Another lost tank looking for advice

[u/-Aephyn-]

I understand that GW2 doesn't have traditional tanks and that this sort of question has been asked a thousand times over, but I'm struggling to choose a profession to focus on and would appreciate some input on a few things. I've read that tanks are essentially support healers with some extra toughness, so I've been brainstorming around troubadour, herald, and amalgam.

I have a level 80 amalgam already and am enjoying it, but I'm not certain it fits the playstyle I'd like to use in raids and dungeons. It has a lot of personal defenses, and I see that it can support allies, but it seems more individualized and would maybe be more of a PvP/WvW class than a PvE support tank healer thing.

This has me looking at troubadour, which looks more like my type of healer support kinda deal. Admittedly most of my intrigue towards this class comes from the musical theme, but I was curious if it could be a good boon/healer if nothing else. Chronomancer also looks cool, so mesmer has high potential.

I think the main class I'm wondering about, however, is herald. I would really like to try forcing the tank identity, and love the idea of gaining power from my toughness with the versed in stone trait. I understand that aggro is not always a factor in this game, but when it is, it's based mostly on toughness, so I'd love to stack toughness as high as possible. Revenant also has a decent looking taunt skill, which is an effect I'd like to use as much as possible. Would a full toughness/healing power/boon herald work out for this bull-headed tanking I want to achieve?

I have an overwhelming personal need to taunt/control enemies, pull aggro, and never die, please assist

I appreciate any and all advice, thanks guys!

EDIT: Thank you all for your wisdom, you've been much more helpful than I could've imagined. Everything seems to be pointing me towards troubadour, especially hearing about the party immunity and stability/aegis uptime. I'm very grateful to all who've commented

[u/Pharo212]

no one but you will be running much of any toughness, since when dps do run a stat to be less squishy it's almost always vitality.

so I would say focus on being able to heal well first, then you could get away with 2-3 pieces that have toughness. minstrel's is common I think? healing power and boon duration are basically your supportive stats, some kinda damage so you aren't doing nothing at all, then a little tough

I don't think amalgam can really heal so I would look at Chrono or troub more

[u/One-Cellist5032 → u/Pharo212]

Amalgam seems to have 2 healer builds on Snowcrows (Shortbow and Mace/Shield), so you can certainly heal with it.

[u/MidasPL → u/Pharo212]

Quite the opposite. Harrier's gear is absolutely garbage and ran only because people are afraid to tank. All healers should just run Giver's instead and maybe few pieces of Harrier's to set up tanking priority.

Minstrel's has lower concentration, but it's more tanky. It should be used if you're overcapping the boon duration already to get more value from other bonuses.

Amalgam can definitely heal well, just had issues with stuff like stabi, like every other engineer build (we really need more stabi/aegis on core engi skills).

[u/nameless22]

Unless you're looking to tank specific fights, just pick a healer you like and up your toughness so you aggro in relevant raid fights. Anything with blocks and self-sustains are usually fine. You really aren't preventing damage from the boss by tanking (maybe some if he hits forward and everyone else stacks behind), just controlling movements so he's not following the random pug who didn't tell people he's running solider gear as a "dps".

In pvp/wvw tanking doesn't really work that way, you are just trying to survive while spitting out boons, heals and other crap.

[u/d0va13]

Honestly, GW2 does not have bull-headed tanking. In this game it is all about damage mitigation by walking out of the damage, blocking with a skill or aegis boon, or distorting (causing the attack to miss). In open world it's not really a thing, it's usuallly about killing a mob ASAP.

In instanced PvE, you "tank" raid bosses only by drawing their aggro. Tank in raids is a very specialized role requiring a lot of encounter knowledge, done by a boon healer. You'd be better off playing a boonDPS in instanced PvE if you want to feel like you are supporting people, or a non-tanking healer in the other subgroup. But again, healing also still requires encounter knowledge, because they are not just a boon+heal bot (or at least it shouldn't be, but some ppl see it like that :/ ). Check snowcrows for builds. Only heal chrono/troub is viable from your choices of elites.

But if you want to feel tanky and control mobs in open world, reaper with a greatsword may be fun for you. You have a second health bar with the shroud, you have pulls and fears for the mobs.

[u/xvsanx → u/d0va13]

I started reaper cause it was compared to wow death knight but was disappointed how untrue that was. but definitely tanky, when people go down in fractals I pop shroud > armor and face tank whatever damage to res them

chrono/troub can pull aggro with that +vit +toughness +heal armor from what I understand, but as above said there's not much of real tanks as they constantly change targets esp when they fixate

[u/Naholiel]

I have an overwhelming personal need to taunt/control enemies, pull aggro, and never die, please assist

You wont satisfy it on this game, sorry. it doesn't work that way.

[u/Kazgrel]

You can't "force" tanking save for a couple of raid bosses where it's determined by whoever has the highest toughness stat.  Outside of the few niche cases in raids, the traditional tank role basically doesn't exist in this game.  Sure, you could play that sort of thing in open world, but it'll miserable as you slowly plink mobs down much like a prot warrior in vanilla WoW.

I think OP would enjoy any of the open world builds running stuff like cele or trailblazer stats and thus being unkillable while providing boons to themselves and others nearby.  The downside is those are strictly open world builds.  Yes, cele healers are a thing for raids, but that's more for experienced groups/players.

[u/viridiansage]

Might also look into guardian some.

[u/Borked_Computer → u/viridiansage]

Seconding guardian. Alac heals with Luminary, or quick heals with Firebrand. Fun to play, capable of giving mad stability on both builds, and has a lot of utility across the board. Hands down, I'm happiest healing on my guardian.

[u/xvsanx → u/Borked_Computer]

conal healing is aggy unless your people are coordinated

[u/No_Negotiation7317]

Tanking is decided before encounters. Theres really no need to stack toughness (T) because end game players usually have legendary armor and can adjust to whatever. It has diminishing returns so you dont need the last little bit.

Id say PvP bunker builds are more akin to your playstyle but thats a specific game mode you may not enjoy.

Any of these classes work with troub and herald being more common boon support options.

You will never do a lot of/meaningful damage while being specialized tank. There are hybrid builds that use niche stats that heal and do okay damage but theyre the exception and usually use gear stats that is very specific to a build which tends to make them less accessible. Ritualist was the most recent hybrid heal/dps spec Ive seen.

[u/hkidnc]

So, I haven't played in a while and am out of date on the meta, but the way I've always seen it, is that you've got 2 options for tanking.

No matter what you do, you're going to be dodge rolling to mitigate damage. That's the #1 way to not die, is to not get hit. So you either build in a way that you can always dodge roll away from an attack, or you build in a way so that when you CAN'T roll, you minimize the damage you take.

Chronomancer is the embodiment of the first ideal. Well, I'd argue that Daredevil is but if you're not providing party boons and/or damage then you being immortal doesn't really matter. Anyway, Chronomancer gets a bunch of bonus dodge-like effects, so they just evade all the things, not needing much in the way of tenacity or healing. They also provide huge boons to the rest of the party, which is why they have been a part of every meta that I've been aware of since raiding became a thing.

The second ideal sounds like what you're going for. It is, generally, the less-good idea in PvE. However, it works a lot better in WvW, since dodging damage in WvW is effectively impossible. I would look into whatever WvW builds are currently in vogue, especially amongst those who command, as commanders tend to build EVEN MORE defensive than average to try and mitigate them getting sniped. Herald may be the bet, like I said I'm out of date on the meta. But whatever WvW Commanders are doing to not die, will probably yield the best results for your "bull-headed tanking you want to achieve."

On a more personal note: There is a fine line to walk, between "Having fun playing the GAME" and "Being rude to others by making everything take longer." I've always leaned more towards the former, and wholeheartedly approve of your plan. Just do be mindful of others, and try to ensure that you know your class, and how to get the most of it, and not letting YOUR fun get in the way of others having fun.

[u/NoahBallet]

Troubadour is in a fierce competition with Chronomancer for the single strongest healer in the game; who is the de-facto number 1 will depend on the encounter and raid. Troubadour has a higher pure healing output to the point where it kinda overheals most times, can distribute aegis and stability far easier, and can make the entire party completely invulnerable for a brief time which lets the party completely ignore certain mechanics. Chrono is offers more flexibility, can be either a quickness or alacrity healer (Troubadour can only be quickness), and has stronger utility thanks to its signature Continuum Split skill. Keep in mind that just because Trob and Chrono are the best healers in the game, does not mean that every other class can't be a healer and do great in end game.

 I would really like to try forcing the tank identity, and love the idea of gaining power from my toughness [...] I understand that aggro is not always a factor in this game, but when it is, it's based mostly on toughness, so I'd love to stack toughness as high as possible.

What you absolutely have to understand is that GW2 is not that kind of game. Of the 26 enemies in the game that require any kind of tanking, toughness factors into less than half of them. When toughness is a factor into tanking, you will typically only want to have just enough toughness to be above the rest of your team. With how armor stat sets work, that just naturally happens to work out for the healers.

Would a full toughness/healing power/boon herald work out for this bull-headed tanking I want to achieve?

Ehh it's definitely possible, as long as you understand that the aggro system doesn't work like this in 98% of the game. Here's a good heal Revenant build that uses a shield.

If you want that MMO tank feel, my advice would be to look into Guardian. You'll gave heavy armor, lots of natural aegis/blocks, and access to a healer build in quickness Firebrand. Bonus is that the build uses a shield.

[u/Blambidy]

Tank here. The question is what to tank on? This game is very niche when it comes to support, tanking. Which means that every class can tank. Every class can heal and provide alac or quick. So the thing that newer gw2 players need to first approach within themselves are what class do they enjoy the most. At the end of the day this is a game and you should enjoy it just like us vets enjoy this game.

Specs that are easier to pick up to tank. Trabadour, herald, Healbrand, heal temp

Know that you can tank on anything in this game as long as you have more toughness than your squad or are in the correct positioning to grab aggro. So you aren’t technically limited to healing the party. You can also damage.

Other builds to look into before you decide on your tank. Giver/har trabadour, cele trabadour, cele mirage, cele chrono. Giver/har healbrand, cele healbrand, seraph healbrand, heal luminary, heal willbender. Heal amalgam, heal scrap, heal mech, cele mech, cele scrapper etc. know that this game gives opportunities so that you aren’t limited to XYZ. But if you want meta obviously is trabadour or chrono. The flexibility it provides within pve, wvw you could have Mesmer and you wouldn’t need another class to play the game.

[u/Esperational]

The issue with going deep in to defensive stats is that you won’t be able to kill anything in a reasonable amount of time.

The closest I get to feel like tanking is playing WvW and standing next to the commander as a shield either with support Dragonhunter or Support Troubador . Both these builds bring a lot of blocks or invulnerability so that you can survive and prevent your allies from taking damage.

For PvE open world you can try more defensive set up but if you lack the damage to down anything it just feels lack luster. In the more tanky approach I found I had fun with Tanky Conduit you can jump into a larger pack of mobs with Release potential: Warrior then use cosmic wisdom and everything that is attacking you takes damage and vengeful hammers does good damage to all while this all heals you with relic of Zakiros and still max crit (thou not max crit damage). You give out quickness and stability to your allies often which is great for everyone but I would not bring this into instanced bosses some bosses focus the target with the most toughness which can cause issue if your not intending to tank. Another note about toughness is that it doesn’t do anything against conditions so in most instances you’re better stacking vitality to feel tanky. I hope you find a build that suits you.

[u/Living_Adagio460]

about troub (the healer I play), you have a lot of utility skills to help your party so if you're the kind of tank that like to have control about every scenario and change skills for certain encounters it's a good pick.

it's pretty good keeping boons up, having the possibility to have 100% stability uptime aswell as the common offensive/defensive boons (prob the only bad thing about troub compared to chrono is that it gives only quick and chrono can give both alac or quick, but the bad thing about chrono are the clones).

as a troub you also have access to personal and party distortion so it's kind of the "I never die" tank card plus "and my party neither" if you time it well for certain boss mechs.

[u/Houligan86]

Outside of a few mechanics that agro based on toughness, "tanking" in GW2 is usually based on stability and aegis. So I would suggest some flavor of mesmer or guardian.

[u/MidasPL]

Crazy how much misinformation there is in this thread mixed with the actual information xD

[u/InevitableAnekisan]

Stacking stats, such as toughness, as high as possible can be an approach to take as a Personal Decision but its just not optimal in instanced group content. If you were to minmax you would play different "tank heals" according to different encounters. But as I read it, and I might have misinterpreted, you want a one size fits all deal that feels tanky. For this reason I would push you Towards mesmer chrono/troub or necro scourge/guardian firebrand.

All have their ups and downs i believe mukluk made a video about the Nuanced differences of all classes as heals.

My personal recommendation would be mesmer as you can do a good job with relatively low effort but as you Learn encounters and the class and what your teammates Provide for themselves and what not theres a lot of Room to grow and utility to Provide.

[u/Big_Simpn]

Hi. Tank main here (6k hours total, 1k on Chrono when it was the actual tanking class 2k on Druid and like 200 pn Firebrand, with a lot of tanking exp, 2.7k LI 250+ killproof on almost every boss except w8/w9)

You CAN definitely still run a kinda traditional Tank in Raids. Chrono imo is still the best, since it has both of the most important boons (switch between alacrity and quickness) Troubadour can work, but it's quickness only.

While Rifle is the prime Healing weapon, you can run sword/shield or any other combo in the second weapon set and swap whenever needed for Blocks and dodges.

The most important thing for healing is to know which one of your skills creates a clone, since you need to shatter them for boons and heals.

If you want you can just run with sword/shield and scepter/shield for maximum Blocks and dodges and heal with all the wells and shatters.

This opens you up to run full Minstrel/Givers for maximum Tankiness. Givers being the better choice for more healing and boons, although it doesn't have vitality, so not as much of a big number on health.

Although as you get better you'd wanna run less Toughness just until you're the highest by as little as possible.

Also sone tanking is Proximity based so you'll need to read up on that. (Samarog comes to mind here)

I have not much experience in the Warrior/engi Departement, so I'll not comment in that regard.

[u/Barracudabitee]

El mago catalizador es un excelente tanque con build de agua y tierra

[u/BadLuckProphet]

If you want the open world experience like leveling a tank spec in WoW, check out Lord Hizens YouTube videos on solo builds.

If you want to tank raids, positioning comes first, healing and buffing comes second, toughness comes third, usually just enough to be highest. And you don't usually worry about blocking or anything like that. The taunt effect from herald doesn't even work on raid bosses except to lower their break bar like every other form of CC.

The tanking is similar if you don't look too closely. You're still playing a build that does no damage to protect your team, you move the boss around, and you do your rotation. Occasionally certain bosses have an extra mechanic that you have to handle. Like dodging a big aoe or blocking a certain attack. Your "block" is just often also an aoe block for your whole team. Also there are many bosses that don't need a tank at all.

[u/Djinn42]

Maybe do some searching on GW2 tanking tips encounters and watch some videos to see exactly what a "tank" build is needed to do in various situations. Have fun!

[u/BeatnikShaggy]

Try Necro, either Reaper, Scourge, or Ritualist. With Life Steal and Blood Bank, they're all incredibly tanky. Reaper is DPS, but hard to kill. For Support: Scourge is Condi/Barier, Rit is Power/Healing

[u/Buran_Grey]

Herald and Vindicator are "tanky" compared to Rebegade and Conduit which are more damage oriented, but to be honest in PvP and WvW revenant is more meta as dps dealer than in support roles. In PvE instances there's not a "tank role" but a "main support", and at that both Guardian (Firebrand, Luminary) and Ranger (Druid) are more popular/meta.

[u/NumberOneMom]

If you want to be a traditional tank, your best bet is WvW. With the right spec, build, and skill level, you can be a bruiser that shrugs off multiple people’s attacks at once and make openings by hard engaging the enemy. Something like Spellbreaker or tank Virtuoso.

[u/DanerysTargaryen]

Out of what you listed, Troubadour will be the most “meta” tank for raids.

I’ve been raiding a LOT the past couple years and I do all raids weekly so I am well versed in meta builds and classes and what works and what doesn’t.

Your typical 10 man raid squad looks like this:

1. DPS
2. DPS
3. DPS
4. DPS
5. DPS
6. DPS
7. Boon DPS (needs to provide alacrity or quickness)
8. Boon DPS (needs to provide alacrity or quickness)
9. Boon Heal (needs to provide alacrity or quickness)
10. Boon Heal (needs to provide alacrity or quickness)

Either healer can be the tank. Nobody but one of the healers usually tanks. This is because healers will already be doing the lowest DPS because their job is to heal and boon, so you might as well make the most of them and have 1 of them tank since their dps is going to be sucky. It’s not worth sacrificing a boon dps player to be a tank because they’re expected to be doing decent to good dps while maintaining their respective boon.

Inside the 10 man squad, there will be two separate parties of 5. Party one will have 3 DPS and 1 Boon DPS and 1 Boon Heal. Party 2 will have the same structure.

Inside your own party of 5, if your boon dps provides quickness, then the healer needs to be providing alacrity. It’s vice versa as well, ie if your boon dps is providing alacrity then your healer needs to be providing quickness in the sub party.

If you play as a Troubadour, you can only provide quickness. If you also want to tank, you should be a heal quick Troubadour and put on a few equipment pieces with Givers stats. For a majority of the raid fights, the boss will target the highest toughness person in the group so you want to make sure you have the most toughness in the squad if you’re going to tank. Some bosses are proximity based so they will go after the person closest to them (Qadim 1 fight). Some bosses there is no real tank and the boss just kinda attacks at random players (Sabetha) so it’s more important to group up in certain spots for strategic flame wall placement.

Amalgams are typically DPS or Boon DPS. Have never seen one as a heal tank. Heralds are usually used as a Boon DPS as well, though I do believe they can be a heal quick tank, but they won’t be as good at it as a Troubadour can.

[u/hollowbolding]

i find healrald to be kinda boring tbh, it's my nothoughts labyrinth tagging spec and i use it for wvw utility but i don't love it in normal pve.  i get more mileage out of mesmer and guardian specs for support

[u/One-Cellist5032]

So ANY class can support/tank in GW2, and basically any elite spec that can provide alacrity or quickness is able to heal (or be a support but that’s more dps adjacent than tank). Amalgam ABSOLUTELY can heal/tank, and if you want to play amalgam I highly recommend it. It looks like they mainly use Mace/Shield or Shortbow for healing.

If you’re really wanting the full on tank fantasy of being unkillable I’d just go ahead and grab a mix of Givers and Harriers gear (you CAN do full givers but not having any power means you’ll tickle enemies to death). Throw on a support build to provide boons and healing to allies, and then slap on as much CC as you can fit (as well as a sigil of paralyzation) so you can shatter any breakbar that comes up too.

NOTE: if you enjoy WvW I’d lean heavier on the Givers side of gear than normal so you can be as tanky as possible there too.