Best sustain build and profession

I am looking for a good melee to play pve open world. I want to see if it is theoretically possible to make a toon that can literally face tank in melee.Edit: yes, I still plan on dodging, I am looking for near constant melee uptime.

Currently I am looking at Necro Condi with Curses, Blood Magic for a ton of lifesteal.

Are there any other professions that could do this well? I was thinking maybe a druid could with Celestial Avatar and staff healing, but am not sure on that one.

Warrior with Defense line and a Condi build with its high base HP and toughness could be good, but doesn't look to have enough healing.

Anyhow, anything else that I am missing?

Condi Auramancer. Great condi cleanse, constant healing/regen/protection/vigor, and immune to crits.

Duracell power Renegade. I pretty much just stand in stuff. Kalla for burst heals, jalis for sustain. Staff for cleanse.

I pretty much face tanked the entire story and open world bounties.

class that can facetank while still doing good dmg would be a warrior, thiss is the build i use: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQJAnYjMdQdH23BWeAnIW6BMjAQBYph3kvydZkdwiLGA-jhBBABYt/o8DgTAQe6BC4BAcmSwKV/BA-e385 hp/sec signet, 495 hp/sec 5stacked adrenal health, 133 hp/sec whwn u give urself might with magebane tether, 7% lifesteal from crits with dagger offhand. I just think about swapping axe mh for dagger for interrupt 3 and guaranteed 4 higher dmg. Second class with good sustain is thief with lifesteal trait. But warrior is the best.

EDIT:Forgot hammer scrapper i played in hot 1,5 year ago. That was the best class to solo with, idk how it is now, but it had a lot of self heal from superspeed/swiftness heal/sec trait, medkit after dodge, evasion and projecile reflects and crazy instant brakbar, long lasting stealth. I was able to solo almost every hot hp, ofc in zerk set. Then i would put thief

Condi Auramancer or Condi Soulbeast. Both can have great cleansing, sustain via shouts or in SLB case via poison and protection heal. Auramancer has big boon applications and SLB has good heal with supportive pets.I could also recommend Druid for sustain. In druids case you just have to switch mode into CAF to give you heals.

Celestial elementalist (auramancer)

The tankiest class would be warrior. It has the highest toughness, health pool, and strongest sustain. Power Warrior has amazing burst coupled with a few stances and sustain you will never die. If you play as spellbreaker, might makes right and healing signet will keep you up. If you play core warrior you literally are a sustain God.

@Opopanax.1803 said:I am looking for a good melee to play pve open world. I want to see if it is theoretically possible to make a toon that can literally face tank in melee.

Currently I am looking at Necro Condi with Curses, Blood Magic for a rone of lifesteal.

Are there any other professions that could do this well? I was thinking maybe a druid could with Celestial Avatar and staff healing, but am not sure on that one.

Warrior with Defense line and a Condi build with its high base HP and toughness could be good, but doesn't look to have enough healing.

Anyhow, anything else that I am missing?

Power rev in PvE probably has the highest survivability while playing a full dps power build in berserker gear. Also quite easy to disengage in PvE.

Though I personally prefer guardian. Yes, dps power guardian is not that survivable but you can switch lines around easily and it relies on blocks so gear is not so relevant. Also, it has the strongest ranged weapon, scepter. Some champions cannot be soloed in melee, so there you go. You also can use mace for trolling things in PvE and the damage is not bad.

Also, surprisingly also thief. Just make surely you use the trait that heals on critic. Between staff evade frames and dodges you can avoid most incoming damage. Then use P/P when melee is not an option.

Reaper with great sword and minions of course. I find it too boring though.

The tankiest class in theory should be a heavy armour class but Necromancer with the right build & stats can out tank warriors simply because of the death shroud & heavy condi cleanse access.

Source: 408 hours on warrrior & 2239 hours on necromancer. Commanded in WvW with sentinel gear on warrior and soldier gear on necro.Not sure where things stand after PoF expansion though. Maybe spellbreaker could out tank necro with enough resistance and if resistance weren't corruptable.

Its hard to literally face tank open world in GW2 because many mobs constantly CC you if you don't evade. You need to evade/immune/block or stability or you'll get chain stunlocked and die.

If you wanted to do this I think Minstrel Firebrand Guardian or Jalis/Ventari Revenant would be best if you just want to eat hits with stability up while healing yourself.

Reaper with Valk gear. You get two very respectable health bars and nearly 100% crit in shroud.

@green plum.7514 said:Reaper with Valk gear. You get two very respectable health bars and nearly 100% crit in shroud.

Yup. This + minions. Nothing else in this game comes close.

@Jephery.8915 said:Minstrel Firebrand Guardian

He wants to kill enemies, not heal them

@Dano.2408 said:

@Jephery.8915 said:Minstrel Firebrand Guardian

You joke, but I took a Minstrel Guardian to solo all the HoT Hero Challenges. You'll stay mostly at 90+% health for the entire 10 minutes while healing hundreds of thousands of HP. With Firebrand, your tankiness is even more absurd with Tome of Resolve and Courage.

@Snowywonders.1378 said:

@green plum.7514 said:Reaper with Valk gear. You get two very respectable health bars and nearly 100% crit in shroud.

reaper minion master is a beast for face tank (well u actually dont FACETANK , since u have minions , but u can take a punch with the buff from death traits and of course shroud when u need to wait for healing CD :) )

I run a celestial, minion master, hybrid damage reaper in open world. It is almost literally invincible. Blood/Curses/Reaper. GS + Staff. I have soloed all HoT hero points and even held bounties to the timer alone. DPS will surprise you, especially if you combo your shroud 5 to 4 for the chilling bolts spray.

Do you run solid celestial?

@Opopanax.1803 said:Do you run solid celestial?

Yup. Strength sigils for might stacking from Reaper tree. I pair it with Ice, but you can use whatever. It's open world, after all.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

@Dano.2408 said:

@Jephery.8915 said:Minstrel Firebrand Guardian

That sounds horrible. If I want every fight to be epic and needlessly long, I'll jump on dauntless for a while.

@Opopanax.1803 said:I am looking for a good melee to play pve open world. I want to see if it is theoretically possible to make a toon that can literally face tank in melee.

Currently I am looking at Necro Condi with Curses, Blood Magic for a rone of lifesteal.

Are there any other professions that could do this well? I was thinking maybe a druid could with Celestial Avatar and staff healing, but am not sure on that one.

Warrior with Defense line and a Condi build with its high base HP and toughness could be good, but doesn't look to have enough healing.

Anyhow, anything else that I am missing?

It depend what you want to face tank.Anything that don't have a breakbar and don't leave a deadly aoe in it's wake can be face tanked by a thief that auto attack and keep the foe in it's smoke field.

Hammer guardian is also pretty good at face tanking things. The same goes for the warrior and it's humongous health regen. You can also use an auramancer tempest (you can even face tank lava damage level). A ventari revenant is also pretty tanky. Necro minionmancer can be one nasty cockroach in PvE. Engi can also be pretty resilient if you use the correct tools... etc.

Anyway, as long as you do not set your eye to high, you can facetank with any profession, however, some foe can't be face tanked and need you to actively use your life saving tools.

Yeah, maybe I should edit the op. I expect to still use dodges. I just want a build/class that supports sustaining while in melee range. Something that does well even against groups or reasonable elites.

The keys are:

1. Active defense, evasion, blocks
2. Gaining health back
3. Good toughness and health pool
4. DPS traits or skills that give lots of bang per buck. Is, 50%/crit in shroud, 50% crit while under effect of retaliation . big win traits like this open up sustain or DPS armor itemization.

@Opopanax.1803 said:Yeah, maybe I should edit the op. I expect to still use dodges. I just want a build/class that supports sustaining while in melee range. Something that does well even against groups or reasonable elites.

The keys are:

1. Active defense, evasion, blocks
2. Gaining health back
3. Good toughness and health pool
4. DPS traits or skills that give lots of bang per buck. Is, 50%/crit in shroud, 50% crit while under effect of retaliation . big win traits like this open up sustain or DPS armor itemization.

Yea you want a valk reaper probably... something like this:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnMbCdbilbCO2A0bilfBDKpFA+AxHxo4VkKL8FCWA-jxRCQBISJoHV+BgnAgd0NAj9Hkk6PQ4iAAA-e

Can go blighters boon instead of reaper's onslaught for more sustain.

You have over 50k+ worth of HP for enemies to chew through and thanks to rise 33% of the damage taken is redirected to them(Shroud #3 gives an additional 20% if you want too). You can also keep up 25 vulnerability and 25 might stacks on your own with shroud. You have 54% crit chance out of shroud and 100% in shroud. You can actually go with zerker gear and get 100% all the time and take dhuumfire instead as well(I personally do that as valk is way overkill on survivability). You have lots of hard CC to completely stop damage and tear through breakbars. It's all purpose OW wrecking machine.

My two tankiest characters are a necro speced in gaining life force, and a revenant speced in ventari tablet.Currently I am playing renegade speced in life stealing, and although it's really fun, is not quite as tanky.

Warrior D/D no doubtSecond Guard S/F 2h Hammer Theif has good Self heal but Guard has access no a lot of Sustain blocks and Especialy Guard with Hammer and constant Protection is goldy tanky

A few days ago I finished the last stage of nightmare fractals (T3 though) on my sword weaver (condi gear), after my group wiped right at begining by the charging minions. I think that's sustainy enough.