Guild Wars 2

I’ve been spending some time in Lion’s Arch today, and noticed CoE parties looking for tanks pretty frequently. What’s up with this? What part of CoE is hard enough to require a real tank?

It’s just nice have have someone in the face of the mobs, squishies go down pretty fast.

Saying they are looking for a tank is rather silly especially for CoE because most fights are either aoe you need to dodge or just random agro.

Now if they ask for a support centric character that would make much more sense for every dungeon and fits this game.

I’m a Mesmer and I melee Subject Alpha most of the time….I’m also not toughness build either though I do have some vitality. Asking for tanks is silly. Asking for skilled players is not.

They need a tank because their subject alpha fight involves dying repeatedly, and they want someone who is going to stay alive so that they can zerg back in. I find it strange that their idea of a tank probably wont include ele or mesmer, despite those classes being the easiest to use solo against alpha for extended periods of time.

Shamrocky.5036:

Saying they are looking for a tank is rather silly especially for CoE because most fights are either aoe you need to dodge or just random agro.

Exactly what I was thinking too.

Fay.2735:

I’m a Mesmer and I melee Subject Alpha most of the time….I’m also not toughness build either though I do have some vitality. Asking for tanks is silly. Asking for skilled players is not.

Yeah, some guy said he was looking for experienced players in his CoE party. I completed all paths several times, so I said I’ll join. Then he goes on asking about my profession, and says he needs to know for an efficient party. 15 minutes later I still see him asking for a Warrior or Guardian because he doesn’t want to die 20 times in an instance (or so he said to me).

Tanks make instances faster and easier. Example would be the golems before the laser, or the dogs at the start. Get a guard to GS pull onto himself while the team AoEs them down, vs having a chaotic kiting fest of single target DPS. I don’t care if you’re running 5 berserker’s, 1 tank + 2 berserker’s AoE + 2 random will clear trash faster.

They’re badharding. Be thankful they’re upfront about it and avoid those groups.

Milennin.4825:

Fay.2735:

I’m a Mesmer and I melee Subject Alpha most of the time….I’m also not toughness build either though I do have some vitality. Asking for tanks is silly. Asking for skilled players is not.

Yeah, some guy said he was looking for experienced players in his CoE party. I completed all paths several times, so I said I’ll join. Then he goes on asking about my profession, and says he needs to know for an efficient party. 15 minutes later I still see him asking for a Warrior or Guardian because he doesn’t want to die 20 times in an instance (or so he said to me).

Well I’m quite capable of going melee on this guy and not dying and when things get heated I swap to ranged but generally as long as you dodge the attacks and his various abilities with skill you can stay melee as a Mesmer.

The distortion when timed right stops him from harming me and I have the 3 x mantra trait which is great with the condition removal mantra in case I couldn’t dodge the burn effect in time.

Sword/Pistol also help with the immobilisation, vulnerabilities and stuns to keep him stationary.

So mesmers can tank certain bosses just fine if done properly. Not just guardians/warriors though they are less likely to die from mistakes true.

I can stay in melee on alpha on all my ele quite easily, almost ALL of his attacks are easily dodge-able and for everything else there’s heals. One pug run I was the only one alive at alpha for the entire fight, took like 20mins on the final fight, but I never died once.

another annoying thing that you just can’t help in pugs is in CoF path 3, the little bomb dodging path, since I don’t have a mesmer at 80 yet I cant portal people, and they just seem entirely incompetent at making it past no matter how detailed i explain it. I’ve actually had to solo gaheron’s drake just to pop the waypoint for them before…

I did COE submarine run yesterday as an Engineer in a pug group.
We had myself as an engineer, a necro and 3 thieves.

We survived with few deaths, but we were downed 24/7
There are a few places in that run that would go faster with a tankish profesion.
The alpha is an example.

Ex

Indeed, I’m in Alpha’s face fulltime as an Elementalist with dual daggers, and only go down if I accidently dodge at the wrong times. I don’t see how you can tank Alpha, because he targets people constantly at random.

It’s the mating call of a bad player. Simply /ignore and move on.

well considering “tank” classes are guardian and warrior. having a support/tank specced guardian or shout/banner warrior is not bad to have in a group. If that group is all pugs, where you can’t be an elitist or assured about “skilled pros,” going w/ a setup that makes the process earlier is a reasonable tactic.

I don’t see what’s wrong asking for a “tank”. I play somewhat of a Tank on my Warrior, using a Hammer and Mace/Shield with regenerating banners, I take 1-2 foes out of the fight so the rest of the group doesn’t have to worry as much. It makes easier for all, and I love doing it

I’ve literally ran everything without a tank fine. Having a Control(someone with KDs/stuns) is helpful a lot but I wouldn’t call them a tank. There isn’t many encounters where the mobs focus fire the person with highest vitality or defense.

Only way I could find someone attempting to be a tank helpful in CoE would be maybe champ wolf and if he’s abel to sit on top of fire shards and keep rezzing people for alpha?

I’m not sure, I avoid these kinds of groups.

The need for a tank is a leftover mentality from other mmorpg’s and it is also the desire of the many lazy players that WoW created with the later expansions. They do not want to constantly have to dodge, weave, or use other skills to survive a dungeon. The players noted instead want to sit back in safety for a majority of the time while someone else does the hard work.

This a terrible way of doing things as GW2 is supposed to be an active combat system. One in which all players have to dodge, heal, etc. It is not a system in which two people the healer and tank do the hard work while the dps just sits there.

No single class should ever be required nor is required to do anything in this game in a quick or fun manner.

Having a “tank” for CoE in particular doesn’t make any sense. The main boss, Subject Alpha, targets everyone in range with every single attack (other than crystal, which if you consider Warrior a tank, is actually quite bad to get trapped in as one because you don’t have a blink). There’s no purpose to having a “tank” for that fight. I’d rather bring my Thief if it was a high enough level than my Warrior into CoE to fight Alpha. Evolved Husk would not benefit at all from having a tank for obvious reasons, same with Evolved Destroyer. Considering that Bjarl spends most of his time either spamming AoE crystals everywhere or laying on the floor, having a tank for him is pretty pointless, too. The Mark T tunnel visions one person, and anyone can survive just fine as his target of choice – no tank useful there, either.

None of the mobs pose a big enough threat to need a “tank” either. The only real danger from the Ice Elementals is that V shaped blast they do, and even with my Warrior I often just switch to my rifle against the wolves so that I don’t have to watch for that dumb PBAoE they do. Some big meaty guy up front just to make things easier to AoE might be nice, but you really don’t need that.