Guild Wars 2

i try use shelter but vs signet is not that good ( almost same cd as trait signet) -3800 hp heal and 2 sec block dont blocking aoe or condition. shelter dont have any trait to buff heal or reduce cd and vs other class heal skills is bad when other class have 15-25s with good passive shelter dont have anything

I prefer it because I run pretty low hp and I can use it proactively to prevent huge spikes.

The block is extremely powerful, and if you don’t run a spec with reduced signet cooldown it’s on a 10s shorter recharge than SoR.

Might of the Protector gives you might when you block.

So yeah its far from up. I haven’t ran the signet in months.

I think it’s decent just the CD is a little long for my taste when compared to other professions healing skills.

The cooldown should be 5seconds less i think.
You can get interrupted when you cast it by some abilities that are unblockable and not only do you get interrupted but you get a full cooldown as well.

5 seconds less on the heal and it would be great. I wish the guardian had at least one heal that came up faster than my racial heal at least.

Indeed, the heal isn’t even that great. This is especially true if you get feared and then you’re screwed. I think 20 seconds is fair.

I think Shelter was designed for WvW zerg fights. The amount of damage you block in a zerg ball is likely way higher than the signet can heal. It also serves as an OH CRAP button if you get out of position. Being feared out of the heal is pretty stupid though and should be fixed -.-

I use it because the only moments I end up healing myself is because I take alot of hits. I can prevent that with the heal. The heal plus the damage blocked is usually way higher than the signet.

buki.3108:

I think Shelter was designed for WvW zerg fights. The amount of damage you block in a zerg ball is likely way higher than the signet can heal. It also serves as an OH CRAP button if you get out of position. Being feared out of the heal is pretty stupid though and should be fixed -.-

Yeah, unblockable fear forcing your heal onto cooldown is overpowered. Unblockable skills is bad design in the first place, but if you are going to make something unblockable, it shouldn’t make shelter go on full cooldown. I’m hoping that was unintentional and will eventually be fixed, if the devs are even aware of it.

The reason Shelter (and Renewed Focus) goes on full cooldown is that it could be exploited by channeling it, interrupting it by using another skill, channel again, self-interrupt again, repeat for unlimited blocks. I suppose a simple fix would be that you can’t interrupt or cancel it yourself, I dunno, it would still cause free blocks if you were interrupted by another player.
I still think it’s by far the best heal we have but not because of the amount of health returned. I use it with Defender’s Flame and Might of the Protector to great effect. Contrary to what was mentioned earlier, it DOES block AoE skills, I often stand in as many overlapping red circles as possible when using this heal and it results in huge amounts of burning and like around 10+ stacks of might (depending on the fight) which then increases the burn damage.
I look for Hundred Blade Warriors when using this heal. I even use it when I don’t need to heal because I usually run mace anyway.

If you look Prayer to Dwayna heals about 2000 more health, scales better with healing power, casts slightly faster and has the same cool down, although it doesn’t have the block. I don’t think it is right that a racial heal seems so comparable and in a lot of situations better than a class heal.

It would be really nice to have it on a slightly shorter recast to make it a bit more balanced, maybe bring the recast down to 25 seconds.

lol 90% of the time I roll out of Renewed Focus

Imo shelter is fine as it is, granted it is always frowned upon in PVE where mobs are predictable, but in W3 countless times has shelter saved my soul, and when used after renewed focus and timed correctly it gave you a 5 sec invulnerably from physical contact window. although I agree with the above, getting feared out of it and put into cooldown is frustrating, but I guess the ones who manage to “see” us putting up shelter in a zerg fight and still managed to fear us out of it, deserves the reward

I’d like to have at least 1 heal on a short CD, be it shelter or not. Every other class got a healing skill with CD of 20 sec or less ^^

Shelter is amazing with the might on block 25 point valor trait in WvW. Charge into a zerg, when you start taking hits just pop it and bam, instant 25 stacks of 15 second long might. Only issue after that is actually getting to someone to kill with them :P

Shelter is fine, but Signet of Resolve is superior because it has a trait that reduces its CD. I wish that Shelter and Healing Breeze had some kind of CD reduction trait as well, so it’s fair.

And yes, it’s suitable for WvW. In PvE, it’s pretty bad.

shelter beets signet in any big fights in wvw and always will as you will most likely get focus fire when getting low on HP and then shelter will save you(most times only if you dont use stabilety) where you cant get to cast signet unless you cast it before you get to low hp and just get downed, and you kinda need to run with 10 points in radiance for the signet to be anywhere worth it in wvw and the losses i would gain in healing would be greater by doing that then running shelter and useing the healing from symbles and boons

I find Shelter indispensable with an AH build where, lets face it you have plenty of ways to keep your HP topped up anyway, and the biggest danger to you is avoiding big damage spikes.

Best thing about the signet is you can trait it for 2xpassive condition removals every 10 seconds which is a nice set-and-forget utility. If you don’t run with AH I think it’s definitely worth slotting ( although it won’t help you to survive teleport into the middle of a zerg )

FxKarma.2857:

Imo shelter is fine as it is, granted it is always frowned upon in PVE where mobs are predictable, but in W3 countless times has shelter saved my soul, and when used after renewed focus and timed correctly it gave you a 5 sec invulnerably from physical contact window. although I agree with the above, getting feared out of it and put into cooldown is frustrating, but I guess the ones who manage to “see” us putting up shelter in a zerg fight and still managed to fear us out of it, deserves the reward

The unblockable fear comes from necro staff traited and it actually has an extremely large AoE radius. There are other things like traps and static fields that can also mess with it. That said though, I agree that making shelter counter-able is fair. I think it’d be good if the skill heal you over the course of the channel, rather than only at the end. It is, after all, a heal skill, and should provide at least some assurance of survival.

i love shelter. we also have more than a handful of traits that benefit us on blocks. if used right, you can actually mitigate dmg, heal and deal dmg to your foes when under a barrage of attacks.

of course, vs unblockable attacks it doesn’t work well. but then again, wouldn’t the signet heal be interrupted as well?

and i practice to not only use it when i’m about to down. use it earlier on, so you can withstand more, stay a live longer, and by the time you need it again you gave it that much more time to be off CD again.

i love using it in tandem with renewed focus when i need to get in a tower or keep heavily under attack.

@akamon: I love Shelter as well, but I don’t feel “it’s good when you use the right traits” is a good defense for any skill.

And of course the Signet would get interrupted as well, but you take Shelter for that added security.

Shelter is pretty good in PvP environments, but significantly weaker against PvE opponents, who are a lot more predictable. It could stand to heal a little bit more for its cooldown, because I think the devs overestimated the power of the block.

Shelter used to heal for about as much as the signet does now in beta if my memory serves me but it locked you in place whilst channeling. I think I like the new version better as it no longer has a 45 second cooldown either. More blocks is always acceptable!
These days, I only take signet if I’m running the swamp fractal…. and I don’t run fractals much.
Anyway, I think Shelter is one of the best heal skills in the entire game, it certainly sticks with the theme of the Guardian, is balanced enough really and has some really good trait synergy.

I think a better question is, at the risk of derailing the thread, Is Healing Breeze even worth taking? I love the idea of the skill, the group support nature of skill and how it’s a nod to a pretty fat regeneration skill from GW1 but it seems to be reasonably hard to aim effectively and takes quite a long time to channel which takes away from any precious damage you could be doing and is also quite vulnerable to interrupts. Does it go on full cooldown when interrupted? I’ll have to go test that one out…

@Silver: This might deserve its own thread. For sPvP I see no point in taking Healing Breeze. It heals for too low and the cone is annoying to aim. I like the concept, but the reality of the game makes it rather useless.

Yeah I agree. Conceptually, before any of the betas, it was going to be the heal I used but as you said, due to how the game plays, it just wasn’t practical and Shelter is just awesome.

I agree that there are some areas that Shelter could use some help, but something I see in this thread is the suggestion that Shelter isn’t as worthwhile in PvE specifically because enemies are more predictable…. The fact that enemies are so predictable is why I like using Shelter so much, it’s another tool I have to prevent damage to myself without ever having to leave melee range and reduce my overall damage. I’m pretty sure enemies being predictable is a plus for its use in PvE.

I’ve always ran Signet, until just recently, when I tried Shelter with a new build. I build mostly for WvW now, and I’m finding Shelter to be far more useful than the other heals.

The 2sec block saves me all the time, and for serious “Oh hell” moments, I can string it with Renewed Focus for a full heal and 5 seconds on invulnerability.

fishergrip.4082:

buki.3108:

I think Shelter was designed for WvW zerg fights. The amount of damage you block in a zerg ball is likely way higher than the signet can heal. It also serves as an OH CRAP button if you get out of position. Being feared out of the heal is pretty stupid though and should be fixed -.-

Yeah, unblockable fear forcing your heal onto cooldown is overpowered. Unblockable skills is bad design in the first place, but if you are going to make something unblockable, it shouldn’t make shelter go on full cooldown. I’m hoping that was unintentional and will eventually be fixed, if the devs are even aware of it.

In my opinion the Shelter should give a heal buff that heals you overtime for the duration of the shelter,so that even if you get interrupted out of it you will still get your heals.

This way if you get an unblockable ability that interrupts you during casting it,which is very easy to do in one on one combat, you will lose your block time but at least you will get your healing.

No other healing ability has this problem of getting a full cooldown when interrupted.
You can get interrupted by Necro’s Fears, by some abilities that knockdown or space control like a guardian’s Hammer #5 Ring of Warding, or pull you from your place like Mesmer’s Focus #1 ability “Temporal Curtain” – “Into the void” and so on.

I love shelter. I used to use the signet all the time until I started into PvP and WvW. It was there I learned how powerful those two seconds of blocks really are. I’m the kind of person that always waits until the last second to heal, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve been downed during the 1 second cast time of the signet. With shelter, the blocks start immediately.

In dungeons specifically, I can’t imagine ever going back to the signet. Just in AC there countless opportunities to use shelter to great benefit. Get pulled by Kholer and your stun-break is on cool down? Shelter. Fighting Colossus Rumblus with low endurance and he burrows beneath you? Shelter. Collecting scepter pieces and you’re about to run into the scavenger group? Shelter. Sure, there are other utilities that can work in these situations, like “Stand Your Ground”, “Save Yourselves!”, and Virtue of Courage, but having an “extra” utility in the form of a heal is awesome.