Guild Wars 2

I’m a new Guardian and decided to play with Shield builds. Am I missing something? My Shield doesn’t give me any Block Skills?

Correct, just Protection and a projectile absorb/heal skill. If you want straight up blocks, you have to use Shelter.

foofad.5162:

Correct, just Protection and a projectile absorb/heal skill. If you want straight up blocks, you have to use Shelter.

Or play as warrior…

Mikau.6920:

foofad.5162:

Correct, just Protection and a projectile absorb/heal skill. If you want straight up blocks, you have to use Shelter.

Or play as warrior…

Fun fact: Ignoring Aegis, we have 6 blocks, 3 of which are projectile only but have other properties as well. Warriors have 3 straight blocks. If you ignore the projectile blocks, we have as many blocks as warriors. If you don’t, we have twice as many. Then there is Aegis. We have two sources of Aegis, not including traits; warriors have zero.

Fun fact, shields were never used to block in reality. Anet has tough us that.

Perikittenor.1892:

Fun fact, shields were never used to block in reality. Anet has tough us that.

All three shield skillsets (Engineer, Warrior, Guardian) block things. If you’re going to be snarky at least be correct.

So shields in real life were used to conjure big domes and then you forgot how to use the shield for 40 seconds, then you remembered how to do it. Yet Blocking with the shield itself is a no go.

I guess we should rename this to the Thread In Which Perikittenor Discovers Gamification Abstractions in Video Game.

TIL :

Gw2 Isn’t Real Life.

/cry

On the upside, every shield gives a free bit of armor (its like a constant 3%-ish damage reduction). If you think about it, you’re covered in plates already and its just one more.

Butt weight, there’s more!

-Shield 4 is the ONLY on-demand protection weapon skill in the game. That’s 33% damage reduction for you and any friends its cone effect hits. Make an effort to keep prot up as much as possible and you’ll notice a huge difference in survivability.
-Shield 5 can be popped for a heal.
-If you DONT pop shield 5, you can actually move RIGHT after casting it. Even though it doesn’t look like it, it’s still there for the full duration. I use it as a light field most of the time to gain retal, and retal is another favorite guardian buff.

I think they just mixed up focus5 and shield5.

A focus = sets up blocks for you.
A shield = creates a dome around you.

Just seems kinda silly, not really complaining, they can both be nice, just joining in the laughing about this.

I am well aware that a game is not the same as reality, but it seems stupid that we can not block with a shield. Second on that, the skills are terrible or at most situational.

Shield 4: Deals decent damage and got on demand protection, but that’s where it stops. If we want a more stable upkeep on protection, hammer does that better and with more traits to improve and diversify the build. Mostly, the cool down is a joke compared with what it does.

Shield 5: Is sadly a joke, it is a skill attempting to do everything but succeed at nothing. It can block unlimited amount of projectiles for four seconds, will knockback up to five enemies 320 mesured distance, and on top it can heal if deciding to detonate the dome for about 1200(0.2) healing for yourself and up to 4 other players.

So where to start, the skill five knock back is the only usefull in certain situations, like stopping some stomping, pushing less clever people of cliffs. So we have that.

The Dome projectile blocking is as well rather situational, on one side it has the potential to Stop a unlimited amount of projectiles, sadly it last a rather short amount of time and it has two big disadvantages. First a lot of its potential is lost especially in WvWvW where a lot of AoE attacks are not considering to have a projectile, the second thing is the light field. Light fields, are not good. Neither are retaliation unless your foe is stupid.

And then on to the heal, that i consider to be crap for that amount and that cool-down. Sure it heals up to five people, but that’s it.

So the problem is that the shield is attempting to do so much at the same time, so it turns out to be another jack of all trades, weapon.

So indulge me. Why it is so good. It can do nothing we can’t already do, and the other way we can do i. We do it better

Jerus.4350:

I think they just mixed up focus5 and shield5.

A focus = sets up blocks for you.
A shield = creates a dome around you.

Just seems kinda silly, not really complaining, they can both be nice, just joining in the laughing about this.

People have been asking for this for two years. I don’t think Anet is any closer to swapping them.

Perikittenor.1892:

snip

No one said it was good. You’ve gone from saying that the shield isn’t realistic, to saying that the shield skills aren’t any good. Those are two completely unrelated ideas. I don’t particularly think the shield skills are any good myself, although I really enjoy Shield 5 as it has its moments.

Blocks, HP pool, mobility and healing threads always attract whiny guardians and warrior wanna-be’s. It also always starts with a newbie asking a simple question that could be answered easily. It’s really getting old.. I’d love to give my opinion but this crap just doesn’t end.

foofad.5162:

Jerus.4350:

I think they just mixed up focus5 and shield5.

A focus = sets up blocks for you.
A shield = creates a dome around you.

Just seems kinda silly, not really complaining, they can both be nice, just joining in the laughing about this.

People have been asking for this for two years. I don’t think Anet is any closer to swapping them.

Funny thing is I don’t think I’d want them to swap em. Then i’d have the blind/damage/heal of focus4 and a projectile blocker/heal/CC as the focus5.

Then a defensive protection application as shield 4, and some personal blocks for shield5.

I think I rather have the damage/blind + personal blocks together. And the shield can take the 2 options I feel I don’t want as much =b

It just seems silly, don’t think I want a change though.

shield feels like its still at beta

I think shield is our worst offhand and we have the worst shield skills in the game which is kind of ironic since our Profession symbol is a Shield

Shield is trash, throw it away until they do something about #4

I really don’t understand all the hate for the shield. In PvE, it’s not that good. However WvW/PvP is another story. I always run shield over focus when it comes to group play. Protection is one of the strongest boons, and with the right amount of boon duration you can get nine seconds from Shield of Judgment for you and five allies. Shield of Absorption is another great skill. Great for stomps and rezs. What most people don’t know is you can cast it, and keep moving. You don’t have to sit there, and the added healing is a bonus. The only fault I find with the shield is it suffers from fairly long CDs, but that’s nothing traiting can’t fix. It fits its role perfectly for a defensive offhand.

People also need to stop comparing it to focus because they each serve a different role.

Torch= Offensive
Focus= Hybrid
Shield= Defensive

Torch #4 doesn’t work properly either