Guild Wars 2

Ok I see that, I forgot that that trait only meant aegis and not blocks. I am an avid mace user, its a fantastic weapon! I concede that I do not play bunker that often, i usually run mediation for pvp. Ok well I guess I will have to try it out when the change comes. I’m not fully convinced that its more usable but we shall see.

I am more of a pve guy so I am pretty biased on focus I will admit.

Tbh it has its place in Spvp with bunker builds, and with the CD reduction dropping from 40s to 30s, that’s a really nice improvement. Torch is mainly used for either burst builds or burn builds. The 5 can be situationally usefull as well, if using sword and you’re just out of reach from someone kiting you, it works, the added condi removal on allies within the cone is also nice. Focus is the general offhand that will generally do well with most builds because blocks and blinds are a great source of survivability.

Looking at shield, its pretty much our only offhand with a near instant interrupt knockback and projectile absorption is useful in a number of ranged situations on point. The 4 could use some improvement though. Either a good damage buff, or give it something like aegis application so it compliments some of our traits. The shield trait should really be brought down from master tier to adept tier as well.

If its PVE though and you’re trying to be optimal, yes focus will always be the best choice over our other offhand choices.

I would still argue that focus would provide better sustainability for a bunker build with focus 5. Especially if you traited for heals on block. The knockback and absorption are just to meager. I do appreciate the knockback for point control, but you dont even need stability to pass through the bubble if you miss the target then you are rooted in place. Theres just too many cons to outweigh the pros for shield 5.

I still haven’t seen or read anything that would make the shield a viable offhand over focus (In any game mode). I do agree with you on torch and I am curious to see what the results are after the CD penalty is removed.

Aeolus.3615:

Farzo.8410:

Hunter.4783:

20 and 24 respectively

That’s what I guessed.

A little bit better at least.

It is a really awesome cooldown at least for shield 5, absorsion is really a very underrated defense mechanicsby players, good call Anet didnt change the shield 5 skill.

Sigh… absorption/reflects are not underrated, especially by guardians. Projectile defense is one of the main reasons guardian is so valueable in dungeons. That being said, shield is a terrible weapon compared to our other offhands. First guardians have 3 main methods of projectile defense: Wall, shield of the avenger, and Sword 3 which are far superior to shield 5’s long CD and ridiculously short duration. These should be more than enough for any encounter.

So there isnt much incentive to use shield over focus, especially in dungeons since focus provides a multiple blind and regain plus a powerful block/aoe/blast finisher. So long story short, there is no incentive to bring shield, its just NOT viable. And reducing the CD does not make it usable/viable/worth it.

As I have said in my other posts, there needs to be useful abilities on shield in order for it to be used. Without comparison the shield does indeed sound nice, its when you actually compare it to our other offhands is when shield becomes terrible.

I really want shield to be great, but we aren’t going to get there if we praise the current implementation of shield and the cooldown reduction is not a buff since it still doesn’t make shield very good.

TL:DR
There is still no incentive to bring shield over focus or torch. The shield skills do not provide anything unique or better than what we already have from utilities and other weapons. We can get constant protection from hammer and way better damage and we can get way better reflects/absorbs from utilities.

Are you guys really going to use shield now? I cannot think of one circumstance where shield would outshine focus or even torch. Even if shield’s abilities had no cooldown, there would still be no way I would use it over focuse because the abilities are terrible.

Shield 4 is awful damage and a lousy protection buff in a weird cone aoe. Even in PVP I would rather have the constant burning torch provides or the blind + regan focus provides. And in PVE protection is useless, unless you are in some high level fractals where hammer completely outshines shield 4 for a protection buff.

Shield 5 is even worse than 4 compared to focus and torch. Knockbacks are not useful (dont get me wrong, interruptions are great, knockbacks are terrible). Knockbacks knock enemies out of damage (melee, aoes, etc), so by knocking back an enemy you are actually hurting yourself and allies more. This is especially true with shield 5 because you do not need stability to re-enter the “bubble”. So if you missed an enemy with the knockback they just walk right in and start hammering on you. The only time knockback is useful is for trolling people on skyhammer. The only semi-useful ability the shield has is the absorb projectile, but again its too short and you are stuck in one spot. Not moving = getting killed.

Lets compare shield 5 to torch 5 and focus 5. Torch 5 does decent damage and it removes conditions from allies. This is a great skill in certain encounters where conditions wreck you. Focus 5 has an amazing block, and if you dont get hit provides huge damage, whats not to like!

Now please, all of you praising shield and its lowered cooldown, why on earth do you pick shield over the other 2 far superior offhand? Shield is arguably the worst weapon in the game and its going to take more than a cooldown reduction to save it.

Also the biggest complaint about shield is not the cooldown, its the abilites.

ArchonWing.9480:

If I read the link correctly, might itself is being nerfed from 35—> 30, so that make fire fields slightly less effective.

Less effective than what?? Yea you will get 750 power instead of 875, which is probably going to be barely noticeable for a full zerk group. Fire fields are going to remain the most dominant type of field to blast for PVE, with the exception of smoke for stealth skips. Just because the total amount of power for might is reduced does not mean that other fields are suddenly going to become better than fire.

How can people say theses are shield buffs??? Lowering the cooldown does not buff the shield. A buff would mean that it becomes more usable, and just by lowering the cooldown is NOT going to make shield viable.

Also a bunker guard should use focus for the extra blocks I would imagine. Im not a pvp pro but shield abilites are simply trash in every aspect of the game. Why would you want to pick a weak aoe cone + not even noticeable protection buff over a blind and regan or a terrible knockback and heal over one of the best blocks in the game that focus provides? I mean, you dont even need stability to walk across the “barrier” that shield creates. Its a terrible weapon.

Do not get me wrong, I really want shield to work. But praising a cooldown reduction and passing it as a “buff” is not going to do it.

Shield doesn’t need CD reduction, it needs useful abilities…. The lower cooldown will not prompt sudden shield use over focus, and it never will unless they change the skills of shield. I really want to use a shield ANET, please give it some attention over the next patches/expansion.

Also would would you even give up to pick up the shield trait anyways….

I like that they are looking at shield, but you gotta do better than a meager CD reduction to make shield viable.

I find it interesting that so many people are using shields considering that it is by far the worst weapon in the game.

Other than that, I like the idea of it only appearing when you enter combat.

The only spirit weapon worth ever using is the shield. It helps with some dungeon encounters that require constant/near-constant reflect/absorb time. Ive occasionally used the bow for some extra condi removal but it depends on the group make-up and is generally not worth taking. For pvp/wvw i doubt that spirit weapons would be any good since they would immediately get vaporized in the mass aoes that happen in zergs.

Mace is far from worthless. From a PVE perspective it hits harder than sword and has a superior cleave. It has an on-demand block with a low cooldown, which also does considerable damage when it counter-attacks(~6-7k). Also the heals from mace auto and symbol slowly accumulate to help keep the groups scholars buff up, assuming people are running zerk&scholar runes. The 3rd auto attack when fully buffed can hit for 10k, which is a crazy auto attack! Also the symbol is great damage and applies vuln, which helps make the mace a better dps weapon.

The additional blind is useful for sword but its also a DPS loss when you use it since it barely does any damage. And the 3rd auto attack for sword is a terrible cleave and can be reflected. The blind is good but you should have that covered with f1 and focus 4 and a thief/ele.

This is why mace is superior to sword in PVE, there’s really no reason not to use it. The only time sword has its advantage is for open-world leveling so you can port around a bit and some dungeon encounters where the teleport is also useful.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I wish I had a six week christmas break. Sounds awesome!

Congrats on all people working at ANet, enjoy your 1 1/2 monthes off!

I really hope you are kidding….. So many unrealistic expectations on these forums. If you really think they are not working for 6 weeks you are delusional. No company on Earth gives that much time off for Christmas. Plus there are 2 patch releases between now and mid January. How much more can they do to make people happy….

People only want to speedrun, which involves full zerk and stacking, because running dungeons is one of the very few ways to easily make gold in this game. For all the new players it can be frustrating but for all the people who have been playing this game for 2 years, they dont want to take an hour to run through AC path 1. Its not our fault good ways to make gold dont last in this game.

The argument about players that stack are just bad is silly, they are just trying to make a quick gold. And as several people have stated already, use the LFG tool its a great addition to the game.

Point taken, the stationary view would be cool.

I like the shield 5 projectile absorb but the knockback is trash. I mostly PVE however where knockbacks are annoying. The knockback is semi useful/funny in Skyhammer though. I just really want a reason to craft Eidolon to go with my other Foefire weapons!!!

DarkWasp.7291:

Tron.3471:

New skills/builds, content and skins are absolutely needed if they want to increase the longevity of the game. A FPV will not keep people coming back like new content will.

While it may have its novelty, FPV is not needed, nor should it be considered over other content or QOL issues that are in the game, some from beta.

I understand the OPs desire for FPV, but I think realistically this will probably never happen, much like mounts. There’s a thread about it every other week or so. I think it would be much more constructive to focus on things that could have a much bigger impact. Just my 2 cents to throw out there.

It should be considered equally with other QoL issues.

Some players don’t like to stop and smell the roses, but others do.

The feature is small and should be easy to implement, but the impact is actually quite large. Screenshots are a form of gameplay for some people. Sometimes they do really good, others see them and become more interested in the game.

This feature is probably not as easy to implement as you think. What about dodge rolls, rotating abilities, camera hopping when in combat, disabling FPV in certain areas, etc. Just because its a small feature doesn’t mean its not complicated. Any time something is changed causes a ripple effect in software which could cause even more problems. There’s a multitude of things to consider with this that people are just not thinking of both from a technical perspective and an implementation perspective. It slowly adds up to being a complicated issue just to have better screenshots. IMO thats not worth it when there’s things like WvW and PvP that really need some love and are core elements of the game.

People say “oh just turn it off in combat”. What happens when you are running around and something attacks you? If its behind you and you didn’t see it and if its a champ or vet then you may go straight to death cam.

New skills/builds, content and skins are absolutely needed if they want to increase the longevity of the game. A FPV will not keep people coming back like new content will.

While it may have its novelty, FPV is not needed, nor should it be considered over other content or QOL issues that are in the game, some from beta.

I understand the OPs desire for FPV, but I think realistically this will probably never happen, much like mounts. There’s a thread about it every other week or so. I think it would be much more constructive to focus on things that could have a much bigger impact. Just my 2 cents to throw out there.

I think 1st person view is silly and not needed. There are tons more things the developers should spend their time on than this.

You say it shouldn’t be used in combat so would that disable your skills or just fly out over your head when you activated a skill? Flying out would be very jarring and i can imagine the fps drop people will have when the camera flys upwards. Because how silly would it be if you hit say whirling wrath and just stayed looking forward…

I’m just hoping for shield changes a some point, heck even torch. Please make shield viable! We are pigeon-holed into one offhand, focus, because it is so superior. The other 2 offhands being laughable other than some very situational occurrences. This has to change.

I have the same problem. I believe it started after the sept feature patch. Ive tried a bunch of things and put support tickets in. Nothing seems to help.

Win 8.1
i7-3770k 3.5 GHz
DH77EB MB
8 GB RAM
GTX 770 4GB EVGA version
650W PSU

Yea I agree, it does look horrible on Norn. I re-rolled my guardian from Asura to Human when I came back to the game, and part of the reason was for the ascended armor, just looks way better on Human i think. I actually like the cloth on it except the cloth part that is brown and undyeable. Just plain silly.

I’m finally getting close to finishing my ascended set, the only piece I am missing now is the helm. I made the shoulders last night and once I equipped them I soon became a little disappointed. Why on earth is there an undyeable region on the shoulders and no other part of the set??? For some reason the brown frill on the edge of the shoulders is undyeable. Has this always been the case or a recent bug?

I know its not that big of a deal but for the amount of time/effort/gold needed to craft this set, one would hope you could fully customize it. Oh well, looks like I need to finish getting some achievements so i can get the radiant shoulders now!

This please. Its tiring that the only optimal set is berserkers, give the condition users some love! Raids should not be added if its just another mindless zergfest like dungeons are. If thats the case just play EOTM and call it raiding.

Fixing condition damage is just one piece of the puzzle here and it will be interesting to see the discussions to follow.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Tron.3471:

Doesn’t spam knockbacks during group events indicating that they are not just mindlessly mashing keys….

What if someone in that group was annoying you so you pop knock backs just to troll them? Not saying I’ve done that, per se, but you know, hypothetically.

lol you could do that. But seriously knockbacks have no place in pve open world events. The only time people should ever use knockbacks is in PVP (when trying to save a downed ally) and maybe in dungeons to set up positioning. If you just want to mitigate an attack use blind/aegis/dodge/etc. Knockbacks prevent dps…. but some people don’t get it.

I’ve played a guardian since right after launch and I have always had a blast. I have also found it very hard to play any alts because the guardian is so much fun. I initially ran an AH knights crithammer build when I was learning to play and it was awesome. You basically feel immortal in that build while doing respectable damage.

Then I switched to a full DPS zerker build for PVE and a meditation build for PVP. Meditation build wrecks people if you time it right, not only can you do alot of damage but surviviability is excellent with the meditation skills/traits. The grandmaster medi trait heals you for ~2k when you activate a meditation and 2 of the meditations are condition cleansing. Pretty awesome when you get loaded down with conditions and are barely alive then you convert conditions into boons and can heal back to full health nearly instantly and give them a good stomping.

For PVE i’m mixing up my zerk gear just to experiment but like people said before, its all about the active defenses and boons to survive since we have a low health pool. Mixing aegis/dodge/blinds can really make you survive but you should pick the necessary traits to enhance those abilities.

The support aspect of the guardian is great and can be very satisfying when you use a clutch Aegis or stability to block or mitigate a powerful attack. Or on the flip side keeping protection and regan up to help people maintain scholars rune bonus.

Also I just really like the guardian weapon animations and heavy armor is boss.

Doesn’t spam knockbacks during group events indicating that they are not just mindlessly mashing keys….

The first hour of leveling is different. That’s the reality of it, yes the trait system could use some rework but there are alot of misconceptions posted in this thread. You can dodge, gather, craft, etc. Right from the start. The tips are there for NEW players so they know it exists. Why this bothers “veteran” players is beyond me.

Dont knock it till you try it. I’ve played since launch and now am releveling a guardian to experience the NPE and its pretty cool. After the first hour or so of playing you have all the skills. Its not such a bad thing and I can see how this would help new players. If you have played the game before, spoiler alert, ignore the tips and proceed as normal.

I’ve played from the games release and I started leveling up a human guardian to see what the fuss was all about and I’m loving it. The NPE is pretty awesome.

Thanks. Will do.

I have the sky dye, but I was wondering if there were any other alternatives for bright blue? I know it changes based on texture and I’m looking mainly to dye on heavy armor/metal. Thanks.

Ok so I have a solution that may be working for me. Here is the info from my support ticket to Anet:

I reviewed your Speccy report and it does look like your processor is running at higher than stock speeds. I believe it’s not actually over-clocked, but the processor is utilizing the built-in Turbo Boost option, which will raise the cores speeds based on load. This is a feature of the CPU model you purchased, marked with the (k) for Intel or the “AMD Black Edition” for AMD. Any CPU’s of these series are able to run faster than intended, automatically, without you doing or changing anything. This can often lead to freezing or crashing in applications that are not expecting this to occur.

Since this situation simulates over-clocking, I’d still like to try to disable this, and for that I have included some instructions for a work around below:

Go into Power options (Control panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options) and click “Change plan settings” near your plan
Then click on “Change advanced power settings.”
Scroll down to “Processor power management” and expand it.
Expand “Maximum processor state” and modify the setting to 99%. Be sure to also set the minimum processor state to something below the maximum. I recommend 5%.
Then simply click “Apply” and “OK.”
After this has been done try launching the game again. When you do, the turbo boost feature should refrain from kicking in and that may resolve the issue you’ve been experiencing.

Im running a i7-3770k @3.5GHz, 8GB RAM, EVGA GTX 770 4GB on Windows 8.1 in case anyone is having these problems with similar hardware.

After this fix it did crash but after i restarted my PC I played again for another 3 or so hours with no crashes. Hoping this was the solution, good luck.

I’ll report my progress in a couple days to see if this truly helped.

Anyone have any guidance?

Here’s another log.

My game is constantly crashing. The screen freezes, music still playing, and the PC becomes totally unresponsive forcing me to shut down. Put in a support ticket and they told me to run the repair tool but now its crashing more frequently! Attached are some crash logs. Cant play for more than 10-15 min before crash.

I guess thats what I get for trying to be proactive and craft early…..

Same thing happened to my cultivated seed. Crafted about a week ago and had my seed in the bank awaiting the next update. Pretty disappointed that I have to wait even longer after trying to get ahead of the game….