Guild Wars 2

Compared to the warrior shield skills the Guardian shield in PvP is abysmal. I could be completely off since I just came back to the game and missing something but just feels very bad.

Well it kind of is. AoE knockback can be good on Clocktower or to knock people from the pedestals at Keep, but otherwise it’s pretty limited. Protection does nothing against Conditions and it lasts for like 1-2 attacks.

It’s not that good, unless you’re like a rezzer-bunker with Mercy runes or something, so you can use the extra stomp interrupt.

Hey it’s not completely useless you can use it as a back-up reflect when your on the reflect team in triple trouble!…….

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But ya that’s about it. It really lacks any practical applications compared to the focus and even the torch now.

guardian.6489:

Hey it’s not completely useless you can use it as a back-up reflect when your on the reflect team in triple trouble!…….

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But ya that’s about it. It really lacks any practical applications compared to the focus and even the torch now.

Guardian shield does not reflect.

Black Box.9312:

guardian.6489:

Hey it’s not completely useless you can use it as a back-up reflect when your on the reflect team in triple trouble!…….

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But ya that’s about it. It really lacks any practical applications compared to the focus and even the torch now.

Guardian shield does not reflect.

Block projectiles… that’s what I meant.. I just say reflect out of habit.

it has a “decent” burst heal, but I think they need to up the heal it does.

As many ask for, a blast finisher on it would be nice as well as providing aegis on shield 4 possibly.

At least the devs are tracking that it is suboptimal as they have tried to buff it recently with shorter cooldowns, but that is still not enough.

CMF.5461:

At least the devs are tracking that it is suboptimal as they have tried to buff it recently with shorter cooldowns, but that is still not enough.

I think their reduced cd on shield was just a placebo effect, same for the other classes complaining about their traits and skills, they got a cd reduction as well. I think Anet likes where shield is currently…

I’d be perfectly fine with #4 doing 0 damage, but offering an Aoe Aegis instead… even if it’s short radius..

It’s beyond me as to why our Shield does not offer a single block….

the idea is it is a midway between warrior shield and engineer shield. half black (protection boon 33% dmg reduction) and projectile block with knockback, with guardian heal flair added to it. We are the hybrid apparently.

I think ANET reduced the CD of these weapons to encourage more players to use it. Such way they can collect more data and analyse it. It’s a prebuff-buff I guess.

I don’t mind Anet caving in to reduce shield skill cooldowns, since everyone including guardians who know how to use shield is enjoying the buff. However, I would be upset if Anet replace protection with block / aegis. That’s just dumb..

Maybe remove the #4 protection duration reduction from PvP? I think it’ll help PvPers.

xFireize.6318:

I don’t mind Anet caving in to reduce shield skill cooldowns, since everyone including guardians who know how to use shield is enjoying the buff. However, I would be upset if Anet replace protection with block / aegis. That’s just dumb..

Maybe remove the #4 protection duration reduction from PvP? I think it’ll help PvPers.

Not Protection, just the #4 damage it gives.

Saiyan.1704:

CMF.5461:

At least the devs are tracking that it is suboptimal as they have tried to buff it recently with shorter cooldowns, but that is still not enough.

I think their reduced cd on shield was just a placebo effect, same for the other classes complaining about their traits and skills, they got a cd reduction as well. I think Anet likes where shield is currently…

I’d be perfectly fine with #4 doing 0 damage, but offering an Aoe Aegis instead… even if it’s short radius..

It’s beyond me as to why our Shield does not offer a single block….

Because Anet thinks different == good, like the terrible use of a GS by the Mesmer as a laser canon.

This probably won’t be a surprise, but I love the Mesmer Greatsword design.

I think we can finish this thread by going: The Shield is not completely useless, but the Focus is just a way better off-hand in most (common) situations.

Apolo.5942:

Saiyan.1704:

CMF.5461:

At least the devs are tracking that it is suboptimal as they have tried to buff it recently with shorter cooldowns, but that is still not enough.

I think their reduced cd on shield was just a placebo effect, same for the other classes complaining about their traits and skills, they got a cd reduction as well. I think Anet likes where shield is currently…

I’d be perfectly fine with #4 doing 0 damage, but offering an Aoe Aegis instead… even if it’s short radius..

It’s beyond me as to why our Shield does not offer a single block….

Because Anet thinks different == good, like the terrible use of a GS by the Mesmer as a laser canon.

Yeah, I’m also gonna have to disagree here. I think the mesmer greatsword is very creative and fits the class well. The only problem I have with it is the distance-based autoattack damage.

Whats wrong with Shield? people complain because it doesnt actually give you a block but why do you need block? it has Protection , a bubble(admittidly not the best) and some ish damage.. It is more based on shielding your group as a whole and not just your own selfish self..(take that you focus users) and Because it has the ability to protect 5 + people instead of just one yes it does not get as much respect because all most people care about is selfish personal damage and not helping the group as a whole.

Which is probably the most dumb thing ever.. I’m sure your OP meta zerker build can do the same amount as the 4 other people you just let die because “helping” others is just not effective

Belarorn.9062:

Whats wrong with Shield? people complain because it doesnt actually give you a block but why do you need block? it has Protection , a bubble(admittidly not the best) and some ish damage.. It is more based on shielding your group as a whole and not just your own selfish self..(take that you focus users) and Because it has the ability to protect 5 + people instead of just one yes it does not get as much respect because all most people care about is selfish personal damage and not helping the group as a whole.

Which is probably the most dumb thing ever.. I’m sure your OP meta zerker build can do the same amount as the 4 other people you just let die because “helping” others is just not effective

Or I could just protect others by giving them aegis and blinding the enemy so they take 0% damage instead of 67% damage.

But hey, whatever you say buddy.

Belarorn.9062:

Whats wrong with Shield? people complain because it doesnt actually give you a block but why do you need block? it has Protection , a bubble(admittidly not the best) and some ish damage.. It is more based on shielding your group as a whole and not just your own selfish self..(take that you focus users) and Because it has the ability to protect 5 + people instead of just one yes it does not get as much respect because all most people care about is selfish personal damage and not helping the group as a whole.

Which is probably the most dumb thing ever.. I’m sure your OP meta zerker build can do the same amount as the 4 other people you just let die because “helping” others is just not effective

The problem which you don’t seem to understand is that shield doesn’t bring anything more meaningful than other weapons or utilities. You can get near constant projectile defense with utilites (if properly traited), so why do we need some lackluster 2 sec. shield 5 ability? The heal? lol. If you want a decent group heal use staff 4 or selfless daring, which are considerably better heals and are not on some absurd cooldown. As for the protection, don’t kid yourself. Hammer and hold the line give better forms of protection and don’t rely on you aiming at your allys. But to be far, as Black Box pointed out, blinds are waaay more effective that protection because you are preventing damage.

In order for shield to be viable it needs to bring something that we dont have, or have a better capability that what we already have. And no, a knockback is not enough to waste an equipment slot on.

Also forgot to mention that focus is a great party defense and offensive weapon. For starters it has a multiple mob blind and regan. It does have a self block but on the flip side is one of the 2 blast finishers a guardian has which can help blast any fields, but in particular fire and water. Sounds like party support to me and is exactly why focus is the meta, because its the best offhand.

Blind and Block vs. Protection have their own pros and cons. Blind and Block are good in a situation where you can see enemy’s movement. This happens in 1v1 to a small team fight. Protection however, helps you dive into an enemy zerg where you can’t really predict what each of the enemies is going to do. If you have huge retaliation up-time and damage, protection is much desired. This is the reason I love protection more than blind and block.

Protection is an up-time based boon, that means there is no problem using shield #4 on top of hold the line. It doesn’t make sense to say save yourselves’s protection becomes futile because we already have protection from hold the line. Same thing with just because we already have a lot of blinds and blocks, it doesn’t mean focus #4 and #5 suddenly become terrible.

Shield #4 is the only weapon skill that provide on-demand protection. Sure with hammer you can get 100% protection up-time, but at what cost? I don’t know about you, but AA-ing hammer all the way and bound by its symbol’s AoE sound terrible to me.

You see, it’s not as simple as 0% or 67%, or hammer is better than shield #4, or shield #4 is futile when we have hold the line, etc etc. If you can’t use shield, it doesn’t mean it’s not viable.

Not fully useless, you can use the #5 as AoE knockback on 30 sec CD on PvP, and only for that. Yeah, this is really bad. ANET won’t make shield viable, that’s the true, I basically give up, but I’ll do a last suggestion, and this is a good one:

On #4, increase the protection duration on sPvP to 5 sec, increase the cooldown back to 30 sec and add one of the following effects:

• 5 sec cripple (would help lack of soft cc that guardian have);
• 5 sec weakness (would reduce the damage even further, but usually can be easly cleaned);
• 1 sec daze (would add another interrupt to shield).

On #5, FIX THE BUG (set the duration to 4 secs), increase the cooldown back to 40 secs, reduce the cast time to 0.5 sec (you must finish the cast to dome keep itself), remove the sequence (detonate) and add a new effect: allies (up to 5) are heal for 300 per second (0.2 heal scaling, so at 1000 healing, you get +200 heal per second while in the dome).

The shield does not need blocks to be viable, the only reason the shield is so weak is because the skills are lackluster. The intend is to be a support weapon, but it do this very poorly.

Only doing this both shield skills would be viable and no, the shield wouldn’t be overpowered, if ANET really wants the shield to be viable, they should at least test these changes.

Shield on Guards has always been one of the worst pair of skills – shame as you’d hope shields on Guardians would have powerful profession skill possibilities. Its pretty useless for the most part. The only real application is in sPvP bunker builds but these days lots of bunker builds choose focus instead anyway. Its the reason I never made The Flameseeker Prophecies (which I think is the nicest Legendary)

I’d be fine if they swapped the Focus and Shield skills due to the personal opinion that Focus skins are bad. I’d rather run around with a shield.

well see how it goes when stronghold gets live, maybe we can use the absorption on our npcs, or knockback enemies that try to collect supply since normal attacks dont interupt the animation but cc does.

Really what they need to do is

1: Make shield #4 also apply cripple to enemies it hits & get rid of the PvE/PvP difference on it

2: Scrap shield number 5 and instead have it grant AOE AEGIS to nearby allies while knocking nearby enemies back.

It would also be nice if they changed shattered AEGIS so that it dazed your attacker when they break an AEGIS you applied.

endscape.7538:

Compared to the warrior shield skills the Guardian shield in PvP is abysmal. I could be completely off since I just came back to the game and missing something but just feels very bad.

Mine looks pretty.