Guild Wars 2

Does anyone else find the shield cool downs to be way too long?
Static shield 40s cd for a 1 1/2sec block and 1s stun.
Magnetic shield 30s for 3s reflect or KB blastF.

I don’t have as much of a problem with magnetic shield as it can be quite powerful but Static shield… come on
That’s a utility length cool down for a pretty basic skill and feels incredibly under powered in pvp as well as wvw.

Am i alone in this?

I agree the cooldowns suck. But if you play pistol in main hand shield is better as offhand because off hand pistol #4 miss way to often and #5 does nothing.

Pistol offhand is much stronger for pvp <3 rapid p/p. I hit 4 often enough its just learning the right times to use it and 5 i use either to stop them ready for ‘4’ or to set up bomb kit imob.

Glue shot cooldown is a bit too long also imo. 24s for a 1 1/4s imob and best case scenario 5s cripple

if you play with nades pistol pistol for me is much better. Pistol 5 is really handy for blocking your opponent and then throws on him all your nades. … i use it quite often in pvp and wvw and it is quite effective. Shield is really strong but for me the cd are too huge …

Not only with engineer (guard and warr also have very long skills CDs).

The problem is that it is balanced around PvP, where controlling effects (#5), and invulnerabilities / reflections (#4) are very powerful.
Chain stunning is not fun (especially since some classes have limited access to stability / stun brakers).
Similar stuff goes for invulabirity skills. It would be bad idea for these skills to have CD comparable with some burst CDs (it would mean you can block every or every other big dmg skill/combo).

yes but for wvw for example in my opinion shield have too long cd . Also in pvp , at the end , i prefer pistol oh to shield. I use shield only when there is more than 1 ranger on opponent team

Always do keep in mind there’s a shield recharge reduction trait, so you can get those to go lower.

In any case, I think one of the reasons shield skills tend to have a little longer cooldown is because they are also passively providing you with additional toughness. Mind you it’s only going to be 61-64 toughness at best when untraited, but you can get it up to 150ish with the trait, which is a nice bonus (essentially another piece of armour).

It’s also possibly due to the fact that they don’t want defensively oriented weapon skills to be frequently usable, although that may differ for each profession.

Then there’s the other thing where they’ve designed the profession so that kits are more-or-less mandatory, so you’re expected to take kits to solve the shortcomings of your weapon skills.

In grand scale of game the toughness provided by untrained shield is around 3% dmg less (if my math is correct) with exotic gear that provide no additional toughness (if you use gear that provide toughness then relative dmg reduction gain is even smaller).