Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to look for a “tank” profession. Yes before everyone say i know there are no “specific” class or role in this game. And that “tank” doesn’t exist.

I just want a profession that doesn’t die, and is easy to learn for a newcommer. I have hear that warrior is the most “user friendly” one.

Does anyone have a guide or a tutorial that is up to date ?
Any help would be great !

Thanks !

Necromancer is by far the easiest and tankiest class.

Also the worst but that’s the price you pay.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Necromancer is by far the easiest and tankiest class.

Also the worst but that’s the price you pay.

Necro is the third tankiest in my opinion, at least from a wvw perpective. Necromancers may have extremely high health further boosted by death shroud, but they have little ways to deal with focus fire or gank, and they have no blocks or invulns and very little blinds. Warriors and guardians are tanker and wvw due to higher armor, arguably better healing, and lots of blocks/invulns/stances or blinds. Oh and most importantly they have easy access to stability a boon that grants immunity to CC.

As a necro in WvW you need to have a guardian in your party or a Meh GM trait to gain stability, and necros need stability more than any other profession to survive in WvW. When a fight turns bad, necros tend to be the first to go down if they’re Caught with their pants down at the wrong time, but their AoE spike damage and natural tankiness makes them a valuable profession there.

Every profession can be built to be tanky or glass though. Although for dungeons the lack of trinity means all out offense is the best. In WvW and pvp though defensive builds relying on active more than passive mitigation can exist. Necros use their health to soak up damage, and have few ways to actively prevent it. Eles and rangers can be surprisingly tanky due to amazing healing and regeneration skills (on pvp builds) while mesmer and thief survivability is generally lower but can be high in trollish stealth or evasion based builds.

And guang, I don’t think you play gw2 of you think that necro is easier to play across the board than warriors..

Warrior > Necro > Guardian

Warrior – [High Health/High Armor] combined with Healing Signet gives you tons of survivability and healing. Even in full Berserker and taking heavy damage you’ll float around 50-90% health in most fights. The only real danger is getting overloaded with conditions and/or Poison.

Necro – [High Health/Low Armor] Deathshroud acts as a secondary healthpool when you’re in a pinch. You can also use the Plague Elite which will temporarily boost your (Power x2/Toughness x4/Vitality x3) for 20 sec. More of a burst survivability class as it lacks reliable anti-CC and mobility making it weak if focused down hard.

Guardian – [Low Health/High Armor] Lots of defensive boons (Aegis/Protection/Regeneration/Retaliation/Stability/Vigor) as well as reflects,AoE condition removal, and temporary invulnerability. Focuses more on party utility/support rather than personal survivability. Most skills are on a pretty long cooldown, but with good CD management its very survivable.

Warrior: Nomads armor and tinkets, 6 toughness, 6 Vitality, and 2 wherever. This has to be the tankiest build/profession available. However your DPS is almost non existant.

lol you should try guardian with that build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWn0ARhQ2JEOCBBimIeQqKA2J3296Y7uB-TRSDABO8AAMUJ4xHBgfV/BjLAQWK/A4QA0rugU2fIAwBwv/mv/GY5lXe5lXul/d5fX+5BB8N-e
Very likely the most facetanky kitten in the game
All you ever have to do is facetank the enemy and press auto attack on hammer and you will never die except to a very few dungeon bosses when soloing.
So it is arguably a rather easy to play build as well

for a beginner tank? probably guardian. I feel it’s hard to make a guardian that isn’t at least a little tanking. if you tried to, it would be even more so. Sure, a dps guardian is possible, but I’m just saying that the average guardian is harder to kill than the average every-other-profession.
one other thing you should consider: a lot of builds might be impossible to kill, but require active skill casting to make it happen. or maybe ramping up to it (they would be susceptible to burst damage). Do you want passive or active tankyness? active is usually more effective, but requires more attention and skill.

Kibazuka.1390:

lol you should try guardian with that build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQJASWn0ARhQ2JEOCBBimIeQqKA2J3296Y7uB-TRSDABO8AAMUJ4xHBgfV/BjLAQWK/A4QA0rugU2fIAwBwv/mv/GY5lXe5lXul/d5fX+5BB8N-e
Very likely the most facetanky kitten in the game
All you ever have to do is facetank the enemy and press auto attack on hammer and you will never die except to a very few dungeon bosses when soloing.
So it is arguably a rather easy to play build as well

OOOO, Also heres a warrior version: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAS5ejMd05ZLIGgQHaAjgC9I0CLvpAIdRcDLBA-TxxGABA8EAwTJYsq/skyvX1NQ8FBYj9HCAcAY5lXe5lXul/d5fX+5BB8N-e

Edit. Forgot to add weapons and sigils in the first. Fixed

nearlight.3064:

And guang, I don’t think you play gw2 of you think that necro is easier to play across the board than warriors..

As far as dungeons are concerned necro is way tankier, Death Shroud is basically a free (massive) pool of extra health whereas the warrior has jack kitten for defense since he’s running loaded with banners and signets and has no endurance regen, blocks, or blinds to speak of.

Also considering you’re the guy who runs condi necro in PvE I don’t think you should really be trying to tell other people how to play the game.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

nearlight.3064:

And guang, I don’t think you play gw2 of you think that necro is easier to play across the board than warriors..

As far as dungeons are concerned necro is way tankier, Death Shroud is basically a free (massive) pool of extra health whereas the warrior has jack kitten for defense since he’s running loaded with banners and signets and has no endurance regen, blocks, or blinds to speak of.

Also considering you’re the guy who runs condi necro in PvE I don’t think you should really be trying to tell other people how to play the game.

Are you delusional? I have never used condition necro in PvE. If you remember that thread, I condemned it’s use in dungeons. I used zerker necro in pugs.

Stop making things up to win an argument. And when I argued my point I meant I was comparing tankiness across the board, not just dungeons, since the OP never specified which environment he was talking about, and I’m not going to sit idly by and let you soil the image of my main as it relates to all areas of the game.

Warrior is definitely the most “user friendly” class. Also, if you are using the term “tank” in the traditional MMO sense of the word (as in, gain agro and let enemies beat on me while someone else heals me and someone else kills the guy beating on me), that role is non-existent in GW2.

There are builds that can survive more hits (or more stacked conditions) than others, but there is no SUSTAINED tanking capability in this game.

ALL classes can be speced to provide some “tankiness” by increasing their Toughness and/or Vitality but such increases mean you loose stats in other areas (like damage….usually considered much more important).

The best way to survive in this game is learning to move, block, evade and (most importantly) dodge.

In terms of starter characters, Guardian with hammer has a built in 33% damage reduction to direct damage on their #1 auto-attack…..semi-tanky from the start.

nearlight.3064:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

nearlight.3064:

And guang, I don’t think you play gw2 of you think that necro is easier to play across the board than warriors..

As far as dungeons are concerned necro is way tankier, Death Shroud is basically a free (massive) pool of extra health whereas the warrior has jack kitten for defense since he’s running loaded with banners and signets and has no endurance regen, blocks, or blinds to speak of.

Also considering you’re the guy who runs condi necro in PvE I don’t think you should really be trying to tell other people how to play the game.

Are you delusional? I have never used condition necro in PvE. If you remember that thread, I condemned it’s use in dungeons. I used zerker necro in pugs.

Stop making things up to win an argument. And when I argued my point I meant I was comparing tankiness across the board, not just dungeons, since the OP never specified which environment he was talking about, and I’m not going to sit idly by and let you soil the image of my main as it relates to all areas of the game.

Are you trying to imply that running zerker necro is somehow any better?

If you’re a beginner, I recommend going with Warrior. As others have said, their combination of a high base Health pool along with Heavy Armor makes them quite survivable, while Healing Signet gives them good sustain. You can further fortify this with Adrenal Health (a trait), Regeneration and runes/food.

Necromancers can be extremely tanky, but it depends a bit on your build, while Guardians rely on a combination of boon upkeep and proper use of utilities and virtues to make them tanky. (Although if done well, they can be far, far more sturdy than the other two professions.)

Warrior and Necros are pretty much the best options if you want to have both tankiness AND damage output.

Both have very high HP pools to being with and both come with skills that mitigate an enormous amount of damage. Defiant Stance and Endure Pain nullify all attack damage, while Defiant Stance also soaks up damage from conditions and enemy buffs like retaliation. They can be traited to give you up to 9 seconds of invulnerability. You could also trait into Defy Pain which pops Endure Pain when you drop below 25%, taking your invulnerability period up to 14 seconds but this requires investing deeply into Tactics.

Necros have Deathshroud, Plague, Lich Form all of which makes them very hardy. Not completely invulnerable but with the right traiting and kit it can be very difficult to kill a necro. Pure condition damage builds are fun and with Dire or Rabid gear, you’ll be quite hard to kill. They take a lot longer to kill things but are fun to play if only for something different from all the pure damage builds out there. I’ve also toyed with a WvW zerg support build using Knights gear and cavalier trinkets. VERY tough and inflicts a great deal of pain to enemy zergs. With that build up, you can easily get to 3k toughness while still having semi decent damage output for taking down enemies after the front line bashes through. Don’t use that build much any more as WvW is so stale I hardly play it. Necros are very hardy against conditions. They can soak it up for healing, draw them from allies and throw them back at enemies, then spread them every, inflict conditions on themselves then transfer them to enemies. I really like playing the necro and they’re really quite a nicely rounded class.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

nearlight.3064:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

nearlight.3064:

And guang, I don’t think you play gw2 of you think that necro is easier to play across the board than warriors..

As far as dungeons are concerned necro is way tankier, Death Shroud is basically a free (massive) pool of extra health whereas the warrior has jack kitten for defense since he’s running loaded with banners and signets and has no endurance regen, blocks, or blinds to speak of.

Also considering you’re the guy who runs condi necro in PvE I don’t think you should really be trying to tell other people how to play the game.

Are you delusional? I have never used condition necro in PvE. If you remember that thread, I condemned it’s use in dungeons. I used zerker necro in pugs.

Stop making things up to win an argument. And when I argued my point I meant I was comparing tankiness across the board, not just dungeons, since the OP never specified which environment he was talking about, and I’m not going to sit idly by and let you soil the image of my main as it relates to all areas of the game.

Are you trying to imply that running zerker necro is somehow any better?

I’m trying to imply that you’re making things up to try to make me look bad.

But hey it could be worse. At least I didn’t eat grawl arrows during a DnT admission test.

At least I wasn’t running necro for it.

Regardless let’s talk after you’ve rolled a real class and can offer constructive feedback on a profession that isn’t total kitten .

Would you guys care to take this outside?

I do agree that trying to shove Necro down a new players throat without a full disclosure of how nitch and alienating playing that class can be is a disservice to the new player. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with playing a Necro, but implying it is as “easy” to play as a Warrior is quite “delusional”.

1. Elixir-Infused Bomb + Backpack Regenerator Engineer

2. Healing Signet + Andrenal Health Warrior

I say these two are the easiest because you do cleave damage as well, super noob friendly, but you need traits.

If you actually just want to not die easily, you should just pick ranger, and go catch a few bears or drakes, and let them head in combat first, then you will out tank all classes in PvE in my opinion

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

At least I wasn’t running necro for it.

Regardless let’s talk after you’ve rolled a real class and can offer constructive feedback on a profession that isn’t total kitten .

Look at my sig. I play more than just necro. I also play Ele, mesmer, thief and ranger (too lazy to update sig to include that one) and I’m well versed and knowledgeable about all their meta PvE builds. I’ve never applied to DnT, nor will I, since I’m a WvW/GvG player at heart, and do dungeons for fun in my spare time, and I have participated in a few practice speed clears with my friends on ele. Anyway the point is necromancer is not total kitten in all areas of the game. In PvE, yeah its the worst and I have all the hopes in the world that the devs will try to fix that because I love playing necromancer, and I’d like to feel useful when I use it in PvE.

My issue with you guang is multi-faceted. You’ve insulted me before by calling me cancer (which personally offends me more than you’ll ever know). Just now in this thread you made up lies to try and make me look bad. In general you argue against two of the professions I love to play (which is not inherently bad in itself), both necromancer, and ranger, BUT I feel like you’re contributing to the stigma that affects both of them for different reasons. And its inexcusable, and discriminatory to perpetuate the idea that these classes, especially necro are absolutely horrible, and while there is some truth in it for HIGH END PvE (that 95% of players will never do), the toxicity of the pug community is more of a problem than the gameplay problems.

Anyway I’m just glad that I don’t have a horrible reputation by the GW2 high end PvE community in general.

I believe this video I came across is evidence enough to show what your reputation is like.

Is that the “rT tries to run Arah and fails miserably” video? I love that one.

Also, I could care less what you think of me except that you keep bringing your personal “I love necro they’re the best” bias into everything. Regardless I don’t care, you can stew in your own grudge as much as you want.

Back on topic, I would actually put warrior in the higher tier of difficulty for the following reasons. I’ve said this before but it won’t hurt to say it again. Note that this refers to a META build, not “I’m a 1200-range rifle warrior in clerics gear” crap:

1) High health but bad healing means that they don’t take hits well. A warrior may be able to take a larger number of hits initially and regen a fair bit during, but having bad active heals across the board means that once you lose that health pool, you have no way of getting it back up.

2) Warrior lacks ways to reliably negate damage. Guardians have built-in regen (that isn’t lost by healing), lots of defensive boons, and lots of blocks. Engineers and thieves can spam blind, mesmers can spam invul, etc. Warrior doesn’t even get consistent access to vigor by comparison which leaves them with just their regular dodge and a short-duration dodge from WWA, which are good for avoiding obvious boss tells but not so great for powering through unavoidable trash damage.

3) Warrior is actually predisposed to eating MORE damage than other classes because of how heavily backloaded their damage output is. Axe auto deals extra damage on the last hit meaning you generally don’t want to dodge during Triple Chop if you can help it, and Hundred Blades roots you in place for a full four seconds, during which you can’t even strafe. That means that oftentimes you just have to sit and eat the attack rather than interrupt your HB if you think you can take it without dying, which in turn compounds with #1 and #2.

4) Warrior lacks a good “back off and range” option. Nowadays everyone knows that stack-and-melee is where the money’s at, but for newbies (like OP) it helps to have the option to back away a bit if things heat up. Most classes have respectable ranged options that they can use without totally crippling their DPS or breaking the stack too much (i.e. a guardian can switch to scepter and back off a few steps just so he’s not sitting right in the PBAOEs). Warrior is stuck with rifle or longbow, both of which really suck, so most likely you’re going to have to stick with GS/Axe even if it kills you, unless you want your team to chew you out for it.

That’s not to say you can’t roll a warrior in knights gear and spec for tons of regen and carry only defensive utilities, but that’s hardly any more of an accurate representation of how tanky a class is than a full clerics water ele who just afks in melee with a staff.

NatsuyakiRingo.3452:

I’m trying to look for a “tank” profession. Yes before everyone say i know there are no “specific” class or role in this game. And that “tank” doesn’t exist.

I just want a profession that doesn’t die, and is easy to learn for a newcommer. I have hear that warrior is the most “user friendly” one.

Does anyone have a guide or a tutorial that is up to date ?
Any help would be great !

Thanks !

Welcome to the game! Sorry your post is being hijacked by fools. As you can see, some people have very strong opinions.

For just general PvE stuff, I have personally found that Guardian is the easiest, “tankiest” (and I didn’t use hammer either!!), followed by Necro. I got my Warrior to level 55 and Guardian was a million times easier to level. I have no idea why Warrior is deemed to be easy and op because I have not found that to be the case at all.

However, you asked for guides/builds. A great wealth of information is located at dulfy.net. She has recently been adding class guides that I think are very helpful – warning, they are very long and geared more towards doing dungeons.

Keep this in mind…you start with 5 character slots…make a guardian, warrior, necro and engie (as suggested in this thread) and see which one you like most! It’s important YOU have fun with whichever profession you play.

Enjoy!!

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Is that the “rT tries to run Arah and fails miserably” video? I love that one.

Also, I could care less what you think of me except that you keep bringing your personal “I love necro they’re the best” bias into everything. Regardless I don’t care, you can stew in your own grudge as much as you want.

Back on topic, I would actually put warrior in the higher tier of difficulty for the following reasons. I’ve said this before but it won’t hurt to say it again. Note that this refers to a META build, not “I’m a 1200-range rifle warrior in clerics gear” crap:

1) High health but bad healing means that they don’t take hits well. A warrior may be able to take a larger number of hits initially and regen a fair bit during, but having bad active heals across the board means that once you lose that health pool, you have no way of getting it back up.

2) Warrior lacks ways to reliably negate damage. Guardians have built-in regen (that isn’t lost by healing), lots of defensive boons, and lots of blocks. Engineers and thieves can spam blind, mesmers can spam invul, etc. Warrior doesn’t even get consistent access to vigor by comparison which leaves them with just their regular dodge and a short-duration dodge from WWA, which are good for avoiding obvious boss tells but not so great for powering through unavoidable trash damage.

3) Warrior is actually predisposed to eating MORE damage than other classes because of how heavily backloaded their damage output is. Axe auto deals extra damage on the last hit meaning you generally don’t want to dodge during Triple Chop if you can help it, and Hundred Blades roots you in place for a full four seconds, during which you can’t even strafe. That means that oftentimes you just have to sit and eat the attack rather than interrupt your HB if you think you can take it without dying, which in turn compounds with #1 and #2.

4) Warrior lacks a good “back off and range” option. Nowadays everyone knows that stack-and-melee is where the money’s at, but for newbies (like OP) it helps to have the option to back away a bit if things heat up. Most classes have respectable ranged options that they can use without totally crippling their DPS or breaking the stack too much (i.e. a guardian can switch to scepter and back off a few steps just so he’s not sitting right in the PBAOEs). Warrior is stuck with rifle or longbow, both of which really suck, so most likely you’re going to have to stick with GS/Axe even if it kills you, unless you want your team to chew you out for it.

That’s not to say you can’t roll a warrior in knights gear and spec for tons of regen and carry only defensive utilities, but that’s hardly any more of an accurate representation of how tanky a class is than a full clerics water ele who just afks in melee with a staff.

My own grudge? You’re the one who tells necros that they should not even bother with PvE wherever you go.

And let me reiterate, the OP NEVER said what game mode he wanted a tanky profession for. In PvP and WvW tanky bullds have a niche to exist and while I was incorporating those to my response, you just ignored that and focused on PvE, and in case you haven’t noticed how anet seems to want to balance this game, PvP at the very least weighs heavily in a lot of their balance decisions. I don’t think you’d be a good authority to talk about whats viable in solo Q or GvGs.

@OP:
Despite what Anet makes new players think, those “specific roles” actually exist. If you really wish to, sure you can make a “tank”, who will be able to eat heavy hits at the cost of no DPS and very little healing. As it was mentioned before, classes with great potential for this role are warrior, guardian and necromancer. You can then further extend their tanking abilities by giving them Soldier’s, Sentinel’s or Nomad’s prefixed gear.
You should be aware, though, that building a character in this way will make it very undesirable to play with in PvE as most experienced players want to finish content as quickly as possible, which involves offensive strategies and usage of offensive gear (such as Berserker’s or Assassin’s). Once you reach the point, when you complete explorable modes of dungeons every day to make profit, you will definitely want to scrap your tanky gear and start focusing on playing offensively.
My honest advice is: do not get used to facetanking heavy hits and playing lazy. This kind of gear and play strategy is no good even for beginners. You should rather try to learn encounters and boss’ attack tells and dodge them properly. Otherwise, if you try to switch to proper gear later, you will be surprised how quickly you go down if you don’t do anything.