Removing the compound damage taken on the guardian shield.

When I play LD as a guardian (often), I often find myself and several others defending a point. As a Guardian, my job should be to protect and heal them so that we can continue to hold the point. But, someone can dash in with a rocket hammer and break my shield instantly, because the damage dealt to everyone in the group that got hit is all taken on the shield at once, shattering it in one hit. What I am proposing is a change to the shield where every attack that hits multiple players within the shield is taken as one hit on the shield. That way a hit that takes out half the shield's health against one person can't instantly break it against two, and a toothpick can't do the same for a group of 4 or 5. Make sense?
<(^_^)>
EDIT AS OF 2/23/13 POST #22:
Idea #2: Separate the Guardian's AoE and self shields. That way, when you get attacked and your shield for protecting your teammates gets broken, you aren't left useless as well. You could argue that Guardian should be sacrificing his own defense in favor of his team's defense, but really, do you think guardian is balanced compared to striker? Do you?
^This idea can be taken by itself or combined with Idea #1.

Also I forgot to add: if 2 guardians have their shields up at once, either only 1 shield takes the hit or each takes half.

I like this idea too it would help people actually try other classes unlike the old striker only thing

+1
Reduced, but not removed.
Also, the sheild should ressist all weapons equaly. Atm It has 25% of each defense, so a regular sword that deals two damages works agianst 50% of your defense, wheras a rocket hammer or flourish work against 25%. Since they work against half as much defence, they are twice as effective. since EVERYONE has a flourish, guardians sheilds are only half as strong as they were meant to be. It needs to just take all damage the same way, as if each attack was normal damage and it only had normal defense. Like how knightbots deal "white" damage.

I don't really agree with this, since it makes multi-hitting a moot point, or just nerf it if there's a guardian present (if we're going with reducing it) If I manage to whack multiple players at once, that's
a) their fault for standing so close (never stand on top of someone)
b) an extra risk for me because I'm vulnerable to that many more people than just one
Also, this makes it possible for multiple guardians to clump together and become essentially invulnerable. It'd be fine if you just restricted the guardian shield to only one defend per hit, prioritizing the guardian first, and allies second based on distance from the guardian.
As for the whole defense thing that orangeo brought up, that's kinda up to what OOO wants to see happen to LD. Personally, I'm fine with there being tactics to breaking guardian shields, but I'm not in charge of LD.

"As for the whole defense thing that orangeo brought up, that's kinda up to what OOO wants to see happen to LD. Personally, I'm fine with there being tactics to breaking guardian shields"
Tactics in lockdown? The only tactic i see is everyone equipping flourish polaris and sklover. not that it's a bad idea, but LD shouldn't be set up so that there's only a few top level loadouts.
The one sheild with ressistance in LD shouldn't be more effective vs one thing than another. Imagine going through the clockworks, and the only shield in the game was skelly.

The tactic in getting rid of guardian shields that I'm referring to is that split damage swords are ineffective, so the game is encouraging using a different weapon. (answering rhetorical questions, yay!).
Also, an alchemer with a high (not exact numeric) damage bonus does damage in the same ballparkwith a high damage bonus toothpick, assuming you're wearing some piercing defense. You also have a status chance, which is a kill if you play it right. RSS does significantly more than a toothpick. Haze bombs are often invisible and form vast untouchable reigons. I'll give you a list of every weapon that works effectively, just to prove this point (I get this way too much):
Toothpicks
Sealeds
Brandish charges (mega hitbox)
Hammers
Winmillion (don't underestimate. It's fast and moves around a lot, but is underused and generally worse than a flourish so no one much cares)
Alchemers
Antiguas
Valiance
..and of course polaris.
RSS/Ionized (but there's not enough of a reason to craft an ionized just for PvP, and if you're spending money you should just be buying CTR anyway)
hazes
...and that's about it. Bombers get the short end of the stick here, sadly.
On to that last thing, this is less of a only-shield-is-skelly thing than a shield that is normal on everything and works especially well on a few things. The issue here is more on the end of the players who are using said weapons, so if you brought only brandishes and sealed swords you're kinda out of luck. Though RSS is about to die for PvP (farewell, PvP bombers - you're now a purely support role), it is currently in the same boat as sealed swords and brandishes. However, said bombers already have a haze bomb that is excellent against guards.

"The tactic in getting rid of guardian shields that I'm referring to is that split damage swords are ineffective, so the game is encouraging using a different weapon."
People are allready going to use single-damage swords though. That's my point. Its a coincidence, not a tactic, and stoormtrooper sklovers don't need any more slack.

If you have multiple weapons, you can use said other one. I'm saying that there aren't actually that many weapons that you can't use as well on guards- there are only three: brandishes, sealeds and RSS. It's not giving toothpicks a bonus, it's giving these a problem. Or if you want to view it the other way, it is giving ALL guns help, as well as hammers, normal damage weapons, status weapons, toothpicks... I think that's it. If you have brought a sealed sword and an RSS you are probably in trouble, but I tell people all the time that a toothpick or hammer (usually) is a better choice.

@Addisond:
-I believe you're solving a problem that you only think exists, or solving one for a small minority. since most people ALREADY use single-damage weapons, there are no "shield-breaking" tactics as the "tactic" is to behave normally. Also SS-line swords break a guardian shield in 2 hits anyway, so that complaint is irrelevant. RSS is only effective crowd control on extremely bunched-up groups of 5 or more, and this change wouldn't effect it anyways since each RSS shard counts as a separate hit. Same goes for haze bombs. Brandishes... once again this doesn't have any effect. if anything it may even them out with the amount of time it takes a toothpick, calibur, or FoV to break a shield. Plus in my experience 5* brandish explosions insta-break guardian shields anyway, whereas if one gets too close the explosions don't go off at all.
-how to beat giant group of guardians: pulsar spam.
~retracting edit made in post#4.
~side note: this whole thing would be less of an issue if swords hit people when it looked like they did, not just everything in their hitbox at once. (maybe.) :P

Lockdown should be left as is so that the P2Pers who do play lockdown are kept in the game as long as possible to fuel development. The rest of development should focus on PvE, and occasionally should introduce new elements to PvP indirectly, but should always favor toothpics+skolver sets so as to cater to the "elite" players of lockdown. The only other option is to fix lockdown, and doing this would go against past decisions- meaning that the developers do not favor this.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying about that, but what I'm saying is that those who ARE using said weapons are forced to not use them. That's sort of a tactic. I don't see the point of this mechanic, but I don't really see a downside. A bit of what you said after that was irrelevant since we had already strayed from the original topic of this thread. I think you mean that a full combo breaks a guardian shield, not two hits (A full combo is very different since it offers a delay that gives your opponent a free hit if they're in range still). And yes, that puslar spam thing works quite nicely CURRENTLY, but if you only hit one person per bullet, your effectiveness is reduced a lot.
Edit: as for what fehzor said, gunners and bombers can also be P2P.

Yes, but the majority of lockdown players that are "elite" use skolver+health trinkets+toothpics, and OOO wants it to stay that way; what I'm trying to say is that the game is supposed to be balanced so that you lose if you aren't using the skolver+HP+trinkets setup. Look at when the devs "broke lockdown" by altering the code regarding hitting multiple times- many people saw it as a good thing, and most of the opposition came from players that were set up with ASI VH toothpics. If the devs are not willing to fix lockdown, which they are not, then they should and will continue on as I said.

It should be reduced like Orangeo said, but the shield health should be increased so it does not go down to a single sword combo or a slew of gun shots.
Off-Topic: Generating money is not a good excuse to keep Lockdown as it is. On the contrary, if Lockdown were balance it would potentially generate even MORE money than it is right now. Reason being is that there would be more players, more styles, more ways to overcome different strategies. People would not have to gear one way: they'd have to gear prepared for many ways, meaning they'd need more highly enhanced gear than just one gear line and a few weapons. Right now, once you get that skolver loadout your set for your lockdown life for eternity. But, what if you had to prepare to combat other things that can match your loadout? You'd want to bring more equipment to adjust to the situations, which means more crafting, more punch rolling, more crowns being taken out of the economy.

i was thinking if there were two shield styles for a guardian. u guys can tell me if this is a good idea or not.
The guardian would have two shield levels.
1st shield level would be very similar to the pve shield style. it would come on quick and only protect the guardian himself/herself for about 2 seconds. the shield would not switch to the lockdown shield/healing style as long as the player is not taking any damage. this shield style would have stronger defense but would not heal the user nor the teammates around him or her.
2nd shield style would be the regular shield/healing. this shield style would be extremely vulnerable, which means one hit from any-weapon would break it. The only difference from the old lockdown shield style is that instead of breaking the shield totally, it would only break the ability to heal. this way it will take some time for the shield ability to heal to come back.
basically my suggestion is to separate the shielding/healing ability of the guardian. i suggest this because currently the guardian shield focuses on all teammates that is in the area of the shield and does not focus enough on the ability for the guardian to protect himself/herself. if there were two ways for the shield to function, the guardian would have more opportunities to guarantee his life over all else and teammates life as a secondary priority.

Since Klipik brought up this thread in an new thread, I'm going to necro it.
The problem here is that it gives a major advantage to a team if they all go guardian and just hold up their shield as one person attacks... See the problem here?
I personally like the way the guardian shield works in LD right now. The higher number of players you're shielding, the higher risk factor.

The way it is right now, you can't actually guard your teammates so much as fight alongside them and heal them afterwards assuming you didn't die before the fight was over. And if you do try to heal/protect even one teammate in a fight, your shield gets broken instantly resulting in:
1) confusion for your teammate who was expecting to be protected and suddenly isn't
2) your shield is broken, now you're probably dead too
See the problem? This way allows you to take AoE hits without the shield breaking instantly.
Also, I just edited the OP with a second idea.

As of right now, the guardian shield absorbs all hits taken within its radius, no?
The shield will only two hits from one attack if the one attacking hits both people at once, no?
Basically, if two people are within the range of my sword, should only one take the damage?

Again, "I personally like the way the guardian shield works in LD right now. The higher number of players you're shielding, the higher risk factor."
It's balanced already, I say leave it as it is.

Except... it's not balanced at all. Guardian can't effectively fulfill the role it's designed for.

Explain.
With your suggestion, all you're doing is making the guardian class less balanced, since one team can just have five guardians protecting one striker, essentially that one team invincible.

+1
I play as guardian all the time and I find my shield bursting in just 1-hit. You're not a good guardian if you can't guard against 1 measly hit from a faust.

I agree with this, maybe adding some more health to the shield would help. Or maybe faster regen, as strikers and recons gain their shield abilities much faster.

@Vlad: You could think of it as the shield creating a protective barrier in front of all knights in hit radius, absorbing the entire swing, shot, or explosion as one hit.
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