Guild Wars 2

There is no pure tanker in gw2 but if your aiming for extra defense go for guardian.

Agreed, they are not tanks in the usual sense, but the guardians are the closer to this concept. Not to say that warriors cannot be setup for support and extreme defense, but the guardians have a larger panel of support, heal and defense skills.

A tank can be defined in many different ways, but the general idea of tanking is to survive and to protect. As long as you’re not looking for the traditional MMO-style tanking, either of those two classes work. With that said, I’m only versed in one of those, that being a Guardian. Keep in mind I am not saying that one class is superior to the other because I only know how one performs… and also keep in mind there are many different ways to build your character.

My guardian is built heavily on support. I have tried two main builds – one that had heavy Cleric’s gear (Power/Toughness/Healing Power) and one that I recently switched to that used Soldier’s gear (Power/Toughness/Vitality). The guardian has dozens of supporting abilities ranging from having access to tons of buffs, notably Protection, Might, Retaliation, and the amazing and irreplaceable Aegis; to various healing abilities and ways to provide healing through offense and defense; to great utility with some form of CC, buffing, or restoration on all of our weapons.

Currently, my character is designed to provide boons to my party that last very long while being very difficult to kill. With the right food I can hit 90% boon duration which makes a lot of my buffs last longer than the cooldown. After about two more item replacements that I’m too lazy to make, my Guardian will peak 20k HP, which is very good considering our innate defenses and low base HP.

In dungeons, my main weapon is the staff and I opt for either a hammer for CC if we don’t need a meatshield or I take a main hand and offhand if I really need to tank it out. I personally favor mace + focus if I am the only one who can take a hit in the party because it gives me a ton of opportunities to defend and mitigate damage. We have, in my opinion, one of the best non-elite skills in the game in Wall of Reflection which bounces back a lot of harmful projectiles done by mobs throughout the game and end up nuking the offender for tons of damage. We also have different shouts that grant different buffs and even remove conditions from allies. We even have longer cooldown abilities that will completely protect you and any allies in the area if that’s what you opt for.

Speaking of, guardian fields are great at supporting their friends because our fields are generally Light or Fire. That means if ranged characters fire their projectiles through your Wall of Reflection, they automatically cleanse themselves of conditions. The way I’m specced, I can activate my Virtue of Resolve to remove three conditions from everyone it hits, but there are a ton of different ways to accomplish this since the guardian class is not one-dimensional. We have different elite skills to use, one which makes you invulnerable while recharging virtues and one which gives you a ton of DPS for a short amount of time with different skills. The one I default to as a supporting guardian is Tome of Courage, which gives me a baseline 20 seconds to cast different abilities to heal and buff, including a huge channel which fully heals your party if you can get it off.

Of course, as a support guardian with this build, my DPS is pretty low. With self-buffed Might from my staff, I am only hitting over 1k if I crit, and my crit is so low it generally doesn’t happen. This does make soloing mobs in endgame zones longer than other DPS specced classes, maybe 50% or so depending. Don’t forget that you can never gimp your character to the point of having to restart since changing gear (if you can afford it and are willing to grind for it, like I did) will give you a different character.

I know that post was all over the place, but I decided to give you a quick look into how my guardian plays to get an idea what you’d get if you built and specialized a certain way. Again, you can do it in so many different ways – there’s a build in the Guardian forums that basically lets you heal and buff while doing strong DPS and being very hearty, and that may suit you better! The class is most definitely rewarding if you’re looking for a frontline fighter, but I advise you get some more insight on warriors before you make your decision.

as others have pointed out if you looking for a class that can 100% take all aggro and soak up the damage by just standing there in front, you are looking at the wrong game, if however you are looking for a survivable class, well all classes CAN do that, though guardian and warrior being the easiest to do it on, with guardian being far in top of those 2 too, the warrior is however easier to reach a higher dps on than guardian on the other hand

mesmer is better tank then those 2. both from survivability and control perspective.

typical situation 1:
melee boss chasing some poor soul in party – main hand sword (3) (3) target rooted and you are in melee range. boss gets mad and as he can reach only you (and maybe others in melee range) he unleashes his wrath on you. main hand sword (2) tro lo lo invincible

typical situation 2:
ranged boss downed someone in your party and continues shooting at him/her – blink near poor soul, revive (activates medic’s feedback), when feedback over – place temporal curtain near body to reflect even more attacks, when its over – feedback on boss, when that over revive again for new medics feedback. if by this point party member is not revived, then something is very wrong with your party.

clones to distract some attacks

ethereal fields (useful for chaos armor)

heck even stealth for emergencies

and timewarp on top of that. you mad?

While mesmers do have stronger control over enemies in some situations, and while it does help to give the OP more perspective on the subject of professions that can tank, I don’t really see why listing that was necessary when he stated he was decided on two specific professions.

It boils down to this:
– Warriors survive in part through high defense and high health pools.
– Guardians survive in part through high defense and damage offsetting/mitigating abilities.
– Both survive in part through dodging and, if you wish, blocking.

My recommendation? Go with whichever of the twos’ profession-specific mechanic you think sounds more interesting. That, or use two of your five character slots to level one of each to, say, level 20 before deciding.

I don’t want to turn this into a guardian thread, but would like to add my experience that might help the OP to decide.

I played a ranger since game launch, and last month, when I was looking for a class to level for an alt, I looked into both warrior and guardian.

The main factor in deciding between the two, had very little to do with class mechanics, skills and the like, although the guardian seemed more versatile. What aided me most was spending some time lurking in both the guardian and warrior sub-forums. This gave me an insight into the types of players who are attract to and are playing these two classes, and the difference is night and day.

I found the guardian sub-forum to be a great source of information, the posts were very informative, and seemed these players knew and understood the class very well. When I asked questions, the responses were knowledgeable and well written. Even the posts describing buggy or poorly implemented skills were well expressed and thought out, and not just rants.

The warrior sub-forum … well lets just say it leaves a lot to be desired if you are looking for useful information. All I found was a lot of chest-thumping over how fast they can do CoF p1 speed runs. This sub-forum only reinforced my opinions on the type of players who are playing warriors, and why some of the worst players I have seen in dungeons are on warriors.

After this, it was a very easy decision for me to make, and it has been fun leveling a guardian to 80 and doing dungeons. The only disappointing aspect to playing a guardian I have found, is ranged combat. This is utterly dreadful, even more so after playing a ranger for so long.

The scepter is by far the most useless weapon on a guardian, the staff at least has defensive usefulness. There is no situation I have come across where I would consider using a scepter over melee options. So, keep this in mind if you think you want to do ranged damage, because this is not really a viable option on a guardian.

Well, between guardian and warrior the guardian is the tank.
Because he gains hp every time and some nice knock up skills on his weapons (shield and the war hammer)
And that’s pretty much it ^^

bri.2359:

The scepter is by far the most useless weapon on a guardian, the staff at least has defensive usefulness. There is no situation I have come across where I would consider using a scepter over melee options. So, keep this in mind if you think you want to do ranged damage, because this is not really a viable option on a guardian.

I normally say this too, but I really like a scepter for long range attacks, then I switch it up to a greatsword when they get close

I play a tanky support warrior and I gotta agree. A lot of dps minded and “selfish” personalities there in my sub forum. I just don’t fit in and worse, the support play style is either discouraged or ridiculed.

I tried playing Guardian but the flavor is just not me.

Good luck with your new Guardian!

Actually scepter 3 is nice to root a target but yeah overall scepter is meh compared to the choices of ranged weapons other classes get.

tsmith.7915:

bri.2359:

The scepter is by far the most useless weapon on a guardian, the staff at least has defensive usefulness. There is no situation I have come across where I would consider using a scepter over melee options. So, keep this in mind if you think you want to do ranged damage, because this is not really a viable option on a guardian.

I normally say this too, but I really like a scepter for long range attacks, then I switch it up to a greatsword when they get close

That’s exactly what I do. Scepter is a decent ranged weapon, and in some instances you are better off keeping your distance and killing….albeit more slowly than with a great sword…a mob without taking much damage.

Vlawde.1895:

tsmith.7915:

bri.2359:

The scepter is by far the most useless weapon on a guardian, the staff at least has defensive usefulness. There is no situation I have come across where I would consider using a scepter over melee options. So, keep this in mind if you think you want to do ranged damage, because this is not really a viable option on a guardian.

I normally say this too, but I really like a scepter for long range attacks, then I switch it up to a greatsword when they get close

That’s exactly what I do. Scepter is a decent ranged weapon, and in some instances you are better off keeping your distance and killing….albeit more slowly than with a great sword…a mob without taking much damage.

exactly! i try to kite them as much as I can lol I normally do a combo of the binding skill, then the AOE skill when they’re bound, then rinse and repeat as they each recharge.