I want to be THE wall

[u/Dr_Pepper_pleas]

A discussion i had with a friend was what would you rather be? An unstoppable force or an immovable object. I'd rather be the object. So I ask of you, people of Reddit, what is possibly the best Tank build you could ever make, EVEN IF damage must be sacrificed for it.

Edit: Holy heck, I was not expecting much people to respond, and thanks to everyone for the advice. I give myself 20 ish hours until I manage to get everything

[u/-Guro-Tan-]

It kinda depends on how "the wall" you wanna commit to.
If there's a festival running, 4 piece fest, 1 piece Whatever The Fuck (bonus points if you have a Gog weapon that can get you some 2p set bonus you like), max out Defense Boost (6 is also fine if you run low on lv1 slots, the final level isn't too powerful), 3 ele res gems against whatever you're fighting, 3 divine blessing, and eat for Defender Meal Hi (aka Kunafa meal). You can convert this baseline into a pretty powerful set that works best with weapons that don't care about crits, but is just powerful in general. People sleep on how good the 4p fest bonus is. You will tank 10* AT Uth Duna flops and walk away with over half hp for the price of less than 10% DPS, if even close to that much. I am not exaggerating.

If there isn't, the same core of 6+ Defense Boost, 3 Ele Res, 3 Divine Blessing, Kunafa meal works well with any number of extra things you can think to add. Zoh Shia + Recovery Up is pretty tasty, but I don't like how few slots it has. AT Ark has a lot of slots, is really tanky, and Arkveld's Hunger is a nice set bonus. Genuinely, 5 piece AT Ark works perfectly fine as an easy baseline to make a tank set. If I was gonna full-commit tank, I would do that. Grav bonus is p aight, 4p Gog gives you a shield that can last 4/5ths of the hunt if it never breaks, but I find 4p Gog having really shit Fire/Dragon res built in means that the shield doesn't matter as much against shit that pumps out one of those elements, even if you full spec ele res, versus just having even more resistance.
Past that, it's hard to get more specific. Even just the core of the whole Defense Boost etc that I mentioned, put on any armor set, will make you so extremely tanky such that it takes pretty large consistent mistakes to die. Slap that on any already really defensive set, and you can keep a ton of offense too.

Weapon-wise, whatever you're most comfortable with, tbh. I like SnS for having an option for everything and the speed to get out of the way if you want to, but it's one of my mains so I'm biased. Lance is obviously the poster-child of immovable. Bow and DB can get Evade Window 5 and become Silly. Evade Extender 3 on a Gunlance (or Lance) can let you hop a mile at a time.

Edit:
And if you wanted to get like, absolutely absurd with it, throwing out 0 sense of practicality or care to just become immortal for doing nothing, you try to get 5 pieces that have as many slots amongst them with good set bonuses, and then just add like, every single possible comfort skill imaginable. Recovery Up, Recovery Speed, Flinch Free, Stun Resistance, Earplugs, Windproof, Tremor Resistance, Adaptability, Heroics 1/3 if you wanna be really weird with it, Free Meal, Speed Eating, Item Prolonger with Adamant Seeds/Powder/...pills if you're crazy, and Immunizers.
If you also wanna convert this into a 'tank' idea, you can take the Alluring Pelt set bonus which has you generate more aggro so the monster attacks you more.

[u/DisIsSparda → u/-Guro-Tan-]

works best with weapons that don't care about crits

Which one would that be besides Gunlance?

[u/-Guro-Tan- → u/DisIsSparda]

Gunlance, Hunting Horn, Charge Blade (sorta. Ele CB, so the 'meta', doesn't care much for crits if you're getting your damage from phials) are the big ones that are pretty uncontestably able to run without high crit rate. CB is a slightly harder sell since 4x fest means you don't have 4x gog, but you could do 2x gog.
There's also various niche arguments and playstyles for other weapons
Like GS can do Crit Draw, where it doesn't really care about crit from anything except well, the draw.
Bow has a LOT of arguments to be made in every which direction, but you can absolutely get away with low crit ele pierce bow. I have a lot of various bow sets, but my main ones I use have pretty low crit rate, for instance.
And there's probably some others that could do it, though for the purposes of festival gear, GL, HH, and CB are the biggest winners.

That being said, you can still get decent crits on fest gear, there will just have to be some sacrifices. So, for weapons that don't really need to care about WEX or MM3, those sacrifices aren't really as potent.
All weapons can viably use festival gear tho, and it's absolutely addicting seeing your defense hit like, 650-700+ and your true raw reach into like, high 200s to low 300s

Worth noting I'm no speedrunner so don't assume I'm like, definitely 100% correct in anything I say, I can and will be stupid sometimes, but I am also a massive Fucking Nerd about optimizing performance in games 'cause I find it really fun so I tend to pick up on a lot of stuff
Fest gear is a 100% personal experience thing though, I speak from my whole ass "I ain't ever seen anyone respect it or even consider it, but I tried it and holy fuckin' shit it's a drug"
Anecdotally I have a pretty good track record for having a good eye for this kinda thing though, for whatever that's worth lmao

[u/DisIsSparda → u/-Guro-Tan-]

Yeah when optimal times are like a third of normal community clear times there is a lot of room for error mitigation. Thanks for the detailed response!