from Generation III until VIII, immunity to Hail. Generation IX onwards, Hail is replaced with Snow which does not damage non-Ice types anymore but does provide a new niche where Ice-types gain a 50% increase in physical Defense during Snow identical to how Sandstorm provides a 50% increase to Special Defense for Rock-types.
  • Eviolite turns most Pokémon into this: it heavily boosts defensive stats, but it can only be used on a Pokémon that can evolve, meaning its attacking stats usually come out lackluster compared to its fully-evolved counterparts. The most favored Eviolite users are already Stone Walls to begin with, since they aren't losing much, including Dusclops and Chansey, who end up being better than Dusknoir and Blissey at their jobs.
  • Rest/Talk, or giving a Pokémon Rest (puts it to sleep for three turns, removing status, and fully restores its health) and Sleep Talk (picks another random move while sleeping, fails if it picks Rest) tends to result in this. It sacrifices two moves that could be used for coverage, removes control, and adds a one-in-three chance of doing absolutely nothing while sleeping, but as long as the user can't be knocked out in three turns, they're basically immortal.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has a quirk where a species that normally receives one of two Abilities receives them both. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon's Bronzong (a Steel/Psychic that usually has either Levitate or Heatproof, on top of good defensive stats) therefore has no weaknesses and many resistances. There are only six types that do standard damage to it. Its offensive stats are as mediocre as ever though, weighing down an otherwise decent offensive move library.
• Prayer of the Faithless:
  • Amalie is an unusual example. She actually has low Armor growth, but her high skill means she has a chance of grazing enemy attacks and she has high Psyche growth to resist magic damage. Her offense takes a massive hit after she's wounded in a fight with Revenant!Aeyr.
  • The Fear emotional condition increases the target's Armor while decreasing their Power.
• Radiant Arc: Terence has low offensive stats and agility, but has high defense and can make enemies more likely to target him.
• Re:Kuroi: Remy has the least attack, but the most HP among the party members. She has defensive skills like drawing aggro from an enemy and setting up barriers to reduce damage.
• Rise of the Third Power:
  • Rowan's damage isn't that high compared to his allies, but he has high HP and can draw enemy aggro. While he has a decent offensive skill, Fury, it takes a while to accumulate enough Rage to activate it unless Rowan's natural Rage generation is increased through passive skills.
  • Rashim has a similar mechanic where he applies Lure stacks to himself, which increases his chance of drawing enemy attacks. He has access to weak AOE skills and counterattacks, though his strongest skill can temporarily weaken the enemy party's defense. Fortunately, he has higher physical defense than Rowan, making him ideal for baiting physical enemies.
• Skies of Arcadia:
  • Gregorio is known as old Iron Wall, sporting a massive shield, although we never see him fight. His fleet sports high defense and is often more reserved when it comes to firing the cannons, saving up for ram attacks.
  • Then there is the boss fight in Yafutoma where the player must fight against a literal turtle, which has a high defense count already but also has a special skill that renders all attacks down to 1HP damage and allows it to heal every turn. The only saving grace is that it can't attack in this form allowing you to focus on gaining SP to perform your own special attacks when his defense drops.
• Estelle from Tales of Vesperia has the most staying power and worst killing power in the game. She has excellent Defense stats, she can cast healing magic, her Elemental Artes all add a defense buff of some sort, and she's the only playable character who thought to bring a shield. By contrast, Estelle's damage is outright terrible. Her attacks have a very short range, she has the game's lowest Strength stat, she can barely stagger enemies in a game where such a thing is crucial to survival, and her Mystic Arte is also the game's weakest among the party members.
  • Estelle retains this pattern in the mobile game Tales of Crestoria, . While she's a Super-Super-Rare class character, she has the lowest attack power of any SSR character, and one of the lowest in the entire game. Her Mystic Arte, Sacred Penance, also does very little damage; most other characters can outdo its damage with their basic attacks. However, her HP and Defense are both massive, and her Awakened ability increases her HP and Defense stats even further. Also, she has First Aid to heal allies, and Sacred Penance also restores a lot of HP to everyone in the party. This makes Estelle a solid choice for staying power, but at the cost of pitiful damage output.
• This is the default strategy for Peco in Breath of Fire III. He has the highest natural HP and second highest natural Defense totals in the game, with average attack and low magic. Oh, and he recovers about 5% of his max HP every combat round. So he's already very difficult to kill, and most people will apprentice him to Fahl (who gives the best level up gains for, as you might guess, HP and Defense), making him Nigh-Invulnerable. The fact that Peco starts at level 1 and can therefore give himself the aforementioned level up gains right off the bat helps a lot.
• Final Fantasy
  • Final Fantasy III:
    • The Viking job's Provoke ability forces enemies to attack them. With their naturally high defense, a pair of shields, and a back-row position, they can tank attacks and leave the entire rest of the party free to wallop on the enemy.
    • The Knight job also has some Stone Wall elements; they have very high defense, an improved 'Guard' command, and will take an attack for a party member with low health, but aside from decent stats inherited from the Warrior class has no actual offensive abilities beyond the default.
  • Final Fantasy IV's Cecil is generally better off being played as a Lightning Bruiser with a little less lightning, but it is possible and in some cases advisable to play him as a shielding/turtling Stone Wall in the somewhat-more-customizable DS remake. Start with his already excellent defense and HP stats, give him some Infinity Plus Or Minus One Armor (which generally only he can equip), and give him an ability set including Draw Attacks, HP+50%, and Brace. Draw Attacks means that every monster with a single-character-hit move will use it on him instead of the other, less-well-defended characters, HP+50% does Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and Brace reduces all incoming damage by 75%. For the remaining slot, you can stick him with White Magic, which allows him to cast buffs on himself and heal the damage the takes. As if this wasn't enough, you can also stick him in the back row, which will reduce his offensive output but will also even further increase his defense. Combine all of these, and Cecil is Nigh Invulnerab, which can be quite useful as that game can be Nintendo Hard, especially in the endgame or bonus areas. However, this build also severely reduces his ability to deal any damage, even with the best weapon in the game, but Rydia and Edge are more than capable of making up the difference.
  • Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XIII-2:
    • The Sentinel role is unable to directly attack enemies, only counterattack; however, they can taunt enemies to target them, raise defensive guards to reduce incoming damage, and come with a passive defensive boost. Lightning's Paladin role in the DLC for XIII-2 goes even further, as her only action makes her completely immune to damage, but doesn't come with a counterattack.
    • The Ethereal Mantle and Magic Damper synthesis abilities exemplify this. Snow and Fang each have a weapon with no Strength boosts and the Enfeeblement ability, which slashes the damage of their physical attacks by 50%^note the upgraded form of this weapon has Hindrance, which only reduces by 30%; Hope and Fang each have a weapon with no Magic boosts and the Stifled Magic ability, which does the same thing to their magical attacks^note and similarly upgrades to Fettered Magic. When combined with the right quartet of accessories, however, the Enfeeblement weapons synthesize Ethereal Mantle, which completely nullifies incoming physical attacks (at the cost of being unable to be healed by Medics); similarly, the Stifled Magic weapons will synthesize Magic Damper, which does the same thing to incoming magical attacks.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: The Ghostly Hood and Preta Hood accessories respectively reduce incoming physical or magical damage by 75%, at the cost of reducing Lightning's Strength and Magic both by 100% (with the upgraded versions reducing by 95% and 90%). Combined with the Guard Glove or Runic Ring for the other accessory slot, the schema in which they are equipped becomes nigh immune to the respective damage type, at the cost of dealing single-point damage.
• Sword-and-shield Warriors in the Dragon Age series typically lean towards this, focusing on abilities that deflect damage rather than dish out the hurt.
  • Shale, the DLC party member from Dragon Age: Origins, is one when using Stoneheart, which eschews offense for effective Turtler/Shielder abilities instead.
  • The Arcane Warrior class, a heavy-armor-wearing mage/tank hybrid. Their abilities allow them to either nullify or greatly reduce all damage, and they have access to any regular mage spell, such as heals and crowd control. If built correctly, they can resist all spells, as well. Add poultices into this for when mana gets low, and the Arcane Warrior can be nearly invincible. The only catch is their abilities use so much mana that all they can really do is auto-attack and occasionally heal, making battles take a long time.
  • Aveline of Dragon Age II is the hardiest member of the party, with her specialization making her tougher than even a tank-specced Hawke and allowing her to take damage on other party members' behalf. Of course, this specialization leaves her actual offense by the wayside, and it's ridiculously outmatched by her defense; you should leave that to the other party members whenever able.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has the Champion specialization, available to Warrior Inquisitors and Blackwall. They focus on drawing enemies in and tanking damage, to the point where they can obtain two abilities to make them completely invulnerable for a brief period. The only ability they have even resembling offense is an area taunt that lets them Counter-Attack anything hitting them; other than that, it's just default attack if you actually want to kill anything yourself.
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • The Protector class for the first two games, and by extension their respective remakes. While their offense will sometimes be the weakest of the front row, most Protectors will simply laugh at hits that would have overkilled other characters a few levels higher than they. They have skills that further increase their/ally's defense, attract enemy attacks towards themselves, resurrect themselves automatically once per battle, take hits for other, squishier units, and nullify, to add insult to (non)injury, physical attacks.
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City has the Hoplite, which has a major focus on defense. Most of their skill tree is dedicated to improving their ability to take hits, shield others, recover from damage or status effects, and even nullifying damage. If you subclass into Ninja and put a focus on the evasion tree to learn how to dodge, you get something that's incredibly hard to kill. Unfortunately, because all your skill points are bound up in defense and avoidance, the character is reduced to Cherry Tapping when they do attack.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: The job of the Fortress class is to redirect, to themselves, the attacks aimed at their comrades. As a result, they not only have a high defense but also a staggering amount of HP. It's not uncommon to reach the cap of 999 HP with one such character even before they hit level 99. As a downside, their attack power isn't very high.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario RPG: The Lazy Shell armor turns any character into a Stone Wall, causing their Defense and Special Defense stats to skyrocket but lowering their Attack and Special Attack by just as much. It becomes a Game-Breaker when equipped on Princess Toadstool, who is a healer and therefore has no business attacking anything to begin with. You'll never lose a battle again since she can just keep reviving your other party members whenever they die, while never coming remotely close to death herself due to her insanely high defense.
  • Paper Mario has the Stone Cap item. This will turn Mario to stone for a few turns, during which he can neither attack nor take damage. However, his partner can still act, making this a Game-Breaker in many situations.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Mario can be become nigh invulnerable with the right badge setup. If he has the Badge Points to spare he can then turn his partner into a Glass Cannon making an incredibly effective combo. Of course, this leaves Mario himself to dry when it comes to actually getting any attacks done, but that hardly matters when you can leave that to an offensive companion.
  • Mario & Luigi: Luigi is this in the series, in contrast to his brother, who is a Glass Cannon. Luigi by default has higher HP and Defense, as well as a higher jump that allows him to dodge enemy attacks with more ease, but his damage output tends to be lower than Mario's.
  • Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time features the Safety Badge, a badge for sale in Toad Town's shop which greatly decreases the wearer's damage output both on the receiving and giving ends.
• Jimmy's Revolting Blob form in Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass. It suffers a penalty to offensive stats and it has no direct offensive skills, but it gains defensive bonuses and can provoke enemies to draw attacks.
• Yo-kai Watch:
  • As a general rule, Tough tribe Yo-kai have high HP and Defense, at-best middling offensive power, and inspirits that buff allies. A handful of the sturdiest Tough Yo-kai (like Swosh, Castelius Max, and Impass) also have Soultimates that boost their own defense and draw enemy attention.
  • Noway, Impass, and Walldin are literal expressions of the trope: they're living walls and are noted for being obstinate and unmoving in all matters.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, Orcs are this compared to the other races of Tamriel. While not as physically strong as the Nords or as skilled with large weapons, the Orcs are without doubt the best users of heavy armor in the setting and get the highest bonuses to their heavy armor skill. Thus, they are able to endure a level of punishment that would have killed anyone else dozens of times over. The Septim Empire specifically recruited Orcs to serve as elite heavy infantry in their Legions, and their success in this role helped them to become more accepted throughout the empire. Orcs also have an innate racial ability to activate a powerful Berserker Rage, which temporarily turns them into a Lightning Bruiser, allowing them to take and dish out massive amounts of damage.
  • Shadowmere, a mystical horse rewarded from a Dark Brotherhood quest in Skyrim, has a whopping 1637 health, higher than that of low-tier dragons (a regular horse has 289 health), coupled with a Healing Factor that puts even trolls to absolute shame. It is not uncommon to see Shadowmere trade blows with dragons without suffering any significant harm. Realistically, for most of the game, essentially the only way for Shadowmere to die is to fall from great heights, and the only enemies that could conceivably pose a threat to it are the likes of the Ebony Warrior. On the offensive, however, Shadowmere does not hit any harder than a regular horse, which is not very hard at all. This does not stop Shadowmere from drawing the attention of enemies quite well, serving as a useful meat shield to a squishy Dovahkiin.
• This is the basic status of the Templar Job in Bravely Default, as their offense is nothing terribly impressive, while also having the highest natural physical and magical defense, gaining a passive that makes the Defend Command even more effective, and having an ability that completely negates the next attack each party member receives. When combined with the Knight's ability to Dual Wield shields, a Templar can live through just about anything.
• Barik from Tyranny comes included with a set of extremely heavy armour that's permanently stuck to him by the Edict of Storms, is kitted out as a sword-and-board fighter by default, and can learn taunt moves that force enemies to attack him. All that armour makes his Recovery absolutely atrocious and as a result his damage potential is much lower than Verse or Killsy's, but on the plus side it also renders him all but invincible to most of the game's enemies (his Achilles' Heel being bludgeoning damage, which is the rarest type of weapon damage). In the game's lore Barik belongs to the Stone Shields, a soldier in the Disfavoured whose job it is to throw up a shieldwall and make the enemy wear themselves out banging on their shields until they're exhausted and the Disfavoured can slaughter them all.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The Ruler class resist every standard class (except Avengers, their counter class, and Berserkers, which hit everything hard), but in exchange don't get an advantage over anything but the vanishingly rare Moon Cancer class (and Berserkers, which get hit hard by everything). The quintessential example is Jeanne d'Arc, who boasts the highest HP in the game and adds a host of skills meant to reduce damage, but the third lowest ATK of the five-star Servants (outdone by many four-stars), a deck with only one Buster card in it, and almost no offensive tricks. Even her Noble Phantasm is nothing but defensive buffs, and when not upgraded, it stuns her after use. This makes her the absolute queen of stall teams, but near-useless if you want to finish a match quickly.
  • Mash Kyrielight, as expected of someone whose class is called "Shielder", fits this well. Her HP is high, she has tons of defensive abilities, including her Noble Phantasm, and her class gives her no weaknesses, meaning no enemies hit her effectively. However, it also gives her no enemies she can hit effectively, her ATK is kind of bad, and she lacks any self-damage-boosting skills, so her damage contribution is basically just going to be adding to the occasional Buster chain.
  • Cu Chulainn, especially his original Lancer version, tends towards this playstyle. All three of Lancer Cu's skills are based on defense: he can dodge three attacks directed at him, he revives himself if his health hits 0, and he can cleanse himself of status effects while also healing himself. However, this obsessive focus on defense means that his damage is no better than a baseline silver Servant, aside from his Noble Phantasm having an instant-death effect (which rarely ever works). Cu can feasibly solo some very hard bosses with the right setup... just don't expect him to do so quickly.
  • A Lancer who operates in a similar fashion is Leonidas I, considered a fairly good unit, especially for a two-star. As expected from the king who famously held the line during the Battle of Thermopylae, his kit is centered around using taunts to Draw Aggro towards him and using his naturally high defense and Guts in order to take hits for the team while the damage dealers focus on overwhelming the enemy. Mash herself calls Leonidas one of the greatest shield-bearing Servants, and even his enemy, Gorgon, compliments him for his Determinator status in the Babylonia Singularity.
• Fallout 2 has the Pariah Dog, an infamous companion that serves entirely as The Millstone. It recruits itself into your party when you stumble on it, and while it's in the party, it drops your Luck Stat to 1 and inflicts you with the Jinxed trait, which vastly increases the odds of critical failures for everyone present. In a fight, the dog will simply run for it, fleeing right off the edge of the screen if it can, and never even trying to defend itself. However, to ensure that you're stuck with it as long as possible, the dog has the second highest HP of anything in the game, very high AC, and anything trying to shoot it is going to do so while their gun is constantly jamming or going off in their face.
• Fallout 3's Dogmeat becomes one of these with the Broken Steel addon installed, starting with a minimum of 2500 HP and potentially getting a maximum of 15,000 at level 30 - far and away the most of any critter in the entire game. In the extremely unlikely event Dogmeat should somehow die, you can also take the Puppies! perk to recruit one of Dogmeat's next-of-kin who has even more HP...
• Undertale:
  • Jerry's only purpose is to make his partners' attacks longer. He can't attack by himself, but he has one of the higher defenses for any character in the game, making him extremely hard to kill.
  • Your character becomes this against Undyne: her spell paralyzes you, preventing you from escaping, but you gain an invincible shield to protect yourself from her spear attacks.
  • Mettaton is an exaggeration of this trope: while he can attack, he's not especially powerful, but his defense is ridiculously high and any hit against him will count as a miss. Until you put on his switch and transform him in Mettaton EX or if he becomes Mettaton NEO.
• Monster Hunter:
  • The Lance is a Jousting Lance with an enormous shield and some of the best guarding capabilities of any weapon. It's even able to tank Fatalis' Limit Break without sustaining a single scratch! As a trade-off, its mobility is atrocious, and its stabs have some of the lowest motion values in the game. To make up for this, however, said attacks deal Piercing damage, meaning that they ignore whether a monster is weakest to Cutting, Blunt or Shot damage on a given part and just uses the most effective type of damage, so you can just poke away at any given part.
  • Monster Hunter (2004): Basarios and its adult form Gravios. They have tons of HP, and their rocky armor-like carapaces cause most weapons to bounce off. Hitting their belly will eventually tear the carapace off, and you can hit them where it really hurts. However, aside from Gravios briefly fluttering using its wings to squash you like a pancake, their offensive game isn't anything to write home about. Later generations let them spew a Deadly Gas, extremely hot smoke, or Knockout Gas from their abdomen.
  • Monster Hunter 2 (dos): Daimyo Hermitaur is meant to be this to contrast with its bluer cousin Shogun Ceanataur. It can't really attack all that well, with the best move in its arsenal being a moderately-damaging stream of bubbles, but it has lots of health, its big claws can protect its face quite well, and they can deflect weapons below a certain Sharpness level. The Stonefist Deviant in Monster Hunter Generations takes this even further; it has a giant black claw that deflects everything. Blades, hammers, bullets...just about anything that hits the claw bounces off and goes flying back at you.
• Suikoden V has two. Richard is a pretty solid (if not incredible) attacker, but his real selling point is his defense - Rich's Evasion stat is the best in the game and his Skill is the second-highest, meaning he'll block, counter or dodge almost every physical attack thrown his way. Give him a Firefly Rune and watch every enemy go in for an attack, get parried and then immediately cut down for their trouble. The other is Raven, who wields the unique Raven Rune - with it, he acquires a 100% evasion rate against physical attacks whilst in a dungeon, ensuring that any enemy that doesn't use magic will never even touch him. Once again, a Firefly Rune will draw all enemy attacks to him, letting your other characters fire away with impunity.
• Robo Trek lets you fully customize your robots' stats and loadout, which can allow you to make one of these - dump all their points into HP and defense and equip them with two shields, and they'll tank damage like a champ while having little to nothing to attack with. This actually isn't a bad option either - you can send them out as a last resort and heal up your other two robots while your brick-bot soaks up damage.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, IV, and The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie has the Keeper Master Quartz. The lower the HP of the equipped character, the higher their defense stat. Combine it with a Master Quartz that heals the character per turn, stack a ton of defense and equipment quartz and bosses who first deal four to five digits of damage will suddenly deal two digits of damage at low HP values, making the character almost impossible to kill. But it does sacrifice the speed of the character and speed in the Trails Series is the One Stat to Rule Them All especially since bosses in Nightmare difficulty are insanely fast and hit hard.
• View from Below:
  • The Cloaked Figure, Melody, has higher health and base DEF than Ash, but also has lower offensive stats and MP. They also have slightly higher base AGI, giving them a higher chance of dodging attacks.
  • In the brief fight against Peter, he will spend all his turns praying and he has only 10 ATK, but his HP is higher than the Crimson God's at 2000 and he has 70 DEF.

Simulation Games

• Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation's A-10A is essentially this in in air-to-air combat but a Lightning Bruiser against ground targets. It can soak up a phenomenal amount of damage, but as a ground-attack platform, its standard loadout doesn't include many options for facing off against other jets.
• In MechWarrior Living Legends, some Humongous Mecha mount depreciated Standard Fusion Reactors, which are massive (requiring a sacrifice in speed, or firepower) but damage-resistant compared to the more common Extralight fusion reactors. The Atlas is the most notable example with a standard reactor, losing out on firepower and speed in exchange for being the single most durable mech in the game. In earlier versions of the game, the Hephaestus Hover Tank was comically durable due to an armor typo but only had the firepower of a light scout mech, and for many years the Bushwacker "Prime" variant had so little firepower relative to its armor than in a 10 vs 10 Bushwacker-only joke battle, the 30 minute mission timer ran out before the teams were able to kill each other.
• In Pocket Arcade Story's fighting mode, Mochipon-Jet is this. While his attacks are on the weak side and he's slow, his high level of defense more than makes up for it.

Sports Games

• Stephanie Morgan in the Backyard Sports series has amazing defense in every game because of her experience at shortstop. Her offensive abilities are terrible.
• Wood Man in Mega Mans Soccer has atrocious speed and the worst super shot in the game, but the highest defense of any character other than Wily (who is unplayable without cheats). He's an excellent choice for your goalie.
• The Terminator Trolz and the Vile Vulgars in Mutant League Football. The Trolz' defense is elite, but their offense advances the ball slowly. The Vulgars' weak offense struggles to gain ground, and usually they can only score off fumble recoveries caused by their brutal run defense.
• In Mutant Football League, the Spiritual Successor to the above: the Cracksumskull Jugulars (prior to roster updates reflecting the real Jacksonville Jaguars' decline and return to irrelevance) had an agile defense that grabbed INTs constantly and took pride in scoring, which is good because their middling offense and special teams couldn't always be relied on to.
• Defensive characters in Mario Strikers such as Waluigi are very fast and have excellent tackling skills, but tend to struggle at scoring because of low shooting power.
• Defensive characters in Mario Tennis Aces are very difficult to to get the ball past due to their great reach but is a Master of None when choosing what type of shot to actually return with.
• 2020 Super Baseball
  • The Tropical Girls. They excel at fielding due to great speed and agility, which makes them tough to score on. However, they don't score much themselves due to (for the most part) weak hitting.
  • The Ninja Blacksox are one of the least powerful/efficient teams in the game both at the plate and on the mound. What offense they have is carried primarily by blisteringly fast baserunning and a couple of decent batters, but with top-line fielding they don't have to score many runs to come out on top.

Survival Horror

• In House of the Dead, fat zombies tend to fulfill this role; they usually don't do any more damage than their skinnier counterparts do (occasionally less, because they don't hit as many times as a skinnier zombie would before you put them down), but they can also usually take more shots. In House of the Dead 2, a hefty zombie can take an entire clip or more of handgun bullets to the torso before dying.
• Ashley's Armor alternate costume from Resident Evil 4 has her be completely invulnerable to any damage, and she can not be picked up by enemies and carried away other than when the plot calls for it. She cannot do any damage to anyone except for when you are playing as her and use the lamps.
• In Five Nights at Freddy's, your only defense against the antagonistic animatronics are two steel doors on either side of your office. Unfortunately, you can't just leave both doors shut all night: they drain power needed to survive the night. Also, on later levels, turtling increases the chance of Freddy simply teleporting into the room and murdering you.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory: SCP-106 has 80% damage resistance against firearms, making him very tough to take down without copious amounts of grenades or the Micro H.I.D. He is, however, one of the slowest moving playable SCPs (being only slightly faster than a docile SCP-096).

Third Person Shooters

• The Metal Petal in Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare hits less hard and is slower than the normal Sunflower in exchange for armored plating, turning the class into a tank/healer hybrid.
• Splatoon: The Undercover Brella (introduced in Splatoon 2) has the lowest damage-per-second output of any weapon in the series, but it can keep its canopy open in front of the user while firing, a capability that no other brella has.

Tower Defense

• Arknights
  • Defender Operators in general serve this role, with low offensive stats (excepting Duelists and Arts Protectors) but very high defensive stats and health. Their main role is to hold down a lane to allow damage dealers to destroy enemies, though in some strategies their role is to lock down a single tough boss while the rest of the squad deals with the other enemies on the map. Protector Defenders are the biggest example of this, as they usually have traits and skills that greatly buff defense of themselves or allies, but Guardian Defenders are also tough due to their ability to heal themselves and allies, while Juggernaut Defenders will self-heal.
  • Gravel is a Specialist Operator whose main utility is that she has a very low deployment cost and very short redeployment timer, coupled with incredibly high defense stats for the first few moments after she is deployed. Her main use is to be quickly deployed to take hits for other Operators or to slow down dangerous enemies. Because of the way ranged enemies prioritize your Operators (usually targeting the most recently deployed Operator) Gravel is often deployed to catch ranged shots that would kill or severely hurt other, less durable units.
• Plants vs. Zombies:
  • The Wall-nut, Tall-nut, and Pumpkin of the shielding variety. These plants solely exist to do nothing but take damage for your easily-killed attackers as well as impede the zombies' advance, having no offense of their own. However, all three plants sure do a good job at it. In the sequel, using Plant Food on either of these takes their durability up to eleven.
  • The sequel introduces the Infi-nut. He has slightly less durability than a Wall-Nut, but he can instantly regenerate himself to full health periodically, as long as his projector exists. Using Plant Food on him will make him project a force field that shields the entire row from zombies. Primal Wall-Nut was also added, who recharges faster then the Wall-nut, and can survive two Gargantuar smashes.
• Being an expy of Plants Vs Zombies, Mini Robot Wars has the Shielder (who functions similarly to the Wall-Nut) and the Warrior (like the Shielder, except that he has a weak attack).
• The Battle Cats:
  • The Tank Cat line of units, which all have high health coupled with low cost and cooldown, but exceptionally weak attack power. Lampshaded in the descriptions, which all state their durability, followed by "Strong enough to move a pebble/small rock/two small rocks.", depending on evolutionary stage.
  • Units that have "Resistant" (damage from indicated type is reduced by 1/4 ~ 1/5) or "Insanely Tough" (same as Resistant only it’s 1/6 ~ 1/7) as one of their abilities are usually known to be able to soak up a ton of damage vs their target traits, but their offensive capability can range from bad to kind of decent, but still lacking compared to most units.
  • For the enemies, Wall Doge acts as one. Like her name might suggest, she is mainly used as a wall thanks to her high HP and her tendency to spawn in groups, but has poor damage in return.

Turn Based Strategy

• In Battle for Wesnoth, the Dwarvish Guardsman line has pretty poor attacks, but good resistances and an ability that doubles their resistances on defense. User-created content provides an even more extreme example: the Steppe Shieldbearer line from the Extended Era is unable to initiate combat, but has very high resistances.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Dragon Laguz are probably the closest thing that Fire Emblem has to a Stone Wall; their breath weapon doesn't impress, but they have a frickton of HP and aren't so much as tickled by anything other than Thunder magic.
  • Armor Knights and Generals straddle the line between this and Mighty Glacier. Their defense is excellent, and their strength is usually quite good, however, their atrocious speed means they rarely get Double Attacks. Thus their offense generally pales in comparison to the more balanced Paladins and Great Knights.
  • It's also common practice to strip the Crutch Character or the Mighty Glacier of their weapons so that they can draw enemies to attack them for little to no damage without killing them with a counterattack, making them function as literal walls and nothing else.
  • Bard/Dancer units tend to have unnaturally high Speed, Luck, HP, and Magic growths, making them nigh-unhittable. They also can't attack at all, as their skillset is based on giving allies a second turn. Their defenses are just so they can dodge a few hits if an enemy catches them.
  • Marty of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 has very low accuracy and speed growth thus making it unlikely for him to hit. You'll often mistake him for an example of Muscles Are Meaningless until you look at his incredibly high constitution, HP, and defense growth. These traits make Marty ideal for rescuing and capturing.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Kishuna can't attack at all, but his defensive stats are only matched by the game's final bosses and he's a walking field of Anti-Magic. It's particularly a scary prospect, as getting to one secret map requires you to kill him in one round before he teleports away the very next turn.
    • Renault, a Bishop who serves as one of the last characters to join your party, is strongly implied to be a former mercenary who only recently turned to the cloth. As such, his defensive stats are abnormally high for a traditionally Squishy Wizard class, but his Magic is miserable and he is locked to the weakest type of offensive magic. He can take a beating, but he sure can't dish it.
• Nippon Ichi games tend to have offense-only in the late game, but sometimes a defensive character just stands out.
  • Disgaea: Hour of Darkness had the Galactic Demons, monsters born in the depths of space and made of living stone. They have very low movement (often only 2 tiles), but made up for this with not only the highest Defense and Resistance stat growth among the useable classes, but also the highest Defense and Resistance Aptitudes for equipment (150%!), on top of near-immunity to the game's Status Effects. A properly leveled and equipped Galactic Demon could shrug off blows from the game's Superboss with ease.
  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has Taro, Adell's younger brother. Though having 4 movement tiles, his strength lies in his HP, Defense and Resistance modifiers. One special is a self-heal, another is a DEF/RES buff, and his last special reduces the target's offensive stats, letting him tank even more. Combine this with his passive ability giving him an even larger buff to his Defense and Resistance when at critical HP.
  • Knights from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. They struggle to do any decent damage in battle owing to their mediocre attack stat and low accuracy, but they make fine shields for squishier characters like Pyremages and Archers. They work even better in groups of three, when they'll occasionally cast a pre-combat buffer that boosts their entire squad's Defense by 20%.
  • Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance gives us Usalia, who kicks this trope up and down the Item World. She defaults with having higher than normal DEF, RES and SPD attributes and has defense-oriented Evilities, including one which improves her evasion from any direction and a default which reduces damage for herself and everyone around her based on the number of folks in proximity. While placement is key, unlike the typical "fire-and-forget" tank, proper outfitting and play make Usalia stupidly unkillable, on top of having decent offenses by NIS standards and one of the best Overloads in the entire game.
• Mario Party 3: Although a party game with several mini games within, it also has Whomp in Duel Mode, whose main purpose is to protect the main player with his good defense and requires a salary of 3 coins for each turn. However, he cannot attack the main opponent or his/her partners when they are in front.
• Civilization V has a few of these. Due to how it is possible to win a game peacefully, without going to war with other people, the stone walls in this game are very good for winning a peaceful victory while deterring anyone who tries to invade.
  • The Shoshone. All of their units get a 15% increase to combat power when fighting on friendly territory. Due to how all of their cities get an extra 8 land tiles around them the moment they're founded, the Shoshone have a lot of extra friendly territory to be more powerful on. On offense, though, it's mostly a long wait until you can pick up the Comanche riders.
  • Morocco. When the game starts, they are usually placed within a desert, and if they stay in the desert, they are very hard to invade. They are able to build the Kasbah improvement on desert tiles instead of Forts. Unlike normal forts, which simply provide a 50% defense boost to units in them, the fact that they also provide boosts to gold, food, and production boosts transforms deserts from comparatively useless terrain to something that keeps Moroccan cities growing, while still having the 50% extra defense to units in them, so invaders have to go through them before they can get to the cities. Their special unit, the Berber Cavalry, which replaces the normal cavalry, only increases this, as they become more powerful when fighting in friendly deserts. Add in the fact that they're a trade-focused empire, meaning that invading them will likely cut out a big pile of money for you, and few people will invade Morocco... and for that same reason, Morocco's in no hurry to invade anyone else, because that would cut off their trade.
  • Korea. It has two unique units that nobody else has access to. First is the Hwacha, a replacement for the Trebuchet that is about 62% more powerful than the Trebuchet, but lacks an offensive bonus against cities, making it excellent for defending but not that great at bombarding enemy cities. The other is the Turtle Ship, which replaces the Caravel. It has about 55% more combat strength than the Caravel, but it is unable to travel into deep oceans. Similar to the Hwacha, it is great for defending your own coastline, but not very good at going on the offensive.
  • Ethiopia. If someone else has more cities than Ethiopia, all Ethiopian units get a 20% combat bonus against them. Their special unit, the Mehal Sefari, which replaces the Rifleman, only increases this, as it can get up to a 30% combat boost the closer it is to the capital. And these stack, giving Ethiopia up to a 50% combat bonus while defending, making them very hard for some big bully to take down. However, the very same bonuses that make them so strong defensively also make them suck on offense; the Mehal Sefari's boost stops working when travelling to attack far-off cities and, as Ethiopia conquers enemy cities, it will eventually have more cities than the enemy, thus disabling that other bonus too.
  • Babylon. Its Unique Building, Walls of Babylon, provides a larger bonus to city strength and HP than normal Walls, but does nothing for offence. It also has the Bowman, a unique Archer with some added punch, who can then be stationed in a city to make it basically impregnable. Aside from that, though, Babylon's offensive potential is pretty much nil — however, its real focus is Science, meaning that after a few turns, Babylon's tech advantage will more than make up for its lack of special offensive units.
• CivilizationVI has a few of its own.
  • There's Georgia, who has a unique Rennaissance Walls replacement, can build walls faster than anyone else, and their leader, Tamar, likes to build high level walls making it difficult to invade.
  • The Maya. Their leader, Lady Six Sky, grants them more combat strength whithin six tiles of their capital, allowing them to fend off invaders, recapture cities taken from them, or capture other civilizations trying to forward settle them.
  • The Gaul. Their unique Industrial Zone, the Oppidum, gives a free ranged city strike once you build walls. Since you want to build one in every city anyways, this means at least two free strikes per to enemy units, with it increasing to three if you decide to build an Encampment. In addition, their leader, Ambiorix, grants them additional combat strength when surrounded, either by friend or foe, making it even easier to fend off invasions.
  • The king (actually queen) of Stone Walls in VI is Vietnam. Their leader, Ba Trieu, grants them additional combat stregth in woods and rainforests, which doubles when inside Vietnam territory. Combine this with the fact that Vietnam can replant woods earlier than other civilizations makes it much harder for others to enter her lands. And this is not even getting into the fact Vietnam's unique Encampment, the Thanh, is not considered a specialty district, meaning it doesn't take up a precious specialty district slot and can be built alongside another district, not slowing down Vietnam's progress towards Victory.
• Push cards and Sgt. Blok in Calculords. Push units can push enemy advances back and usually have high HP, but little to no offensive power. This doesn't mean they aren't threatening, since any units pushed back to their base are destroyed automatically. Many push units also possess armor that protects them from damage below a certain threshold. A simple yet effective strategy is to fill a lane with push units (with an armored one at the front), and buff the lane's health and/or armor. Sgt. Blok is an enemy commander who makes extensive use of push cards, to the point of having very few attack cards in his deck; his advances an be hard to stop as he has plenty of armored troops to put at the front of a line.
• The Sentinel class in Wild ARMs XF. They have a strong natural defense and armors that solely focuses on defense, but they're the weakest in terms of physical power when compared with other physical based classes. Their designated weapons also do not provide much attack power when compared with other classes' weapons.
• Telepath Tactics:
  • Spearmen. They lack the extra-powerful single-target attacks of other melee classes, and they have fewer counterattacks, but they have a boatload of health and can use the best defensive equipment. They even get an ability that makes them more likely to be attacked upon promotion.
  • Cavaliers, too. Though they're a lot weaker than other melee classes, they have a ton of health and can wear the best armor.
• In Nectaris, the M-77 Trigger mine has the same attacking and movement potential of a literal stone wall (i.e. none whatsoever). However, for gameplay purposes, it is a proper unit that, like other units, can be supported by other adjacent allied units (including other mines), and can gain experience from successfully defending against attacks, which commonly happens since it's tied with the Giant for best defense in the game.
• Rampart in Atlas Reactor has the highest HP in the game, and his signature move Bulwark deploys a giant shield that No Sells all attacks from a single cardinal direction. Rampart pays for this with having no dash outside his ultimate, low energy gain, and his offensive moves are limited in range and damage.
• Mordheim: City of the Damned: The Sisters of Sigmar as a faction. Their units have universally below-average strength but rather good weapons skill, so even if the damage of their strikes isn't high they still hit reliably and parry well. The real draw off the Sisters though is their robust HP, near-universal ability to equip heavy armour, exceptional morale and plethora of support magic to back up their troops. Between all this, the Sisters are hard to shift and a menace in open combat.
• In X Com Long War the aptly-named Goliath class of Mec can absorb fire from a whole squad of opposing aliens with barely a scratch when specced down the middle of its perk tree. It even gets better at tanking shots the more times it’s fired upon in a single term. This of course sacrifices all perks that give it either battlefield control or damage with its weapons, hamstringing the Goliath's capacity to kill anything by itself compared to other speccings. Still, it's good to have someone facetanking into hostile overwatches and other corridors of death soaking up all the damage so everyone else can breathe easy and do their thing instead.
• XCOM 2: The SPARK, a robotic combat unit introduced with the Shen's Legacy DLC, wields a giant cannon that can dish out the hurt, but the unit's abysmal aim and mediocre offensive abilities make it much more suited for tanking duties. The entire left side of their skill tree is dedicated to facilitating this playstyle by giving the SPARK extremely thick armor^note if the game is modded to allow SPARKs access to the Training Center and the unit gains the Blast Padding ability on top of its Bulwark skill, SPARKs can end up with a ludicrous seven armor pips, enough to downgrade all but the most powerful attacks in the game to Scratch Damage, healing capabilities, the ability to force a panic check on any enemy that attacks them, and finally an ability that increases their durability even further while redirecting all attacks against allies in their vicinity towards themselves. SPARKs are also natively immune to fire and poison, they tend to have significantly more health than their human comrades, they can be sent into combat regardless of how damaged they are, and suffering heavy damage will never affect their morale because, unlike human operatives, SPARKs don't have a Will stat.

Other

• Cube Colossus: An Shoot 'Em Up, with multiple playable ships to shoot from. One of them is A.M.U-02, described as:
  High Shield, Slow Move, Weak Attack.
• The Alien from the Web Game ImmorTall cannot attack, but can take damage from the enemy soldiers and prevent the family from getting killed. Unfortunately, there is a limit to that, and he dies after the final attack on the family.
• In Meteos, Arod functions in this way. Meteos is a Falling Blocks puzzle game where each civilization has different physics. Arod is the one with the weakest gravity, so blocks fall slowly and are cleared slowly. In multiplayer, this creates the effect of Arod being slow to attack with garbage blocks, and when it does, it doesn't usually hit that hard. However, the slowness also means attacks from opponents come slowly, allowing the Arod player ample time to defend and withstand those attacks. Arod wins matches by sheer endurance, waiting for the opponent to slip up and destroy themselves.
• 100% Orange Juice: Fernet may have lowered attack and evasion (-1 and -2 respectively) but her 6 HP and +2 Defense means she can easily tank damage. On maps with regeneration effects she shines.
• Palworld:
  • Dumud has 100 base HP and 95 base defense, but its 70 base attack is on par with early-game Pals. In addition, it moves by flopping around, making it one of the slowest Pals.
  • Mozzarina has 90 base health and 80 base defense, which is quite good for an early game Pal. However, their base attack is the lowest in the game at 50 and their movement speed is slow.
  • Mammorest and its ice variant, Mammorest Cryst, have the highest base HP stat of all the Pals at 150, and a solid base defense stat of 90. This is offset by their incredibly slow speed and relatively weak base attack stat (by endgame Pal standards) of 85.
  • Wumpo and its Grass-Elemental variant, Wumpo Botan, have the second highest base HP of all the Pals at 140, with good defense (100 for Wumpo, 110 for Wumpo Botan). Their base attack stat of 80 is low for an endgame Pal.
  • If you catch the Black Marketeer, he'll no longer be able to attack, but he'll be able to take some serious punishment before going down thanks to his 20,000+ HP.
• Some of the vehicles from World of Tanks can end up as this trope, with high armor for their tier bouncing off dead-on frontal shots and even artillery shells coupled with a piddly little gun that can't penetrate anything. United Kingdom tanks seem especially prone to it, like the Exelsior, the Black Prince, the AT-15 and the AT-15A.
• War Thunder:
  • For Britain, the Churchills and the Matilda are great at eating shells but their measly 40mm 2-pounder guns will struggle to penetrate anything back, and because they fire solid shot with no HE filler you need to know where to aim for to hit vital components like crew and ammo storage. The Churchill Mk.III is more of a Mighty Glacier because it's upgunned to a 57mm 6-pounder with superior performance against enemy armour, and the Gun Carriage Churchill with her really big (but fixed forward facing) 76mm 3-incher is even moreso.
  • For the French, the Char B1 Bis. is a behemoth with thick armour that many guns will struggle to penetrate at Rank II (it's a BR 2.3). Truth in Television: a single Char B1 Bis. during the invasion of France in May 1940 was responsible for destroying an entire company of Panzers by itself -- more than 140 German shells hit the Char but none penetrated. That said, German HEAT shells will make short work of the Char, as will Swedish APDS.

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