I spent 700 hours playing shield Bro since early alpha I don't think you understand melee at all in EC, with such claims. JPA is good for certain tasks and farming kills, GA is good in playing tight with squad and farming kills.

Have you seen jump classes in tight spaces light control points (i.e. the Shieldbro's supposed happy place)? They're INCREDIBLY hard to get rid of. They do everything Shieldbros can do but better

You can add me on steam (same nick as here) and we can play duo a skirmish or two - you will see how effective GA can be if played right

Oh, and...

Two main melee schools I've witnessed and participated in: backstab, and bumrush. The Storm Shield is worthless in both of them

I usually main the tactical.
But after loosing 6 games in a row last night and not beeing able to kill anything with him I tried the GA in the 7th match.
Did run him without shield but with power sword and bolt pistol.
Played him like I play the eldar scorpion. Tried to stay out of sight and tried to get behind the enemy line and attack them from behind.
:-D Boy was this fun, killed A LOT more enemys than with the tac.
Ok i died more often than with the tac too but with each of my deaths i took at least 2 or 3 enemys with me.
And I easily got twice the xp i would get with the tac and found the GA to be a more valuable asset to the team than the tac.

The GA with stormshield is a super effective team protector and melee combatant. You can absorb alot of incoming damage from gunfire + melee attacks and prevent enemies from instantly sprinting towards your tacticals and devastators.

The ground assault its more about positioning and taking your time defeating an opponent. As opposed to the JPA or Chaos ground assaults frantic kill or be killed. You 'provoke' a response from the enemy by being up front and in their face, if they dont focus you then you slice into them and quickly drop them, but if they do focus you then theyre wasting valuable time or ammo trying to do something about you.

With a storm shield you can press an advance and push through a corridor or room that would normally be a death sentence to other classes. Or you can help you team fall back against a losing fight to better cover. Or you can grab the attention of the enemy while your teams apothecary revives your fallen teammate from behind your mobile cover. Or you can protect a tactical as he captures a point from both melee or ranged attacks OR grenades even.

Even with a chainsword and some simple mods you can still drop enemies fast and effectively, but you dont have to rush yourself in doing so. You can take advantage of being a constant presence in a fight and look for reckless moves and then go in for the kill.

Well said, us Orks field a lot of shieldboyz to great effect against all factions and we get very confused when we hear LSM players saying that the Stormshield is no good. Ours is worse and we still love it, we even sometimes make coordinated pushes into tough points with legitimate shield walls when the fire is particularly dense.

Yeah even with a weaker shield its still a very effective tool in teamwork. Glad to hear your enjoying it!

That's the point. Even with shield you aren't effective from the front. You play sneaky, you attack form flanks. And it's a way more effective than tactical atm. I envy orks who can cap with shield

Ground assault is awesome. Chainsword, bolt-pistol, artificier power armor, iron halo and you are just unstoppable. I enjoy plaing like that very much.