Guild Wars 2

“The benefits of guardians taking the firebrand are that you’re gonna have a lot more focus support available to you.”
- Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire – Expansion Feature – Elite Specialization video

In the Firebrand introduction video, they talked more about support than they did damage. However, looking at the new skills, I’m concerned that Firebrands are still going to be failures of support, like Guardians have always been. Yes, Guards already have support abilities, and yes, Firebrands add more healing than they previously had, but the old support was very weak and all of the Firebrand healing is on big CDs. Even when traited with the GM trait, the Tome of Resolve still has a 25.5 second CD. When you compare that to Druid CA or Rev Ventari, it’s no competition.

I’m really hoping that there’s something I’m missing about how the tomes and pages work, and/or other older traits have been changed to support healing Firebrands. It would suck to run healing gear and support traits, and only be able to heal for 25% of the time. There’s no value in that. And looking at the base numbers, Firebrands are going to need to run full healing power gear in order to actually put out good numbers.

Am I missing something? Is anyone else having the same concern?

Do the tomes have a duration until you run out? It seems like the cd is only an issue if you use up the 5-8 pages and then have to stow it to get back the pages since as far as i know, the pages do not regen. Your only other option is renewed focus at that point.

I don’t think the tomes have a duration, so that’s true – if you can stow the tomes and pull them back out without a CD, then that would help a lot. But if the pages only replenish when the tome runs out, then you still get the full CD and can’t use the heals for 25.5 seconds. Maybe Renewed focus will be an important part of healing viability to work around that. And that could work since the mantra elite won’t be worth using outside of PvP anyway. But it’s also entirely possible that there’s a mechanic around tome pages that we don’t really know yet.

First of what:
You still have heals from mace and AoE virtue of resolve which have highest pasive heals in the game I think.
Secondly, as a suport you will propably going to use Tome of Couruge on top if resolve, to grant allies some sweet boons and perma quickness.

On top of that you have 2 traits which reduce cooldown of tomes: 33% from GM and 15% from virtues line. That’s almost 50% cooldown reduction (however I think that GM traits does reduce tomes skills cooldown, but not the tome itself. )On top of that you have 33% cooldown reduction from alacricity.
If GM effect indeed affects Tome itself you can go close to 10 sec cooldown with alacricity which is compareablr to druid.
Dont forget about healing symbols though. Its gonna be monster of sustain healing compared to druid which is burst healer.

Think of Firebrand as half Druid half chrono though

That’s very true about the additional CD reduction and the quickness uptime. Hopefully the quickness to allies, and giving allies burning will be able to make up for the lack of the druid damage buff.

And I’m now looking into the combination of the Pure of Heart trait, which heals when Aegis is removed (including on allies) and Invigorated Bulwark. It looks like with the combination of the mantra heal (with Aegis), Aegis from Courage, and block from mace 3, that should be easy enough to stack. So with all of that and full Magi’s ascended gear, Pure of Heart could be potentially healing for around 2k in addition to blocking the attacks due to aegis. Then the passive healing from the mace attack, mace 2 heal, and upgraded Virtue of Resolve on top of all of that…

And you could swap to staff for the might/burst heal, ball detonation, and continue symbol healing, to fill during the tome CD.

Well ok, now I’m getting more optimistic

REKKRAP.1759:

Well ok, now I’m getting more optimistic

I’ve been using a Valor/Honors/Virtue build to heal 100cm the past week, and it is easy to keep people topped off because half of the stuff is blocked. Going Firebrand over Valor would make me lose shield CD and Altruistic Healing (there so I don’t have to worry about myself) as well as losing “Receive the Light!” as a burst heal and VoC stun break. In exchange I would gain way more aegis, even more stun breaks with the elite skill, and more than enough condi cleanse instead of using SYG. Not to mention the quickness and tome skills.

For fractals/open world, Firebrand healing will be great. For raids, it will be debated until we see the whole picture and number crunch everything. WvW and sPvP I don’t do enough to make a comment on.

You do not really need to heal that much because a lot of the damage will be mitigated by Aegis, and by taking Pure of Heart in Honor you’ll also provide a bit of healing in the process, on top fo the one coming from symbols, regen and probably other sources i’m missing.
Big emergency focused heal? We have Receive The Light, but I don’t think there’s room for it on firebrand, looking at how important the mantra heal looks for quickness sharing.

However, the most important thing IMHO is how is firebrand supposed to replace a Druid, which can handle the healing while providing (up to now) exclusive offensive buffs.
Healing + Quickness + Mitigation is pretty much what a minstrel Chrono does, without the alacrity, and that’s not exactly a spec everyone uses.
I actually see more potential for the class as condi DPS + Quickness + Mitigation than as a healer TBH.

The mantra heal probably has such a low heal precisely because the devs noticed that the mantra would proc pure of heart and with healing gear that’s 2k healing x3 on top of the heal from the mantra without taking into account the smiter’s boon trait which adds an additional 2k aprox. Not sure if that’s x3 or just once though.

smiter’s boon+pure of heart+plus base mantra heal x3 would be ridic.

Smiter’s boon has a cool down. You just never see the cool down because it is only 16 seconds which is shorter than all Guardian heals.

Vargamonth.2047:

However, the most important thing IMHO is how is firebrand supposed to replace a Druid, which can handle the healing while providing (up to now) exclusive offensive buffs.

The most important Druid buff is Grace of the Land, because it increases power damage and condi damage, and that buff affects a full raid (up to 10 people). Then Glyph of Empowerment gives 10% more damage, but only to power builds, and only to 5 people. Firebrand can instead buff condi damage. There’s a buff on a 12 second CD on Tome of Justice called Ashes of the Just that buffs allies to apply a 4.5 second burn on each of their next 3 attacks.

I think 1 Druid and 1 Firebrand would compliment each other in a raid. Group the Druid up with the power dps, and the Firebrand with the condi.

I wouldnt be surprised if they nerf glyph of empowerment or grace of the land in some way.

Kuya.6495:

I wouldnt be surprised if they nerf glyph of empowerment or grace of the land in some way.

I’d be happy about that. IMO the lack of offensive buffing is the biggest reason why nobody plays Ele or Rev healers. A nerf to that would finally make support roles balanced between classes. And that would put Firebrand healing in a much more competitive place.

They could also just give firebrand, tempest and ventari their own special buffs. Maybe give firebrand a physical damage reduction buff, limit grace of the land to physical dps, give tempest condi dps buff, and give ventari some condi damage reduction buff.

Kuya.6495:

They could also just give firebrand, tempest and ventari their own special buffs. Maybe give firebrand a physical damage reduction buff, limit grace of the land to physical dps, give tempest condi dps buff, and give ventari some condi damage reduction buff.

I like this idea a lot. It goes back to pre release rhetoric about all classes feeling really powerful instead of just balanced.

Kuya.6495:

They could also just give firebrand, tempest and ventari their own special buffs.

There is a trait that when applying quickness, you also give 2 stacks of the new buff that applies burning to attacks. So Firebrand does have a unique buff, but it really only affects condi builds in a good way.

Azoqu.8917:

Kuya.6495:

They could also just give firebrand, tempest and ventari their own special buffs.

There is a trait that when applying quickness, you also give 2 stacks of the new buff that applies burning to attacks. So Firebrand does have a unique buff, but it really only affects condi builds in a good way.

That’s not a buff. Unless you think Venom thief is a support class.