Guild Wars 2

Link to skill Shield of the Avenger

I’m sure everyone is aware of this abilitiy and I’m sure every Guardian in higher fractal levels or specific dungeon paths uses this skill. A spirit shield which – untraited – is active for 20 seconds and periodically creates a projectile absorbing bubble. After that, it has a 60 second cooldown.

Until the patch in January I could life with this utility because it did its job well. However, January struck and Shield of the Avenger became susceptible to attacks.

I understand, that the spirit weapons were annoying in sPvP, especially traited versions. The Hammer was like the flesh golem but better since unlike the Necromancer’s skill it was not an elite and could not be destroyed.

But in PvE, the change was quite devastating for spirit weapons builds and users.
I can only write for myself but I use different utilities for different encounters and I guess most Guardians do this aswell but even before the Patch I did not use any spirit weapon besides the Shield of the Avenger as their effects are rather weak and other utilities are just plain better (mainly Shouts, Consecrations and Meditations).
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Enough backstory: What is the deal, Grogba?

While the skill description says, the Shield is active for 20 seconds in reality it is closer to 15-16 as Shield of the Avenger needs a second to register if its summoner is in combat. Then, and this is my main concern, the skill periodically deactivates for 1-2 seconds.

This means that, unlike Wall of Reflection, I, the Guardian, have no control over the Shields absorbtion. Especially the Uncategorized Fractal becomes a major pain in the beginning because the plattforms do not offer enough room for dodging and I cannot maintain stability for more than 6-7 seconds every 24 seconds with “Stand your ground!”.

The next major problem – since spirit weapons became attackable – is that the Shield will rarely survive for 20 seconds: Either dmg spikes destroy the Shield while “off” or thanks to its pathing it just kills itself. Last one happens frequently in Volcanic Fractal and the Worm-Boss in Twillight Arbor.

tl;dr

I would propose four changes to Shield of the Avenger and Shield of the Avenger alone:

• Make Shield of the Avenger immune to all damage again
• Shield of the Avenger should maintain its projectile absorbing bubble for the whole duration. Only when its summoner moves away it should deactivate and relocate
• The shielding effect should begin immediately after summoning not after attacking or getting hit
• To balance the changes, increase the cooldown of the skill to 80 seconds but starting on summoning, not on destroying. This way, using the whole duration wouldn’t really change anything

As such changes would make the Shield quite overpowered in sPvP, either make it a PvE/WvW only change or make it invulnerable in PvE but not in sPvP.

discuss

Just do what they should have done when changing up the skill for spvp:

-spvp split: summon is vulnerable
-wvw/pve skill: summon is invulnerable.

Easy, fast, effective and most obvious fix.

I agree, however the constant deactivating while the skill is active needs a fix regardless which approach a-net might choose.

Unfortunately it’s not just the shield that needs improvement as many others who tried spirit weapons agree.

Starting with the AI:
Bow of Truth for some odd reason likes to charge at remote foes who attack you or it randomly leaving you without condition removal or healing. Both the bow and shield should stick to their summoner at all times at maximum range of 200 or something.
Spirit weapons just like every other NPC can’t “run and gun” which means they just charge a running target > stop > swing > miss > wait for attack cooldown and run after it again greatly wasting damage potential.
Sword of Truth and Hammer of Wisdom never run all the way to target and only after that use their skill when you command them wasting the move and putting it on cooldown (tooltip says command range is 1200 but it’s more like 300).

My additional suggestions:
Bow of Truth – should be moved to healing skills, each shot should heal a small amount in addition to condition removal, command needs ground targeting.
Sword of Justice – command needs to be changed to something similar to Whirling Wrath, right now it’s a waste of DPS potential when it strikes less than 3 foes at once due to lenghty animation delay.
Hammer of Wisdom – third attack in it’s chain should be a knockdown instead, a knockback messes up your other attacks way too often, command could be AoE.

Final thoughts:
Unlike in sPvP spirit weapons do have a lot of trouble surviving high level content and large WvW fights, perhaps one of their traits should increase their health or toughness as well.

I certainly agree with the need for invulnerability in PvE, since the low health is just ridiculous against many mobs where you need the shield. However, I’m not sure whether permanent uptime of the bubble, as long as the shield is active, would be such a good idea regarding balancing. Of course, I’d really like something like that, but our anti-projectile skills are already way above the level of almost all other classes.

It should be nerfed and you want to buff it?

I wonder, why do you think it should be nerfed?

Almost all spirit weapons are – in my view – next to useless in PvE anyway thanks to bad AI as Althalos stated and only the shield is of some use because it offers protection.

However, I agree with CptAurellian that our anti-projectile skills are excellen but getting hit in uncategorized or seeing allies go down because the shield trolls us by deactivating or dying to puddles/Area Effects is very annoying.

Because projectiles absorption/reflection is too strong?

Never felt that way. Guards may have received the biggest slice when it came to distribution of reflect/absorb but almost all other professions got some way of dealing with ranged attacks, too. Except Necro (I do not know theirs), Ranger (needs axe in offhand) and Warrior (traited shield). The other five have at least one utility.

only change (of the four you listed) id like to see if the first
its already powerful you can time the absorbition down time with blinds or aegis to protect in the mean time

- dont want to see a longer CD
- i like thakitten doesnt activate till in combakitten means you can move it around whilst out of combat (if i need it to activate asap i lay down a symbol or smite then summon it)

Grogba.6204:

Never felt that way. Guards may have received the biggest slice when it came to distribution of reflect/absorb but almost all other professions got some way of dealing with ranged attacks, too. Except Necro (I do not know theirs), Ranger (needs axe in offhand) and Warrior (traited shield). The other five have at least one utility.

necro has no reflect or destroy

Please ! Do not increase the recharge time ! If you want this fast, efficient and effective way to repel projectile but wih long cooldown use our wall of reflection. Shield is to have a near constant (~50% uptime when traited !) but unreliable defense against projectile.

But the active state (weaken) is not very usefull – or I have miss something. Does someone use it ?

Ettesiun.9127:

But the active state (weaken) is not very usefull – or I have miss something. Does someone use it ?

if its about to die or time out (but a bubble is still up) then you may as well