Guild Wars 2

So I decided to bring up this topic here and bring up a debate about how all guardians feel about shield. Many guardians have asked whether or not shield is getting revamped for many reasons that have not been brought to attention over the last years.

IMO, The First thing is shield on guardian is the only shield that does’t feel like a shield. As many have stated before, focus seems more like a shield then shield does itself. We have no way of blocking anything except projectiles with shield which is very is a very bad design for a shield. Every other class with a shield has some form of blocking with its shield. If the shield skills could possibly apply aegis and regeneration, then that could be something worth while.

Second, the other problem is the current skills on shield are too short in duration and ineffective/situational to for how long its cool down is. As far as pvp is concerned, Guardian should be the best node defender over any class, but staff ele outperforms a guardian in every way in regards to that. Our CC is lacking and dd ele has better CC and more available CC as well as damage on top of more sustain and ways to peel out of a fight. Our one cc is a 30 second cooldown which is mediocore at best. Shield needs to be truly revamped otherwise shield will always be neglected.

At this point and time, everyone assumed Guardian was in good standings therefore everything was neglected for so long and other classes surpassed us at what were are supposed to do best. Shoutbow/Staff Ele/ DD Ele all do can hold a point, control a point, outsustain, peel/heal, and CC better then we can as a bunker guardian.

Our shouts dont heal like shoutbows either and we have no direct heals consitently to keep our teammates up as opposed to healing breeze, staff #2 & #4, selfless daring, and our virtue of resolve. If the heals were bigger to compensate for our long cooldowns(which plagues guardian), that would be more beneficial. A few of those skills require active directing of the skill or our teammates to be in a very small radius to even heal them. Why would that even help our teammates if they won sit on point? Shoutbows can just spam AOE heals from a distance that actually as opposed to our lousy shouts. (Im sorry but i feel our shouts are lousy). On top of that our low health pool is what hurts us heavily in terms of trying to sustain ourselves and our teammates considering we need to use a lot of our cooldowns to peel for our teammates which may be ineffective at times.

Guardians need to regain its position at being the best at one thing whether its point control, self sustaining itself to where it never dies in a 1v1, self sustaining its team, dps guardian, or a hybrid. Right now its not the best at anything and everything can do better than what its supposed to be good at in every situation. Right now the only option is hammer dps guardian in pvp.

I am happy we’ve obtained longbow but I am sure many others feel that we would’ve been happy if shield was revamped or even used in our new specilization which actually made us feel like a guardian. Right now Shield doesn’t feel like a shield and I don’t feel like a guardian when I cant really guard my teammates.

Would love to hear everyone else’s perspective that I may not have heard already.

I have no problem with shield being a supportive weapon more than a self-defense weapon. Using magic to protect a group instead of physically protect yourself is perfectly in-line with guardian. If the abilities were stronger, I wouldn’t see any complaints.

With all of the “new tech” it would be nice if the projectile bubble was mobile.

Edit: side thought: we really have become the jack of all trades, master of NONE.

Exedore.6320:

I have no problem with shield being a supportive weapon more than a self-defense weapon. Using magic to protect a group instead of physically protect yourself is perfectly in-line with guardian. If the abilities were stronger, I wouldn’t see any complaints.

Thats fine but it needs to optimal in either being supportive or self defense and as of right now it is neither. The Knockback is not that great or the protection from #4. The duration is too short as well as the cooldown. Other classes can give both prot and knockbacks with much more effectiveness without sacrificing so much, while also giving much more support to teammates at the same time.

I would love to see the following changes to the shield

1: Get rid of the difference between PvE & PvP for the number 4 ability.
(having the protection up time cut in half sucks)

2: Make shield number 4 taunt enemies that it hits
(the fact guardian did not get a taunt on any weapon/ability sucks)

3: Scrap shield number 5, instead make it grant AEGIS to all nearby allies & knock back all nearby foes.
(With some moderate damage)

Then change the shield trait so that shield number 4 & 5 also grant resistance (say 3-4 seconds) to nearby allies.

After that the shield & it’s trait would be worth taking. (Especially if your playing around with AEGIS traits.)

A quick idea,

How about a small charge targeted like Warrior’s Whirlwind Attack added to Shield of Judgment causing dmg along the path & with a large hit at the end of the charge hitting 3 targets (using new technology). Also change the protection application to be 360 degrees for allies within 280 range occurring at the end of the charge. It would also be nice if the protection lasted a little bit longer then 3 sec.

With regards to Shield of Absorption (SoA) I would look at increasing the shield duration as at the moment SoA is a much weaker Wall of Reflection which has a 10 sec duration & 40 sec cooldown. With regards to the dome I would either like it;

• Instant cast or almost instant allowing you to move straight away.
• Or have the dome move with you.

It would be very nice if the shield somehow could apply aegis as this would play into all the aegis related traits & also how aegis seems to be tie into the Guardian’s theme. This could work very well if added to the trait;

• Stalwart Defender - Gain 180 toughness & shield skills now apply aegis, 20% reduce cooldown.

Lastly a thought with regards to Aegis, what if it could stack (5 or maybe 3 times). Due to it’s nature & use duration doesn’t really help this boon as it’s more about apply aegis before the next big attack. If it stacks you would them look at short uptime duration for the boon similar to Blind’s durations.

aegis use to stack but was removed since virtue of courage would stack 3x usually which was apparently OP. with the new by default “infinite” duration passive aegis though it would probably be okay. would make it easier to keep UC up…

i personally don’t mind the role of guardian which is the master of zerker classes; its basically the only class that has decent infight survivability without kiting or stealthing and does zerker level damage and wrecks other zerkers in fights. only problem with it atm is the low health pool so a lich auto will 1 shot you from 90% lol

Drennon.7190:

side thought: we really have become the jack of all trades, master of NONE.

You mean jack of some trades, master of NONE.

I remember when they nerfed Shield 4 to give 3s of Prot in spvp instead of 5s. It was back when Guards were running 2x Water, 2x Monk and 2x Earth to get really high boon duration.

Well, it’s May 2015 and you can’t even run that setup anymore. Yet when the devs made the last balance pass, rather than bring the Prot back up to 5s they lowered the cooldown instead. It’s like nobody at ANet even remembers nerfing it in the first place.

Shield 5 is only good for the knockback, it offers hardly any defensive utility. Nice, an immobile bubble that roots me and merely absorbs projectiles, so that it doesn’t trigger any of our several ‘on-block’ traits. Also, none of my allies would ever want to ‘take refuge’ in my awesome shield because it offers 0 damage mitigation from melee, AoEs and anything else the game doesn’t consider a projectile, nor does it provide any useful buffs, just a crappy heal if the Guard even bothers to cancel the skill early.

I still remember when I was new to the game and I tried protecting allies in WvW with shield 5 for the first time. It was such a glorious disappointment to just watch everyone melt to AoE whilst inside my ‘protective’ shield.

It needs fixing and it’s needed it for a long time.

I feel that we shield would be okay with some tweaks.
I do think it is odd that guardian did not get a single taunt ability in the revamp. its basically our thing. on top of that why are we also short of the resistance buff? guardian would be a pretty obvious choice for that. we have but one weapon skill that acutally removes conditons from ourself: focus 4. if that gets dodged we have none. every other class has either more option or can trait for condi removal on weapon use.

instead we get a trait to get protection on focus mastery, which makes shield #4 even more obsolete

so maybe its that: Shield #4:
change the protection into 6 sec resistance buffs on yourself and people infront of you

if traited:
shield skills remove two conditions (#4 on all effected allies, #5 within the radius)

either of the two would make me use shield instantly. together > top synergy

Asmodal.6489:

I feel that we shield would be okay with some tweaks.
I do think it is odd that guardian did not get a single taunt ability in the revamp. its basically our thing. on top of that why are we also short of the resistance buff? guardian would be a pretty obvious choice for that. we have but one weapon skill that acutally removes conditons from ourself: focus 4. if that gets dodged we have none. every other class has either more option or can trait for condi removal on weapon use.

instead we get a trait to get protection on focus mastery, which makes shield #4 even more obsolete

so maybe its that: Shield #4:
change the protection into 6 sec resistance buffs on yourself and people infront of you

if traited:
shield skills remove two conditions (#4 on all effected allies, #5 within the radius)

either of the two would make me use shield instantly. together > top synergy

This is a great idea lol. And yes they are making focus give protection which is going to make shield even more obsolete. Your recommendations are good and hopefully a dev takes a look.

Pitman.9210:

Drennon.7190:

side thought: we really have become the jack of all trades, master of NONE.

You mean jack of some trades, master of NONE.

With the actual trait/stat system that is exactly how guardian feels, if u dont play a medi guard it is almost a expect to loose situation.

about shield skills, shield first skill could change to anything, it lacks, the second skill i dont mind that roots the guardian to one place but most of times guard gets rooted and skill effect doest absorb or does not KB targets w/o stability and even ends prematurly somewhere lesser than 1sec, just doing the KB animation, its use besides KB is motsly to the range auto atack absorption for 1-2 seconds when works.

Anet really need to play more with guardian on wvw and see the lack of effectiness of non meditation guards.