Tank

From Guild Wars Wiki

[edit] General concepts

Tank or Tanking refers to a common strategy in PvE, in which a character able to withstand large amounts of damage draws the enemies’ attention (or “aggro”) and stays the focus of their attacks, freeing more fragile party members to act. This strategy does not work in PvP, as any “tank” there would be ignored in favor of targets easier to kill.

[edit] Setting up

There are many ways to tank. The classic tanks are warrior characters, thanks to the very high armor this profession has, using skills that help to mitigate damage or to block attacks. However, there are many different ways to reach the same goal, so common tank builds use one of the following:

• A Warrior with high armor and defensive stances. The first kind of tank introduced in the game and still one of the most popular in game, the warriors have the benefit of an unconditional strong defense provided by their armor, as well as being the only profession in the game with access to a Rune of Absorption. Their stances can also be hard to remove, as few PvE enemies have stance-removing skills. Like a big block of meat standing in the front line to bear the brunt of the damage, they are often called meat shields. Their weakness, elemental damage, which is usually dealt through spells, is usually countered with spell-counters such as Obsidian Flesh. In high-level areas with appropriate environment (such as The Deep), sometimes several warriors are coordinated to build a wall between enemies and their party.

• A Dervish that relies on protective enchantments, such as the ones in Earth Prayers. One of the most recent characters in GW, the dervish usually relies on melee attacks, and therefore, like warriors, has skills which allow for survivability on the front lines. Although most people think warriors are better at tanking because of their 80 armor rating, there are armor enchantments and insignias to make their armor rating higher. Most of the dervishes' defenses are enchantments, which is both a boon and a hindrance: each time an enchantment ends it gives a minor boost the dervish's health and energy thanks to Mysticism, but enchantment removal is more common in PvE than stance removal, so Vow of Silence is used to prevent the biggest part.

• An Elementalist that compensates for his low armor with strong defensive Earth Magic spells. With weaker armor than warriors and dervishes, the elementalists are forced to rely even more on their spells than the dervishes, be it through enchantments (their most common defense) or through skills such as Ward Against Melee, that may help the entire party. Elementalist tanks are found less often in common PvE areas than the two kinds mentioned above, but they are often used in more specialized roles such as in the Domain of Anguish or in some farming builds.

• A Necromancer with a vast army of minions who specialize in melee attacks. Here the necromancer himself does not tank – rather, he creates a large number of minions that act as meatshields for the party, hopefully being picked as targets by the enemies. This method often is not considered real tanking – while the minions do sometimes draw the enemies' attention and they have the ability to body block enemy melee attackers, they may not be controlled by the necromancer, so many of the hardest parts of tanking are impossible with them.

• A Monk with special healing and protection skills can protect themselves and the group as a meat shield. Usually they use skills such as Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond because of their low armor rating of 60. Although, because monks are urged to stay in back and heal, it makes it rare to see monks tanking. Monks that tank often bring smiting skills to increase their damage output.

• An Assassin using Shadow Form, Deadly Paradox and/or Glyph of Swiftness to reduce Shadow Form's recharge time. That way, the Assassin will be near-invincible tanking while the rest of the team can do their work. With a simple chain that involves Death Blossom, the assassin can also keep aggro easily.

• A Pet is also another possible tank. Buffed with Call of Protection, Symbiotic Bond, and Otyugh's Cry it can easily make the single best damage absorber in the game. The opposing AI, however, gives them less priority as a target, making them less reliable as tanks for large groups, especially if a delicate structure is in place and is snapped easily by faulty aggro.

[edit] Mechanics and tactics

Guild Wars does not have any skill that allows players to simply draw “aggro” just by clicking on it. Instead, the process of getting the enemies’ attention is a more complex procedure that requires a minimum of collaboration from the entire party.

All players have, in their mini maps, a white circle drawn around their characters called the Danger Zone. Should an "unaggroed" hostile enemy touch a character's Danger Zone, the enemy, along with his entire group, will turn to attack the character who "aggroed" them. Those who keep the enemies outside of their Danger Zones are far less likely to "draw aggro," allowing the healers to heal in relative safety provided they keep their distance.

Body blocking a foe also seems to draw their aggro.
Knockdowns Seem to cause a foe to repick its target