Guild Wars 2

I was very excited by the theme of this, and very let down by the implementation. The Tomes are what drew me, but with the limited pages, long cooldowns, and very single-focus functionality make them practically unusable. The fire tome seems like a fun weapon, but you basically get one run through it and then it’s on CD forever. The heal and buff ones seem nice at those roles, but when you’re in them you can’t be doing anything else. What use is someone who ONLY heals or ONLY buffs in a solo situation?

Here’s my suggestion on how to make the Firebrand viable:

1. Reduce the cooldown on each Tome to around 4s. You should be able to swap them like Ele attunements, so you could activate some buffs, do some damage, heal up a bit, more buffs, more damage, etc.

2. Make it so that the #1 skill burns no pages. You should be able to spam it indefinitely like any other #1 skill (maybe change the Healing and Buffing #1 skills to be minor damage abilities instead).

3. Make it so that all pages are shared between books, and regenerate over time like
Thief Initiative.

There we go, problems solved. This way, you can roll between the three tomes like an Ele would from Fire/Air to Water to Earth, buffing and healing while needed while hopping quickly back to your DPS spec. The free #1 skill give you something you do while you wait for pages to respawn. The regenerating pages allow you to keep using the books constantly, while still limiting your ability to just spam out the strongest attacks.

Make it happen.

The cast time to go into Tomes needs to be instant or at most, 1/4 cast time.

That idea sounds quite nice for the tomes. However, they’re only one of the issues that will probably kill FB if they remain unsolved.

This idea, instant cast or 1/4s cast to enter, and 360 mantras are what are needed for this spec. Anyone thinking otherwise are just getting “WOW’d” by the pretty graphics and not thinking of practical aplication of this spec.

Azoqu.8917:

This idea, instant cast or 1/4s cast to enter, and 360 mantras are what are needed for this spec.

Not enough. The tome cooldowns are ridiculous.

They really need to get this back to the drawing and work on the tomes and traits.

RabbitUp.8294:

Azoqu.8917:

This idea, instant cast or 1/4s cast to enter, and 360 mantras are what are needed for this spec.

Not enough. The tome cooldowns are ridiculous.

Have you actually read the suggestion?

CptAurellian.9537:

RabbitUp.8294:

Azoqu.8917:

This idea, instant cast or 1/4s cast to enter, and 360 mantras are what are needed for this spec.

Not enough. The tome cooldowns are ridiculous.

Have you actually read the suggestion?

Nevermore, I though “this idea” meant azoqu’s own idea, not OP’s.

Tomes are not meant to be Kits!
Tomes are not meant to be Elemental attunements!

We are not meant to slip in and out of them, they are cooldowns we save for emergency situations, pop for big burst, burn through the pages fast, then return to our weapon.

Stop trying to make Tomes something they never were meant to be.

Arnath.2319:

Tomes are not meant to be Kits!
Tomes are not meant to be Elemental attunements!

We are not meant to slip in and out of them, they are cooldowns we save for emergency situations, pop for big burst, burn through the pages fast, then return to our weapon.

Stop trying to make Tomes something they never were meant to be.

You seem convinced, are you in contact with a dev that explained to you what tomes are meant to be?

But let’s entertain the idea, let’s say tomes are indeed panic buttons. What use is there for a panic button that takes 3/4s to cast, that does nothing when it is cast and you have to spent more time casting the skills?

And what about the skills themselves? The only thing close to a panic button across all tomes is the AoE resistance on Courage, when you are getting focused by condi, and the cleanse on Resolve for the same situations.

The bottomline is, both base Virtues and Dh ones are much better panic buttons than tomes.

I think that they’re good as they are.
Yes, reduce they’re cooldown will make them better, but they’re already strong.
Also, they grant us skills that are Seriously Strong.

I tried few sPvP matches and literally Bursted down people in 1v2-1v3. (not always, only one or two times).
Come in battle and active the Big AoE that reflect projectiles grant an incredible effect with the amount of ranged builds like ranger, mesmer and guardian that use projectiles that can be reflected.

If you go in mid, spam two stability witht he new elite and then F1→5-4-2-3-2, you’ll see only downed people all around.

The class have lesser survavibility and lesser istant defensive skills than the Dragonhunter (F3 and F2), but obtain a Huge improvement on the DPS, expecially AoE.

Truning back to the main discussion, Tomes work really good. They’re Strong, grant Strong skills (I already see the F1 Tome to be insanely nerfed in few weeks) and can’t be made spammable.
If skills like that become spammable, you’ll also see an insane amount of Nerf that will make them Totally Useless.

Tomes are Not Attunaments and are Not Kits.
Tomes are Tomes, a really Strong Mechanic that grant us Strong skills.

Maybe the casting time of tomes can be reduced by a little, but we’re able to spam stability and there’s not so much need to make them istant.
Also Mantras need a little casting reduction because in PvE will be totally ignored (you can’t stop 2.5 sec only to spam 4 burn in 3 seconds or clean few conditions).

Tomes need a Different approach than while using Virtues. You have to Plan your move and Prepare yourself to be able to act.
If you do, the result will be Insane.

Playing Firebrand pretty much all day, I have to say I feel a lot better playing Vanilla guard than Firebrand If i actually wanted to support. But I really do like the tomes and Firebrand itself, it just needs a few fixes though.

Imo the fixes that need to happen are
-Lowered Cast times for both swapping into your tomes and and some of the tome skills themselves. They’ve helped me go down more than they actually helped me support and/or survive. Example- getting condi bombed swap to tome of resolve, try to cast the 2 or the 5 for condi cleanse, already dead.

-Mantras- Honestly I think they could use a ranged buff, either further out in a cone 600 range or AoE around you. Burn mantra needs to be 3 burn at least, final charge should be 6-7 burn for 4 seconds.

My two cent for what needs to happen.

Unfortunately I don’t see Arena Net making any last moment adjustments to PoF elite specializations.
Beta doesn’t mean anything, it’s just there for PR and to serve as an advertisement. I guess the most severe bugs will also be fixed.

The way I see it, for the first few months, half a year, Arena Net will stubbornly ignore all feedback and make no changes.

Tomes are not meant to be Kits!
Tomes are not meant to be Elemental attunements!

But they could be.

We are not meant to slip in and out of them, they are cooldowns we save for emergency situations, pop for big burst, burn through the pages fast, then return to our weapon.

But that’s boring.

If Tomes are just for emergencies, then they are too much hassle. Why even bother with them when you can just use vanilla or DH’s “one and done” abilities?

What makes the Firebrand worth bothering with if you can only use any of its options occasionally? Specs like Deadeye, Soulbeast, Scourge, Weaver, Holosmith, etc., say what you will about how they balance out, but at the very least they completely change how each class functions. In its current state, Firebrand really doesn’t add anything cool to the class at all.

If this is what the Firebrand was meant to be, then the devs made a big mistake in the concept phase, and need to rethink what it should be.

I think that they’re good as they are.
Yes, reduce they’re cooldown will make them better, but they’re already strong.
Also, they grant us skills that are Seriously Strong.

If it would be unbalancing for them to allow the skills to be available as often as I propose, then I would prefer they make them weak enough to balance them out, than for them to stay as long CD as they currently are.

One other possible option, which might be interesting, would be to greatly reduce the CD of summoning the tomes, but only allow you to use a single spell per summoning, maybe raised to three with the trait. So basically you could roll from tome to tome pretty freely, but would only be able to do one cool thing with it and then it gets put away. It gives you many options to choose from, but you only get to use one at a time, which could keep it balanced.

I tried few sPvP matches and literally Bursted down people in 1v2-1v3. (not always, only one or two times).

What about PvE roaming? That’s my priority.

The way I see it, for the first few months, half a year, Arena Net will stubbornly ignore all feedback and make no changes.

I have my doubts that they’ll make any huge changes before PoF launches, but I would expect a major balance patch within the first 3-6 months, and I expect the balance devs to be working on these things full time until that happens. If so, getting positive changes out there as early as possible can only help their development process.

I do wish that they’d given players more time to offer feedback on the abilities before launch though.

If you’r problem is PvE what’s your problem about Tomes?
Your main problem should be use the F1 to burst down everything AoE every lot of seconds. And you can do that!

30 seconds of CD reduced to 25 if traited.
Usinf F1 you obtain Insanely Stron Skills that liteally Melt everything in the area (you make also your allies spam Burn!)
Usinf F2 you obtain condi clean and heal (but yes, the skills need a little rework to be more useful in a Support way)
Using F3 you obtain a Permanent AoE that Reflect Projectiles and can spam Stability and Resistance

For the PvP, the DH F3 is better because grant you 3-5 seconds of Block (also for allies in front of you), the F2 grant mobility and the F1 is perfect for the Trap trick.
But in PvE you barely need the F3 if you really find something really big on your way.

In PvE the Firebrand Tomes will be insanely strong if compared to the DH Virtues. I never use that Virtues in PvE but I will literally Abuse of the F1 Tome in every single PvE scenario!

There’s maybe some rework to do in terms of Casting Time of the Tome skills, reducing the casting of tome to 0.25 and some skills may be Istant or have casting time reduced.

A Big problem of that Elite are Mantras. They’re just Bad (at last in sPvP)
The only two I use are Mantra of Lore and Mantra of Liberation. The first because I use it instead of Smite Conditions to clean more conditions than ever. Really useful, istant and the last mantra convert into boons instead of only clean the conditions. The other one because with that Stability I’m able to cast freely my Tome of Justice Combo of skills and melt Everything in the area. If the enemy team eat all the skills there’s not a chance that they survive (unless they can spam Resistance). not even a good condi clean spam can save them to be easly killed.

the other mantras are just Bad, not only in sPvP but even in WvW or PvE.

Waste of design space. Tomes have a massive amount of potential and should have been added as a new weapon class. There are only three caster weapons, available to every caster class off the bat. There is zero design space left for traditional caster specializations and we’re already seeing the inherent design issues with that in this new wave of specs.

I mean they’re giving a class of magical lore keepers a freaking axe, the only weapon they could have give that would have read less as the armament of an intellectual was if they had given us a club to smash people with. Was that not a big fat sign reading “We’re running out of ideas” to anyone else?

The game needed for tomes to be made weapons, not just for current but future content to have sufficient design space, and ANet flubbed it because it was too much work.

In PvE the Firebrand Tomes will be insanely strong if compared to the DH Virtues. I never use that Virtues in PvE but I will literally Abuse of the F1 Tome in every single PvE scenario!

The DH virtues might not be OP (although they are always useful to have), but they are easy, you just press one button and they do their thing. FB virtues, on the other hand, may be more powerful, but take a lot more time to mess with them to pump out all that effect. But since you can’t use them often, it puts them in that annoying middle ground where you can’t use them as often as you like, but when you can use them they’re a hassle to make the most of them, and neither state feels particularly fun.

The strength of the DH wasn’t in the virtues though, it was in the traps, which were awesome. I would take a vanilla Guard with trap access over a DH that can’t use any traps, any day. The mantras, however, are lame, and I don’t particular care about them. I wanted to be a killer librarian, and the FB has the potential to be that, but not in its current form.

Silv.9207:

If you’r problem is PvE what’s your problem about Tomes?
Your main problem should be use the F1 to burst down everything AoE every lot of seconds.

Maybe that fact that Firebrand was supposed to be the support spec for Guardian?

Ohoni.6057:

The strength of the DH wasn’t in the virtues though, it was in the traps, which were awesome. I would take a vanilla Guard with trap access over a DH that can’t use any traps, any day.

I disagree, completely.

The reason why people are currently running burn DH over core burn guard is precisely because of the wicked virtues that the DH gets, not because of the traps. The burn DH build doesn’t use traps, it only uses meditations and consecrations.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Ohoni.6057:

The strength of the DH wasn’t in the virtues though, it was in the traps, which were awesome. I would take a vanilla Guard with trap access over a DH that can’t use any traps, any day.

I disagree, completely.

The reason why people are currently running burn DH over core burn guard is precisely because of the wicked virtues that the DH gets, not because of the traps. The burn DH build doesn’t use traps, it only uses meditations and consecrations.

Shield of Courage is love, Shield of Courage is life (literally).

Shield of Courage is one of the biggest reasons DH can survive in close range.

RabbitUp.8294:

Silv.9207:

If you’r problem is PvE what’s your problem about Tomes?
Your main problem should be use the F1 to burst down everything AoE every lot of seconds.

Maybe that fact that Firebrand was supposed to be the support spec for Guardian?

This, I can’t believe the devs shafted the support-side of guardians again in favour of condition cancer of all things. Clearly they don’t give a kitten about support players, and I’m really tired of it because it’s been that way since the start of the game.

Conncept.7638:

I mean they’re giving a class of magical lore keepers a freaking axe, the only weapon they could have give that would have read less as the armament of an intellectual was if they had given us a club to smash people with. Was that not a big fat sign reading “We’re running out of ideas” to anyone else?

I suppose main-handed foci could have worked, if ANet felt “daring” enough to make an off-hand weapon main-hand that is, but yes I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the axe is ridiculous on this spec.

Main-hand torch would have been? fun.

RabbitUp.8294:

Main-hand torch would have been? fun.

But then ele would have had to become firefighter instead of weaver :P

The irony is that Firebrand is melee oriented support/condi but it cant stay alive soon cause its mantras are cone oriented and 300 range and not even 1 defensive stuff to protect themselves.(elite mantra need protection for 3 sec after every use and 6 sec for final)
I hope they wont nerf DH cause DH is far more superior than Firebrand (healing and blocks).
Firebrand needs total rehaul of tome skills cause Tomes are locked in 4 types of resource=book ammo, huge tome cd, tome cd skills and long cast times. That wont work for melee brawler at all.