(PvE) which are the tankiest classes?

I want a class with high self sustainability and I want to know which classes have better pure tankiness (facetank) with invulnerables, heals and shields. My intention isn't to facetank, but I want to know this. I'm guessing they are necro, ranger(cuz pet) and warrior? I don't know if I'm missing any

@Sivannie.2670 said:I want a class with high self sustainability and I want to know which classes have better pure tankiness (facetank) with invulnerables and shields. My intention isn't to facetank, but I want to know this. I'm guessing they are necro, ranger(cuz pet) and warrior? I don't know if I'm missing any

Low natural tankiness (Low defenses, low HP):

• Thief (low base HP, few natural defenses, must learn to dodge, Daredevil increases tankiness with extra access to evades)
• Elementalist (low base HP, must trait/skill for defense, Tempest increases tankiness with overloads)

Moderate natural tankiness (High defenses OR high HP):

• Guardian (Blocks, Natural Regen, Low base HP, Firebrand is super tanky with the amount of buffs pushed out and healing, DH also increases tankiness)
• Mesmer (Evades, Distortion, Chrono pushes this into high tankiness with blocks too)
• Revenant (Blocks, Evades)
• Engineer (High base HP, access to blinds, Scrapper pushes into high tankiness with extra defense on hammer and gyros)

High natural tankiness: (High defenses AND high HP)

• Warrior (High HP, Heavy Armor, Natural Regen, Blocks, Evades)
• Ranger (High HP, Plenty of access to ranged damage, Pet [particularly bear], becomes even more tanky with druid)
• Necro (High HP, Shroud, Blinds, tankiness slightly lowered with scourge)

Iiiiiiiiiif you want to be a tanky support:

• Chronotank
• Druid
• Firebrand

Iiiiiiiiiif you want to be a tanky damage dealer:

• Dragonhunter/Firebrand
• Reaper/Scourge (Scourge has higher damage and access to barrier, Reaper has second health bar)
• Scrapper (although damage is somewhat low)

I'd rather Guardian higher than Warrior, for sure.

Warriors are deceptively squishy because they lack sustain (and Protection Boon) which the Guardian has coming outta the wazoo. So the effective staying power is far greater with the Guardian despite the lower natural Health.

Ranger using Druid, is the tankiest you can probably go in PvE. Pet tanks and you switch the pet out every 15 secs. Dual ranged weapons. Great mobility and healing. While it is not the epitomy of damage, you can play with full berserker gear and be tanky.

Necro with minions of course. In my opinion ranger is better, but necro pets deal pretty good damage.

I find that all the remaining classes can pull be okay tanking wise. It is more of question of how much damage you are willing to sacrifice.

I find ele to be the least tanky in PvE. The combination of low hp pool and low armor can cost you significantly if you make a mistake, unless you invest much into hp and healing power.

But Druid with full berserker won't heal alot.

I have recently tried creating the tankiest build possible across all Classes (just for fun - not trying to imply it is good in any way other than surviving) and have settled with Guardian. Both Aegis and Protection uptime make him very durable while the amount of self heal available to him is pretty insane as well. On top of that he has an Elite which makes him Invulnerable for a while and a healing Skill that Blocks incoming damage.(If someone has any ideas how he could be even tankier, please do tell me :D )

But on a more serious note, usually you don't want to be just tanky, you'll likely want to contribute something as well, either damage or boons or healing so Druid, Chronomancer, Reaper, Firebrand or PS Warrior are probably not quite as tanky as my Guardian Build but they all contribute a million times as much to a fight.

No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class. Ok. Lets separate:

Witout gear:Its probably warrior the tankiestMesmer and guard followingThen ingi, necro, ele, ranger, rev, thief

With gear:Tankiest: guard, mesmer, ele, rev, warriorFollowed by ranger, necro, ingi, thief

You can build all classes tanky as f....

There are always good builds for sustain for every class. And for every class sustain is gathered different

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class.

If you cannot see how Necro has the potential to be one of the most tanky classes in the game you’re doing the class horribly wrong.

The second lifebar in Shroud is huge.

Why is aegis of guardian called so 'good' it just blocks one attack and doesn't help a shit against staccato damage bosses in high level fractals and raids. I go down a lot more often as guardian than as warrior, ranger be cause the health is so super low. A lot of enemies hit extremely hard, easily out damage your whole health bar, insta down. bam. This won't happen as necro, warrior, revenant or ranger (or engi).

That said I only run damage builds, I don't have a single defense stat on all my gear (mainly berserker for direct damage and viper's for condi damage).

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class.

I have to correct myself. Sure i can play nomads necro, but every class gets fcking tanky with it. But i wanted to suggest a build, where u still do a decent amount of dmg. And for that, necro isnt the best.And pls, dont try to tell me how necro works. Im playing for like 4 years now. Got like 80% of my gametime on necro. I got my legendary armor through raids and then i tested like everything.

Sure i could play trailblaizer core necro. And sure im tanky as f... but i dont want to take ages to kill a white enemy xD

Every other class has better sustain than necro.Ok, you can play full zealot, take wells, pull like 6trillion enemys and just stand in the middle while laughing.But the original post was about not wanting to facetank everything.

And for that, necro is definetly one of the worst classes.

Just to say, im not counting minions. Cause they are just fcked up. And their dmg sux. And it would just be an indirect way of facetanking.

Guard has way better healing, protection, blocks, invuln, kicksEle has way better healing, dmg, protection, many evades, blocksMesmer has way better healing, blocks, invulns, evades

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:Why is aegis of guardian called so 'good' it just blocks one attack and doesn't help a kitten against staccato damage bosses in high level fractals and raids. I go down a lot more often as guardian than as warrior, ranger be cause the health is so super low. A lot of enemies hit extremely hard, easily out damage your whole health bar, insta down. bam. This won't happen as necro, warrior, revenant or ranger (or engi).

That said I only run damage builds, I don't have a single defense stat on all my gear (mainly berserker for direct damage and viper's for condi damage).

Maybe u shoukd try to start dodging then or better position yourself. If a raidboss hits you, and you go down as a guardian because you played dmg, then you or your tank did something terribly wrong.

Dont tell me but gorse does retaliation and its staccato hits. Well, your fault for hitting the boss in this phase.

The only thing you are allowed to go down to, is ambient dmg. But then you should think about changing out your healer. Or maybe if you are ressing others. Then there is a way higher chance to go down

it have diference...

• build character as a pure tank (useless in pve)
• build it as a raid tank (here you have special chars with builds... as a chronotank)
• make pve open world class which deal dmg and also can tank a lot, so chillout easymode pve, here i will choose variants of necro, d/d spelbreaker have a nice regen+vamp to stay alive a lot, i also saw some interesting harier stat variants of firebrand, soulbeast :D

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class.

Then you should be well aware that even if you run glasscannon builds with Necro, their second lifebar still puts them way ahead of classes without it in similar gear.

I honestly don't see the problem here. Necros ARE inherently tanky because of Shourd.

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class. Ok. Lets separate:

Witout gear:Its probably warrior the tankiestMesmer and guard followingThen ingi, necro, ele, ranger, rev, thief

With gear:Tankiest: guard, mesmer, ele, rev, warriorFollowed by ranger, necro, ingi, thief

You can build all classes tanky as f....

There are always good builds for sustain for every class. And for every class sustain is gathered different

Without gear, guardian and necro to be the most tanky class, don’t underestimate death shroud as the 2nd health; protection and aegis of guardian as a damage reduction can do.

No classes can take a single 40k hit besides aegis, don’t forget that.

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@Sivannie.2670 said:I want a class with high self sustainability and I want to know which classes have better pure tankiness (facetank) with invulnerables and shields. My intention isn't to facetank, but I want to know this. I'm guessing they are necro, ranger(cuz pet) and warrior? I don't know if I'm missing any

• Thief (low base HP, few natural defenses, must learn to dodge, Daredevil increases tankiness with extra access to evades)
• Elementalist (low base HP, must trait/skill for defense, Tempest increases tankiness with overloads)

• Guardian (Blocks, Natural Regen, Low base HP, Firebrand is super tanky with the amount of buffs pushed out and healing, DH also increases tankiness)
• Mesmer (Evades, Distortion, Chrono pushes this into high tankiness with blocks too)
• Revenant (Blocks, Evades)
• Engineer (High base HP, access to blinds, Scrapper pushes into high tankiness with extra defense on hammer and gyros)

• Warrior (High HP, Heavy Armor, Natural Regen, Blocks, Evades)
• Ranger (High HP, Plenty of access to ranged damage, Pet [particularly bear], becomes even more tanky with druid)
• Necro (High HP, Shroud, Blinds, tankiness slightly lowered with scourge)

• Chronotank
• Druid
• Firebrand

• Dragonhunter/Firebrand
• Reaper/Scourge (Scourge has higher damage and access to barrier, Reaper has second health bar)
• Scrapper (although damage is somewhat low)

Let me correct a few things:

• thief just need pistol off-hand to perma blind mobs. In regard to blind nobody have as much of it than thief. Surviving as a thief in PvE is as difficult as laying an instant aoe at the feet of your target.
• Guardian just need to equip a hammer and the cheapest soldier gear to be way more resilient than most of the other profession. With it's large amount of block/invuln, there is no way that you'd put it in moderate natural tankiness.
• Ranger have a intermediate hit point and intermediate armor... yet you put them in high natural tankiness?

I'm sorry to say it but all professions have an equal amount of survivability. The only difference between professions is how how forgiving it is to take a hit. Low health pool have a lot of tools to quickly go back to their initial health but can't afford to take a big hit while large health pool struggle a lot more but can afford to take a big hit. Toughness in PvE have basically no impact and as long as the event start to scale on number, you'll be dead as fast with your high tankiness profession than with your low tankiness profession.

I'll be honest, for most of the solo PvE content, the profession with which it's the easiest to go throught the content is the thief not the warrior, ranger or necromancer. The gameplay of a tanky thief in PvE is probably the easiest possible: laying an instant smoke field and auto attacking. Most of all, if you want to skip some part, you'll even ave plenty of stealth. Even naked a thief is tanky when you do that.

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class.

Also natural toughness from minionmancer.

When I started playing I assumed that each class should focus on its corresponding stat, so I made a guardian with emphasis on toughness and vitality. I still have him around, although bit by bit I'm replacing his gear. Point is, he's tanky as hell. Basically he's unkillable, and even if I find myself engulfed in mobs and just trying to run away, it's the one toon I have that can pretty much take any amount of punishment and get away clean. He's useless for damage, but it can be fun sometimes to just be able to stand still and take the punishment. Most classes survive by killing the enemy before it can kill you, but with this I really can just take whatever dmg and wait for someone who does better dmg to come along and kill the thing that's hitting me.

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:No. Just no!!!!

Dont take necro as a high tanky class.

If u just define being tanky by having much health. Ur right.But. Necro has exactly 2 evades and a little bit of protection. But thats it.

Tankyness isnt only defined by a big healthbar. And if you would have played necro recently, you would agree, that hes not really that tanky.

As scourge you loose that second health bar. Barrier doesnt make up for it.As reaper, you got a nice shroud decay added last balance patch, that cut our shroud uptime by 1/3.And as core... well core is just useless if you still want to do dmg. But yeah, its a little bit more tanky.

ele and guard scale the most with defensive stats and traitslike ele is by far the squishiest class baseline, but if you deck it out in full defensive gear and defensive traits, it's probably now the hardest thing in the game to kill

@Nimon.7840 said:

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:Why is aegis of guardian called so 'good' it just blocks one attack and doesn't help a kitten against staccato damage bosses in high level fractals and raids. I go down a lot more often as guardian than as warrior, ranger be cause the health is so super low. A lot of enemies hit extremely hard, easily out damage your whole health bar, insta down. bam. This won't happen as necro, warrior, revenant or ranger (or engi).

That said I only run damage builds, I don't have a single defense stat on all my gear (mainly berserker for direct damage and viper's for condi damage).

Okay, I shouldn't have mentioned raid bosses - these are actually pretty organized. It's more in fractals or other mobs which are hard hitting. But maybe I became too casual the last couple of years. I don't know.

Here is another (impractical) example of a "as tanky as possible" - Build, this time I tried to go with Ele and I think this build is actually more survivable than my previously posted Guardian build. Please do note though that this is not a good build, just like the Guardian version. It's a just for fun build that is only good at one thing (tanking) which is bad in pretty much all of GW2's gamemodes - you should always try to be able to do at least 2 things out of the following: Deal Damage, Tank, Heal, Provide a large variety of (useful) boons and/or buffs.

No classes can take a single 40k hit besides aegis, don’t forget that.

Holosmith have access to basically 100% damage reduction. Spectal shield (50%) + Protection (33%) + one of holo adept traits (15%) + mussel food (10%) + other traits from core engineer you can take. And thats without any gear or potion.

You taking 50-100 damage from veteran dredges in FotM. Same dredge can kill ele with 2-3 hits.

@"Incognito.3529" said:

No classes can take a single 40k hit besides aegis, don’t forget that.

That's not how it actually works, and even if it was, it's near impossible to do for any length of time:

• Spectrum Shield lasts 3 seconds
• Did you mean Light Density Amplifier, which only works in PF (killing any synergy with spectrum shield)?
• What core engi trait are you referring to? The closest I can figure is Iron-Blooded, which nobody takes, and would be better utilized by scrapper anyway.
• You're also borking a holosmith build to accomplish something that could just as easily be done by equipping tool kit and using Gear Shield or a scrapper build.

If you want to make engineer tanky, here's how you actually do it:

• Scrapper + hammer with soldier gear (or any other tank gear, really).
• Bulwark gyro
• Protection
• Alchemy/Inventions or Tools/Scrapper trait lines.

I only play 7/9 classes, but in my experience it is the Revenant. Specifically the power herald builds and the healing renegade. Power herald has a lot of self healing with vengeful hammers and life leeching, a few evades/blocks, but also facet of light's healing capability is epic. Healing Renegade, however, can self heal well enough to solo Ensolyss at 99cm. I found this out to my dismay, but it is possible.

I wouldn't use the definition "tank" to characters, which are not warrior-like. Tank is the person who absorb damage through his armor and hp mainly. Maybe with some magic help like Guardian (or paladins in other games).

As to mage-like and rouge-like characters, it is better to say "character with a good sustain" or "character with a decent survivability". Don't you agree?