Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I thought a little about a making a raid DH tank and came up with this which I feel does what it should quite well. However I have not had the chance yet to play as the tank so I would like to know if the general thought behindit might work well:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRApe5dnsABlChFdCOCBEEhl6h6KAW0fArGCipQe+z//H-TBSBQB3T/glUlBKK/M4+DVQJ4BVbwcm/AwDAgUABO1C-e

The idea
Achieving 100% boon duration with herald and therefor:

- providing a longlasting aegis (+ healing 850 a pop)
- 50% flat damage mitigation with protection up and no conditions
- providing 100% uptime regeneration (maybe not needed)
- 10 sec quickness
- 100% vigor uptime
- 35% uptime protection for 5 other targets

I do feel that having 100% boon duration is something worht achieving since communal defense and shield of judgement aegis duration is quite low. the prolonged duration will guarantee a blocked attack and therefore the heal before the boon runs out. on top I will generate longlasting might stacks myself.

I lose out on quite a bit of damage modifiers.

Hammer is of course another good choice however I feel a bit naked when running it.

Thoughts?

you can’t build a tank like you would a traditional mmo, you still need to be able to pump out respectable damage.

the role of a tank in GW2 raids is simply positioning the boss to favorable spots, your high toughness isn’t needed because you’re face tanking the damage, its needed to maintain aggro.

there’s really only room in the group for 1 pure healing build in a raid, the rest need to be damage dealers.

Darknicrofia.2604:

you can’t build a tank like you would a traditional mmo, you still need to be able to pump out respectable damage.

the role of a tank in GW2 raids is simply positioning the boss to favorable spots, your high toughness isn’t needed because you’re face tanking the damage, its needed to maintain aggro.

there’s really only room in the group for 1 pure healing build in a raid, the rest need to be damage dealers.

hmm I do not find that really convincing yet. looking at the meta build draft for DH celestial tank on metabattle as well as several PoV DH tank raid vids I am not sure we are on the same page.

I basically mimic’d the stats but gaining about 200 power 10% crit chance and losing 30% crit damage in exchange for 50%boon duration – which comes only with thoughness. The healing is not for me but for pure of heart which bnefits largely from even a little.

the build is far away rom being a dedicated healer build.
what it does it optimizes my sustain by having 100% uptie of regeneraation and vigor and having acces to the maximum number of aegis.

maybe what is considered meta has already changed?

Part of your thought process is solid:
A single healer can’t keep 10 people above 90% for that whole fight, so by gearing for a bit more toughness and healing power and giving out regen/protection/aegis to the melee you keep their scholar runes up and allow them to concentrate on dps instead of worrying about self-sustain. That kind of setup will almost certainly result in an increase to overall raid dps over a setup like Darknicrofia is suggesting where the tank tries to keep his own personal dps high.

There are a couple of things in your build that I would question:
1) Building around [Communal Defenses] and [Pure of Heart]
Communal Defenses has a 15 second internal cooldown. Combine that with Pure of Heart and it’s healing for less than 60 hp per second per target. Even if you assume the Aegis blocked 1500 damage, it’s still less healing than you’d give out by taking [Absolute Resolution] and [Battle Presence] in Virtues. That’s REALLY lackluster.

I think Stalwart Defender is a much better choice in that slot. Using Shield5 to knock away seekers can be pretty important.

2) Altruistic Healing is an important part of a tank build for Guardian. You’ll be pulsing tons of boons out to the melee group, and it will result in a ton of self healing. That makes it easier for the healer to keep the ranged group up (which means more scholar runes, less self-sustain, etc…)

3) If you take Altruistic Healing, then Empowering Might will actually heal you for WAY more than Pure of Heart, and you’ll be helping to stack might for the melee group! It’s a win/win/win.

4) Hunter’s Determination does nothing for you. The raid bosses don’t CC you (at least Vale Guardian and Gorseval.. don’t know about Sabetha yet..) Bulwark is a much better choice. It will give you 7 seconds to heal back up any time you get low (such as if a lightning circle detonates).

solid advice and reasoning. I do think the blocks are valuable but I can still ake advantage of that while shifting stats away from healing to more dps.

valor is basically a variant anyways. zeal and virtues for more dps (and utility in case of virtues).

thanks mate

Asmodal.6489:

hmm I do not find that really convincing yet. looking at the meta build draft for DH celestial tank on metabattle as well as several PoV DH tank raid vids I am not sure we are on the same page.

I basically mimic’d the stats but gaining about 200 power 10% crit chance and losing 30% crit damage in exchange for 50%boon duration – which comes only with thoughness. The healing is not for me but for pure of heart which bnefits largely from even a little.

the build is far away rom being a dedicated healer build.
what it does it optimizes my sustain by having 100% uptie of regeneraation and vigor and having acces to the maximum number of aegis.

maybe what is considered meta has already changed?

Ok first of all, I’m the one that put the Celestial build on meta battle, but i’m not the initial author. That would be Narc from DNT.

You need to understand something. There is no meta for raid and there won’t be any from a couple of weeks, probably more a couple of months. For now, anybody can go on metabattle and write whatever build they want. So really, look at metabattle to see nice idea, but for now don’t take them as anything close to best build. If you want to look for good build, research video of fight and you will see what is working.

Now, you are right, but Darknicrofia too. That’s the thing with raids. With 10 players, there is several solutions to kill the boss. A lot of group used Zerker Reaper or Chronomancer to tank the boss with just enough toughness to keep agro. With a good healer, they can do the job and stay alive while doing high dps. This give your group more room for error because you do way more damage that ways.

Another strategy is to use a hybrid tank with a healer. This leave less dps to the group as a whole, but the tank is more independant of the healer, leaving the healer more freedom to heal the 8 DPS. This also give more freedom for the tank to move the boss around as he please. Overall this method have less dps, but it’s easier for the 8 dps to do their damage. Both method work tbh, and i’m sure other strategy work too.

Now for you build. You may have similar stats as the Celestial Tank build, but you are a bit too far into the tanky side of it. Stats ain’t everything. You have less dps trait with Valor, Hunter’s Fortification and Determination. You also sacrficed the Hammer, which is a deadly error imo. Perma protection from the hammer is so powerful for the tank, while doing more dps than camping mace.

I think you focus too much on Aegis. It’s a nice boon, but adding duration to it is near useless. It’s the number of aegis that count not it’s duration. Anyway for the first boss you don’t have small amount of big hit, but large amoutn of small hits, making aegis less powerful. Really, protection beat aegis by a lot in raids (while in normal pve, it’s the other way around).

I would also take Bane Signet with you. It’s a dps increase, but more important it’s a massive cc for break bar.

You are good with your mix of gear to replace celestial. But you miss the point of the build. You sacrificed too much dps and your perma protection, which we the two main goal of the Celestial Tank build (other than tanking itself of course).

While the Celestial Tank is still viable for pugging raids or you do not have a competent healer, I have a more updated version but it would require more optimized group to run it due to its lower toughness and much higher DPS output.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HBQkl7IPt8

Written Guide: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/25118468-dnt-dragonhunter-tank-for-optimized-raids/post/last#last

Narc I have a question. I know that Dekeyz use a Magi/Cleric Druid, did you guys had any agro problem between the cleric trinkets of the druid and the relatively small toughness from the celestial guardian? Because we had some problem with that at Gorseval (still working on my Trailblazer armor to replace the guardian). Our Druid had to swap some trinkets to get less toughness. She didn’t had the agro all the time, but a couple of time, Gorseval changed agro for like 2 secs.

We did not on Vale guardian, Now for Gorseval it won’t matter because it seems like he does a secondary toughness check which causes him to be buggy and walk around so much. Even with my Scrapper in full Rabid running Adaptive Armor we would still have this problem of swapping targets. Until Anet decides if this is a bug or “working as intended” it does not matter how much toughness your tank has over the rest of the group.