Guild Wars 2 really have roles?

[Sindust.7059]

Tanking only exists in raids. Everywhere else there is only healing, boon support (alac, quick) and DPS.  And in the raids the tanking is usually done by the healers. Healers must bring either alac (for example HAM, Druid, Tempest) or quick (HFB, Scrapper), and the missing boon is then brought by one of the DPS.

 

If you absolutely must have a tank, there is only one deidcated tank build that I'm aware of that has any chance of getting into raid groups, and it's not a warrior (in fact I have never seen warriors tank anything in gw2). That build is chrono that can provide both alac and quick. By picking that build you can make up for the lack of personal DPS and healing on your char by allowing the group to take an extra pure DPS over a DPS boon support. But it's quite tricky to get 100% uptime on both alac and quick with that build while staying alive, so unless you make your own group to accommodate such a tank, you're unlikely to find a PUG that will take you.

 

And unless you're doing instanced group content, it's probably best if your healer runs a celestial hybrid build, because you won't need much healing, and when you do, harrier/minstrel's healer probably wouldn't save you anyway.

[Fueki.4753]

29 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

in fact I have never seen warriors tank anything in gw2

I used to tank Lupi in Arah on my full Soldier Warrior.

But that was long before HoT and the accompanying power creep.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[draxynnic.3719]

33 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Tanking only exists in raids. Everywhere else there is only healing, boon support (alac, quick) and DPS.  And in the raids the tanking is usually done by the healers. Healers must bring either alac (for example HAM, Druid, Tempest) or quick (HFB, Scrapper), and the missing boon is then brought by one of the DPS.

 

If you absolutely must have a tank, there is only one deidcated tank build that I'm aware of that has any chance of getting into raid groups, and it's not a warrior (in fact I have never seen warriors tank anything in gw2). That build is chrono that can provide both alac and quick. By picking that build you can make up for the lack of personal DPS and healing on your char by allowing the group to take an extra pure DPS over a DPS boon support. But it's quite tricky to get 100% uptime on both alac and quick with that build while staying alive, so unless you make your own group to accommodate such a tank, you're unlikely to find a PUG that will take you.

 

And unless you're doing instanced group content, it's probably best if your healer runs a celestial hybrid build, because you won't need much healing, and when you do, harrier/minstrel's healer probably wouldn't save you anyway.

Does that build even still exist? I thought the recent chronomancer changes pretty much forced you to pick one or the other.

[Sindust.7059]

On 12/3/2022 at 6:17 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Does that build even still exist? I thought the recent chronomancer changes pretty much forced you to pick one or the other.

Hm, I'm not sure now that you say that. I tried it out a few months ago, and it was still possible.

[Kodama.6453]

11 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

Hm, I'm not sure now that you say that. I tried it out a few months ago, and it was still possible.

Do you remember how you generated these boons? I also thought this would be impossible now, because the traits from chronomancer which grant alacrity and quickness are both grandmaster traits competing with each other.

Is there a way for a chronomancer to generate one of these boons without having to rely on these grandmaster traits?

[draxynnic.3719]

50 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Do you remember how you generated these boons? I also thought this would be impossible now, because the traits from chronomancer which grant alacrity and quickness are both grandmaster traits competing with each other.

Is there a way for a chronomancer to generate one of these boons without having to rely on these grandmaster traits?

From what I've been able to find, a quickness chrono can still self-alacrity through a minor trait, and an alacrity chrono can still use Time Warp and Arcane Thievery. You can then spread what you make for yourself through Signet of Inspiration. I'm sceptical that you can 100% both at once, though.

It was a fairly recent change though - I think it was part of the infamous June patch.

[Sindust.7059]

3 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Do you remember how you generated these boons? I also thought this would be impossible now, because the traits from chronomancer which grant alacrity and quickness are both grandmaster traits competing with each other.

Is there a way for a chronomancer to generate one of these boons without having to rely on these grandmaster traits?

I remember I used the skill that resets the cooldown of a utility skill to use some skill twice to get 100% uptime, but I really don't remember the details.

[draxynnic.3719]

19 hours ago, Sindust.7059 said:

I remember I used the skill that resets the cooldown of a utility skill to use some skill twice to get 100% uptime, but I really don't remember the details.

Mimic.

 

Do you recall if you had a quickness well and an alacrity well? That's the real litmus test, since those don't exist any more. Apart from Time Warp, the only way to give quickness or alacrity without the relevant GM trait now is to give it to yourself and then spread it with Signet of Inspiration.

[Sindust.7059]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Mimic.

 

Do you recall if you had a quickness well and an alacrity well? That's the real litmus test, since those don't exist any more. Apart from Time Warp, the only way to give quickness or alacrity without the relevant GM trait now is to give it to yourself and then spread it with Signet of Inspiration.

I think what I did was something along the lines of giving out alac with the heal well and shield 5, and quick with shatter skills, then mimic signet of inspiration to use it twice to increase duration of both, and of course time warp. But I just tried to remake the build (had deleted it, because at some point I wanted to try virtuoso and needed the space), and I can't seem to figure out a way to make it work, because quick on shatter skills and alac on wells or shield 5 are exclusive. The best in terms of quickness duration that I seem to be able to get out (with 94% concentration) is 30s: 12s from time warp + 3x6s from signet of inspiration (if the skills are used in quick succession and alac is running, it comes off cooldown about a second before quickness from the 2nd cast runs out, so it's possible to get in the 3rd cast, but that's it), and then everything that could give quickness to others is on cooldown. And considering that time warp should be about half way through its cooldown if alac uptime is 100%, that gives us about 50% uptime on quick with perfect execution. And when picking the quickness trait, there is no way to give alac to others at all from what I see, because signet of inspiration doesn't "spread" the boons, it just extends the ones that the people already have.

 

So yeah, the build indeed seems to be dead. I apologize. This means that there is no viable pure tank build in the game. Sad. Or did I miss something?

[draxynnic.3719]

Protip: The build templates are just an alphanumeric string, so if you want to save a build but can't fit it into an in-game template, you can copy it onto a spreadsheet. 😛

 

Pretty sure that the heal well hasn't given alacrity for a while, but Well of Recall, now Well of Senility, did. So you might have been running Well of Recall as your third utility, while generating more alacrity for yourself for spreading with Signet of Inspiration. You were probably using the quickness-on-shatter trait, but as you point out, losing Well of Recall and baseline alacrity on Tides of Time makes it pretty much impossible to do now.

 

No need to apologise - the rework was pretty recent after all, and if it had turned out that there was still a way to do it, that would be useful to know.