Guild Wars 2

Herald grandmaster trait Soothing Bastion now reads:

Activate Crystal Hibernation (shield 5) when struck when you are below the health threshold. Using a shield skill increases boon duration.
Number of targets: 5.
Duration increase: 2 seconds.
Radius: 600.

IIRC in BWE3 you only had to equip a shield for the bonus. Now we have to be using a shield skill? Keep in mind our shield skill cool downs aren’t something we can be spamming.

Also, I’ve tried testingthis but I don’t understand the AOE aspect of this skill. This benefit is supposed to hit my party? Hence number of targets and radius. No one around me gets any +2 seconds boon duration buff or effect I can detect.

This trait was probably the main reason to run shield for me. Looks like the only Herald GM winner right now is Elder’s Force (+2% damage per boon).

Please undo this change.

Edit: With further testing, I don’t even think the boon duration is working at all. I tried spamming shield skills and watching swiftness duration from the facet. I’ve also tried counting might stacks with shield, shield skills, and without shield.

(The crystal hibernation part does work..)

Can confirm, using a shield skill does not extend the boon duration of my existing boons.

From what I remember, this is the way the trait has been since it was introduced though. Of course, I could be wrong.

Icdan Sevaen.4628:

Can confirm, using a shield skill does not extend the boon duration of my existing boons.

From what I remember, this is the way the trait has been since it was introduced though. Of course, I could be wrong.

I tested swiftness stacking with and without shield, with and without F2 facet and it worked. I could stack about a minute of swiftness. Now I’m stuck at 7-11s.

In play, I could stack so much fury that I could use the use ability and turn fury back on way before my boon would run out.

I don’t think it was ever simply for having a shield equipped, no. I will see if I can test this later.

It’s been bugged since BWE3 and reported multiple times.

I can say with 100% certainty that in BWE3 you had to use a shield skill to get the duration increase. I tested this ad nauseam. It was never just simply for equipping a shield.

That said, yes it is bugged now and has been bugged since BWE2 that it just doesn’t work on skill use period.