Guild Wars 2

I am trying to build a tankier guardian but I cannot seem to last long no matter what I do…

I have 30 in toughness and full 6/6 Sup Runes of the Dolyak

In total, my armor rating is 3,563 and I have about 15.5k health

I still get dominated in PvE

Suggestions?

also, I was told that armor rating or toughness is “useless in bulk” that I will get the same effects with 2.5-2.7k toughness, is this true?

The game is not designed to take damage. Hence avoid it by blocking, blinding, evading. Consider Signet of Judgment and the protection boon.

What do you mean by “tankier”. In my opinon “tanking” has to aspects: 1) getting and holding the aggro in order to avoid damage to your allies 2) withstand the incomming damage focused at you.

Yea, im trying to withstand the incoming damage, and it does not seem to be working

You’re not going to tank any better by hoarding Armor. 3k to 3.2k is plenty of Armor in order to “tank” in GW2. More than that is too much, and you’re sacrificing damage stats.

Tanking involves a lot of things, not the least of which is knowing when to time your dodges (and having a constant source of Vigor), having a way to cleanse conditions reliably when you need it most (Soldier runes and/or Pure of Voice + Shouts, for example) and having sources of blind, Aegis, block, projectile reflect/absorbs, etc.

Fortunately, Guardians have those in spades. See the boss winding up for a big attack? Pop Retreat for a free block. Or roll out of the way. Don’t just stand there and take the hits.

Edited to add: When people say armor is useless in bulk, what they mean is that there is a diminishing returns on armor. Adding 200 armor to 3000 armor adds an additional 6.25% damage reduction, whereas adding 200 armor to 3200 will give you 5.88% additional damage reduction. So you get less for the same amount of armor.

I was unaware of the diminishing returns on armor stat. Is that well documented somewhere so we can review it? I would like to see where those percentages are derived.

You’re not supposed be able to stand in front of a boss just tank hit after hit. As it has already been stated you need to dodge roll, use blinds etc. 6x runes of the dolyak are worthless. The regen is only 30hp and can’t be boosted in any not even higher healing power.

I use the following in PvE and dungeons.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mccM0V0zMMNLvmMNMmm9MxxaVoqcaqo

Armor
Soldier (pow/vit/tou) 2x superior runes of the monk, 2x superior runes of water, and 2 major runes of sactuary. This give me 50% boon duration. 60% total boost from the 10pts in Virtues.

Weapons
Hammer from AC dungeon (prec/vit/heal)
Cleric Staff
Berserker Scepter and Shield

Trinkets
Berserker Amulet and earrings. Knight’s rings with ruby jewels.
Purging flames creates a fire field that combos with hammer’s Mighty Blow to give you and your group 3 stacks of might for around 20 seconds. It’s not listed in the tool tip but hammer’s ring of warding creates a light field that combos with Might Blow as well for area retaliation.

Don’t be afraid to active Virtue of Justice which give your party a free burning attack plus 3 stacks of might from you Virtue points. If your dire straits pop Virtue of Resolve and Virtue of Courage followed Renewed Focus and if absolutely necessary pop the virtues again to stay alive. Your heal skill shelter also blocks attacks for 2 seconds.

The Staff is good for the might stacks and any points that you need the speed buff. Its default attack helps to kite mobs when needed. Scepter and Shield (or focus if you want) for prolonged ranged fights.

You can swap out Purging Flames for Wall of Reflection in some fights as well. When I am in underwater combat I swap out Master of Consecrations trait for the one that makes spirit weapons last longer. Between the spirit hammer and sword I have can have a weapon up 100% of the time. This helps out greatly with your damage output.

MHE Tiger.4875:

I am trying to build a tankier guardian but I cannot seem to last long no matter what I do…

I have 30 in toughness and full 6/6 Sup Runes of the Dolyak

In total, my armor rating is 3,563 and I have about 15.5k health

I still get dominated in PvE

Suggestions?

How much healing power do you have? My Guardian has 3200 armor, 16.2k hp, and +1400 healing and I can tank many bosses.

With Symbol, Writ, and AH with the Mace you can heal yourself for a respectable amount of health. If you have it traited you can also heal yourself for 1,400 each time you dodge roll and with vigor you can dodge roll very often. Often times I dodge roll into a wall next to the boss.

Guardian’s can only tank in PvE by constantly healing themselves through their skills and abilities. If you just go straight toughness and vitality you end up just becoming a sponge.

I already did number crunching and every +100 healing is equal to +100 health per second when you’re using the mace when you factor in Writ, Regen, and AH. The staff is basically guaranteed to heal you for 3/4th’s your life in full duration.

Also, picking the right tools for the fight can make it significantly easier.

@ComeAndSee

I messaged you in game, I figured it would have been easier to talk.

But I am not necessarily traited for healing power, how do you suggest doing so?

You can manage, just use buffs to compensate for the damage.

Heres the build I use on dungeons to great effect.

My gear is AC as its one of the only toughness vitality armors I know of (and I hate over 1k tears) full soldiers runes, are much better than Dolyak since the regen from Dolyak is so small. Soldiers also removes a condition whenever you use a shout and all your utility skill are shouts. Jewlery should have either toughness vitality or vitality healingpower, same for weapons.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeRlUgiCnFyKEf4ESWBDE7BBiRw31DKSiYIA;TwAA1ytEWJ1StlSLqsMZJyymlLLZWA

At level 80 I have 21k hp and gain 79hp for every boon I apply from altruistic healing. I apply boons with virtues shouts crits and weapon skills.

21k hp gives you a nice buffer for conditions which are removed with shouts. About the only time I die with this build is when I have no alleys near me to activate altruistic healing.

Obtena.7952:

I was unaware of the diminishing returns on armor stat. Is that well documented somewhere so we can review it? I would like to see where those percentages are derived.

My understanding is that incoming damage is divided by armor rating (which uses 2600 as a baseline for showing what kind of damage you’re likely to do at level 80).

So the diminising returns of ouch/armor is that if you have only 100, adding 100 cuts your damage taken in half. but then adding 100 to 200 only cuts the damage taken by 1/3. Adding that 100 to 300 only reduces damge taken by 1/4.

By the time you are at 2600 (baseline) armor, adding 100 armor is less than a 4% difference and it just gets worse from there.

I find a lot of my tanking relies on precise timing of blinds (Virtue of justice, sword button 2), aegis (Virtue of Courage, “Retreat!”), some dodging, immortality via renewed focus, and… running the hell away when its time for someone else to pick up the slack.

Obtena.7952:

I was unaware of the diminishing returns on armor stat. Is that well documented somewhere so we can review it? I would like to see where those percentages are derived.

Additional damage reduction gained by adding armor is given as the formula:

Additional Armor/[Original Armor + Additional Armor]

You can plug in numbers to see how that works out, but essentially the more armor you have, the less you gain by adding more. It’s not a super extreme diminishing return but it does get less effective. If you want, I can derive that for you, but you can PM me for that.

MHE Tiger.4875:

@ComeAndSee

I messaged you in game, I figured it would have been easier to talk.

But I am not necessarily traited for healing power, how do you suggest doing so?

Just FYI, tanking through healing power is just one way to do it. There are other ways, and healing power is not a miracle cure to being able to facetank. I facetank some of the more obnoxious bosses without more than 300 from traits.

I have a guardian using Magi’s gear with rune of mercy. mace/shield and staff. I can walk around orr with zero fear of dying, and often chat with my friends while I have a mob or two wailing away on me without needing to do anything. needless to say, my damage is pathetic.

Guardians do not siak damage. Guardians mitigate damage through utilities and virtues.

If you want damage soak, roll a warrior. High tough and hp.

Your trying to do something against class mechanics but it is diable but not the best at doing it.

Use a hammer for 100% protection up time. Writ of the merciful. AH . This is alk you realky need to tank. The rest is damage mitigation with blovks from aegis. Blinds and dodging.

Combine everything and you should be able to walk over most bosses.

What not to do is to 100% face tank. You cant face tank every boss.

I carry 3 sets for various occasions. For “tanking” I use a set of Pow/Tgh/Heal with a few Prec/Vit/Heal thrown in. I keep my crit at around 15-20% which I have found to be plenty to keep Vigor up the majority of the time (with the new adjustment to duration from trait), in conjunction with Superior Sigils of Energy. My tanking revolves around dodging, as not only do I evade the damage incoming but also heal any that I’ve taken. This build also gives me more than enough damage to “hold agro” for the most part (as much as GW2 mechanics allow), or perhaps I should say “be the main but not exclusive focus” of xyz mob.

Note that I’ve also found that when you’re with a melee heavy group, you can trade out some pow/tgh/heal for prec/heal/vit, enough to get around 35% crit, allowing you a little more vigor uptime, however I’ve found this lowers your “threat” which is good in this case. The reason is you’re not so much tanking as you’re AoE healing (and if you’re not taking hits all the better so you can stay in longer). I’ve calculated that when using a mace + traits + dodging (in this build I’m able to dodge about every 3 seconds)I’m putting out over 1k heals/sec, which my melee buddies love. This allows them to melt face longer and in many cases never have to back off except really hard hitting bosses. Though this isn’t tanking per se it does play into the “how do I mitigate damage from teammates” goal.

GL

I can tank everything in CoF dungeon without using dodge (except flameseekers (the one with the flamethrower)). Going full bunker to tank is bad. You need to find balance between tankyness and dps (crit for food healing helps alot).

MHE Tiger.4875:

@ComeAndSee

I messaged you in game, I figured it would have been easier to talk.

But I am not necessarily traited for healing power, how do you suggest doing so?

Right now this is the PvE build I use. http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcc9omvxR0mbNC9Maxx0MVmqcak

I get my healing power from 5 pieces of cleric gear and 2 all stat rings + 1 all stat earring + 1 cleric earring + 1 cleric amulet. Also, I use Cleric weapons. My chest piece is the Vitality + Toughness + Power piece.

Armor I use 3 runes of Water and 3 runes of Monk. It’s an extra +150 healing and +20% boon duration. Weapons I use stacking healing power and my jewels I use cleric jewels.

Those all stat items give you the most bang for your buck because they give you basically all the stats you need. Vitality, toughness, healing power, and some crit dmg.