Build:W/any Soldier's Stance Hero

A durable frontliner that has a 100% uptime on IAS and block chance.

Attributes and Skills
General variables
 * to increase your team's armor rating.
 * make use of hero AI to keep enemies in place.
 * for stance removal. Energy might become an issue.
 * for an AoE interrupt.
 * mostly safe to use because of the 75% block chance.
 * powerful condition cleanse.
 * pets are great value for a single skill slot, especially if taking physical damage support.
 * if bringing a pet and some of the energy intensive variants. Reduce Strength and either the weapon attribute or Tactics by 1. Raise Beast Mastery to 6.
 * strongly consider bringing this to keep pets alive in hard mode. Ra
 * to engage and have more mobility.
 * or to resurrect.

Equipment
Armor: Weapons:
 * 1 Stonefist insignias on head, gloves or feet if using the hammer build or bringing [["None Shall Pass!"@15].
 * Sentry's insignias on the remaining slots.
 * Best vigor rune you can spare.
 * Runes of vitae and at most 1 rune of clarity to fill out the remaining slot(s).
 * A "Strength and Honor" or "Dance with Death" weapon of defense or fortitude.
 * The weapon should be Vampiric by default, but Zealous is required for some builds. Do not bring Zealous hammers, the low attack speed hampers energy generation.
 * Tactics shield of fortitude (inscription as you see fit).

Counters

 * Anti-melee. Mostly blinding and blocking.
 * High armor levels against physical damage.