Guild Wars 2

I really like the idea of using a shield as a warrior. It looks cool too but it doesn’t seem to make me anymore tanky. In the sense that even with feats the skills still have massive cooldowns and apart from a 3 second block/reflect every 27 seconds (cd doesnt start till after its finished use) it doesnt seem worth it. The armor value isnt even very high, maybe a third of other pieces of heavy armor. Probably equivalent to wearing a dress over your wrist? – i haven’t checked the light armor numbers though.

Am i missing something? Or is there a way to make a shield an effective off hand?

Shield is a great weapon if you’re building to be a glass cannon. Usually as a GC you can’t afford many utilities or traits to keep you alive longer. A shield gives you some flexibility in that area, as well as a stun to stop stomps/heals and to line up additional damage by a weapon swap.

There have been many times where a movement skill of mine was on CD and I would have died to mesmer shatter burst if I didn’t have a shield to quick swap to.

I don’t remember the armor value off the top of my head, but the Shield Master trait also adds an extra 90 toughness, and reduces the CD on skills. I’d argue it’s a must if you want to use a shield a lot instead of just a pain button (the extra 200 toughness from the Defense trait line also helps in the tanky-ness department).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield_Master

I use a sword/shield for my main, and both the stun and block can be very useful (mostly PvE with a little WvW). It’s always a nice option to be able to dodge, throw up block while your endurance recharges and able to dodge again. And in PvE the stun is very useful on pretty much everything except for bosses, while the block can always be useful.

I’m sure for those that want to go more power they can use the stun then swap out to a more damaging weapon to start a chain.

EDIT If you were looking more for a personal example of combos. With a Bow & sword/shield
Signet of Rage —> Pin Down —> Combustive Shot —> Arcing Arrow for AoE Might, swap to sword/shield —> close in with Savage Leap (and fire aura) —> Shield Bash —> Signet of Fury —> Flurry —> Signet of Might
Really it has both an offensive and defensive element. I’d say you can make the most of it if you’re good at reading other creatures/players animations for the proper stun/block times. Stand alone it isn’t very good, but can be used good in conjuncture with your main hand/a weapon swap.

Shield is a combination of an “oh kitten” spike survival skill with a stun, though the cooldowns are rather poor without the Shield Master trait. Another fun addition is to use the missile reflection trait, I’ve watched several Rangers, pistol Thieves and occasionally others almost kill themselves by trying to shoot at me.

Shield warrior is bad. Its very situational and it doesn’t really make you survive, it only delays your death with 3 seconds

I have never seen an engineer actually use shield in combat,
would be nice if their throw shield(aka captain america) skill
would be renamerd and given to use, they already got ton of
cool backpacks, turrets and what not.

@Varyag, never had the need to blog shots for a few 3 secs,
though I would low a thief detector, they always manage to get
up behind me, and before I can react, they have downed me,
….so much for wearing heavy armor.
Would be nice if Warrios at least got immunity to backstabs or something like that.

It feels kinda weak in PvE as many mobs have slow attacks, making shield 5 feel a bit pointless.

But I use it all the time in WvW and it’s amazing. Shield 5 plus Endure Pain gives you plenty of time to run into an enemy group, taking their focus away from whatever they’re attacking, and then hit them with Stomp or Fear Me (or both)

DragonMind.2983:

@Varyag, never had the need to blog shots for a few 3 secs,
though I would low a thief detector, they always manage to get
up behind me, and before I can react, they have downed me,
….so much for wearing heavy armor.
Would be nice if Warrios at least got immunity to backstabs or something like that.

I said it was “fun”, like the physical skills – I never said they were viable.

But no, you don’t need immunity to backstabs.

I tend to agree with the OP. I am still a pretty fresh 80 and am working on the Warrior shout build 0/20/20/30/0 and have taken the traits to increase toughness and reflect missles and came to the realization that the shield is nothing more than eye candy in its current form.

Currently, with 3 peices of cleric gear, one mad king shoes, and 2 random yellow rares I have about 2650 armor and around 1000 toughness. I have been using the shield to level for about the last 30 levels and after looking at my stats with and without it seems very lackluster to use a shield. Granted you get a 1 second daze with the bash and 3seconds of invulnerability, which work well situationally, but 54 armor(yellow) on a shield and 90 toughness by trait feels almost negligable.

I think I have come to the conclusion that a sword or mace offhand will give you the same effect essentially (Ripost with sword w/ shorter cooldown, or tremor with mace w/ same cooldown) with more DPS and you aren’t losing much in the way of defense/toughness.

Unless they buff the armor or give a way to passively block with shields, I just can’t see using them for anything other than looks anymore.

incisorr.9502:

Shield warrior is bad. Its very situational and it doesn’t really make you survive, it only delays your death with 3 seconds

Yep it delays your death for 3 seconds if you’re bad like this Incisorr guy. Shield helps you go aggressive for those 3 seconds that you can’t, and being able to land an offensive is ALWAYS important as a Warrior. No offense to you though but you seem like a casual who is just going to give bad advice. And bad advice is contagious.

TL;DR Learn to make plays and you will see that only Long Bow and Hammer are the only ones at fault.

I can’t live without shield (I trait it with reflect).

That block is the difference between a win and a loss.

If you use reflect correctly you can end up making the enemy hit themselves for 5k+ damage without laying a finger on them.

The shield stun could do with an increased range, amount of stun for the timer it’s on though.

Cheers for the input guys. General idea i’m getting is it’s never something you use as a priority. But when ur stuck, slowed, getting kited etc. Using that 3 seconds + stun to get back to your target before swapping to your main weapon.

Yup thats basically the jist of it.

I use a Hammer and Mace/Shield, I’m set up for pure defense. It’s really good in my experience, in dungeons at least, for ranged mobs and blocking an attack back for 3-5K depending on how much damage they would do. Can really nail a ranged boss.

This is all if you got Reflect Missiles of course

Shield is probably the best weapon out there for many reasons, reasons which people ignore badly. For start warriors are designed to be hard weapon switchers. Even if this design doesn’t work as good as it should the basic is still there. In spvp for example my build resolves around shield/axe and a great sword. The shield and axe are the main weapon in the build while the GS is the random damage dealer of doom. This build lacks any long range BUT, if I face a hard long range opponent my shield takes care of both keeping my alive and sending massive amounts of damage his way. Why massive amounts? Most ranged classes such as pistol thiefs and short bow rangers spec around high crit and damage with no defense, when a glass cannon with such damage hit itself , at which point they hit their one strong weakness they are forced to retreat or die. Here is when one of the many uses of shield bash comes in, with it you can close combat to your favor, interupt their escape and go in for a hundred blades or whirlwind.

Random person going to finish your team mate? Interrupt with shield bash. See a healing animation? Interrupt with shield bash. Shield stance is possibly my favorite skill in the game, mainly cause i can bounce projectiles back this includes, engineers turrets such as that nasty net that immobilize you, bolas and many others. Also since I am not taking damage I can use these few seconds to let my healing cool down and keep me going.

Problem is, people usually expect themselves to put a shield on and auto win. Something like "Oh I got my shield on, my new defense should somewhere around 50 – 100% higher. Yet this is not the case, over all the shield is there for those with the skill to use to be come stronger.

^
I agree with this, I love my shield, Shield Stance is probably the best block skill in the game. The only times I don’t carry a shield is when I’m in lower-level zones, and it’s never far in my bags. I’m a very defense-oriented player though. (I refuse to do dungeons because I can’t be full-time defense tank in Guild Wars 2.)

I don’t really like Shield Bash though. Because of the charge animation, it has a delay before the stun, and it happens even if you’re next to your enemy, which makes it very hard, if not impossible, to interrupt anything with it. Considering the 25 second cooldown, it doesn’t feel right. I think it should block or evade during that .5 second charge, so if you miss the interrupt at least you won’t get hurt by it.

Lyonell.1753:

Problem is, people usually expect themselves to put a shield on and auto win.

…

In what kitten game has this ever been the case?
Most every MMO treats a shield as “Oh, ok I suppose you can tank now mr. warrior but the tradeoff is you will be complete kitten in PvP with damage that drops below that of a typical mob around your level”.

I mean, prot warrior was complete garbage with a shield up until mid wotlk, then it was viable a few of us got gladiator with our shields, everyone cried, it got nerfed back down to “meh” status once again (I quit playing pre-cata so won’t comment on anything that might have changed since then).

AoC shield guardians were garbage in pvp. Forever. Go polearm or go home.

WAR chosen were… ok with a shield at best, better with a 2-hander though and proper aura molding.

Then there’s other niche pvp mmo’s like DarkFail where shields were the most crappy piece of crap to have ever crapped crap before.

I mean I always love to be a sword n’ board warrior type, aesthetically it pleases me. However shields are almost always treated in a rather kitten self-kittening manner only to be used for meat shielding in pve. Never mind the fact that the reality is that shields are just as much an offensive weapon as a defensive tool.

Shields here, when traited, are ok. CD’s still seem a bit too long when traited though.

The shield is awesome. But it isn’t an automagic poof your a tank thing. It takes skill and timing to know when to use your skills. but that stun and block really do make a world of difference if used at the right times. Stun. Gap closer. And Invuln. Plus a decent amount of defense of toughness. It makes a difference.