Guild Wars 2

Overall I really liked the Glint specialization because of how the energy bar is used concerning the utility skills. I was looking forward to seeing the shield skills when it was announced because I had hoped that shield would finally find a use in all three game modes. I like the look and feel of sword and board and have sought to use those weapons in all the MMOs that I have played. Sadly the Warrior and Guardian don’t exactly give that good feeling when it came to the board. Half the time the shield hangs loose by my character’s side, not actually functioning as how a shield should.
With the introduction of Revenant and the energy bar, I was ecstatic because I thought that the shield could finally be used through the energy upkeep mechanic. After seeing the livestream, I’m going to be honest and say that I was pretty disappointed.
I was hoping it would be somewhere along the lines of:
Crystal Hibernation
no cooldown
25 Energy Cost
Energy decreases by 10 every second
Energy decreases by 1 every time you block an attack while the skill is active. The amount of energy depleted per attack scales up according to how much damage that attack does. The larger the damage, the more energy is depleted per attack
Heal for a fixed amount per second
Block all physical and projectile attacks in a 225 degree angle in front of your character, gaining a Break Bar. Susceptible to attacks from behind. Susceptible to damage from ground-targetted attacks. Susceptible to crowd-control effects. Can move while casting. Cast skill again to cancel skill early. 3 Crowd Control skills to break the Break Bar. If enemies break you, you are stunned for 2 seconds and gain 25 stacks of Vulnerability for those two seconds.

In this way, I would think that there would be a more active role in using the shield. However, players cannot abuse its use by constantly having it up. This also makes it so that players have to watch their energy bar and Break Bar in order to avoid the negatives of using the skill for too long and at the wrong time. This means there has to be a lot of timing involved when using the skill. Leaving the shield up for too long will deplete a large amount of energy, leaving the Revenant unable to perform any other skill. Raising the shield at the wrong time in the middle of a lot of CC will mean that the Revenant will be stunned and suffer a large opening in defenses. This provides a risk vs reward situation while allowing players to have that “uh oh” button that is powerful, but doesn’t make players entirely invulnerable. In this way, a shield can still be useful and act more like a shield while not being entirely overpowered. I just thought this up on the spot so I’m sure there are those who would find some balance issues wrong with this (if this idea really sucks please spare my feelings ) In general, I just want to see a use for the shield and for it to feel more like a shield instead of what the Warrior and Guardian has.

Does anyone else feel that shield should be a bit more active in terms of using it more frequently in play?

Edit: I forgot to add in the heal. It would probably be a lot less than the original heal considering the stuff I added

It really depends on how it works with conditions. If you’re healed from the ones you already have, then the movement lock is worth. Also because you can stunbreack and heal your vulnerability just by legendswapping.

true but if i remember correctly, vulnerability lasted for only 2 seconds and Rev has few, if any, stun breaks. switching legends and getting locked out of that legend for 10 (?) seconds just to cleanse one condi that lasted 2 seconds is pretty unbeneficial. Also, by the time you stunbreak and cleanse, the 2 seconds are almost up and you would have wasted that stunbreak/cleanse. I don’t know. It just feels like shield isn’t fluid and very situational especially with the high risk and low reward. I do agree with you about movement lock depending on how condis work though.