Guild Wars 2

I love the classes that can be built up to have almost comically ridiculous defense. I already have a lvl 80 Guardian exactly where I want it. I am looking to roll an alt now, but I want to know which other class comes the closest to being able to spec super defensive?

Bunker Mesmer/Elementalist/Engineer are the other hyper-defenders.

Ele, Necro, and Engie.

Regen shout warrior is good too.

Mace/Shield warrior with defensive utilities ftw. So much block.

I play an extremely resilient Elementalist.
0/0/30/30/10
Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Arcane

Dagger/Dagger or, for ridiculous tankiness and less offensiveness, Dagger/Focus.
Build for healing, toughness, and condition damage.
Use signet of restoration.

You just… won’t… die. It takes a while to kill you not even counting all the awesome defensive abilities (focus primarily, and utilities depending on build) you have.
I started getting bored of the build because combat wasn’t a challenge. Sure, it took a lil longer to kill mobs than it would with a dps build, but I could take on groups of 5+ in Orr without trouble.

I only used it briefly for sPvP, but the build appeared to work quite well based on my experiences. It’s not an easy build to play. Ele is a bit more difficult to play already because you have to use 20 abilities in synergy rather than switching occasionally between two sets of 5 abilities. But knowing when to and when not to use your defensive abilities is also quite important.

From what i’ve seen, any class can be super defensive. Defense is not always about taking small amounts of damage with mitigation or massive health pools. Thieves for example can spec into tons of stealth and health regen. Makes them very tough to kill.

If all you want is defensive ability, thats anyone. The question is, what kind of defense do you want? Gameplay wise.

But off the top of my head for other classes that are “tanky”, warrior and necro for sure. Lots of health. I think engineers can also be pretty beefy. I think necro’s have the highest base health pool in the game.

Necromancer would be super tough, if half the traits actually worked and didn’t heal your enemies. :P

Any mesmer with the barebones of this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAW86kwzSq3QPSY+QvPfI6oFA;TgAA1CtosxYjwGrYObk2A will be incredibly tanky. Defender reduces damage done by 50%, duelist grants regen every 3 seconds and because of your trait you will gain protection every time regen reapplies, and with every illusion out, the overall damage you take is reduced by 3% each. Because of persisting image and signet of life, the phantasms can take a few beatings before going down.

Necro and Engineer.

Esorono.1039:

Any mesmer with the barebones of this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAW86kwzSq3QPSY+QvPfI6oFA;TgAA1CtosxYjwGrYObk2A will be incredibly tanky. Defender reduces damage done by 50%, duelist grants regen every 3 seconds and because of your trait you will gain protection every time regen reapplies, and with every illusion out, the overall damage you take is reduced by 3% each. Because of persisting image and signet of life, the phantasms can take a few beatings before going down.

Defender dies quickly, signet of life is pretty much a fail and waste of a slot, and the traits don’t actually work.

What sort of ele build? I’m 30 arance, 30 earth and really struggle.

Necro…They already have a huge amount of hp.

lollie.5816:

Esorono.1039:

Any mesmer with the barebones of this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgIQNAW86kwzSq3QPSY+QvPfI6oFA;TgAA1CtosxYjwGrYObk2A will be incredibly tanky. Defender reduces damage done by 50%, duelist grants regen every 3 seconds and because of your trait you will gain protection every time regen reapplies, and with every illusion out, the overall damage you take is reduced by 3% each. Because of persisting image and signet of life, the phantasms can take a few beatings before going down.

Defender dies quickly, signet of life is pretty much a fail and waste of a slot, and the traits don’t actually work.

Defender lives for a fair amount of time in a fully defensive build since they take some of your stats, every bit of phantasm health counts in this build when your defense is dependent on two of them, I know for a fact all the visible traits work, my duelist does add regen which in turn grants protection, illusionist celerity also works, persisting images also appears to work, and I’m not entirely sure about illusinary defense since that is hard to test, and vengful image does grant my phantasms retaliation.

Either way, the build is incredibly durable, the mesmer barely gets scratched from heavy hitting attacks and it’s hard to die with unless caught by surprise.

The phantasm traits cancel each other out. Hilarious because they’re down the same trait line.

It depends on the phantasm, but the retaliation isn’t really needed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzKyKilNVxk&feature=youtu.be

Broken traits are broken.

lollie.5816:

Broken traits are broken.

I just showed you a video of it working though.

The traits I’m talking about don’t work.

Everybody knows that except you apparently.

That video only shows defender icon and signet of life icon btw, it does not show the traits working. Because they don’t work.

10 Earth / 30 Water / 30 Arcane – Bunker Ele. They’re stupid difficult to kill.

lollie.5816:

That video only shows defender icon and signet of life icon btw, it does not show the traits working. Because they don’t work.

Ah yes, the boons on my character and the phantasm are coming from the person next to me, can’t be my traits working at all.

Hello? The traits on the phantasms. You know, the ones that don’t work, the ones your little video vs a dummy don’t show. It’s becoming pretty clear you’ve never left the dummy to actually play a mesmer in real world.

Highly Defensive specs are nothing but Nuisance!
You cant be killed and you cant kill. Why do you fight for i wonder.

I got flashback of the time i running RA with Super Tanker build in GW1 with my Wammo ign Bad Bad Baldy. 5 vs 1 and none could kill me lol it was hilarious!
Furthermore it was before Anet set a timer for RA
But it gets old fast trust me.

lollie.5816:

Hello? The traits on the phantasms. You know, the ones that don’t work, the ones your little video vs a dummy don’t show. It’s becoming pretty clear you’ve never left the dummy to actually play a mesmer in real world.

I’ve used the build many times in PvP to test it, and yes unlike what you think, it does work. And very well in fact, the defense on the mesmer is through the roof with the build. Not like you would know anyways, you never tried it.

Do you even read what people write? The phantasm boon traits do not work, they cancel each other out. Some people…

lollie.5816:

Do you even read what people write? The phantasm boon traits do not work, they cancel each other out. Some people…

Do I have to draw a red circle around the boons for you?

Hey, how about you do that ON THE PHANTASM. Your video has none of those. Show me on the little doll where the big bad boon traits (retaliation/regeneration, and the other that your “bare bones” build does not have) touches you, I mean works all at once.

Everyone knows those boon traits cancel each other out btw. You’re arguing pointlessly, because you’re straight up wrong.

lollie.5816:

Hey, how about you do that ON THE PHANTASM. Your video has none of those. Show me on the little doll where the big bad boon traits (retaliation/regeneration, and the other that your “bare bones” build does not have) touches you, I mean works all at once.

http://i.imgur.com/Xomb6.jpg I put arrows in the picture in case you can’t see circles either.

On the phantasm, that’s the defender icon (ie NOT a trait boon) and on yourself, that’s NOT FROM THE PHANTASM TRAIT LINES I’M TALKING ABOUT. That’s the defender icon and the trait for yourself, not the trait that affects your phantasm. The phantasm trait lines cancel each other out. Try again and better this time.

Traits that affect phantasms down Illusion line cancel each other out, but de.r—-p up there does not know this from practising on his dummy.