Guild Wars 2

I cannot find one for the life of me. I don’t just mean searching forums, online, etc, I mean after altering, messing around, trying tank support dps and condi…. I just cannot find anything that doesn’t get utterly rolled by even bad players and builds. Nothing in firebrand makes sense or works better then DH even for tanking…. Symbolic is just better for that. I am a very experienced guard with over 12k games played as only guard. I have made legendary every season and during the entire first year of HOT, guard was borderline the worst class in the game….. No one entered guards in weeklies and ESL. It was total crap at hi level. Just like how traps never were a serious pvp build with any class before conception of DH….. long cast times and quickness burst were never anything that has done good in pvp prior to Firebrand. I feel firebrand is extremely weak, uninspired, and just very poorly designed. It is utterly baffling really why they would think 1 sec + cast times would ever work with quickness when boons get ripped on the regular in pvp. I was so looking forward to playing a new build, something that we wouldn’t be forced to play in pvp. Firebrand unless totally redesigned, will never even come close to working at any level in pvp the way it feels currently…. This is crushingly dissapointing…. I had faith in anet as I truly do love them….. but seeing the other classes pull off 15k one shots and have massively strong builds (most of them), I truly do not believe anet will even be capable of balancing this correctly, especially after experiencing the first year of HOT. I know I could be missing something and I plan to give it more time, but after being such a die hard fan of pvp for so long…. this honestly feels like a good time to give it up… I just really thought anet would have learned there lesson from HOT…. these builds are all a mess and just so confusing as a hardcore pvp player. I am not going to even ask/beg anet to make changes because no matter what, the pvp will most likely never be fun like it was preHOT as the competency of this unfortunate demo/expansion fundamentally shows. Please prove me wrong. I want to be wrong.

I came up with this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAs/+E1DxmhABRYMQU5fYBfQbAMtrJA-T5gAQBAa/BAcSAkYZAA

the empty weaponslot is axe, healing is mantra and last utility is the mantra that removes condis.

For the Firebrand Traitline: all the bottom traits:
1. Archivist of Whisperes: More pages= More burn, healing, stability
2. Legendary Lore: This trait is freaking awesome imo. it gives you one more stack of burning on every tome skill( for example: this increases the burning dmg on skill 2: to 11k burning). It also gives you one block everytime you use a skill of tome of courage.
3. Loremaster: beeing able to keep justices passiv is one of the biggest aspects of this build..Without it the dmg wouldn´t be nearly as high as it is.

On the first look this build seems to be pretty weird. But it really kicks kitten The “Secret” is the Rune of the Mad King if you use ur elite it will summon a couple of birds that repeatedly attack your foe ( even after he blocks, evades or stealths). Combining this with the virtues passive ( every 3rd attack a flame explosion ) this skill alone can create up to 6 stacks of burning. While the birds attack your foes ( not only one ) you are able to use some defensive skills like sanctuary, tome of courage or tome of resolve.

For Example: When i notice my health starts to go down or i´m under pressure i pop feel my rath ( usually all enemies start dodge rolling because they see birds repeatedly attackingthem), switch into tome of courage give myself stability, resistance, to tome of resolve and start healing ( u willhave quickness between the whole rotation duie to feel my wrath and and the firebrand traitline). At the same time i preassure my enemy even more with puring flames.

When it comes to attack rotations i usually try to waste the enemies condi cleanse with torch and axe then switching into tome of justice : 3-2-4-1-1-2-3-2/4 doe to the constant burning and bleeding ur enemy will die.

About sanctuary: you can also go with sth if you want ( e.g: if i see 2 necros in the enemy team i switch to sth with more condi cleanse

For references: i´m on 480.000 dmg and 400.000 healing average.

Thanks for the feedback, I will work with that.

Same happened to me, Im so dissapointed that my favorite class is the kittentiest of all the new specs, so Im using meditations for condi clean and consagrations to balance the burn skills of the Firebrand.

After playing with my DH, against the same team….. I am thoroughly convinced Firebrand is significantly weaker in every regard in an extremely obvious nature then Dragon Hunter. If I had to suggest what needs to be fixed I would literally say just look at anything…. Maybe its amazing in pve or there is some ridiculous build I am just not seeing but it barely feels half as effective as DH….. It is obviously the ridiculously long cast times and the amount of times you get interupted out of life or death abilities… On top of the fact that your buffs and attacks have a ridiculously small range…. and absolutely no new mobility options for a class that was in desperate need of it…. It is honestly confusing and a total waste of a spec in pvp currently with a total rehaul needed to make it even close to competitive. I honestly believe vanilla guard is stronger. Again, I will totally be glad to take every word back if I am proven wrong. I know Anet tries hard and wants to make us all happy…. I just honestly do not understand why such obviously poor design choices were made with this specialization. The difference in balance in some of these professions with barely a month away from launch is utterly frightening.

In a fight when I am DH, say I get targeted by the team… I can shield of courage or dodge roll and use frag of faith if im honor symbolic….. drop my heal trap get most my life back… use the traps and F1 to control space/dps….. Here I run into a grp with my team vs their team…. they target me…. if i can even get f3 off, i then hope that the barrage of attacks and condis can be fended off by long ass cast times that ya… it can work and i can stay up… doing no damge …. same with f2….. but if they run out or you are interupted after you blow renewed focus…. against a good team in legend, you are dead. The only way to get swiftness is with runes or shouts also…. forcing more sacrafice for a mobility heavy meta. There is simply no way to stay up with FB, even tho the damage is there if you spec into it, the suitability is just horrid.

A big part of the problem is that virtues doesnt work as good as it could with this tree. Renewed focus not renewing the virtues, and indomidable courage trait not giving stab on F3 is a huge problem as well and if that was changed… it would make sense and help… but still no where near competitive.