Guild Wars 2

Been thinking, and looking at the weapon damage of a shield is lower then a pistol.

And here is the question.

When useing a kit, what does more damage ? Or is it the same ?

Kits don’t use weapon damage. Just bonuses.

If you’ve got two Berserker’s Pistols, it’ll deal just as much damage as one Berserker’s Shield and one Berserker’s Pistol.

Shield does more damage when you push half the zerg off a cliff and kill them instantly using Magnetic Inversion.

For all other cases, it’s just as Anymras says – weapon damage is irrelevant, the only thing that counts is stats akin to power, precision, condition damage et cetera.

For PVE i would go pistols, as IMO the shield simply do not bring enough of a benefit in relation the cooldowns imposed. Honestly ANet should either up the duration of Controls by x10 or reduce the cooldowns on skills by 1/10 in PVE, so that we have an alternative to the kiting burst method of dealing with mob swarms. bosses can’t be control locked anyways, thanks to defiant.

not… enough… benefit? it doesnt block, stun, blast finish, and reflect projectiles? you can’t use your healing turret toolbelt f1 and then your 4 twice to do an AoE water field blast heal? really? how is torch and glue shot better than that? stun that thief with your 5.

Stuns in general are pointless in PVE as they do not last long enough to matter.

I do not run healing turret as i find the whole ordeal of drop, overcharge, blast times whatever overly cumbersome (much rather use med kit toolbelt or elixir while on the move).

the projectile reflect, while nice, is not worth the 30 second cooldown as it breaks if i move and stops me from attacking.

And lets not forget that the block drops on a single melee hit, so you can’t use it to escape having multiple mobs on your behind. I could perhaps use the blast to send them flying, but as i said it breaks on movement. Meaning i would have to remember to stop, blast and then continue on. Would much prefer if i could simply pop the shield up and go.

the experience may be different in PVP, where your opponents can usually be dropped via a stun&bust combo. PVE mobs however are big bags of health, making that approach futile (especially when they come in groups, and you can only stun one of them).

why’re the mobs all over you in pve. this is all I run in pve and I find the drop/overcharge/blast to be alot easier than 6 1 2 3 5 ` of medkit. not to mention it’s heal exceeds the toolbelt by leaps and bounds.

events mostly, or simply that often if i aggro one it will also call upon 2-3 nearby “friends”.

And i don’t do the whole button dance with med kit, unless i feel i can get way with it (never mind that 1 behaves as if it was the base attack of a weapon, meaning that any of the other skills of the kit can interrupt it). I just hit the toolbelt heal and get back to fighting (sometimes pop 4 if i find myself stuck in combat because of some annoyingly long condition, and 5 for that swiftness from time to time).

All in all i do not do keyboard tap dancing during play. I play engineer for the situational flexibility kits give me (melee = bomb/tool, ranged = genade/flamethrower/elixir gun).