Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, I’m a newbie guardian that enjoys tanking in almost every RPG I play. Sure, I guess it’s a bit less exciting than dodging and kiting all over the place while throwing spells behind your back, but for me there’s something appealing about standing toe-to-toe with a boss and trading blows without backing down.

Anyways, in GW2 I chose a guardian (after several false starts and some extensive researching), went with a crithammer build I saw on this forum, and made it even tankier to suit my playing style. At lv80, I saved up for full exotics and started collecting laurels for ascendents.

Then I went on my first “serious” dungeon run.

It was a pick-up group at first, but got progressively seriouser as people dropped out a and one guy brought in his guildmates. Anyways, it ended up being me and 4 people from the same guild (a dedicated group, I guess), and I was confused by the speed runs. They hardly fought any mini bosses or mobs along the way, dodging and weaving towards the final boss in an astounding display of dexterity and cowardance.

Along the way, I was constantly ragged on for not bringing enough offense to the table, and being a hindrance to the group because of it. When I explained I was trying to be a tank, it was met with even more mockery, this time directed towards tanks in general.

Yes, I understand the developers did away with the holy trinity, and the almighty dodge roll has rendered tanks irrelevant (except in higher levels of fotm?), but an MMO entirely filled with various styles of glass cannons and semi-glass cannons is somehow supposed to be more fun?

I know I should just stick to the open world and avoid dungeons, but the open world gets boring after a while. So my question is, is there any place left for pure tanks/bunker builds in this game?

Oh, and here is my build, please critique:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQJASWlYgqCnFyIEfIFRuAbBYPwoH/41DKmQGC-jAzAYLIMGAhJQZvklAHEbltIasqHM1ZS1wCy2bYTeg84KrBBUO-e

There’s no tanks in this game. Building a tankish character may grant you more survivability and is more helpful in certain situations but it’s not required.

Zerker builds tend to do well in exp dungeons as long as you know the mechanics to shorten the run.

Tankish builds tend to do well in wvw settings with some exceptions.

In higher levels of fotm generally no, dps is prefered from my experience, and knowing the encounter well to dodge killer hits, but really I wouldn’t complain if people in my dungeon runs wore full clerics with an emphasis on not dying, what would annoy me more is a zerker dying nonstop.

Though that being said I’ve heard people voicing their opinions on tanky builds as a stepping stone to learning encounters, then gradually moving towards zerker when you can dodge it all and kill the boss asap.

As for your build, if you enjoy playing it then do so, it looks like a very group support build, I myself love meditations since the recent patch, and I always try to hit hard because I like seeing big numbers xD.
It sounds to me like you just had a bad experience with a dungeon group, so my opinion: play how you like, just don’t expect to be welcomed in high high fractals or arah path 4.

Keep calm and carry on. ;D

Of course there is! Just because of all the stuff you read about zerker guardian being great and all doesn´t mean that bunker guardians can´t be effective. In speed runs you won´t be as effective as the mainstream zerkers, but if you just wanna enjoy the dungeon I don´t see why bunkers won´t be a good choice. You´ll probably read a lot of comments sayin AH is the past, anchor or bunker guardians are sh**, full zerker is the best, etc etc……I say F*** them all, play how you like best and enjoy the game

As for the build, are you going for a PVE only build? or WvW too?
Looking at the stats I think you have too much Toughness for PVE. You could drop it to about 1700-1850 and still be able to sustain damage and be survivable tank. Use those points for offensive stats to higher your output damage. (more power, more crit damage…your choice). If you’re going for a hammer build with symbol traits, lower that crit chance to around 40% (it´s enough for good damage). If you wanna have high crit chance, think about Empowering Might (good dps boost and good healing with AH).

PS: I play an AH tanky/dps guardian and I don´t think i´m weaker than all the full zerkers outthere…It´s how I like playin the game

I think u shouldn’t let one bad dungeon experience deter u from playing dungeons. With experience, u will realize that no matter how much toughness you have, u can’t just take damage from some big attack from boss and hope that u can heal back before he hit you again. You have to dodge the big attacks and take the smaller hits if u dun mind.

For a new guardian, I will recommend Strife’sbuilt: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70142-after-100s-of-hours-my-final-guardian-build/
It is relatively forgiving to new players and allow you to fight the mobs in the face, if u like that, but u still have to dodge the big hits

As for your current built, it certainly have too much toughness, use the guide I post for reference. Sigil of blood sucks as it has a 2 second internal cool down(player test say it is 5s) and only heals for 452 hp.

Just to share my experience, I started my guardian as a healway built ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/WvW-PvE-The-Healway-Guardian) . I certainly feel quite godlike in that built. I can pretty much out heal 90% of most boss attacks and dodge oncs in a while for a 1.5k heal. That was until I went to 2x fractals and realize that each boss now hit for like 5k damage and does it consistently very few seconds which i cant outheal anymore. That was certainly the changing point to my way of playing guardian.

I was too lazy in the past and just press the skills whenever I want and dodge whenever I want to for the heal without regards to the timing of the monster attacks. In fact the tanky built I use was making me a bad player because i was face rolling everything else except fractals. After that I started to learn when to dodge and use blocks more intelligently than before. Then I realize that all the tankiness in the healway built was wasted on normal pve content and decided to swap to a dps zerk guardian built. After swapping to a zerk built, I’m getting downed in fractals 28 less than before because I am learning how to dodge properly and use blocks better, but I am still far from a perfect player.

Hence I recommend strife’s built, it is not as tanky as healway but not as dps focused as the built I’m using. I think it is a good starting point for a guardian

people like seeing red splatters with big numeric values contained within.

you can be tanky if you like, but you may find yourself playing solo more than grouped up and the fault cannot lie with those around you. GC is the way to go because people are impatient and that is something that will never change.

going toe to toe can last no more than 45-60 seconds(super generous statement here): aegis, gs3, 1hs2, F1, f4, f5, F2, retreat, shelter, renewed focus, F2, gs3, 1hs2, F1 + any passive/active healing//sigil/rune/food combinations + dodging.

in contrast, i don’t know any bosses(cept lupi) that will go down in under a minute unless the group is tailor made to drop the boss that quickly….and having high toughness will not help you achieve that. nor will spamming all those blocks, though it is satisfying in a scientific and nerdy way to see how many attacks you can mitigate by never moving a single inch

There’s nothing wrong with being tanky. Only elitists and other inflexible people would bother you for choosing so. However, from my experience, being nothing but tanky isn’t too effective. When making a good tanky build, you should try to include things such as an abundance of CC and/or group support if possible. Also, try to maximize on either power or condition damage. Soldier’s gear (power/toughness/vitality) works especially good for this, because if you collect a full set, your attack can easily go over 3,200 while still retaining a bunker-esque feel. You can also mix two or three clerics accessories in as well.

are they viable? yes. are they optimal? really depends on the situation! had your group been a non-speed running group (i’m assuming based on your story), and they kept getting low on health, having you as an “anchor” could have made the difference between succedding or wiping.

that being said some have mentioned, there is no “tanking” in the traditional sense of drawing aggro and allowing all the mobs to focus on you. this is my first MMO so i am only using these terms as what i’ve gathered from hearing others talk about it. and so to me tanking in gw2 really means being able to survive, sustain and outlast. i.e. not dying.

then does that mean you must sacrifice damage to do it? probably a bit. but that doesn’t mean yuo can’t still hit hard and contribute to the group’s DPS.

you can definitely still do dungeons using the build you are. it’s a great build to start on and if the group’s you’re in don’t have MAX DPS, then it’s a good build to have in a group, imho. though of course you could tweak your armor to be a little lower since you have quite a bit, and transfer some of that into power, for example.

i would recommend keep going at your pace, and when you feel comfortable eough for whatever content you may be interested of focused on at the moment, start to shift your egar around. not necessarily more DPS, but to more suit your playstyle. as the game continues to evolve, so will the players – thus the builds and skills we use. so i encourage all to keep experimenting and coming up with new builds. or same builds, but new gear. anything goes and you’ll notice there’s a lot you can do.

though, at the end of the day, if something works for you, if you enjoy something, go for it and don’t let naysayers and debbie downers drag you to where they dwell.

Can’t tank arah. I wear enough toughness for 3k armour but get hit for 6k still.

everywhere else is fine, but the random aggro switch that mobs have inside really sucks.

My guard runs knight armour/zerker trinkets (some calvier for tog) 0/15/30/20/5, my guildies love me in dungeons cause I can dmg while taking the hits and keep mobs off them.

lol I guess this is what happens when you try to theorycraft without without any actual in-game experience :P

I was actually aiming for 4k armor because I’ve heard somewhere that the “average” armor rating in GW2 is 2k, and I wanted twice that amount for a 50% damage reduction. My character was able to achieve its equivalent with 2250 toughness + strength in numbers + SoJ. I know the “perma” protection of hammer renders all that unnecessary, but I don’t trust it because bosses move around all the time :/

The sigil of blood/omnomberry pie/ writ of merciful is actually part of a strategy to increase heals without directly putting points in the horribly-scaled healing power. I did the math…an extra 300 points in healing power would net me around 60~70 heals-per-second (not including dodgeheals), while WoM/pie/blood gives me around 280, or the equivalent of 1200 healing power.

This also explains the 44% crit…I need that for the blood/pies. Also, I needed at least some damage to hold aggro.

So theoretically , this build cuts 50~66% of the of damage coming in (compared to a normal 2k armor guy), while gaining approx 6~700 heals per second from a wide variety of sources, while still having enough life points (17K when I finish getting my ascended) to survive spikes and deal enough damage (2770/44%/30%) to hold aggro.

It sucks that I spent so much time crafting this build and then find out all people want are greatsword zerkers. Ah well, back to the drawing board. Thanks for your input, guys.

there are no tanks… there are bunkers.
and yeah guardian support-bunker is very viable…
people will always whine, that You are not playing “only-rightfull-way” unless they’ll notice that You are actually keeping them alive…..

The inherent problem with toughness is that it is a variable which is pitted against attack, and not a flat reduction in damage.

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

With the above formula, you will see that damage done is the culmination of weapon damage, power, and the skill used.

Your armor then is used to divide that damage into the actual damage done.

In PvP players have a finite amount of power stats available to them, which allows for toughness to have a fairly stable return on reduction of damage.

In PvE the mobs can be given higher or lower power and coefficient values that are beyond what players can achieve, thus making some encounters pointless to have toughness on because it will never divide the damage down low enough to help.

The majority of the fights you get into in PvE are also predicable enough that you can time dodges to avoid the serious stuff, and the rest is balanced enough to allow anyone no matter what gear they are wearing to survive.

The “play how you like” mentality allowed more flimsy builds that do more damage to survive more range of encounters to allow a wider range of play.

In turn, the tankier builds now have “too” much toughness in comparison to the encounters.

Well now that toughness is theoretically out of the window, player damage has to be accounted for. So mobs are given enough damage mitigation and health to survive full dps builds without it being “too trivial”. But now tanky low damage builds inherently do less damage…resulting in long drawn out fights because of low damage and higher survival that is not needed.

So due to the “play how you like” philosophy, they have in some ways doomed us to play as Glass Cannon (GC) in pve, because in the end the only thing that matters is damage.

Mobs hit soft enough for GC builds to survive, and they are hearty enough for GC builds to not be allowed to solo with ease and trivialize encounters…so all the encounters are balanced, seemingly, on GC.

The remaining mechanics revolve around dodge rolling and active gameplay, which is slow enough to allow a wider range of players to react to it and predictable enough to allow everyone to regen enough energy to dodge when need be.

I hate to say it, but we are killing ourselves with the nice and all inclusive nature of letting more people play

PvP has a little bit less of this issue, but it is still there to some degree, the roles are more defined for each profession because of the meta, which allows some people to be wanted as tanky bunkers.

After that whole spiel, I would like to say that I WANT more variety and I play as a utility, semi tanky guardian, instead of full zerker GC. I have a full set of zerker, and I use it from time to time, but it doesn’t match my play style which is solo and sometimes WvW.

Oh my that is quite tanky. I tend to roll more defensive myself but I don’t go so tanky as you. However your build is actually a pretty viable WvW build. My server would most likely prefer your build as they always call for full PVT gear for large group open field combat. So to answer your question does DPS reign supreme? Depends. In a dungeon speed run which you found yourself in, yes. This goes for PVE in general which isn’t really difficult. The objective here is to kill everything as fast a possible to maximize profit.

However ’zerker players are adorable in large open field WvW situations. If your facing me and want to maximize MY profits, by all means run ’zerkers. As I said my server or even guild would prefer your build any day over the typical beserk guardian.

sorry…it’s 4k armor, not 4k toughness (4k toughness would be kinda crazy lol). And thanks for the replies….I’ve learned a lot in this thread!

So if 4k armor is too much, what would be considered a “balanced” armor rating? I see a lot of builds hovering around 3k, is that typical for front-line melee characters?

Arround 3k to 3.2k armor, more than that it is useless, invest in critical and critical damage.

Damage > everything else.

If u gonna invest in crit damage, take cavalier or berserker stats on ascended backpack/earring/rings before your armour. This is because ascended stuff have a lower stat points trade off as compared to armour/weapon.

Zerker is the only viable gear set. Great game design, huh?

We obviously don’t tank like other MMO’s but we can do some. Best way that I’ve found to gain agro is simply proximity and do some damage, always exceptions though.

Protection, IMHO, is the ultimate tanking boon. Run Hammer with 0/0/30/30/10 or 10/30/0/30/0 or anything in between. Grab 2x Sup Rune of Earth, Monks and Water each. This will give you +50% protection duration, trait in Writ of Persistence and live in your Symbol of Protection. You and your melee are now taking 33% less damage. Add in the signet for another 10% and add in some toughness if you need more mitigation.

Guards are all about a bunch of little constant heals especially when you talk AH. I use Sigil of Blood and Onmon Pie all the time. Don’t be afraid to run without AH though, switch in some DPS traits. I am currently running the 10/30/0/30/0 build which works well. I carry a full set of soldiers and a full set of berserkers, constantly mixing and matching depending on the content. This build lets you run tanky or you can optimize for DPS, if you get in a crappy zerker group you can just switch up and roll with um. Using an old but thorough spreadsheet Hammer shows to be around 5% less DPS than GSword all things being equal, if you have Writ of Persistence traited.

Most important is play how you like, stay alive and be mindful of your dps output.

Blood~

Even if you’re personally very survivable, you might not be helping others survive because so many attacks are aoe/cleave/pierce and you can’t guarantee you’ll have aggro anyway.

So, one guardian with a massive ehp pool isn’t innately helping the group because the mob won’t always be attacking them to make use of it, while doing damage is almost always helping by making the fight end faster.

Things like wall of reflection, blinds and aoe boons are helping everyone survive and/or allowing them to dps more and you don’t need to be survivable yourself to use them effectively.

The main problem with “tank” builds is that we nor anyone else can effectively tank anything in this game. There are some situations where it may seem to be working perfectly and you can pull a boss away from allies while they res/attack/whatever and other times where a target will stick on a person like glue even if that person hasn’t done anything at all, attacking healing or even moving…

Because of this there really is no way to build to be a tank at all. What I assume you mean is build for survivability. Well that is OK and completely “viable” but your question isn’t exactly clear there. Tanky Guardians are “viable” in that they can complete all the content in the game with little trouble, but DPS still does reign supreme. You can be completely viable and not be the best, which is exactly what you have in mind.

There is nothing wrong with building for more survivability and honestly I think every class should do it from the start. I’ll tell you like I tell all my pals and guildies, Start with heavy survivability and as you get the hang of content start swapping out your gear for DPS. In the case of guardians this means starting with soldier/clerics. Then slowly moving to Valk/Knight or straight to Zerk. The reason for going slowly one piece at a time is that you get used to having a little less HP, a little less armor, and the small steps don’t bother you anymore. Going for at least a 1/2 knight 1/2 Valk set is a good place for a Guardian to be DPS wise and still have enough survivability to keep people feeling safe, but the best rewards come from high zerker.

There really is one reason for this DPS is very powerful, it prevents damage, it rally’s allies, and saves time on every run. In fact as someone else pointed out in higher level content DPS is wanted even more for these reasons. When it comes down to it the main problem is that Toughness vitality and healing do not give you as much increase in survivability as Precision, Power, and Crit damage increase damage done.

In other words a Full cleric/Soldier guardian will not live much longer than a Knight/Valk Guardian under pressure, and a Zerker dies only slightly faster than them both. Because of things like dodging, energy sigils, constant aggro swapping, personal healing, One shot boss mechanics, bad defensive stat scaling, and mechanics that make it so no one needs any support. In PvP we don’t gain many benefits for being tanky.

Take the new healing buff we just got for example. it showed 2 things. #1 healing power is still fairly worthless upping the healing coefficient on Monk’s Focus has increased the heal so little people don’t even care. Why? Because you would have to have 2500 bonus healing for it to heal you one tenth more of your base HP. It was a 300% increase in healing and its healing coefficient is still not great. Even the Merciful Intervention changes support non tanky builds better. A great heal that requires no healing power to be good and does not get much better as you gain healing power.

The plain and simple truth is gaining DPS stats increases DPS incredibly while gaining tank stats increases survivability marginally. Bosses that 1 shot you with 12k HP are going 1 shot you with 20K hp and you are going to take 3 times longer to kill them. Tanky is viable but DPS is still best in the hands of a good player. If you have poor reflexes, bad situational awareness or any other problem like that then stay closer to the survivability gear. But if you are good at dodging and rotating your heal skills, getting out of melee when needed and can use the geography to your advantage start making your way to Zerker you will not regret it.

The main problem with “tank” builds is that we nor anyone else can effectively tank anything in this game. There are some situations where

4k armor?!
is that really possible?
I though that 3k is that higher level of armor

@CMF actuallyI’m playing more utility guardian right now and as I’m running dungeons and all other stuff with mostly my guildmates and no-one consider me as “bad-party-member”….

@Lokki main problem of Your post is….
DPS won’t help You if You encounter something that has health pool big enought to survive pretty long against full zerker and dmg big enough that glassy guy have no chance to stand against.

btw. healing power isn’t that bad…
maybe for average guardian that isn’t interesting in big usage of it it looks like useless but in my build that makes BIG difference to have that 1k+ healing power or not to have it. both in self-survivability and supporting the party.

also main idea of bunker (as I told previously: there are no tanks – there are bunkers) is not to take all the damage to Your face and stand against it – but being able of withstand nearly everything – in guardian case that is also matter of supporting allies in the midle time….

Being tank entirely depends on what you want to do, and where the meta has evolved to.

Early in the game tanky was good for a lot of pve and dungeons. As players skill and gear and knowledge grow more complete the reliance on tanky goes down.

I think tanky guardians are great for running in Zergs in wvwvw, but in a lot of other places that tankiness is wasted.

Above all play what is fun, but also expect others to do the same. If you find a group that wants extreme dps, and are built as a tank- instead of asking them to accept your style of play, move on and find a group without that restriction.

Bosses usually have clear attacks that you can easily dodge. I’ve been running Arah with full zerker and usually the parts where I have trouble are the legions of mobs that carpet the floor with red circles. Those risen mesmers make me cry tears of anger. xD

But yeah, I started my life as a guardian with the infamous “Strife 0/0/30/30/10 build”, which I immediately found way too tanky. AH builds in general seem a little “selfish” to me as you are only healing yourself. “But guardian give boons” blablabla… But if your excuse is making your allies deal more damage & survive better then it is a fact that you are relying on them. So eventually I started trying out different builds, switched my knight armor with soldier runes to berserker armor with scholar runes and I have to say I feel much more useful now.

When you are pure glass you learn to dodge much better and position yourself in a way that you don’t get driven over. Aegis is a strong mechanic, feels like a waste if you use a really tanky build and aegis ends up not really mattering to you.

Everything that matters in PvE is damage, that’s the sad truth.

@Lord Trejgon

Almost certain I never used the words “bad party member” in my analysis of toughness and the use of it in the current game. So if that is what you took out of what I wrote, that is your own personal spin on those words.

I have found you are constantly trying to contradict me in random posts, and it is quite annoying but oh well, it is a public forum.

I also am running as a support based build which focuses on stacking might to make up for the lack of my offensive stats, but it also stacks might for my group. I don’t speed run, and don’t want to be in groups that are tailored to do so. I enjoy playing “normal”.

So while I understand “why” berserker is dominant in dungeon pve, I don’t agree that it “should” be.

@Lord trejgon:
4k armor is possible, although my character used more of an equivalent of 4k armor by adding the 150 for strength in numbers to a base armor of 3464 (for 3614), and the 10% damage reduction of SoJ (which translates to 361.4 armor for a total of 3975, and goes over 4k once I finish my ascendants)

I played around with the build editor and the best I could come up with is a “true” armor rating of 4.1k, which goes over 4.5k if you include SoJ (please add 150 for strength in numbers):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlYgqCnFyIEfIFRuAbBYPwoH/41jEKRGC-jwyAYLIMWAJMBi2AmALiGbZjIashjqtx0wER127UbyHiWQA6C-e

But I felt it sacrificed too much in terms of vitality, healing, and condition removal. 4k armor was a nice compromise (or so I thought).

What you said about healing power confirms what I have long suspected: that although it scales horribly for self heals, but becomes far more useful in groups, as each mass heal effectively multiplies your healing power by 5.

I must admit I’m a bit disheartened to learn that inGW2 tanky builds are basically the training wheels for newbs on their way to full zerker. There’s so much more to tanking than simply “not dying”. I know people can play whichever way they choose to, but deliberately choosing a sub-optimal build in an MMO usually means getting kicked out of groups, getting ignored by future class/profession patches, and therefore missing out on most of the content in the game.

So…full zerker it is then. Thanks for all the replies and critique, I’ll post my new build once I work out the math behind DPS.

I won’t deny that there are groups out there that will kick you. I have not been kicked from a group yet crosses fingers, but I know what kind of group it is before I go into it. A normal group would have no problems with what ever build you ran, but they would get finicky if you don’t do the dungeon “right”.

A lot of shortcucts, stacking, and little tricks that everyone does. I don’t really agree with all of them since some seem pointless and easier to just clear stuff, but some do make fights more manageable.

Normally if you just make it clear that you haven’t done it before they are more forgiving.

In PVE, tankiness is more or less used as training wheels. There are some encounters where toughness works for aggro control but that doesn’t always work.

In all the PVP contents however I heard survivability means everything

@CMF:
Yeah, I’ve actually had some pretty positive experiences in pick-up groups doing CM, MF, HotW, and Arah. I tanked, held aggro, buffed teammates and didn’t die…therefore I must be awesome, right?! It was only when I got myself in a “dedicated” party doing speed runs on CoF p1 that I started noticing deficiencies in my build.

So it’s a great wake-up call. I would never have realized I was playing the game entirely wrong if I’d stayed with pugs and became self-satisfied with a sub-optimal build.

As for the shortcuts and tricks, I hate those too. I feel those things have an effect of stopping newbs like me from trying dungeons at all because you either have to beg experienced players to walk you through a dungeon the first time, or spend half an hour reading up wikis and youtube videos online beforehand.

Trying to tank almost never works, for a variety of reasons:

1) If you are the only “tank” in an otherwise DPS group, you will not be able to hold aggro anyway and everyone else but you becomes more likely to die due to lower DPS making fights take longer and thus increasing incoming damage. Then you are screwed because good luck killing anything in a dungeon with a tank build. This is true no matter how many “tanks” are in the party; DPS will die first and useless tanks remain standing.

2) If your entire group is full of tanks, or only tanks are still standing as a result of #1 above, you are not likely to wipe immediately but everything will take so long that you might as well just reset. A single DPS soloing a boss usually takes 10 times longer due to losing all the group boons and conditions that stack up to enable the 10k DPS target for most organized groups. A tank build can have as little as 10% of the DPS of a zerker build, which means a fight that a DPS-oriented group could clear in a minute could literally take an hour and 40 minutes to solo as a tank.

3) You can’t tank anyway, because most stuff either does way more damage per second than anyone can tank/heal through, or even a zerker can power through it. It is very rare to hit that fine line where a tank can facetank but a zerker cannot.

Moreover, defensive support =/= tanking. In a game without aggro mechanics, building like a tank is basically a massive screw you to the rest of your party. You are basically going “I don’t mind getting you guys killed so long as I don’t have to pay repair costs” by running a build that ONLY keeps yourself alive. Meanwhile, defensive support builds can be quite strong without going full kitten on the defensive stats; a 10/30/10/20/0 zerker DPS hammer guardian, for example, can pile on defensive boons, a group toughness boost, and tons of projectile blocks, stability, etc. without sacrificing much, if anything, in the way of DPS.

@Guanglai Kangyi:

Hm, I’ve never had any problems holding aggro, usually it’s the opposite…I facetank until everything’s on cooldown, get chased clear across the map, hit until I go down, then the boss would continue beating on my body until I die a final death. Only then does he notice I have teammates XD

Or maybe it’s because I’m usually running with kittenty pugs in full MF armor, and real DPS guys would get more aggro. Isn’t the aggro formula some combination of damage, proximity and toughness? A tank may hit like a wet noodle, but no one can beat him on proximity and toughness!

I, like anyone enjoy playing the game my way. But if you’re anything like me then once you join a team (particularly one you don’t know) you want to be an asset and not a liability. While being a full pvt guardian may be fun and you may be the last one to die, it doesn’t really make you an asset. Learn dungeon mechanics, run some defensive support (reflects, AoE aegises, protection), set yourself up in some nice berserker gear and dodgeroll to victory.

GW2 is designed to allow you to tweak your class to fit your playstyle.

If being tanky helps you clear content because that is how you play then go ahead and spec yourself that way.

DPS is not king. Being alive and contributing is.

The problem with tanking is: no matter how tanky you make yourself. in a lot of dungeons you will die in a couple of hits anyway.

mtpelion.4562:

GW2 is designed to allow you to tweak your class to fit your playstyle.

If being tanky helps you clear content because that is how you play then go ahead and spec yourself that way.

DPS is not king. Being alive and contributing is.

Wukunlin said it one way, I add the other: Even being full glass cannon does not mean you need to die. Another reason why “tanks” are sub-optimal. Even though a hammer-AH can be quite comfortable sometimes.

subclavian.5839:

@Guanglai Kangyi:

Hm, I’ve never had any problems holding aggro, usually it’s the opposite…I facetank until everything’s on cooldown, get chased clear across the map, hit until I go down, then the boss would continue beating on my body until I die a final death. Only then does he notice I have teammates XD

Or maybe it’s because I’m usually running with kittenty pugs in full MF armor, and real DPS guys would get more aggro. Isn’t the aggro formula some combination of damage, proximity and toughness? A tank may hit like a wet noodle, but no one can beat him on proximity and toughness!

The formula for aggro in this game, as far as I can tell, is pretty just “whoever the boss feels like beating on.” The “toughness = aggro” myth was, as far as I can tell, perpetuated by one guy who wanted to justify his knight/AH build as viable rather than running full DPS, even though he regularly did speedruns with otherwise zerker team comps. He also had a bunch of other silly claims, like “having a shield increases aggro” and “putting boons on allies makes nearby mobs target you”, all of which are obviously plainly incorrect. I and others have actually tested it in a structured fashion and have found that there is basically nothing you can do to consistently control aggro across the board. There MAY be dungeon mobs out there that tend to aggro more onto characters with high toughness; there are also just as likely to be mobs that aggro onto low toughness.

If there is anything you can do to “tank”, it is to run in first. That at least guarantees the mobs will do their first few attacks on you before they reroll on their aggro table a few seconds later and target someone else.

mtpelion.4562:

GW2 is designed to allow you to tweak your class to fit your playstyle.

No, GW2 is designed to have everyone wear berserker gear and mow down mobs that they didn’t bother skipping.

Yaki.9563:

mtpelion.4562:

GW2 is designed to allow you to tweak your class to fit your playstyle.

No, GW2 is designed to have everyone wear berserker gear and mow down mobs that they didn’t bother skipping.

Damage output is what matter on this game, kill fast and you will survive longer, toughness doesnt make much effect if being atacked by some one with huge damage output.

example:
valk+zerk gear and with longsword and hammer i can take several target at same time due high crit damage ~12k to light armors in WVW .

If i choose to get 2.4k toughness (~3850 armor) and 22k health i die with people hitting me over 10k with criticals, damage being reduced by souths to 6k.

Yes… damage and critical is the way to go in here.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The “toughness = aggro” myth was, as far as I can tell, perpetuated by one guy who wanted to justify his knight/AH build as viable rather than running full DPS

I’m pretty sure that this “myth” was created by Anet people, when they were giving a vague explanation of the aggro (or “hate”) mechanics for enemies. I don’t know about giving out boons and all that, but high toughness giving higher aggro is very much a fact. Of course there is still a bunch of randomness involved in NPC’s picking their target, and some have different behaviours (some bosses seem to prefer to target ranged, etc), however if you want aggro, get high toughness.

I can notice the difference in aggro I get on my Guardian whether I’m using my zerker gear, or my knights-mix gear, and when someone else in the party has higher toughness than I do.

Surbrus.6942:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The “toughness = aggro” myth was, as far as I can tell, perpetuated by one guy who wanted to justify his knight/AH build as viable rather than running full DPS

(…)
I can notice the difference in aggro I get on my Guardian whether I’m using my zerker gear, or my knights-mix gear, and when someone else in the party has higher toughness than I do.

humm on WvW supervisors tend do like me alot if i run over 3.7k on armor they will ignore other people, if i go zerker i get slap them alot and they will ignore me, unless i start criting on NPC real high.

http://gw2ita.wordpress.com/review/interview-with-colin-johanson-by-mmorpgitalia-and-gw2-italian-blog/

Q: How the AI of enemies will work? Specifically, how enemies will chose their target? Will they be capable of complex behaviour and combat strategies?

A: That’s a great question, because it’s something we don’t necessarely get asked details a lot. There are very few creatures in the game right now that have kind of their final skills and abilities that we intended them to have. For example, in the demo that we’re getting here at Gamescom… the undead army in the high level map is probably the closest thing to what I would consider to be in an army that has a lot work done on it at this point. Our creatures are going to be getting a lot of work between now and release. We have really been focused mostly on the players side of things at this point and on getting all the contet put together on. So creature balance will be kind one of the next things that we tackle, and we’ll be moving army by army in trying to give them themes and skills and AI details to each army specifically. In regards to AI and aggro… simple creatures will use an AI system to determine who attack, and one of the most important criteria will be who is the closest target to them, but there are also criteria like who’s doing damage, how much damage they’ve done… and other things like that. These are basic things that most creatures would use. Then there will be unique AI for a number of different creatures that will use specific skills or the entire creatures will do different things than that. There may be creatures, for example, who attack the furthest away player in the party. There may be creatures who try to focus on people wearing medium armor or light armor, and try to chase them around. There may be creatures that run away, there may be creatures who get out of the way of attacks, there may be creatures who specifically only use skills on people at specifc times. So, all of these are aspect on which we’re going to work as we get closer to the release of the game.

http://www.gamespot.com/guild-wars-2/videos/guild-wars-2-panel-at-comic-con-2011-6325039/

The two sources of where the mechanics have been divulged to the public. As far as the video, I tried to skip around in it but didn’t hear anything about agro per say. It may be in there, but I dont have time to watch it atm.

Does it really matter? Play what you like and play for fun.

Jut don’t cry when others idea of fun doesn’t include a tank. Instead of forcing your idea of fun on others, find like minded people to group with instead. This works for all aspects of the game.

No one is forcing you to go full dps- just don’t expect others to accept your play style if it conflicts with their idea of fun.