Guild Wars 2

Knuckledust.5621:

I am not asking for a buff here, I am asking for a fix. The shield is not remotely close to viable on daily situations such as dungeons and Orr.

That’s my main problem with the shield at the moment. when it comes to general pve its skills don’t provide anything significant to a fight.

Focus grants:

• limited aoe regen
• limited aoe blind
• group condition removal
• up to three blocked attacks
• a blast finisher
• might on block with trait
• burn on block with trait
• multi-hit damage, procing vigor and might multiple times with traits
• a heal (when you give allies regen) with trait
• vulnerability with trait

Torch grants:

• group condition removal
• heavy aoe multi-hit damage, procing vigor and might multiple times with traits
• removes boons with trait
• increased damage against burning foes with trait

Shield grants:

• up to five people with protection
• aoe knockback
• aoe heal
• a light combo field
• light aoe damage, which can only proc vigor multiple times and only if there is more than one mob with trait
• 90 toughness with trait
• a heal (when you provide protection to allies) with trait

As you can see, the focus and the torch have general group and solo pve use and a lot of synergy with certain traits. With the shield however, its general group and solo pve use is very situational (why use the shield for the protection buff to reduce aoe damage when you can use the focus to nullify aoe damage) or useless (why would you want to knock enemies back while solo and certain enemies are immune to knockbacks) in a lot of scenarios on top of its unique trait being boring. It becomes even worse when you notice the cooldowns between these weapon choices.

• Focus: 25 and 45 / 20 and 36 with trait

• Torch:15 and 15 / 12 and 12 with trait

• Shield 30 and 45 / 24 and 36 with trait

The focus and the torch offer at least something noticeable on relatively short cooldowns. The shield offers a short and moderate cooldown for abilities that just don’t get that much use.

One thing that would need to be done to the shield would be to give it a block. Our valor trait line focuses on blocking and shields yet we don’t actually get a block even though everyone else with a shield gets a block (seriously, even elementalists get a form of block in the form of Fortify on their shield). When it comes to the theme of the shield, you almost always think of someone who blocks or attacks with a shield and would therefore choose it to feel like a heavily defensive person. And with that line of thought, I don’t care if it’s a one second block or aegis, albeit an aegis would have more synergy with our traits, we just need some form of block on the shield.

All in all, while I understand that A-net was trying to go for a group based shield, the torch and focus also have group based elements that are, arguably, more interesting, have a broader use in every area of the game, and fit thematically.

As a level 59 Ranger, I’d say this quest definitely needs to be looked at. The risen either need to have lower hp or be in smaller groups. I shouldn’t be fighting 5+ enemies that have more hp than mobs outside of the personal stories, can poison, and have knockdown.

I have full green level 50 armor with precision and power, and my weapons are level 53 yellows. However, it takes quite some time to kill any of the risen. Lowering hp or mob amounts, preferably hp so they can keep the feeling of being overwhelmed by a horde of undead, would greatly increase the fun of this personal story mission.

Edit: After doing the quest after this one, they should definitely make the risen have low hp. The Ghost Rite does a good job of having a large amount of undead without slowing the pace of combat because you can only take a few hits before dieing.

The bug catching challenge at the Charradis Estate is bugged.

• Sometimes the challenge givers chat box disappears when I click to continue the challenge without continuing the challenge.

• It’s possible to grief others who are doing the challenge by attacking one of the bugs and getting a cow to fight it and die.

• There also seems to be a possibility for the cows to not accept the bug that they are supposed to eat.

I also had an issue where there weren’t any forest grubs to catch so I lost the challenge. A simple fix for this would be to either speed up the respawn time or make it so the bugs don’t despawn.