Guild Wars 2

I’m planning out my legendaries, and I love the look of the Flameseeker Prophecies and the Moot wielded together (and the precursors are comparatively cheap). Plus, I love the feel of a true old-fashioned “fighting cleric” look to the guardian.

But… I’ve been running mace and shield in verious contexts, and I always just end up feeling superfluous. I’m all trottinging back and forth across the battlefield trying to stay in melee range, swinging my little stick in the air, while meanwhile my teammates appear to have no need of my support capabilities whatsoever and simply employ an “offense is the best defense” strategy.

Dungeons would seem to be the context where a support build would be most meaningful. But in practice, just about everyone runs past the big group encounters in dungeons and then burns the boss, again making support pretty pointless.

Is there really any part of the game where mace/shield truly shines, and if so, what is it? I don’t want to choose legendaries based on aesthetics that will then trap me in a useless build.

I am not really an experienced guardian — he is a recent 80 — so if I’m missing the point entirely, please enlighten.

Bunker guard is the only real place mace/shield shines. PvE is all about damage, so you’re better off going other weapons. WvW isn’t as static as PvP, so while it can be useful, most of the time the other weapon combinations will be more beneficial.

Well, I guess that’s why the precursors are cheap, then. Bummer.

In PvE, if you’re into speedclears Mace Shield healway is a no.

If you pug and/or do casual runs with friends Mace Shield healway is the best thing you can run. Your runs will always go smoothly. There will be a couple of things you’d need to dodge but generaly, you’ll be immortal (and your party too, to a degree).

Fight Clockheart with that build, it’s funny.

I wouldn’t take Mace + Shield to WvW because you will have no leap. You can blast water with Mace 3 though.

Mace can also be used with a medi burst build when roaming but to be fair, Guardian is a very weak roaming class because Mesmers are a thing, they are tanky as kitten in WvW and they are EVERYWHERE.

Mace is good for fractals and some dungeons when you use it in rotations with gs or hammer. It’s about 1% less dps not counting extra vuln than sword in gs rotations and more dps than sword in hammer rotations if you need more blocks. Shield is the worst weapon choice in pve though.

mace\shield isnt that bad on WvW but your role is limited to soak damage and bunker a bit (with AH), but excells when other groups decided to go on range for 2-3 seconds lol.

the effort to get out of an 1vs1 situation against thief or mesmer is really hard.

Spirigo.2897:

I wouldn’t take Mace + Shield to WvW because you will have no leap. You can blast water with Mace 3 though.

Mace 3 is not a blast finisher. I would probably use Mace a lot more if it was.

I actually made The Moot and Flameseeker Prophecies to use them together. I absolutely love the visuals but I do regret making them instead of something like Eternity.

I’m not big into WvW so I’ll stick mostly to PvE.

1. Mace’s biggest issue, in my opinion, is it’s lack of cleave on AA chain. The third attack only hits one mob. This instantly puts it at a major disadvantage for fighting multiple mobs and especially for clearing trash. This is the main problem I’m waiting to be fixed before I use my mace/shield…until this is corrected I can’t justify using these weapons even to myself.

2. Symbol of faith does mediocre damage with a low heal. Regeneration is nice but unless you are going to run cleric’s (not suggested for pve) I don’t see the point when you can run full zerker hammer and get -33% incoming dmg from AA and solve both of these first two problems. Raising mace’s base heal would help this attack when comparing it to that protection from hammer.

3. Protector’s Strike is awkward to me. It’s a nice burst dmg attack but if you wait even half a second to get hit you wouldv’e done more dmg with AA. True, it gives you a block but I still don’t find as many opportunities to use it as I’d like. It would be nice to be able to detonate it at will.

For shield
1. Shield of Judgement definitely has potential. Once again, everytime I see it I just think of running hammer. I’d like to see one of three things 1) reduce CD, 2) have it give a couple seconds of stability (seems like a shieldy thing to do), 3) increase CD to maybe 45 seconds and have it cure some conditions on yourself and allies in addition to the protection.

2. Shield of absorbtion could be buffed a lot by increasing the heal and adding a small chill to mobs trying to enter.

Shield just isn’t good. Don’t use it until they buff it (if they ever realize how badly it needs to be buffed). Mace is good for bunker builds and in some dungeons and fractals it can be useful as well, but in PvE you would still be building for DPS even with a mace.

Mace ain’t so bad but shield is pretty crap in pve

Mace works well with a burn on block Runes or Trait. Run into people fighting and pop #3 for nice damage.

from a WvW perspective.

mace + focus is pretty good for mitigation. Back in the day when commanders got a tag buff and where being head hunted i used to run Mace/focus to protect our guild commanders. I like the combination as i has only 1 lightfield and its easy to control placement, i cry everytime i see a light field override water/fire. Mace auto attack scales insanely well and it can hit hard and fast.

But overall its a niche build,

Thinking about recent changes to meditation though it may be passable but you would have to rely on using a utility skill for movement when not in combat.