Guild Wars 2

The Mace is a melee weapon with a channeled Block that has a secondary attack activated on a Block.

There are 3 more skills like this.

Warrior – Sword Riposte
Warrior – Mace Counterblow

Ranger – Greatsword Counterattack

For the Guardian when hit by a ranged attack it consumes the Block and activates the melee ranged attack, most likely hitting nothing and blocking only one attack.
This also occurs with the Warrior – Mace Counterblow.

For Riposte and Counterattack when hit by ranged attacks they continue to Block and are able to block any number of ranged attacks during the duration of the channel.

Why is there such a disparity? Surely all of these skills should either Block for the duration of the channel or all Block just one attack whether ranged or melee.

There are other blocks that trigger on ranged hit as well. But all of those (like the Mesmer’s Sword4 and Scepter2) have a ranged attack to them, so you get the counterattack on the enemy at least.

I do agree that Protector’s Strike needs to be changed in some way. Blocking a ranged hit and then just swinging your weapon around uselessly is surely disappointing. But I think just letting it continue channeling through melee would be boring. Personally, what I’d like to see is to have it change the projectile into a ball of light with a small AoE blast radius (approximately the size of the melee counterattack) and launch it back at the enemy. A bit like Druid’s Staff5 where it converts the enemy projectile into a different projectile, except here you’d launch the return one back at the opponent.

Well our mace block, shields all team mates in the area. The other counters only protect the user. If we could taunt the enemy on us, then yes, more than 1 block will be amazing. As we can, protect whoever is getting hit is cool.

Anyway, i agree counterattack should only happend if theres enemies at range.