Guild Wars 2

nuff said.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

savage as it may be, it’s not worth giving up more mobile stun breaks, or an endurance refill that also cleanses conditions.

Is useful, though. Without a doubt.

Aidal.4901:

savage as it may be, it’s not worth giving up more mobile stun breaks, or an endurance refill that also cleanses conditions.

Is useful, though. Without a doubt.

Well, traded my blinding powder for that. Endurance refill still with me, and shadow step intact in build. Now I have extra 15 sec stun break, long kitten block (it feels so at least), and knock down on demand.

While I was reading the patch notes, I thought the same as you, I guess I’ll experiment somewhat with Bandit’s Defense.

Might be good with Defender runes.

Boika.5367:

Aidal.4901:

savage as it may be, it’s not worth giving up more mobile stun breaks, or an endurance refill that also cleanses conditions.

Is useful, though. Without a doubt.

Well, traded my blinding powder for that. Endurance refill still with me, and shadow step intact in build. Now I have extra 15 sec stun break, long kitten block (it feels so at least), and knock down on demand.

We’re probably looking at it from different view points then, I pvp/wvw more often than anything, the sheer list of unblockable attacks (which went up) makes it only partially usable for me.

BP on the Staff is awesome because of the knockdown and target drop. BD was almost as good but with this change I think it surpasses BP even on the staff. Faster cooldown, long block, optional knockdown and a stun break. No class has a skill with this level of sustain.

Straegen.2938:

No class has a skill with this level of sustain.

Not sure about scrapper…

Shelter comes close. Traited it’s a 2s block that cleanses two conditions and deals Aoe damage, lacks a stun break though.

But as I stated before, pvp wise blocking is greatly reduced in value, especially now that basilisk venom attacks pile on.

It’s definitely a core utility along with shadowstep for me now. It’s a second get out of jail free card on an incredibly low cooldown. Other utils won’t save your kitten from getting stunlocked or immob-locked as often as this, and you really don’t need stealth utils with how much stealth access bounding dodge gives you. You can also just use it as a stop-gap to recover endurance and initiative. The kick is pretty good too.

There are more unblockable attacks now but let’s be real, they are not THAT common. Most require a second of setup like rev shiro util or now basilisk venom, which you can dodge when you notice it. It’s not about blocking the whole 1.5 seconds necessarily, it’s to give you a brief moment of safety so you can avoid huge bursts and then stealth up/ia out.

Bounding dodge is good for stealth but that leaves you open to immobilization anyway, and with necros coming to the forward after this patch unblockable is going to become common soon enough, especially in wvw, where it’s all turned to a pirate ship mindset. Necromarks and wells, test of faith can be traited iirc to be unblockable, and that trap is instacast.

Again I’m not denying its usefulness, but it just doesn’t feel like it can be used to reset a fight nor escape one.

It takes a bit of getting used to the fact; thief has a on demand block utility now, it works well though, just be aware there are unblockable attacks though.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unblockable

I quite like the new version. The block is very handy as stun breaker and the margin to use the kick afterwards gives room to outplay enemies.

I will have to integrate with my Staff build (which used SA and PI). Knockdowns work so very well in an interrupt build and coupled with staff can set up some nice attacks.

Straegen.2938:

No class has a skill with this level of sustain.

Jana.6831:

Not sure about scrapper…

Scrappers have more sustain but no single skill as good IMO. Shock Shield is close though.

Aidal.4901:

Shelter comes close. Traited it’s a 2s block that cleanses two conditions and deals Aoe damage, lacks a stun break though.

Shelter is certainly solid but a DH will likely never take it. Shelter is also on twice the cooldown and without specific traits it doesn’t even come close IMO.