A tank in any MMO is a necessary tool for group play and can be useful for solo play as well. Right now we’re going to go over a Warrior tank build designed for playing through dungeons in Guild Wars 2. This build is especially great for new or inexperienced players but can also be incredibly strong for group play. Either way it has high defensive stats and moderate damage. Let’s jump straight into the build.
Weaponry
For this build on your primary weapon set you’ll want the Mace as your main hand and Shield as your off hand. For your secondary weapon use the Hammer. For your aquatic weapon use the Spear. These weapons give you a good combination of power and defense to increase the defensive capabilities of your tanking Warrior.
Skills to Use
For the best tank possible we recommend using the following skills on your Warrior:
Healing – Mending (heals your player and removes 2 conditions)
Slot 1 – Banner of Defense (places a banner down that provides buffs of regeneration & toughness for you and any other friendly players within a 600 range)
Slot 2 – Dolyak Signet (quite possibly one of the purest tank skills; decreases the amount of damage your player takes while passive and provides stability while active)
Slot 3 – Endure Pain (primarily for tough scenarios; player takes no damage for 5 seconds and breaks any stuns)
Elite Slot – Rampage (turns the player into a juggernaut with a new set of skills; has strong attack power and defensive power; 180 second cooldown)
Trait Point Assignments
Because this build is designed to be a tank for the Warrior class we will be focusing primarily on the defensive traits. Below we have outlined exactly where to assign your trait points for your player as well as give suggestions as to which trait skills to select and we explain exactly why we chose them.
Defense Trait Tree
This one is pretty obvious. Tanks need to be able to withstand a ton of damage, even more so when playing through dungeons because the enemies are generally stronger and you’ll need to protect your team players to really gain the advantage when facing large or tough mobs. We assigned 30 points here for the +300 healing and +300 toughness.
For the trait skills in this tree we chose Turtle’s Defense (adds 200 points to your toughness whenever you’re affected by cripples, stuns, immobiles or chills), Shield Master (adds 90 points to toughness while you’re carrying a shield and makes Shield skills charge up 20% faster) and Spike Armor (adds 5 seconds of retaliation when your player is hit by a crit attack). Most of these are very obvious as they add to the total toughness of your player.
Strength Trait Tree
No matter if you play as a tank, support or DPS you will still need to have a decent amount of power for your attacks. To achieve this we assigned 20 points to the strength tree. This adds 200 points to your power and gives you a 20% bonus for condition damage length. The skills we chose for this trait tree are Short Temper (player gains 3 stacks of might for 5 secs and also 1 adrenaline strike every time your attacks are blocked) and Distracting Strikes (inflicts confusion on enemies when they are interrupted).
Tactics Trait Tree
Tactics is useful primarily because it adds points to your vitality. In this case we added 10 points to the tree for an additional 100 points in vitality, a 10% bonus to boon durations and the Determined Revival (adds +5 toughness for every level when you are rez’ing players) and Empower Allies (provides nearby teammates with +70 power) skills.
Discipline Trait Tree
We only assigned 10 points to the Discipline tree as well. This was to gain the extra 10% chance of critical hits and the Versatile Rage (on weapon swap player gains 5 adrenaline strikes) and Warrior’s Sprint (gives you extra running speed while wielding any melee weapon) skills.
Recommended Armor
For this Warrior dungeon tank build we would recommend investing in armor that is relative to the purpose of the build. Any armor that adds additional toughness is a good choice. To save coin don’t buy exotics but rather purchase rares such as pieces with the title of Cleric’s or Knight’s. These provide great bonuses that are ideal for anyone wanting to play as a tank.
Here is our video run-down of this build:
