Guild Wars 2

Level a Guardian for all things GW2, including WvW, SPvP, and PVE. But I think my preferred play style would be GS and 1h/Shield. But I am hearing Shield is terrible right now?

Is Guardian decent end game even if I choose to use the kitten weapon set?

The Shield has a lot of problems for a lot of high pace play. It still finds a place in World boss events… a little more now that Wall of reflection is harder to aim.

But the complaints stem from the fact that the Shield skills are designed for Back line defense, but guards tend to front line in most groups. Which is ironic considering the defense bonus from shield would make more sense in melee combat… as would the Absorption bubble to cover allies in a group setting.

Focus would give you a lot more.

shield is only somewhat useful in spvp as a full cleric/bunker

it is hands down the worst weapon of any profession, including the revanant.

Of course you can use shield everywhere you go!

Can you play every aspect of the game with a shield? YES!
Is it optimal to play with a shield? NO!

The irony is: Focus has more “shield-ish” abilities then the Shield.
If you don’t care what the offhand weapon is called then you can use the focus because it’s practically THE shielding weapon

If you know what I mean

I think they literally thought that the Focus offhand was more of a self centered weapon compared to the shield… because of the “Focus” name? It’s just weird.

It just boggles my mind that every item with a “Shield” name on it can block except ours. Every other Focus in the game acts just like our Shield weapon set! They definitely mixed up the two weapons.

You can try something like this:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-BBxg;1JFV10J3RGV90;9;4nPQ;0146156248;4U3m6W;1Uwl6Uwl6S0C

Bit awkward but may work for you. This build focuses on reviving your teammates and to hold a point until some help arrives. Just ask your teammates to not die more often than 24 seconds The GS is your clear-up weapon here. If you see a foe getting low jump on him and try to CC-pull or burst down with WhirlingWrath. You are also really good at countering Shadow Refugee with symbols and your shield (even if the thief has stability you can kill him with your GS while he has no chance to oneshot you above 50% HP).

AHEM should give you enough sustain in a 3v3 fight while your 23,6k HP, 2600 armour and the infinite dodges and heals give you enough sustain to hold a point for a while.

The constant weapon swap is crucial. You get energy back and you can apply covering condition to screw up some classes (ele, thief) rotations.

This build definitely a team-fighter instead of “far-pusher” but you should have no problem at “home”.

In wvw you can do something like this but with speed/traveller runes and mix of soldier/knight/berserker. Do not use shield#5 unless you protect somebody from going down! The knockback can really kittening of your groupmates!

Happy Guardin’!

Aggrostemma.1703:

(…)
In wvw you can do something like this but with speed/traveller runes and mix of soldier/knight/berserker. Do not use shield#5 unless you protect somebody from going down! The knockback can really kittening of your groupmates!

Happy Guardin’!

shield domes in general are awesome to absorb the CC casted by other guardians and some nading spam, or to abosrb reflected omega golem missiles, it is(was) very good for front lines, problem is that the invest in defensive stats to play in a much more stressed zone is now basically impossible, so it is better to use the focus and a full dps meditation build because it is much much easier to kill a target(all that matters).
Since players are playing build that are full dedicated to maximize their dps and in range mostly aoe shield is uneffective.

@OP , classes in this game are designed to play with X weapon only, if u go out of the meta builds you will struggle alot there is a huge gap of build effectives between meta and creative builds, this new system didnt change much, the thing is that DPS is now more easy to play and player are feeling more rewarded for that(damage got icreased over defenses), all that is non dps is even weaker due the existent gap of defensive builds effectiveness has example guardian shield and mace/shield traits.