Spotlight on Skills #10
Originally Published by Sausaletus Rex
Every so often this column will shine the spotlight on a particular skill or set of skills for an in-depth analysis of just what that skill can do for you and the best ways to make it work. Keep in mind that Guild Wars is still under development and the information in this column is subject to swift and drastic change.
We turn again to the Warrior and an oft-misunderstood elite. Not a stance, not a shout, not an attack, and one of the few remanined "shield only" skills. The skill in the spotlight today is :
Shield Bash
From the Warrior's primary only attribute Strength, comes the bizarre Shield Bash. It’s classified as a generic “skill” or, in other words, not even ArenaNet was quite sure what to make of it. It’s also one of the few “shield only” skills in the game meaning that in order to use it your character needs to be holding a shield just as they’d have to hold an axe for Disrupting Chop or a sword for Savage Slash. Therefore, it’s really for those who’re wielding an axe or a sword rather than a hammer, although you could always swap in a shield for a quick casting of it, it seems to require the shield stay in order to maintain its effects. If you were to cast Shield Bash and then switch to a hammer or a bow or a focus then while the skill’s buff will remain it won’t actually be capable of blocking any attack and, thus, be useless. When used Shield Bash protects your character against one, and only one melee attack for a set period of time. If that melee attack is a skill it’s going to lock that skill - forcing it to recharge for a long period of time and, thus, be unusable and knock down the attacker.
A skill lock works thusly: Once a skill is locked it needs to discharge through that lock much as if it had been activated and needed to recharge normally. If it is locked for 15 seconds then it takes 15 seconds before the lock is discharged. That timer is in addition to any other recharge timer that might be present on a skill. If that skill needs to recharge normally then that lock is added onto that time and must be discharged first before any cooling down. If, when Shield Bash is used against, say, Power Attack with its 4 second recharge, Power Attack will be blocked, resulting in no damage, and Power Attack will take a full 19 seconds before it can be used again. Some skills will lock skills at a time other than when they’ve just been used but the principle is that same. It’s especially devastating against skills with a low recharge because those are the skills that your opponent is mostly to want to be using over and over again. The shorter the recharge timer the more recharge you’re adding as an overall percentage as with Power Attack where Shield Bash’s lock represents nearly a 400% increase. Adding a skill lock turns those spammable skills into skill with untenably long recycle time. Although, of course it can be used to good effect against skills with a long recharge to begin with, pushing them out of being able to be used again during the important moments of a battle. Also note that it can be especially hurtful to adrenaline skills. Such skills don’t have normal recharge timers; instead they’re recharged through causing damage with weapon hits. Any such blow charges an adrenal skill for a strike of adrenaline. Enough strikes and that skill can be used. However, while locked an adrenal skill will not gain any adrenaline whatsoever. Any hits made to charge that skill up will be wasted hits.
The skill lock from Shield Bash, then, can be an effective source of disruption. As can that knockdown effect. However, it’s an extremely limited benefit because of the narrow circumstances when it will take effect. You’ll only knockdown a target – leaving them immobile and unable to respond for a few, crucial seconds – when they are attacking you in melee. And, then, you’ll only lock anything if they’re using a skill categorized as an attack skill. If someone’s unlucky enough to use a melee attack skill on you they’ll be hurting but when they don’t attack in melee, if they should attack through spells or bowshot, then you’ve wasted your energy.
On the face of it, that’s not really a good effect, is it? Certainly not when melee characters are going to be carrying around more than just one attack skill – you might lock the one but they should have other tools in their toolbox to use to hurt you with. Since Shield Bash takes 30 seconds to recharge you won’t be able to lock a lot of skills in rapid order, just the one, so you’d better hope that you catch the attack skill that most troubles your opponent to lose. And while it might block an attack there are plenty of skills out there that say they can’t be blocked at all or are otherwise going to make you pay for daring to stop them.
It’s a skill that’s only going to help someone who’s facing melee attacks, namely, someone dealing with Warriors. Since it’s tied to the Warrior’s primary only attribute that means it’s serving to make a Warrior a little bit better against their fellow Warriors. But not against all of them. Only against one of them, because while Shield Bash might last a little while it only works for one melee attack and then needs to recharge itself for nearly 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds are a long time in a battle, especially when three or four Warriors or other melee bangers have decided you’re a tempting target. And while Shield Bash will offer 100% protection against the first of those Warriors to attack you, it does absolutely nothing against the rest, as it won’t have finished recharging by the time they’ve handed your skull to you on a platter.
Shield Bash, then, seems a skill for dueling, when two characters - two Warriors – square off against each other and decide to trade blows. In a one on one fight against another Warrior it surely will give you an advantage. But Guild Wars isn’t a game of duels; it’s your team versus their team. And you aren’t often going to find yourself up against another Warrior or even a pack of them. Well, you will, but only after the relevant parts of a battle have been decided. But, as a Warrior, planning to tackle other Warriors is not the best strategy. Other Warriors are as big and bad and armored as you are and, just like you, they often travel with their limp-wristed spell-tossing friends and bleeding-heart healers. Those are nice targets without the protection that a Warrior’s steel and prowess in melee will be giving them. And none of them are likely to be using melee attacks in order for you to get any benefit out of Shield Bash. Other characters are much better put to shutting down Warriors than a Warrior, too, a Protection Monk can neutralize most of their efforts or a Curses Necromancer can neuter them through debuffing.
However, on closer inspection, Shield Bash does have some nice things going for it. Firstly, although it’s a defensive skill and a Warrior’s defensive skill, it’s not a stance. It’s, instead, a skill, which means you can use Shield Bash and any stance at the same time. Stances, of course, cancel any other stance you might be using when they’re cast. That won’t happen with Shield Bash. An extremely good reason to consider something like Shield Bash is that unlike other protections available in the Warrior skill line, it’s not going to hamper your offense. That’s because while some Warrior stances are defensive in nature, like Shield Stance, other stances are offensive in nature. Stances like Sprint don’t play well with your defensive stances. You can’t buff your speed up and buff your defenses up at the same time to, say, run away better or to stay in melee range while you’re suffering damage. Nor, for that matter could you use something as innocuous as Frenzy, which will increase your attack rate, which drastically raises your damage, with a Disciplined Stance to counter-act the increase damage you’d take from Frenzy. You must then make the choice between which stance is most important to you in any given moment. Using that defensive stance is going to hurt your offense and Warriors are all about delivering a steady stream of offense over time. Shield Bash plays nicely with any stance you’d like to play along with it, so you can add some defense while increasing your attack rate with Flurry, for example.
Also, note that while the duration the blocking from Shield Bash will stay around, the rest of its effects aren’t impacted in any way by Strength. They’re constants not variables and you can have a Strength of 0 and still get that knock down and still lock a skill for 15 seconds. And, for that matter, still have Shield Bash last for a good 5 seconds. That’s more than enough time for someone to attack you in melee. If you’re using Shield Bash not to prepare for when you’re taking melee damage but in the middle of a melee beating then as long as that duration is longer than your attackers swing speed it doesn’t matter. A character will attack in melee automatically and you can slip Shield Bash in-between attacks and turn the tables on your attacker. So Shield Bash is, effectively, almost an unlinked skill. Like Sprint, it can be used and used well not just by primary Warriors but also by secondary Warriors as well. And there it has some possibilities because while a well-armored Warrior might not be all that worried about preventing a single attack from their fellow Warriors, other characters will most certainly appreciate being able to stop a big, bad Warrior from pounding in their heads.
Shield Bash, then, is bizarre because it’s probably of more use to the secondary Warriors around than it is to the primary Warriors even though it sits within the Warrior’s primary skill line. It’s still a questionable addition, though, as it’s of minimal benefit when there are better ways of shutting down a melee character. If Warriors are your problem, though, it’s a nice way of pulling the rug out from under them. All the attack skills and armor and damage buffs in the world aren’t going to help them if they’re flat on their backs. A skill that most characters are going to pass on, though, even though it’s been stripped of that elite tag.
We turn again to the Warrior and an oft-misunderstood elite. Not a stance, not a shout, not an attack, and one of the few remanined "shield only" skills. The skill in the spotlight today is :
Shield Bash
“For 8-10 seconds, while wielding a shield, the next melee attack against you is blocked. If the attack was a skill, your attacker is knocked down and that skill is disabled for an additional 15 seconds.” - Shield Bash. Skill. 5 energy, instant cast, 30 second recharge.
From the Warrior's primary only attribute Strength, comes the bizarre Shield Bash. It’s classified as a generic “skill” or, in other words, not even ArenaNet was quite sure what to make of it. It’s also one of the few “shield only” skills in the game meaning that in order to use it your character needs to be holding a shield just as they’d have to hold an axe for Disrupting Chop or a sword for Savage Slash. Therefore, it’s really for those who’re wielding an axe or a sword rather than a hammer, although you could always swap in a shield for a quick casting of it, it seems to require the shield stay in order to maintain its effects. If you were to cast Shield Bash and then switch to a hammer or a bow or a focus then while the skill’s buff will remain it won’t actually be capable of blocking any attack and, thus, be useless. When used Shield Bash protects your character against one, and only one melee attack for a set period of time. If that melee attack is a skill it’s going to lock that skill - forcing it to recharge for a long period of time and, thus, be unusable and knock down the attacker.
A skill lock works thusly: Once a skill is locked it needs to discharge through that lock much as if it had been activated and needed to recharge normally. If it is locked for 15 seconds then it takes 15 seconds before the lock is discharged. That timer is in addition to any other recharge timer that might be present on a skill. If that skill needs to recharge normally then that lock is added onto that time and must be discharged first before any cooling down. If, when Shield Bash is used against, say, Power Attack with its 4 second recharge, Power Attack will be blocked, resulting in no damage, and Power Attack will take a full 19 seconds before it can be used again. Some skills will lock skills at a time other than when they’ve just been used but the principle is that same. It’s especially devastating against skills with a low recharge because those are the skills that your opponent is mostly to want to be using over and over again. The shorter the recharge timer the more recharge you’re adding as an overall percentage as with Power Attack where Shield Bash’s lock represents nearly a 400% increase. Adding a skill lock turns those spammable skills into skill with untenably long recycle time. Although, of course it can be used to good effect against skills with a long recharge to begin with, pushing them out of being able to be used again during the important moments of a battle. Also note that it can be especially hurtful to adrenaline skills. Such skills don’t have normal recharge timers; instead they’re recharged through causing damage with weapon hits. Any such blow charges an adrenal skill for a strike of adrenaline. Enough strikes and that skill can be used. However, while locked an adrenal skill will not gain any adrenaline whatsoever. Any hits made to charge that skill up will be wasted hits.
The skill lock from Shield Bash, then, can be an effective source of disruption. As can that knockdown effect. However, it’s an extremely limited benefit because of the narrow circumstances when it will take effect. You’ll only knockdown a target – leaving them immobile and unable to respond for a few, crucial seconds – when they are attacking you in melee. And, then, you’ll only lock anything if they’re using a skill categorized as an attack skill. If someone’s unlucky enough to use a melee attack skill on you they’ll be hurting but when they don’t attack in melee, if they should attack through spells or bowshot, then you’ve wasted your energy.
On the face of it, that’s not really a good effect, is it? Certainly not when melee characters are going to be carrying around more than just one attack skill – you might lock the one but they should have other tools in their toolbox to use to hurt you with. Since Shield Bash takes 30 seconds to recharge you won’t be able to lock a lot of skills in rapid order, just the one, so you’d better hope that you catch the attack skill that most troubles your opponent to lose. And while it might block an attack there are plenty of skills out there that say they can’t be blocked at all or are otherwise going to make you pay for daring to stop them.
It’s a skill that’s only going to help someone who’s facing melee attacks, namely, someone dealing with Warriors. Since it’s tied to the Warrior’s primary only attribute that means it’s serving to make a Warrior a little bit better against their fellow Warriors. But not against all of them. Only against one of them, because while Shield Bash might last a little while it only works for one melee attack and then needs to recharge itself for nearly 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds are a long time in a battle, especially when three or four Warriors or other melee bangers have decided you’re a tempting target. And while Shield Bash will offer 100% protection against the first of those Warriors to attack you, it does absolutely nothing against the rest, as it won’t have finished recharging by the time they’ve handed your skull to you on a platter.
Shield Bash, then, seems a skill for dueling, when two characters - two Warriors – square off against each other and decide to trade blows. In a one on one fight against another Warrior it surely will give you an advantage. But Guild Wars isn’t a game of duels; it’s your team versus their team. And you aren’t often going to find yourself up against another Warrior or even a pack of them. Well, you will, but only after the relevant parts of a battle have been decided. But, as a Warrior, planning to tackle other Warriors is not the best strategy. Other Warriors are as big and bad and armored as you are and, just like you, they often travel with their limp-wristed spell-tossing friends and bleeding-heart healers. Those are nice targets without the protection that a Warrior’s steel and prowess in melee will be giving them. And none of them are likely to be using melee attacks in order for you to get any benefit out of Shield Bash. Other characters are much better put to shutting down Warriors than a Warrior, too, a Protection Monk can neutralize most of their efforts or a Curses Necromancer can neuter them through debuffing.
However, on closer inspection, Shield Bash does have some nice things going for it. Firstly, although it’s a defensive skill and a Warrior’s defensive skill, it’s not a stance. It’s, instead, a skill, which means you can use Shield Bash and any stance at the same time. Stances, of course, cancel any other stance you might be using when they’re cast. That won’t happen with Shield Bash. An extremely good reason to consider something like Shield Bash is that unlike other protections available in the Warrior skill line, it’s not going to hamper your offense. That’s because while some Warrior stances are defensive in nature, like Shield Stance, other stances are offensive in nature. Stances like Sprint don’t play well with your defensive stances. You can’t buff your speed up and buff your defenses up at the same time to, say, run away better or to stay in melee range while you’re suffering damage. Nor, for that matter could you use something as innocuous as Frenzy, which will increase your attack rate, which drastically raises your damage, with a Disciplined Stance to counter-act the increase damage you’d take from Frenzy. You must then make the choice between which stance is most important to you in any given moment. Using that defensive stance is going to hurt your offense and Warriors are all about delivering a steady stream of offense over time. Shield Bash plays nicely with any stance you’d like to play along with it, so you can add some defense while increasing your attack rate with Flurry, for example.
Also, note that while the duration the blocking from Shield Bash will stay around, the rest of its effects aren’t impacted in any way by Strength. They’re constants not variables and you can have a Strength of 0 and still get that knock down and still lock a skill for 15 seconds. And, for that matter, still have Shield Bash last for a good 5 seconds. That’s more than enough time for someone to attack you in melee. If you’re using Shield Bash not to prepare for when you’re taking melee damage but in the middle of a melee beating then as long as that duration is longer than your attackers swing speed it doesn’t matter. A character will attack in melee automatically and you can slip Shield Bash in-between attacks and turn the tables on your attacker. So Shield Bash is, effectively, almost an unlinked skill. Like Sprint, it can be used and used well not just by primary Warriors but also by secondary Warriors as well. And there it has some possibilities because while a well-armored Warrior might not be all that worried about preventing a single attack from their fellow Warriors, other characters will most certainly appreciate being able to stop a big, bad Warrior from pounding in their heads.
Shield Bash, then, is bizarre because it’s probably of more use to the secondary Warriors around than it is to the primary Warriors even though it sits within the Warrior’s primary skill line. It’s still a questionable addition, though, as it’s of minimal benefit when there are better ways of shutting down a melee character. If Warriors are your problem, though, it’s a nice way of pulling the rug out from under them. All the attack skills and armor and damage buffs in the world aren’t going to help them if they’re flat on their backs. A skill that most characters are going to pass on, though, even though it’s been stripped of that elite tag.
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