Guild Wars 2

i just started this game 3 days ago im lvl 30 atm i love tanking so i made a guardian but im unsure of what to do in build/trait i mainly want to be a really sturdy tank with being able to do decent or enough damage to hold aggro

ive looked around and havent found any useful info really

could someone shed some light on the supposed ideal build for tanking pve / dungeons thank you

There is no tanking in PvE as you may know it from other MMOs. PvE is about dmg, support and crowd control. Check Obal’s guide.

well i still want to be durable i was wondering about using mostly toughness/vit armors and using power /crit accessories to keep DPS up (im lvl 40 atm now)

Kinky.9358:

well i still want to be durable i was wondering about using mostly toughness/vit armors and using power /crit accessories to keep DPS up (im lvl 40 atm now)

As a guardian you are durable because of all the active defense you have access too. Blind, Aegis, Block, Invulnerable, Reflect, dodge etc.

toughness/vit armors are good as learning wheel. You won’t gonna know much about the encounters at first so either you gonna spam your active defense and run out quick or you won’t gonna time them well enough. There is two way that you can approach it. You can either get a more defensive gear set and mix it with a good dps/support build. The advantage is that you gonna learn how to use the active defense from the build while having a defensive gear as a safety net. The drawback is that you eventually gonna want to change your gear to a more offensive gear as you get better with active defense. Its not that much of a big deal since exotic armor is pretty cheap, but as a new player you could have a hard time getting transmutation charge to change your look if you change gear several times. (If you do map completion and PvP you won’t have problem getting transmutation charge, but if you don’t like those, it can be hard to come by).

The second option is to get beserker gear right away (offensive gear) so you don’t have to change anytime soon. But to compensate you take a more defensive build. That’s nice since you won’t waste any transmutation stone, but you won’t have accept to as much active defense and learn to use it compare to the first option.

You also have to choose your weapons that you prefer. Greaswords + Sword/Focus is the best choice and they work together. Hammer on the other end work well alone so your secondary weapon can be almost anything, like a Scepter for some range when you are in difficulty or something like that. Other than that, all weapons are viable, but not as good as those that I mentioned. Staff is the only weapon that you should play as little as possible in PvE, it’s more of a pvp weapon. If you bring it in PvE, take a hammer and only use the staff at the start of a fight, never switch to it in mid fight.

If you really want to tank, warrior and ele is by far way better at tanking. The guardian is not designed to “tank”.

Edit: And there’s no tanking in this game’s PVE. It goes by the name of support and control which all classes bring in one way or another, and of course DPS which is also a way of support.

I run a support/healing build that is very, very, very tanky. Check my signature for the build.

While GW2 does not use the “trinity” approach of heals, tank and DPS roles, you can still play a valuable role as a support guardian by cranking out heals, by applying damage mitigation with Protection, Blocks and Aegis and by buffing your party with Might, Regeneration, Retaliation. Depending on your build, you can clear or reduce the duration of Conditions or emphasize heals.

Tons of fun, though Warrior is probably a better overall bunker/tank class with its high health pool and damage mitigation. Tanking on Guardian requires more finesse but when you get comfortable with dodge heals, your cooldowns and tiptoeing around red circles, you’ll help keep your party alive and generally be the last one to die.

interesting when when i got this game a few days ago thought guards were basically like paladins heavy tank and junk i’ll just mix and match until im comortable with cooldown timing and all that i just dont want to do a boon support build and i think i’ll be happpy lol

A fragment of a forum post on guildwars2guru.com. The bold text is the dev’s response to a poster.
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Martin Kerstein

ArenaNet

ArenaNet

Posted 28 January 2011 – 06:30 PM

Dastion said:

That sounds a very hypocritical statement. Being a good tank is not about sitting there getting beat on, especially not in a game with the ability to dodge attacks. Tanking in any MMO always has been about battlefield awareness (you need to pay attention and know if something peels off after a squishy) and control (you need to control the mobs to protect your allies).

Nothing hypocritical there – the keyword in my statement is “traditional”. I played most MMOs on the market, and I did my fair share of tanking as well. In almost all of them, you control aggro via taunt skills (in the form of direct taunts, aggro inducing AoEs etc.) to make mobs aggro on you. You might call this battlefield awareness, and I agree that it is a form of it. But it all boils down to the tank keeping aggro and being pounded upon by mobs in the end.

And if you try that with the guardian, you will eat dirt a lot.

I hope that clarifies my statement.
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Here is the hole post about what was the expectations about Guardian and Warrior before the game was released and what the dev response was.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/11088-guardian-tank-or-warrior-tank/page__st__210

creepmatic.9435:

A fragment of a forum post on guildwars2guru.com. The bold text is the dev’s response to a poster.
——————————————————————————————————————-

Martin Kerstein

ArenaNet

ArenaNet

Posted 28 January 2011 – 06:30 PM

Dastion said:

That sounds a very hypocritical statement. Being a good tank is not about sitting there getting beat on, especially not in a game with the ability to dodge attacks. Tanking in any MMO always has been about battlefield awareness (you need to pay attention and know if something peels off after a squishy) and control (you need to control the mobs to protect your allies).

Nothing hypocritical there – the keyword in my statement is “traditional”. I played most MMOs on the market, and I did my fair share of tanking as well. In almost all of them, you control aggro via taunt skills (in the form of direct taunts, aggro inducing AoEs etc.) to make mobs aggro on you. You might call this battlefield awareness, and I agree that it is a form of it. But it all boils down to the tank keeping aggro and being pounded upon by mobs in the end.

And if you try that with the guardian, you will eat dirt a lot.

I hope that clarifies my statement.
——————————————————————————————————————-

Here is the hole post about what was the expectations about Guardian and Warrior before the game was released and what the dev response was.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/11088-guardian-tank-or-warrior-tank/page__st__210

This. Is. Gold. 100%. Thanks for sharing!

Soldiers gear, don’t go for Sentinels or any other kind of gear that has high tough/vit.
You don’t need it, and you’d just cut your own fingers by giving up damage.

Thaddeus.4891:

Snip

You also have to choose your weapons that you prefer. Greaswords + Sword/Focus is the best choice and they work together. Hammer on the other end work well alone so your secondary weapon can be almost anything, like a Scepter for some range when you are in difficulty or something like that. Other than that, all weapons are viable, but not as good as those that I mentioned. Staff is the only weapon that you should play as little as possible in PvE, it’s more of a pvp weapon. If you bring it in PvE, take a hammer and only use the staff at the start of a fight, never switch to it in mid fight.

Well staff is a really good weapon for open world content, because it gives a lot of movement via swiftness symbol and it’s just THE BEST weapon to tag a large amount of mob in no time. Staff is really usefull when leveling IMO. Other then that, yes.

As said, Guardian is about preventing damage, not absorbing it and healing through it.

Guardian has a large number of party wide defensive abilities to prevent damage to your whole group. This includes the aforementioned blinds, blocks and the Aegis boon, the Protection boon, and projectile reflection and absorption.

All of those abilities work the same regardless of what gearset you use, so you might as well go all damage (in most of PvE), or just enough survivability to live through the expected damage (PvP and WvW, different styles of WvW would need different amount of survivability).

Depends what you do, but AH hammer Guardian is pretty tanky. Just have 1-2 people stand inside your symbol and you’re set for facetanking most things.

Here’s one of the builds I use. (It’s my Fractal setup)
*Note that I am an Asuran guardian, so Radiation field is on my bar.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVQQJASWl8ApWolCxzN0ENR8gUVAsfut71HjdD-ThCBABdpUoS1KOTJIWK7A4SKYpqKVt/AFPpgU00onOACBUeCA-e

It’s a good mix of stats so you can take damage and dish it out. Just change weapons depending on the occasion.

Kinky.9358:

well i still want to be durable i was wondering about using mostly toughness/vit armors and using power /crit accessories to keep DPS up (im lvl 40 atm now)

Using knight’s or valkeryie armor will make you durable whilst still allowing you to hit hard, and is an excellent tool for learning the game. For durability, consider hammer, as the basic attack provides protection – a 30% incoming damage reduction. With the trait “writ of persistence” you will have 100% protection up-time and do moderate DPS. The grandmaster trait “altruistic healing” will turn the protection you provide to your party into sustained self healing. Eventually, you will learn how to use active damage mitigation such as blinds, ageis, and dodges to take little if any damage in most encounters. once you reach the point that you find yourself dodging or blocking most damage, switch to berserkers’ armor: the true strength of the guardian is to be very durable whilst building entirely for maximum damage: an exciting and initially dangerous style of play.

Best of luck with your guardian!

As others have noted, a good Altruistic Healing is very bunkery/tanky and fun.

If you want to be a tank you can wear nomad’s with an AH + PoV build so you can stand in the poison rings in AC beating on the spiderqueen for hours while the spider queen is still at 90% health, its really useful for not dying and removing conditions from party members other than that just a wasted spot in the party.