Guild Wars 2

Hey all, I’ve out of the game a while, so I’m just looking for some understanding/clarity regarding this.

Mostly I want to know if there have been any unofficial ideas or leaks or anything that point to changing guardian shield abilities in general. Warrior and engi have from day one had better use of the shield than a guard does, and the new revenant and chronomancer skills look ok and awesome in my opinion.

Is there anything at all being said about helping guard not be the absolute worst shield class? Considering they should be far from that, considering the whole support/protector thing….

cd reduction
15 char

Yeah, a CD reduction is all we’ve really seen. It helps, but still isn’t quite enough. If the weapon had a legitimate block or some other supportive or defensive layers it would be significantly more effective. To my knowledge there hasn’t been any comments on reworking it in some time, however I do know the Reaper devs mentioned taking a look at Necro Scepter and Axe at some point (I think) and maybe giving them a little love so we could luck out and see that sort of thing happen with Guadian Sword and Shield.

Been suggesting since launch that they make shield number 5 apply an AOE AEGIS and knockback.

As for the trait it would be awesome if they made it grant resistance on shield skill use

It’s not terrible, it’s less oriented on your self DPS, or your self survival, but you can actually help your party and allies with it with some sweet control, projectile blocker, and protection

Stuff that aren’t on your self improvement seems to be despised by the “meta”, I don’t know why

Kehlian.4380:

It’s not terrible, it’s less oriented on your self DPS, or your self survival, but you can actually help your party and allies with it with some sweet control, projectile blocker, and protection

Stuff that aren’t on your self improvement seems to be despised by the “meta”, I don’t know why

Something can be bad for reasons apart from being non meta. Compared to all the other options available at a guardians disposal, shield falls dead last in terms of weapons. Which I find sad, and why I’m asking if there’s been any news of change.

Shield is used by bunker guardians in PvP. Outside of that, it has niche uses.

I tried on a lot different builds it is still a very weak option compared to the other offhand (Focus and Torch). In theory it is supposed to be used as support/control weapon, but as support I find both Focus and even Torch better and the control part I find weak. For defense Focus is better as well.

Also the shield is the off hand that have the weakest trait available for the class.

Maybe some day they finally change or properly buff this weapon to be viable, now I advise to not use this weapon.

For group support shield is better,at least i think.But yeah,trait is terrible and on same spot as other much better supportish trait… .

It’s really not even that great as a group support option, sadly. My Fresh Air Ele can heal and block projectiles and grant team protection more frequently, more effectively, and with more uptime with just an offhand focus alone. The only thing our shield really has going for it is the AoE knockback, which is just not worth sacrificing the potential gains from focus or even torch.

Anet seems to think that reducing the cooldowns is suddenly going to make our shield viable, but the fact is that people don’t use it because they don’t like how ineffective the skills feel, and no amount of cooldown reduction alone (aside from 100% uptime, maybe) is going to change that.