Guild Wars 2

Yesterday I created new character. As I already have meta warrior I thought about creating tank warrior. When I looked at shield I felt puzzled. CD on shield are massive (25, and 30 seconds without traits).

I was thinking and the only conclusion why CD are so high is because it could mess with PvP.
Shield in PvP can prevent quite huge burst, and would be undesirable if it would be available more often than burst).
Stuns in PvP you can chain so it is not fun if you get CC indefinitely (thou you will probably have some form of stun break and stability)
Not PvE it is not so fun. Shield will probably be only able to block single attack (especially if you fight boss), and CD is 2 times as big as riposte, that not only will block this attack, but still hurt enemy.
Control effects in PvE are even bigger mess, as the only one think that you want to CC would be bosses and champions (as Zerkers kill rest with ease, maybe expect elites sometimes), but after single CC boss enemy will get Defiance stack that prevent other CC, so the only viable CC you would like to use is ice bow freeze, as it last longest, and rest as defiance stripping. Still number of Defiance stacks don’t depend on number of hard CC available in team, or even length of last CC, so the mere 1 sec daze is worth this same as 3 seconds stun.
Also shield bash do low dmg, and leap finisher is almost negligible as you don’t have access to any fields, and most auras also have too low duration for PvE.

I would like for developers to rebalance skills (not only warriors – shield is only example – I don’t think it would break game if they lowed CDs by 5-7s, and 10s) that they work a bit differently in PvP and PvE.
They know it -> they just changed dmg from confusion that it deal significantly more dmg in PvE.

My second Pet peve is weakness. I don’t like luck chance in this skill.
While boss preparing super attack it can deal low dmg, or one shoot people. 50/50 do you take a risk? Of course not. No one would take risk. I would be much more happy if in PvE monsters would do 75% dmg all the time, or even 80%, but to be sure that you don’t get that spike dmg (that noone like to receive).

I’m still wondering why GW2 didn’t follow GW1’s lead of specially segregating PvE skills against PvP for these very reasons. I don’t know how many skills were affected in GW1, but I can confidently guess around 50% or more. Activation times were longer in PvP, CD’s were longer, effects were watered down, etc. Aftercast delays were a big thing especially if you had a tendency to lag in PvP.

The mechanics in this game are comprehensively different and more complex with regard to skills and effects. That said, I’m confident there’s nothing that can’t be done with a little finessing and fine tuning of skills, to bring back that segregation that GW1 had.