Guild Wars 2

1. To understand this Elite Spec better, one important thing to note, the name very poorly describes what this spec does and what it’s designed to do.

The Firebrand is a lot like a Priest from WoW

OR

A lot like Mercy or Lucio from Overwatch.

Get it now? Immediately after seeing those analogies, you instantly get what this spec is about.

If you try to play the Firebrand like Core Guard or Dragonhunter, you are already doing it wrong.

I started out doing this exactly, slotted in radiance a few mantras and shouts thinking I can charge into battle like a Guard/DH…no no no. Very quickly it felt clunky, odd, and out of place. The Tomes/traits and skills available didn’t match the playstyle I thought I could do.

I started playing around with the tomes, switched to Meditation trait to use the tomes more often, used Honor instead of Zeal and went more supportive route. HUGE DIFFERENCE.

I was literally the difference between pug zergs dying, and pug zergs surviving! The Firebrand is a Support Healer Caster in it’s truest form from classic MMO archetypes.

Firebrand’s are Mid-Range, Mid-Line Support. Core Guardians are Front-line support, and DH are straight up long-range to close ranger damage dealers.

All in all, this feels super rewarding if you ever played a Mercy in Overwatch or a WoW Priest, that sense of healing your allies and you bringing in all that HP juice goodness, you will love the firebrand!

Also you will get super kittened when friends and allies don’t rez you are protect you, because guess what, if they don’t, they die too (especially if they are pugs). I got so mad soo many times for teammates ignoring me, until they see the value and whole point of the Firebrand.

Otherwise, an amazingly complex and intricate support/healer spec, with supplementing mid range dmg mix condi/dd. Very nicely done.

2. Feedback and Criticisms
Switching and Activitating the tomes themselves feel very odd and clunky. The 1 second castime to use a tome and to another just doesn’t feel smooth.

Not only that, I see: Archivist of Whispers- Minor Trait and Loremaster – Grandmaster trait MANDATORY, you need to make these baseline. Otherwise the cooldown is way too long and too short of usage for the essential skills to be of any use.

3. Suggestions and Solutions.
Right now, it’s a kitten caster with a kitten core guardian. COMMIT, make a full amazing support caster in all it’s glory. Here’s how.

With the tomes, make it function like Engineer tool kits in terms of toggling and switching/ or Ele attunements. Quick and easy to switch around, will be nice and smooth

“But wouldn’t that be OP? You get to use these skills all the time?”

NOPE! and here’s the catch, you see the cubes right beside the tomes?

MAKE THEM FUNCTION LIKE THIEVES INITIATIVE!!!!! So you have the smoothness and switching of Engineer kits, but make each skill of the tomes recharges be spent and used like Thief initiative skills.

This way, one it’s easier to balance with more control (I.E. how fast the cube pips recharge, and the cost for each tome skill) with the added benefit of feeling smooth to use for the player switching between each tome smoothly. And encourages a playstyle to enjoy the tome usage!

4. Final thoughts

Firebrand is 90% the way there!!! It’s a really good spec, with a lot of intricacies and thought put into it.

I can see this competing with Druid in Raids, and highest Mid line Support in WvW Zergs

Hope this reaches an open-minded dev!!

Solid feedback, you hit the nail on the head and come with some very solid suggestions too boot.

I hope Anet will listen to you because firebrand really needs some reworking and I think your suggestions would be a major step in the right direction.

I gave your post a +1 in the vane hope that it helps.

I’d also like to add that with the idea of firebrand as a mid-line support caster, the mantras really need a rework. They shouldn’t be cones but instead regular AOEs. They also shouldn’t be 300 range but 400 at the very least. 300 cone-shaped range is the default melee range that most melee weapons have, but the game is a lot more lenient and forgiving with melee skills and their hitboxes than the mantra cones.

As said before but I will say it again, the cast times on the mantras also need to be reworked. Almost 3 second cast times to charge up my mantra is just too freakishly long and really takes you out of the flow of combat. I understand that using up all my mantra charges should have a trade-off, but I feel we’re already getting that in the form of a longer cooldown. Adding a long cast time as well is just unnecessary and makes the mantras feel clunky.

I agree with the op. If you play support, you get more out of fb rather than trying to dive right into a point. You function better when you drop heals mid fight, cc mid, drop reflect at mid and spam stability and aegis on your team. You are just a support that can drop mean condi spikes if he decides to use justice.

I also suggest changing mantras to aoe centered on the fb so actually using mantras supportively is actually rewarded. As it stands now i just use mantras to defend myself. Would also be great if we had a mechanic to reduce the cd on tomes so we don’t become too reliant on renewed focus again. Maybe something like a recharge reduction on team mate rez.

Its hard enough dropping circle aoes in pvp, how are we expected to land cones?

OP, I think your suggestion for the tomes + thief initiative makes complete sense. IMO tomes shouldn’t replace your weapon skills, they should replace your utility skills, and you should be able to toggle between all three virtues/tomes to fulfill a different supportive role.

That being said, the firebrand looks amazing, but it feels clunky and has zero identity. It’s a miss mash of too many different things and its trying to juggle all these different mechanics at once, which makes it difficult to play.

At this point in time, so close to release, nothing will change though sadly

This has been beaten to death in other threads. Mantras cannot support due to range issues, so they are more like single target shouts. Tomes are extremely underwillming. Only tome of justice has some uses and does not work well in sPvP.

As a healer, you will be primarily utilizing honor, mace, shield, staff and merciful intervention. FB line does not offer much there and axe offers nothing. It is not a question of wither can Guard support or not, it is what does FB offer to support that role. Not much.

I play bunker/healer in sPvP using valor/honor/DH. Using FB instead of DH is slight increase in support for a nose dive in suvivability and damage.

otto.5684:

I play bunker/healer in sPvP using valor/honor/DH. Using FB instead of DH is slight increase in support for a nose dive in suvivability and damage.

Another problem with FB to add to the list, when taking the “selfish” spec is better for support than taking the support spec.

I greatly agree with the OP on how its support should be played, and realy like the suggestions to the changes in virtues. good suggestions

I’m not a huge Overwatch player, but how do you solo PvE with Mercy?

You lost me with that mid range .. 300 is not mid range. Especially melee attacks.

I don’t see how you can compare extremely mobile FPS characters to a slow moving MMO character.

Lucio and Mercy have disengages and speed boosts.

FB… has nothing.

FB has the potential to be a good support elite but due to its inherent design by having everything on long cooldoens and cast times is going to restrict this elite from being viable in pvp.

I also agree with the OP. I do think mantras need improvement, the cone is not a good mechanic. probably stick to shouts for the time being.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not a huge Overwatch player, but how do you solo PvE with Mercy?

The comparison he was trying to make is that you’re not in the middle of the fight – you’re the backline.

Exedore.6320:

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not a huge Overwatch player, but how do you solo PvE with Mercy?

The comparison he was trying to make is that you’re not in the middle of the fight – you’re the backline.

I thought it was that you are a support healing class now not a “all the dps in your face” class.

Tzozef.9841:

Firebrand’s are Mid-Range, Mid-Line Support. Core Guardians are Front-line support, and DH are straight up long-range to close ranger damage dealers.

All in all, this feels super rewarding if you ever played a Mercy in Overwatch or a WoW Priest, that sense of healing your allies and you bringing in all that HP juice goodness, you will love the firebrand!

Firstly, Firebrands only offer close-range support. Core guardians actually have a lot more strong 900-1200 range support, so that’s not true. Secondly, I’ve played Mercy and the Firebrand is not the same. Mercy has more range, she heals more consistently, and she actually has significant mobility. Firebrands often have to get right next to people to support them. I’m pretty kitten sure WoW Priests also have waaaaaay more range, just from the videos I’ve seen of them in the past, and they also have kits dedicated to support instead of the large part of Firebrand being dedicated to condition cancer.

Exedore.6320:

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not a huge Overwatch player, but how do you solo PvE with Mercy?

The comparison he was trying to make is that you’re not in the middle of the fight – you’re the backline.

How exactly is >600 range “backline”? Old tomes had 1200 range and were backline, new tomes are melee-to-mid range at most.

I love healers and I play them extensively in these kinds of games, and you guys don’t quite seem to be aware in this regard. The firebrand is nowhere even remotely near to being backline.

Tzozef.9841:

Firebrand’s are Mid-Range, Mid-Line Support. Core Guardians are Front-line support, and DH are straight up long-range to close ranger damage dealers.

I wanted to get back to this because upon 2nd inspection this is kitten and makes no sense.

Everything the firebrand does is melee range. not mid-ranged, but close-ranged, melee-ranged.

Heck, I rewatched the developers diary on the PoF elite specs and even the developers literally say that firebrand is supposed to be played at melee range.

But as a melee spec, firebrand is extremely lackluster, it’s bad actually. I hope you agree to that?

The comparison he was trying to make is that you’re not in the middle of the fight – you’re the backline.

Perhaps, but what’s the role of the backline in solo PvE? Who’s the frontline meant to be when nobody else is around?

Tzozef.9841:

Firebrand’s are Mid-Range, Mid-Line Support. Core Guardians are Front-line support, and DH are straight up long-range to close ranger damage dealers.

I wish that was true. The staff is nerfed to 300 range, mace/axe being 130 range, mantra’s 300 cone, tome has no ground targeted heals. How is the Firebrand ever going to be reliably supporting anyone from even close range while players are scattered around in every game mode? Stacking used to be a thing back in the days where players piled up in dungeon corners, pirate shipping was ideal and the PvP meta consisted out of tanky celestial builds. Nowadays we have Social Awkwardness in Fractals, massive AOE condition/cc spam in PvP and for WvW the Firebrand doesn’t really offer anything we already could (stability, heals & condition removal).

All in all, this feels super rewarding if you ever played a Mercy in Overwatch or a WoW Priest, that sense of healing your allies and you bringing in all that HP juice goodness, you will love the firebrand!

To be honest, Druid feels way more like Mercy with their staff and offensive buffs. I suppose you can define the Firebrand as a priest but it distances itself from this archetype as it lacks sufficient access to its support Tomes.

2. Feedback and Criticisms
Switching and Activitating the tomes themselves feel very odd and clunky. The 1 second castime to use a tome and to another just doesn’t feel smooth.

Not only that, I see: Archivist of Whispers- Minor Trait and Loremaster – Grandmaster trait MANDATORY, you need to make these baseline. Otherwise the cooldown is way too long and too short of usage for the essential skills to be of any use.

I agree with your criticism. Especially the two Grandmaster traits other than Loremaster feel lackluster.

3. Suggestions and Solutions.
Right now, it’s a kitten caster with a kitten core guardian. COMMIT, make a full amazing support caster in all it’s glory. Here’s how.

With the tomes, make it function like Engineer tool kits in terms of toggling and switching/ or Ele attunements. Quick and easy to switch around, will be nice and smooth

“But wouldn’t that be OP? You get to use these skills all the time?”

NOPE! and here’s the catch, you see the cubes right beside the tomes?

MAKE THEM FUNCTION LIKE THIEVES INITIATIVE!!!!! So you have the smoothness and switching of Engineer kits, but make each skill of the tomes recharges be spent and used like Thief initiative skills.

This way, one it’s easier to balance with more control (I.E. how fast the cube pips recharge, and the cost for each tome skill) with the added benefit of feeling smooth to use for the player switching between each tome smoothly. And encourages a playstyle to enjoy the tome usage!

That’s how I initially thought the Tomes would work. No cool downs, initiative system. Tomes need to be the main mechanic of the Firebrand but now they feel as if they are a secondary tool.

4. Final thoughts

Firebrand is 90% the way there!!! It’s a really good spec, with a lot of intricacies and thought put into it.

I can see this competing with Druid in Raids, and highest Mid line Support in WvW Zergs.

It lacks offensive buffs to compete with Druid in raids. It doesn’t have any range to be Mid Line in WvW. But I like your suggestions for improvement.