Guild Wars 2

So just curious…

Any PvPers ever try and work Earth Shield into a staff or maybe even D/D bunker build?

If so, what was your experience with it? I’ve never done it but curious to try. It does seem like it has a lot of point control and decap potential with the block, invul, pull and daze. Yet, never even heard it discussed as a viable utility slot pick.

I mean, theoretically, you can swap into earth for stoneheart and pop it to mitigate a lot of potential damage while waiting for your other attunements to come off cooldown. Or use it anticipation of a stealthed thief or mesmer burst.

Why don’t you personally choose it as a skill? What are your reasons?

The only time I’ve actually somewhat got it to work, was on a zerk SF lightning rod build. It has a decent autoattack, two low cooldown ccs and an invuln. All 3 are incredibly useful on zerk sf. The only thing that held it back considerably is how much the invuln forces you out of position. You might well be invulnerable during the channel, but that doesn’t stop the enemy team from walking up to you and preparing for when you get out.

Thing with using it on bunkers is that the fifth skill loses capture contribution and is thus pretty useless, and the rest of the weapon really isn’t any tankier than your actual weapon. Plus bunker builds are often on a set rotation.

Gokil.2543:

The only time I’ve actually somewhat got it to work, was on a zerk SF lightning rod build. It has a decent autoattack, two low cooldown ccs and an invuln. All 3 are incredibly useful on zerk sf. The only thing that held it back considerably is how much the invuln forces you out of position. You might well be invulnerable during the channel, but that doesn’t stop the enemy team from walking up to you and preparing for when you get out.

Thing with using it on bunkers is that the fifth skill loses capture contribution and is thus pretty useless, and the rest of the weapon really isn’t any tankier than your actual weapon. Plus bunker builds are often on a set rotation.

Thanks. Those are all actually really good points I didn’t consider.

Earth Shield will never be usable as long as it has a casttime.

I’d totally use it over armor of earth or arcane shield if it was instant and a stunbreak.

Such a little change could bring so much build diversity, but Arenanet don’t care…

Imo, I would also go with a lightning rod build if running earth shield, tho outside some playfullness on staff or d/f lrod… it kinda gets worse for non-lrod and offensive uses. Whilst earth shield is pretty good for dueling atm (block n invul + dodges can cover A long time of “no dmg” (and can lure stealthed enemies into attacking so you know where they are)) it will get worse and worse the more enemies you’re facing as everything on the earth shield also has either higher cast time (#4 is 1s+ or forces you to go full melee range to get effective (auto/#3). Tho if I were to suggest a build for earth shield its either: Fire 113/Air 223/arcana 221 Arcana shield, lightning flash and earth shield. Or air 223, water 111, arcana 221 and run armor of earth, lightning flash and earth shield for a slightly more defensive version. (Also as a reminder, do not use fear runes with lrod as it bugs out lightning rod!!!!) My thoughts and knowledge on running around with earth shield in duels/tpvp.

-Distubin

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Earth Shield will never be usable as long as it has a casttime.

I’d totally use it over armor of earth or arcane shield if it was instant and a stunbreak.

Such a little change could bring so much build diversity, but Arenanet don’t care…

Supposedly sometime in the next two days the developers are going to be going over their balance plans for the classes when the expansion comes. I am hoping beyond hope that they are going to reveal SOME kind of plan that will do something about how there is one rote-memorized method for playing this class, and half our utilities and MORE than half our traits completely defy and even work against that single playstyle.

As for me, love earth shield, its tons of fun, that said it is almost always useless. I’ve tried using it in PvP, and its very rarely even worth using let alone slotting. I can think of one time where I 1v3d on mid for five minutes, not even exaggerating, but it was against three idiots that just spammed ranged attacks at me from the exact same spot while I ran circles around the mid point, they literally didn’t even move, it was almost like they were afk’d at a world boss. But other than that one moment of glory, hardly ever even managed to do anything with it.

I made a thread about it already but I think the arcane line should have a focus on conjured weapons. It would change how attunements are used. It has the possibility of synergizing with the Tempest very well. It would better allow Eles to stay in attunement without penalty by swapping conjures like kits.

uhohhotdog.3598:

I made a thread about it already but I think the arcane line should have a focus on conjured weapons. It would change how attunements are used. It has the possibility of synergizing with the Tempest very well. It would better allow Eles to stay in attunement without penalty by swapping conjures like kits.

Acane line always focused on Arcane skills and i think it should stay that way. Fire is the conjure line and i think they should just improve its synergy in some way. Either that or they could improve the functionality of each individual conjure by the element it represents, so infuse some effects into earth line that would help earth shield.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Earth Shield will never be usable as long as it has a casttime.

I’d totally use it over armor of earth or arcane shield if it was instant and a stunbreak.

Such a little change could bring so much build diversity, but Arenanet don’t care…

Yep. And you could generalise your comment to say all conjures.

Even if conjures were instant, they would still be a little underpowered because of the high opportunity cost of losing 21 skills to gain 5 fairly mediocre skills.

Specifically for earth shield:

• The leap on earth shield should also be longer.
• The melee-range auto-attack is pointless, should be buffed quite a bit, eg: knockback on the 3rd chain skill.

I used to use it on a few fractals (mainly dredge) back before the update when the scaling was crazy and at level 50 you could get one shot. Never use it anymore now though.

Hey there. I use Conjure Earth Shield all the time since over 5 months in sPvP.

I use it with a Condition Staff build. (Settler; Air Earth Arcane) I will also use it for a secret Tempest build. I am surely the person with the most experience you can find with Earth Shield.

As for the conjured weapon, I have a few point I would like to share.
1. Disregard the Conjurer Trait. You don’t need 25 stacks, Fire Aura is interesting, but does not stack in duration; moreover, you lose Lightning Rod with the fire line.

2. Earth Shield offers a reliable way to apply conditions from the auto-attacks and a well-timed Stone Sheath (block).

3. Decent team fight utility from the possibility of a 3 man unblockable pull followed by a 2 seconds daze from Magnetic Surge.

4. It can counters shenenigans like Rampage of Lichform for you and an ally.

5. Low cooldowns. Magnetic Surge is on a 12 seconds cooldown. It is very important to consider looting the second earth shield as you will enjoy a “lowered cast time” from simply picking up instead of the 3/4 seconds cast.

6. Double attrition. This concept is hard to grasp. I talked earlier about Lightning Rod. L-Rod grants weakness and weakness hinders the endurance regen. By itself, a steady amount of weakness gives an edge in 1v1s (keeping it simple) as you’ll ultimately have more ressource than the enemy the longer the fight goes on. Especially for the Earth Shield, which is one of the most complete conjured weapon (all abilities are useful on it) For instance, if you were to use Frostbow 4 and drop, you would not have gained a clear cooldown advantage. So here’s my point: you have more cooldowns to play with on a class where you already have more cooldowns than most.

From experience, an opponent trying a 1v1 will most of the time run out of cooldowns way before you. Here’s a little story to illustrate my point. I was doing a friendly duel to practice with a d/d elementalist. During that duel, I used Frostbow and Earth Shield. After 1 minute of duel, the d/d ele wanted to stop thinking it would not be over. I simply let him, but I pointed him to some stuff after. I told him to look around and see for himself the Earth Shield on the duel ground and the Frostbow a little bit farther. “My rotation is far from being over”, I said. This is the truth. Our d/d elementalist would not have the proper endurance left to dodge another Frostbow 5. So, as the combat goes on, the opponent will not be able to answer the overwhelming quantity of crowd control.

I hope I have helped you about earth shield. You can send a private message if you want precisions with builds and stuff.

Nota Bene.
The Earth Shield could get some help too. Propositions I have told already.

-Change the 180 vitality to 180 condition damage. (The vitality does not help because you end up losing it when dropping the conjured weapon without benefiting from it; it’s not a clear cut benefit like some extra power or condition damage.)
-Add a leap finisher to Magnetic Surge.
-Add a projectile finisher to the final auto-attack.
-Lower the cast time of both Earth Shield and Lightning hammer to 1/2 seconds down from 3/4 seconds. Or hell, make them to 1/4 seconds like other conjures.
-Make the picking up command more responsive and quicker. Sometimes it takes longer to pick up due to auto-attacks or pre-casting one of the spells in the rush.

I thought about changing that pull skill into something like: you drop you earth shield to make it levitate like a ward pulsing 3 times protection, pull enemies 3 times to its center and dmg at end when expolding.

Second one would be to change fortify into fortified ball, the same purpose but with mobility and two scenarios how its end: if you cancel it it daze enemies around if it end normaly you gain stab or prot.

Each of those would make you drop your shield. I found that sometimes dropping that weapon when no longer needed is a pain. Therefore it would also give some play into it, cuz we chose one of them which we need more in our situation.

I really wish they would make Conjured Weapons act sort of like a Mantra.

You would pre-cast it and then it would fill your second weapon slot and be accessible via weapon swap on the normal cooldown. Once all charges have been used it, like Mantras, it would go on cooldown, although the cooldown would be less than it is now. Unlike Mantras you would only have one weapon at a time available and casting a new Conjured Weapon overwrites the previous one and places that one on cooldown.