Guild Wars 2

Ive been theory crafting some builds with my team in WvW and is wondering how does shattered Aegis do. All my guardians run semi zerker while maintaining survivability so we all have high crit chance and power/crit damage.

Shattered Aegis does 500(with 25 might) and crits for about 800 ~ 900 damage, one guardian applying it to 5, and having 4 guardians applying it to 20 (one aegis guard per party) will add 50k overall damage (assuming every single player hits 5 people) to the kill zone on push just with one skill. And thats assuming it doesnt crit.

Ive read topics on how people see this trait is useless or may it only be underrated.

What are peoples opinions on this.

I can’t say that Aegis traits are bad, there is just the problem with not having enough Aegis sources in the first place. With no traits and using Virtue of Courage and Retreat, which are the only two sources of AoE Aegis, you can apply it only once every ~75 seconds.

While the damage looks nice on paper there are some extremes to consider. Having 5 guardians split in 5 parties of 5 you get 25 triggers of Shattered Aegis, which can get split among 125 targets yielding laughable 500 damage per target or everyone hitting the same group of five dealing heavy 12500 damage per target (assuming they won’t die before that just by getting roflstomped by 25 people).
By looking at these two extremes my conclusion is you won’t get any decent results unless you manage to force everyone to fight in an area not larger than a size traited symbol against significally smaller force, but no less than 5 targets. Otherwise most of the damage will be split appart or completly wasted.

Honestly, there are much better and more reliable sources of AoE bursts.

With traits you can make more applications, or Runes of the Monk, or one of the new GM traits. It can synergize with Honor I, Honor VI, or Valor II.

The point about better AoE bursts misses the point.

1. What do guardians have that is a better AoE burst? What to guardians have for AoE period? Symbols?
2. Aegis blocks attacks (preventing damage on your allies) and then provides damage back, therefore the relative difference between impact on your allies vs. impact on your foes is an important one to consider. I do not know of any other AoE that provides a complete block (AoE blinds can be removed or cleansed, protection is just damage reduction, and healing/regen is only useful after damage taken) to damage. Of course some skills are unblockable so it will not help against those.

This does have the noted problems. Best place to use it is in tightly packed melee trains in WvW when the two zergs are passing through each other or when there are lots of AI around (MM, clones/phantasms).

The cost benefit of maximizing SA use or synergizing it (improving Courage means traiting into Virtues, etc.) over other builds is where the real discussion should lie.

Nice feed back, it is true that it may be a very situational skill but one i find usefull for pushing chokepoints especially timed right. And this trait only takes 10 into Zeal, so you are still able to maintain virtues such as double stability. With PoV shouts also convert burn into Aegis which may be usefull if coordinated by using enemy purging flames againts them if timed right. And it definitly wouldnt be planned as a main source of damage but an extra source in addition to weapon skills. In its own way its also a small souce of damage mitigation. And with future patch when blocking produces Aegis, wouldnt this build go well with mace and shelter.

The only weakness is a question if this attack is affected by retaliation, as hitting 25 targets with retaliation is very devastating

I don’t think it does, but have not thoroughly tested it.