Well ... yes and no.
You can explicitly build Barbarians MOST EXTREMELY tanky, more so than any other warrior. Something like this:
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Str 8, Dex 17, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 8
CLvl1 - Rogue 1 - or start as Barbarian and take Rogue next level
CLvl2 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 1
CLvl3 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 2
CLvl4 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 3 - Wildheart subclass, Bear Heart (resistance to all damage types but psychic)
CLvl5 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 4 - Feat: ASI +1 Dex, +1 Wis
CLvl6 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 5 (Extra Attack)
CLvl7 - Rogue 1 / Barbarian 6 - Stallion Aspect
CLvl8 - Rogue 2 / Barbarian 6 - (Dash as Bonus Action = constantly get temporary hitpoints every turn)
CLvl9 - Rogue 3 / Barbarian 6 - Thief subclass for extra bonus action (allows to constantly dash whenever you received damage)
CLvl10 - Rogue 4 / Barbarian 6 - Feat: Tough (or ASI +2 Dex, or Ritual Caster for Disguise Self to use Githyanki psychic damage resistance items, etc)
CLvl11 - Rogue 5 / Barbarian 6 (Uncanny Dodge, halven incoming damage once per turn)
CLvl12 - Rogue 5 / Barbarian 7 (lesser Alert feat for free; thats why I wouldnt take Alert with this character, usually an extremely good choice)
It should be noted to get the resistance from the rage you have to attack every round, and to renew your temporary hitpoints you have to dash every round.
You can dash out of combat to get the tempoary hitpoints. You can dash without actually moving to get the tempoary hitpoints. Besides dashing can also trigger certain beneficial effects from various items, too.
Also have ideally an Abjuration Wizard in group as the most tankiest and broken class and use the two lover rings from Act 2 to halven incoming damage additional to the Bear Rage and the Uncanny Dodge, becoming even more riddiculously hardy.
If you can get any damage reduction from items its applied AFTER the damage is halved up to three times, too. Unfortunately this build can neither wear heavy armor nor pick up the Heavy Armor Mastery feat.
You probably should logically use Shields and Medium Armor without Dex bonus limit to get your armor class through the roof, too.
Maybe get psychic resistance through itemization.
You can constantly use Reckless Attack to make yourself the prefered target for enemy attacks. And with high enough armor class you still wont be hit that often.
The advantage from attacks against you from Reckless Attack is the only way in the game to make enemies prefer you as a target, except for certain spells, which are of course a limited resource and only work against single targets.
Using Reckless Attack also gives you very high chances to hit and to crit, and boosts very much any improvement to crit chance you posess though items, allowing for a quite high damage output as well.
You can either use Finesse weapons or Strength Elixiers; maybe default to Finesse Weapons and pick Strength Elixiers for especially tough encounters.
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But there is of course nothing that forces you to go for this. You can also go all out damage with a Berserker build, or some of the other Hearts. For example Wolf Heart is super strong if you have a melee focused group.
Such a build would still be quite tanky, but wouldnt have that great armor class, and would not have the damage reduction that other builds can have, namely from heavy armor and the Heavy Armor feat.
And as a *pure* rogue class, Arcane Trickster is the only choice I would consider. Especially if you make good use of the invisible and permanent Mage Hand, like dropping stuff to the ground, then throwing it with the mage hand, thus de facto giving you more actions per turn, AT is actually perfectly solid.
From a powergaming perspective, both Thief and Assassin are VERY front loaded and only interesting for a 3-5 level dip. Thief naturally combines super well with Open Hand Monk, Assassin naturally combines super well with Gloomstalker Ranger. From a powergaming perspective, pure class Thief and Assassin are among the weakest subclasses in the game, because Rogue got nerfed compared to the original D&D5 definition.
