Guild Wars 2

Title says it all. SInce the raid came out I’ve been playing my main, a guardian as only a zerk dragon hunter. I’m interested to get into tanking as I already have a knights set.

How are you guys building in terms of trait lines (can we still call them that), and trinkets and runes and stuff.

I’m starting with basically no knowledge outside of common sense so anything would help

So this is my thinking / playing so far…

With as less toughness as possible to hold the aggro. And also going into symbols (Hammer/Mace + Shield or Focus). Writ of persistence is clear and sometimes also in the direction of AH to take some pressure of the healer.

Going for dragonhunter instead of virtues gives the possibility to use a trap and a flat 10% damage reduction due to no conditions in the fight i have seen so far. Also this opens up the possibility to use a dps-trap to push your personal dps a little bit.

Right now i have the trooper rune in my knight armor set – but this was in there before and i didn’t change it. Rune of scrapper might be nice. Also sigil of water might be worth a try for the second slot in the weapons …

this ends up to something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVEQNAS5ensABddi1CBGCBEEhFGi6qY7yAA7ASuSQu4P+oH-ThRBQBlS9nro8DF6GM4+DA4JAYGlgAA-e

In the end it should be fine-tuned to your group. Maybe dropping Valor for zeal in order to increase your symbol damage is an option, but this depends on the amount of healing you need. Other option would be droping dragonhunter in order to increase the passive amout of heal, but this should lower your personal dps – also because of losing the trap – which could be replace by Signet of Judgment in order to keep the damage reduction.

I think it is not really the optimal build, but as i said it really depends on your group…

My “build” is a result of little money and complementing the guild comp. Tried multiple times two nights, this was used for night 2.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVMQNAS5ensABddiFdCOCBkdil4BrKAslqXY9gkwWQe/1/OgA-TRyGABA8EAKRdlhUaskysoUCymuBBVpggLCgJ7PAA-e

The trinkets are a mix that I wouldn’t generally recommend, I got them because I wanted to be able to keep them for most game modes as I’m short on laurels. Knight’s gear because I only have that and cleric’s. First night we tried I used “Hold the Line” instead of “Procession of Blades” and ran valor AH instead of zeal, but I was too indestructible in that my health didn’t drop. So I changed it to zeal for more dps. Took healing aegis because with no AH might on crit doesn’t help survivability, and we had a herald to give might anyways.

Our healer was a druid with only clerics trinkets and dps armor the second time around, so “frag o’ faith” plus DH F2 helped supplement the times when astral force was down. We didn’t have enough coordinated pushes/pulls to keep all the red orbs away, so I was most always in the AoE of at least one of them at a time. My health would occasionally spike to less than 1000, but that’s where F3 and the druid came in. Would probably have switched SoJ out if the healer had more healing gear. I also originally ran “Feel My Wrath” instead of “Dragon’s Maw”, but we were severely lacking CC for the break bar in phase 3, so I changed it out.

I wouldn’t say this build is anywhere near optimal, but it’s what I got and it worked well until things started going wrong in phase 3. It’ll probably change again next time if the comp is different.

So I’ve been doing a lot of tanking on my guard, still haven’t cleared VG though (mostly PuG). And I’m wondering what anyone else thinks about having dragon hunter as a traitline while maybe making use of half the traits in there.

Is going DH as a tank a waste?

Kormeg.2469:

So I’ve been doing a lot of tanking on my guard, still haven’t cleared VG though (mostly PuG). And I’m wondering what anyone else thinks about having dragon hunter as a traitline while maybe making use of half the traits in there.

Is going DH as a tank a waste?

DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank. But as we get better, more and more people are looking for a more and more offensive tank with just enough to keep agro and survive. In that sense DH is very good.

We use a Celestial Tank with Zeal/Honor/DH. It’s surviability come from the Hammer Protection and celestial gear, while doing a decent dps. He also bring Bane Signet and the blade trap for more dps. You can even go farther and replace the celestial gear with knight armor with scholar rune and zerker trinket for an even more offensive tank.

If the celestial tank work well in pug, the Knight variance is a bit too dependent on the healer for some pugs.

Thaddeus.4891:

DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank. But as we get better, more and more people are looking for a more and more offensive tank with just enough to keep agro and survive. In that sense DH is very good.

I disagree with this completely.
Hunter’s Fortification, Bulwark, and the change from Virtue of Courage to Shield of Courage are three BIG defensive reasons to take DH as a defensive trait line.

I’m of the complete opposite opinion that you need to try to keep your personal dps high when tanking Vault Guardian.

We have been running several practice groups helping new people get used to the fight and found that if we brought two healers, the group’s dps actually increased. At first, that didn’t make sense. Why would dropping a dps to bring a second healer actually increase the group’s total dps? It’s because with two healers, the other 7 dps had more scholar rune uptime and didn’t have to waste any time with self-sustain at all. It’s hard if not impossible for a single healer to keep 10 people above 90% in that fight. We actually easily beat it with a two-healer practice group.

A guardian tank can put on some Nomad’s gear and serve the same purpose as that second healer by providing strong regen, protection, and aegis to the entire melee group.

Your personal dps will be terrible, but the group sustain you bring will increase the total group dps by more than you are losing personally. And the fight will go much more smoothly too. Easier to recover from mistakes, etc…

For Gorseval and Sabetha it’s a COMPLETELY different story.
But for Vault Guardian, I build my tank something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApdSn8cCVdi1CBOCBkdil6h6KAW0XArGCipQe+3//H-TRxaABgp+jE6DAd/h3U+BgSQA-e

Phor there is no one solution for the composition. I saw tank ranging from full Soldier to Cleric to Bezerker. I explained my way and you explained your way.

I didn’t say there was only one way to play.
You can certainly build your tank to try to max your personal DPS while keeping barely enough toughness to hold aggro. It CAN work that way… I just don’t personally think it’s very effective.

But you specifically said “DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank.”
That doesn’t have anything to do with being one of many solutions to group composition… it’s just misinformation. So I called you out on it. : /

phor.7952:

I didn’t say there was only one way to play.
You can certainly build your tank to try to max your personal DPS while keeping barely enough toughness to hold aggro. It CAN work that way… I just don’t personally think it’s very effective.

But you specifically said “DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank.”
That doesn’t have anything to do with being one of many solutions to group composition… it’s just misinformation. So I called you out on it. : /

Fair enough. But as very effective or not, I totally disagree. At vale guardian a more tank/support tank or 2 healers will make the fight easier, but you might end up close on the timer.

For Gorseval on the other hand, now you definitely not gonna have enough dps. Well not definitively. A good composition/players can kill Gorseval with 3+min left on the timer, so I guess that you can do it. But I doubt that much people can do what Snow Crow did. I know that we have 1 offensive tank, 1 healers and 8 dps and we have just enough dps to kill Gorseval.

Thaddeus.4891:

Kormeg.2469:

So I’ve been doing a lot of tanking on my guard, still haven’t cleared VG though (mostly PuG). And I’m wondering what anyone else thinks about having dragon hunter as a traitline while maybe making use of half the traits in there.

Is going DH as a tank a waste?

DH is an offensive trait line, which won’t help you tank. But as we get better, more and more people are looking for a more and more offensive tank with just enough to keep agro and survive. In that sense DH is very good.

We use a Celestial Tank with Zeal/Honor/DH. It’s surviability come from the Hammer Protection and celestial gear, while doing a decent dps. He also bring Bane Signet and the blade trap for more dps. You can even go farther and replace the celestial gear with knight armor with scholar rune and zerker trinket for an even more offensive tank.

If the celestial tank work well in pug, the Knight variance is a bit too dependent on the healer for some pugs.

This is how i use DH to help me to get pseudo-sturdy, “tanky” is a wrong word for guardian due the low health limitation IMO.
-Blocking removes a condi, when blocked with Aegis besides remove condi heals arround 600 health.
-Duelled senses when KB (Shield 5th skill) targets will criple and vulnerability so team will get more time interval to aoe spike target for the easy win.
- Hunter determination when it happens will drop fragments with the block it will cleanse condis and heal to, still it is an unoticiable heal compared to the easy damage output this game offers.

This is also a build easy to defeat so not allowed to do 1 vs 1 fight, mostly team and positioning helping allies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJApelsAhahYrQwdIwPELNE11wuABAWBEBhgczn8PPA-TFSDABO8AAiS53kqE8lSQ90D0o6OMt/AAnAAA-w

I got alot of cleanses on this build, still i found your damage build far more usefull than a defensive guardian :\

I would take force of will to increase surviability duration but, it is useless…

I use a very similar build to above, with Honor, Valor, Dragonhunter specialisations. It’s built around shouts with Pure of Voice (conditions to boons for you and allies) and Altruistic Healing (apply boons heal), along with shield/mace & Longbow.

It’s not 100% tanky, and certainly not specifically built for the raid, but very group orientated which I like, and with allies close by in combat, the healing is for the most part great. The downside is that the damage is fairly pathetic, and there are limited CC options.

I’ve tanked the Vale Guardian Relatively easily with this setup, as long as there a couple of melee characters with me (which there almost always are). In general I enjoy shouts as they can be used on the fly and don’t interrupt any weapon skill/movement/dodge mechanics at all.

I know this is a super old thread but I have been playing around with my guild with working on Guardian tank on all tank-able raid bosses. here is my build
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yksXU9HatEg

I played around with a ton of differnt builds includging hammers. I felt like hammers tho good on dmg you lose a lot of your tankyness on VG at least since Phase 5 you have to move so much you don’t have time to pop protection. plus MS has more in hand blocks and heals. I have both a hammer build and MS builds but I prefer my MS for the most part.