No Guard Thank Guard!

[Krin]

My issue with Guard was the lack of visual cues for both it's up/down state and if Phalanx was available. Sure, you lift your shield when you punch the skill the first time, but the animations (for Midlander at least) would reset to the normal stance after my next ws/auto-attack. Also, you had to guesstimate from damage or constantly read your combat log to see if you triggered Phalanx after that last attack.

Most of my time in Gladiator was spent reading my Combat Log. I want to look at the pretty battle on my screen, not play a MUD.

Honestly, at rank 14 my Gladiator battles reduced to mashing my WS's, and during cool downs randomly mashing Guard/Phalanx just in case. I think if they had put more thought and debugging into the visual cues so it could be done w/out the combat log, it would've been an awesome mechanic.

At least now I just mash Phalanx after every enemy attack. :-P