Guild Wars 2

I know a lot of people prefer Chrono Tank (And I can figure why: Mad support, lots of Evades and Invulns, doesn’t lose a whole much from being the tank etc) or no Tank at all, but I’d like to take a look at these two professions to see what they bring to the table (I’m considering either simply because I love their playstyles).

For the Scrapper, the pros seem to be:

1. Great Personal Protection uptime
2. Great Personal Healing
3. Evade and Block Deals Damage on Hammer, allowing you to sustain and damage at the same time
4. Decent to Awesome CC depending on Utilities

I’m not sure what Specs a Scrapper tank would run though. Explosives/Tools/Scrapper?

For Reaper, the pros seem to be:

1. Can run Valkyrie and still output Optimal DPS (For a Power Reaper) with a proper team setup, allowing them to facetank more and dodgeroll less.
2. Has 2 HP bars
3. AoE Fear and Stun, loads of Chill.
4. Possibly one of the easiest rotations to get down.

One question about this: How would a Viper/Carrion + 1 Rabid/Vigilant piece setup work for a Reaper Condi Tank? Would it work at all since you have to give up Death Perception for Dhuumfire?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

If you wanna go condi necro… You should supposedly have full viper and full sinister trinkets – minus amulet and accessory if you got the viper ones, so just swap out said sinister trinkets for rabid/something with condi and no prec if you really wanna go reaper and take that one crit trait. Or don’t and simply go with the passive toughness increase per minion controlled. It should be way more than enough to tank without gimping your damage and swapping your gear.
Pretty sure death magic/reaper/curses is what you’re supposed to be doing… Where’s spoj when you need it? He’s probably still complaining about revs somewhere.

About the scrapper, I wouldnt’ call the protection uptime great at all. It has one trait with prot on heal… The turret heal is good, but guard is superior in sustain, protection uptime (aoe) and—-
Ah, sorry, I forgot that guardians are now off-limits and you’re a noob if you dare say they may bring something useful anywhere. Forget it.

P.S. Fear is kitten for seeker control at vg. I’d still go with a necro over an engi because it’s more solid and is a dps without having to sacrifice almost nothing on tank duty. We got some kills with a scrapper tank and it was a PITA to heal through that, god (he was on offensive setup, no bulwark). Personal preference here, don’t take it as if I read it on a spreadsheet.
P.P.S. Plz no zerk scrapper, don’t make me cry

Go explosives/firearms/scrapper, throw on some rabid and stay with the condi engi builds, you only sacrifice a bit of damage. Scrapper tanks biggest strength is slick shoes and some aoe heals as well as the minimal damage loss that all condi tanks bring.

Hmm, for scrapper tank, I would recommend hammer. Scrapper works well as a tank due to how well rabid stats work for tanking while maintaining high dps (same for condi reaper) and with that, you’ll still want pistol/pistol. Below is a link to a good guide on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBiu-FBG2bM

Between scrapper and condi reaper, I’m not sure there’s a really big winner, although scrapper can probably keep up more dps on most fights. Reaper is still solid though and can bring epidemic for gorse.

However, some groups also seem to be using rabid burnzerkers as tanks, which does even more damage than all of the above while filling the tank role…

Well since going scrapper is a waste id say Reaper is the better choice. If you want to tank on engi you dont need to go scrapper.

Reaper tank can just go with the normal Spite/Blood/Reaper setup while grabbing toughness from some external source (food, infusion), run Rise and call it a day. Everything after that isn’t necessary but “nice to have”, I guess.
Condi reaper would just run Curses/Death/Reaper and like desade said, full vipers hype. Also different utilities, of course. VG shouldn’t move much, so you can make at least something out of your lich minions. Also solves the issue with toughness.
You wouldn’t take Soul Reaping in either scenario.
For seekers you’d have the problem that you apply chill with fear so they wouldn’t really move much, however conditions like weakness do have an effect on them.

I personally run power reaper tank in our group and it works fine, you shouldn’t ever feel any form of pressure, even less so if you slot rise, and starting at 50% I can pretty much set my AA to GD and use other skills once off cd.

Yeah, tank reaper must be one of the most relaxing things in the universe.
Even guard is comparatively harder, at least you gotta pay attention to your teammates…

Trailblazer’s set would be ideal for Reaper on “tanking” duty I guess. Still nearly the same Condition damage and same condition duration. Loss on Power and Precision isn’t that impactful. Swap CPC/Suffer for Rise! if needed, you’re done.

One thing to note is that any class that tanks based on using a completely different set of armor (i.e. rabid, trailblazer’s, etc.) will either need to get two sets of armor or will be less productive on the Sabetha fight.

This is another advantage that chronos have over scrapper/reaper/anything condi tanks since they can just swap out trinkets to knights while using their normal sinister/berserker gear, which is far easier than crafting or buying a new armor set.

Reapers may be the exception, depending on the build. I’ll admit that I don’t know enough about them to tell if they can get away with just a trinket swap. My experience is that Scrappers are a bit tough to heal if not in full rabid armor. Your mileage, of course, may vary…

Erm, reapers and scrappers, or necros and engis, can tank just fine by swapping not more than 1-2 trinkets or 1-2 utilities, or nothing at all… I thought that was already established…
But yeah, I hate dealing with engi tanks unless they’re outstanding.

Rym.1469:

Trailblazer’s set would be ideal for Reaper on “tanking” duty I guess. Still nearly the same Condition damage and same condition duration. Loss on Power and Precision isn’t that impactful. Swap CPC/Suffer for Rise! if needed, you’re done.

Less precision means less crits = less bleeding from Barbed Precision, also less condition damage from target the weak and if you’re running earth sigil, less crits from that too etc.

Rym.1469:

Trailblazer’s set would be ideal for Reaper on “tanking” duty I guess. Still nearly the same Condition damage and same condition duration. Loss on Power and Precision isn’t that impactful. Swap CPC/Suffer for Rise! if needed, you’re done.

You lose a massive 6% of your damage by going through and replacing all of your Vipers gear with Trailblazer and Sinister with Rabid. As it turns out, that is almost the exact same damage loss you get from dropping Corrosive Poison Cloud for Rise in a full Viper/Sinister setup.

I tank on chrono, engy, and necro and all of them do different things. Engy has the highest damage potential of the 3 (if you already have chrono buffs covered in your group), but keeping up with engy DPS is difficult enough for most people even when you are not tanking. Adding tank responsibilities on top of that makes it even more fun.

Condi reaper is great because you get to bring epidemic to help out with adds or for passing condi stacks. Additionally, the condi reaper rotation is pretty straightforward and easy to perform at near optimal levels.

Chrono, in addition to the quickness/alacrity, has the advantage of being able to block/distort etc. through a lot of mechanics in fights that make things easier for the people around you instead of dodging and re-positioning.

All 3 classes bring different things to the table, but it really depends on what you want out of that raid spot. I will say that unless you are a really good engineer, the tank engy would be your last choice.