Now, its obvious that firebrand is guard’s condi spec and that most of your power is centered around the tomes, but I feel like the following things are lacking.
1- Axe is incredibly lack luster. Guard is the second most immobile class in the game (necro being slowest, although I’m guessing scourge will quickly change that). A slow weapon with poor damage (bleed duration is hilariously low). There’s also the point that it is purely melee on a class that, without JI, quite literally has no mobility in that weapon setup. Pairing axe with torch is incredibly damage oriented (even though axe itself is a poor damage choice), focus does nothing to alleviate the missing mobility, and shield actually has an ability to PUSH people away from you, which only exacerbates the clear weaknesses of the weapon.
You can perhaps make a case that the axe trait that applies daze would pair nicely with the pull (although both abilities are rather slow), but the axe trait is competing with the tome trait that gives you more pages (charges to cast tome abilities with, if you haven’t tried it yet). The reason why this is important will be made apparent in a moment. To be honest, I think the axe trait should just be made baseline and something else like applying quickness 2s every time you get past something like 3 stacks of burn with an ICD of 10s would be better in that slot.
2- The tomes. They’re much stronger than the rest of the profession skills you get on core and DH (DH’s being debatable, tbh) and even moreso when you take the adept and the master tier traits that buff the books. Due to the strength, for instance, of the burn you get from the justice tome, the passive burn application outside of the tome has been made almost non-existent. It is almost a waste of potential to try to do any kind of damage outside of the tome and it feels like you’re better off simply attempting to survive until you can whip the book out again.
I feel like if you’re going to lock so much of the FB’s power behind the tomes, we need some ways to interact with the way its CD functions.
For instance: Make the books function like engineer kits (also meaning no cast time to pull them out) and have the pages function like a thief’s initiative. Have all the abilities cost “x amount of pages” (you could thematically tie that in by saying the greater the story, the longer the passages or something like this, which would add further value to the trait that grants more pages). Also, the cast times for alot of the abilities look nice, but they need to be sped up. The higher you climb in PvP and the better your opponents, the more every second of the fight counts. Thief and Spellbreaker now have 101 openings to screw you since your cast times are so long and elaborate.
The animations are good for roleplaying and dancing, but not so much for fighting.
3- Aside from mantra of truth, I couldn’t make a single argument as to why I would want any of the other mantras. The reason being is that at least mantra of truth grants you quite a bit of cover conditions, + the utility of being able to just soft-cc a target at will. If I’m building any kind of damage oriented build (which is what most guardian specs are), I’d rather have litany over anything else, with shelter coming in a somewhat distant second.
They lock so much power behind the use of the tomes, meaning renewed focus is even more valuable than ever before (even though having an elite give you a minimum of 3 stun breakers and a ton of stab is pretty nice).
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like the mantra trait is bugged, although that doesn’t entirely matter due to the fact that it is also competing with a super powerful trait that further enhances your tomes.
tl;dr:
Too much power locked behind tomes, tomes too clunky and restricted due to immense CDs (90s on courage, if I’m not mistaken) and cast times, and profession weapon is simply too slow and short ranged for a class with no mobility.