Guild Wars 2

Lets make a constructive thread discussion how tomes could be improved.

Here’s my opinion.

• All Tomes take 1/2 second to cast.
• Tomes have no cooldown.
• Pages are shared between all tomes – by default you get 5, traited 8 – if you use tome skill #1 you lose 1 page, if you switch to other tome, you still have 4 pages.
• Tome skill #1 – 1 page, Tome skill #2 – 2 pages, Tome skill #3 – 3 pages, etc.
• Tome pages regen – 1 page in 1 second.

Increase the range and/or make the skills ground targeted and I think they’d be fine.

Making them use a more initiative-like system as you suggest would be good too though.

Make tomes like kits and pages like initiative. Make em all share pages and cut down the cast time for a lot of the abilities. Add page cost to all abilities, varying with strength, make the autoattack cost nothing but rework the effect (more range, less impact).

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:

• You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
• When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 0.5s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
• Skill #1 cost no pages.
• You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Remove stability from #1 of Tome of Courage and add a small amount of barrier.

Rework Legendary Lore: Now applies an effect around you when you equip a Tome
Justice: Burn foes around you
Resolve: Apply regeneration to nearby allies
Courage: Apply aegis to nearby allies

I think all these solitions would overpower tomes…

To make the tomes more usefull, an easy way would be to make recharge time based on the numbers of tomes spend.. so if you use 3 tomes of a total of 8, the recharge time of that tome would be 3/8 * 20 secs = 7.5 secconds ( tome of justice with recharge time reduction).
Its sad that with the current recharge time mechanic you are like forced to spend all chapters or you would end sub optimal, this mechanic would make switching between tomes much more fun, and add more depth to the decisions made, while not overpowering the Virtues.

To be honest its mostly fine, just remove cast time on them.
Give resolve tome better healing power scaling
Fix all bugs from traits and RF
Allow us to stow tome while using RF so we can get the recharge and not cancel RF.

The cone problem needs to addressed along with mantras by either making them PBAOE or increasing cone size.

edit: i dont care much for the pages into initiative idea.

RabbitUp.8294:

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:

• You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
• When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 0.5s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
• Skill #1 cost no pages.
• You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Remove stability from #1 of Tome of Courage and add a small amount of barrier.

Rework Legendary Lore: Now applies an effect around you when you equip a Tome
Justice: Burn foes around you
Resolve: Apply regeneration to nearby allies
Courage: Apply aegis to nearby allies

It doesn’t ACTUALLY have to interact with the traits that reduce virtue CD (you could alternatively add a clause that converts virtue CD to tome ability CD).

Also, I think that it’d be smoother to allow you to recover pages faster when out of combat, like every other resource in the game (like HP and initiative).

I’m not sure about the specific numbers but the suggestions provided in the OP are generally what I’ve been telling people too. Treat tomes more like kits with Pages as an ammunition/initiative/energy system that gates the skills rather than hard cooldowns.

While talking about Firebrand in the stream the other day they mentioned how bad it felt when you had half a mantra and had to decide whether to waste it to put it on cooldown or go into a fight with only half the skill still usable. Tomes have that exact same problem right now.

I think a more fluid system like that would also make healer tome a LOT better. Healing for a ton every 45s then having no healing at all just doesn’t work very well IMHO and it’ll generally just lead to the tome being ignored unless you don’t have anything else to do.

1.Reduce the cast times of the tomes
2. delete the button on “f” that allows you to switch back to weapon ( if you are stuck and spam the button,most of the times u switch out by accident)
3. Ad sth. like druids staff heal where he kinda teleports towards a location and heals nearby allies in that area.
4. Increase the overall healing of the resolve tomes skills ( most of the time its not worth it to switch into them)
5. Increase the resistance duration on tome of courage
6.Increase the range of axe to 300 like any other melee range weapon

SlayerSixx.5763:

RabbitUp.8294:

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:

• You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
• When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 0.5s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
• Skill #1 cost no pages.
• You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Remove stability from #1 of Tome of Courage and add a small amount of barrier.

Rework Legendary Lore: Now applies an effect around you when you equip a Tome
Justice: Burn foes around you
Resolve: Apply regeneration to nearby allies
Courage: Apply aegis to nearby allies

It doesn’t ACTUALLY have to interact with the traits that reduce virtue CD (you could alternatively add a clause that converts virtue CD to tome ability CD).

Also, I think that it’d be smoother to allow you to recover pages faster when out of combat, like every other resource in the game (like HP and initiative).

The cd reduction trait is not the problem, the problem is with other traits, like blind on F1, condi cleanse on F2 and stun break and stability on F3. Those have no internal cooldowns, so you would be able to spam them. And other traits that give boon on virtue activation, you would get permanent protection, regen, retaliation without any cooldowns.

Nick.6972:

Lets make a constructive thread discussion how tomes could be improved.

Here’s my opinion.

• All Tomes take 1/2 second to cast.
• Tomes have no cooldown.
• Pages are shared between all tomes – by default you get 5, traited 8 – if you use tome skill #1 you lose 1 page, if you switch to other tome, you still have 4 pages.
• Tome skill #1 – 1 page, Tome skill #2 – 2 pages, Tome skill #3 – 3 pages, etc.
• Tome pages regen – 1 page in 1 second.

I agree with your suggestion purely as someone who has spend many hours playing supportive roles in fractals, raids & WvW.

The problem with the current version of tomes is that it’s mostly going to be a DPS spec with the ability to provide quickness. Firebrand can do decent DPS by using the tome (of justice) every once in a while to do a DPS burst. While the tome is down the Firebrand can fill the downtime gap with DPS from weapon and utility skills.

However, when it comes to fulfill the role of main support it becomes more complicated. Too much downtime means that the Firebrand won’t be able to reliably assist someone when they need heals/defensive abilities. For example, the Druid is able to fully heal a party in Celestial Avatar (CA) by using #3 & #4. During the short downtime of CA the Druid still has the ability to heal others by using glyphs and staff #5+#3 or staff auto-attack. This is where I think Firebrand is somewhat limited:

1. The downtime of Tome of Resolve is at best 32 seconds. That means the guardian needs to fill a huge gap with other supportive abilities. The Firebrand will have to rely on Mace+Focus & Staff with the mantra heal and signet heal elite as gap fillers. The Firebrand’s weapons are nowhere near as close to being useful as the Druid’s staff & warhorn for active support. Mainly because it doesn’t provide a lot of active healing. Staff #4 Might negatively interferes with that of the PS Warrior and mace heals can only be applied on the enemy target.

2. The positioning is too stiff. The tome does not have any targeted heals like Druid has on CA #3 and staff #3 to quickly aide someone. It will become rather useless in most end-game situations such as fractals (where you get punished with social awkwardness if you stand too close to each other) or in WvW (where people are way too spread out). So it would be at least nice to make Tome of Resolve’s #1 Desert Bloom & #4 Shining River a ground targeted AOE.

3. Lack of protection on Tomes. I was kind of hoping we would at least be able to provide permanent protection other than spamming Hammer auto-attack. Only protection is given by activating Tome of Courage and #5. Why not put protection on Tome of Resolve’s #3 Azure Sun? This tome skill seems rather underwhelming.

4. The best defense is a good offense. Druids provide the party with insane damage buffs from spotter, spirits and GotL. This is going to be very hard for the Firebrand to replace. As of late, sharing buffs are going in the right direction. We can now share signets to teammates (albeit somewhat weak) and Quickfire trait might be the Firebrand’s equivalent of the Druid’s Grace of the Land. The tome skills kinda lack unique buffs right now. None of the tome skills make me really excited.

I think all these solitions would overpower tomes…

If the solutions overpower the tomes with their current abilities, then I would rather the current abilities be toned down, or individual CDs on some of them increased, or whatever balancing needs to take place to balance them with shorter overall Tome CDs. I cannot enjoy their current form.

RabbitUp.8294:

SlayerSixx.5763:

RabbitUp.8294:

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:

• You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
• When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 0.5s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
• Skill #1 cost no pages.
• You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Remove stability from #1 of Tome of Courage and add a small amount of barrier.

Rework Legendary Lore: Now applies an effect around you when you equip a Tome
Justice: Burn foes around you
Resolve: Apply regeneration to nearby allies
Courage: Apply aegis to nearby allies

It doesn’t ACTUALLY have to interact with the traits that reduce virtue CD (you could alternatively add a clause that converts virtue CD to tome ability CD).

Also, I think that it’d be smoother to allow you to recover pages faster when out of combat, like every other resource in the game (like HP and initiative).

The cd reduction trait is not the problem, the problem is with other traits, like blind on F1, condi cleanse on F2 and stun break and stability on F3. Those have no internal cooldowns, so you would be able to spam them. And other traits that give boon on virtue activation, you would get permanent protection, regen, retaliation without any cooldowns.

Fair. I’m sure they could work around that as well, but at this point it’s probably asking them for too much.

It was a bad idea to turn virtues into tomes, honestly.

It would have been so much simpler to turn virtues to Ele-like attunements, and add a seperate F4 button that’s a tome based on your current attunement.

So, the tome itself will be freely accesible, and all traits and cooldowns are tied to the attunements.

Nick.6972:

Lets make a constructive thread discussion how tomes could be improved.

Here’s my opinion.

• All Tomes take 1/2 second to cast.
• Tomes have no cooldown.
• Pages are shared between all tomes – by default you get 5, traited 8 – if you use tome skill #1 you lose 1 page, if you switch to other tome, you still have 4 pages.
• Tome skill #1 – 1 page, Tome skill #2 – 2 pages, Tome skill #3 – 3 pages, etc.
• Tome pages regen – 1 page in 1 second.

No, no, no no no no that would just make it worse. Your idea would ultimately restrict the tomes even more.

This is what we need:

- Tomes should have no activation time. You press F1, F2 or F3 and you’ll immediately have your tome ready to go, just like druid’s celestial avatar, necromancer’s shroud and engineer’s kits.

- Tomes should have a 15 seconds cooldown at most, similar to druid’s celestial avatar in PvP. Someone suggested a 10 seconds cooldown like necro shroud and I also saw someone suggest 4 seconds cooldown like elementalist attunement swapping. I’d be fine with that too though it might turn out to be a little bit too OP. So lets start with 15 sec cooldowns and see how that works out.

- I’m fine with the idea of different tome skills using up different amounts of pages, like thief’s initiative basically, but in that case we’d need to have a significant buff to the amount of pages we get. Baseline should be 10 pages and traited should be 15.

Pretty much the only thing for me to suggest for fluidity sake would be to reduce the cast time to either 1/4s or 1/2s as well as the tome skills themselves and some after casts. That is mostly my gripe with Tomes. Mantras need a bigger range or to make it a PbAoE around yourself.

I like the OP’s fixes. All of them.

Nothing extra to add.

The fact that there is no refunding on pages not used cripples it if the system remains the same way it is. The defensive books often require you to quick put it away so the enemy isn’t smacking you in the face without repercussion, so waiting the extra long CD times to get back to your support is crippling. Making the tomes more target based would be much better though. The 5’s range are huge and pretty good, but the others make it so you stand behind your team to make use of them, yet you are a melee spec so it creates a problem.

The tomes either need to be less specialized or they need to not go on cooldown when stowed.

Yeah, the current design makes the tomes distinct from engineer kits, but it does so by making them a lot worse than engineer kits. You feel like you really ought to spend all the pages before stowing the tome since it will go on full cooldown anyway, but each tome is highly specialized so that’s really difficult to do.

I pop open my Tome of Courage and I can get stability, resistance and a projectile reflect, but I can’t even autoattack. So I just kind of run around doing nothing in between applying stability every few seconds until I’ve used all the pages, and then the tome is on cooldown for over a minute. This just feels so much worse than playing the base guardian profession and using the Virtues grandmaster trait to make my Virtue of Courage apply stability instantly on activation while I keep fighting.

Same problem with the Tome of Resolve. I pop it open and I’ve got 4 healing skills and one skill that applies vigor and swiftness. I almost cannot do anything but heal until I either run out of pages or just stow the tome and waste any unspent pages so I can get my weapon back out. It’s more powerful than the basic Virtue of Resolve, but it’s just so clumsy to use.

I really think the tomes need to just work like engineer kits. Let the firebrand open and close them at will with no cooldown, and gate the skills with individual cooldowns. If they wan to keep the pages mechanic, have a pool of them that regenerates over time like the mantra charges.

Right now I just don’t really like the tome mechanics. I want those overhauled before we even start talking about the problems with some of the tome skills.

The more I play Firebrand the more I think Tomes should basically be Kits, no activation time, no pages, with eventually ammunitions for some skills, higher cooldown for tome skills, and no cooldown for tomes themselves.

The first Chapters (Searing Spell, Desert Bloom, and Unflinching Charge) would have ammunitions for a purely balance purpose, while the other skills would get higher cooldown.

Virtues passives are heavily affected by those changes, each one of them would go down when using a tome and would remain down few seconds after leaving the tome, Justice would go down for 20 seconds, Resolve for 35 seconds, and Courage for 75 seconds, using a tome during this time would freeze the cooldown but not reset it, visually when your passives are down you’d see a similar cooldown as the ammunition cooldown. The Loremaster traits would allow in return to retain the passives outside of the use of tomes.

[I can also see how Tomes might be too strong if they’re basically Kits, therefore I can also see them having low cooldown similar to Attunement, which would look like something like this: Justice 8 seconds, Resolve 12 seconds, Courage 15 seconds. This change also allows for Power of the Virtuous (Virtues trait line) to be useful as it’d reduce the cooldown on tomes.]

Mantras oriented towards support should be AoE, otherwise they’ll be useless in sPvP and awkward to use in PvE/WvW, with rather good range. However mantras oriented towards the offense such as Mantra of Flame should remain cones, but their angle and range should be slightly buffed.

i) CD wont trigger unless all pages of a tome all used up. Even if tomes are swapped out.
ii) pages of a tome regenerate over time, just like mantra , when that tome is active.
iii) tomes recharges should be 15 , 30, 60 for each one.
iv) cone range to 600.

1. Make tomes instant
2. leave Justice as it is , its fine.
3. Buff healing in skill 1 and 2 in ToR.
4. Add a damage component in skill 1 in ToR
5. Rework skill 3 and add in the swiftness it gives in to skill 4 in ToR.
6. Add a damage component to skill 1 in ToC.
7. Remove all kinds of CD:s on the tomes so we can change book according to situation. If this is done i think both ToC and ToR just needs minor tweaks. If you keep the current system with long cd:s you need to buff both ToR and ToC by a lot.

8. Just let the “pages” be for all tome-skills. 7 pages untraited, 12 pages traited and add in traits for gaining/recover pages. Like “Gain a page when swapping to an other Tome”

I’d like to see a version of tomes that just adds the tome’s effects on top of your current weapon instead of replacing it. If you did that, I think you could leave the cast times as is, but be able to switch to a burn/heal/whatever on an as needed basis, with the trade-off that you’ll be tearing some pages out for the weapon skill alone, not really getting the tome bonus.

Two options:

The first is keeping the 5 pages, skill recharges* (Skill 1 gains a 2s recharge), and all that the same. However, once you leave the tome, the tome cooldown is the sum of all the skills you used while inside the tome. If you want to use Shining River 5 times (Resolve 4), you’re looking at a 50s cooldown. If you use Justice 2(4s), 4(10s), 5(12s), 1(2s), 1(2s); your cooldown is 30s.
Renewed Justice could be changed to reduce recharge by 5s per kill, or reduce by 50% per kill. Courageous Return shouldn’t need to be changed.

The second is a tweak of Rabbit Up’s

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:
You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 3s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
Skill #1 cost no pages.
Skills #2-5 cost 2-5 pages respectively
You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Loremaster would reduce the page gain time by 33%, down to 1 per 2 seconds.

In regards to tomes with no cds and associated traits, a small icd (5-15s depending on trait) could be applied to those so that you could still get benefits frequently, but not be totally abused by tomes.

Add in the same amount of healing an engie can get while leaving Photon Forge but make it a burst when swapping, this could justify the casting time on tomes. Remember that Photon Forge is instant.

“When entering or leaving a Tome you gain quickness and heal allies in a 600 range for X amount”

This would also add to some of the lackluster skills in ToR.

Btw holosmith was hysterical compared to the old engie, super fun. Great design even though OP as hell atm.

-Activating tomes instant or at least 1/4s
-Reducing the cooldown of the tomes like F1 25s, F2 30s, F3 40s.
-Also buffing the healing output with ToR would be nice to see. #5 and spammimg #1 heals not as much as many auto attacks. As anet switched away last year from bunker builds to more damage you also need some burst heals.
-Some traits need little buffs as the only possible way to play FB right now is 3-3-3. Everything else is stupid. Even if your minor traits say you need quickness.
-Change or add ways to gain quickness as the FB depends on this boon far more than any other class.
-Without reliable sources of swiftness the axe’s range is far too short and needs to be at 200+. Even the animation hints to that.
-Last, the support mantras need to go 360° and the offense ones 180° or a bigger range.

I started with tomes but the rest needed to be said by me.

We need F4, tome of saving. Activating this tome you blow yourself up while healing to full 10 allies, giving them all boons for 10 sec. This should be usefull and great tome.

Why not remove cd on all skills so they are only gated by the pages. And rework the trait that reduce cd on skills with 33% instead reduce cd on virtues with 33%.

Ofc balance some skills in Justice would be neccessary but it would do a ton of good for resolve and courage. The balance could be done by the amount of pages they use.

What I’d like:

• Overall CDs slightly reduced
• Traits that recharge Virtues should at least reduce the CD of Tomes when triggered.
• Stowing Tomes reduces the recharge by 5-10% per spare page by default.
• The AA should not cost a page or pages have to slowly regenerate.
• Increase the healing coefficients of F2 – not the base healing.

Those would be huge quality of life changes from my point of view which don’t include reworking the whole mechanic.

All the arguing about range on Tomes and Mantras: It’s a design choice, really. Saying those don’t work att all is like saying Shield #4 has no application in the game. It just isn’t true. And as others said: Making Mantras AoE or too long ranged would harm Shouts. The effects are just fine and some are pretty powerful.

Firebrand obviously wasn’t designed to be a full range caster – even though it would have fit the theme of Tomes, no debate there – nor to be the one leading the charge. It is best somewhere inbetween. You either like it or you don’t.

Xaylin.1860:

All the arguing about range on Tomes and Mantras: It’s a design choice, really. Saying those don’t work att all is like saying Shield #4 has no application in the game. It just isn’t true. And as others said: Making Mantras AoE or too long ranged would harm Shouts. The effects are just fine and some are pretty powerful.

Shield #4 has 600 range and is a wider cone, Mantras are 300. I don’t see the point of your argument, if mantras had the same hitbox as shield #4 they would be fine, but they don’t, they are half that.

Firebrand obviously wasn’t designed to be a full range caster – even though it would have fit the theme of Tomes, no debate there – nor to be the one leading the charge. It is best somewhere inbetween. You either like it or you don’t.

It’s not mid-range either, it’s full melee range with no defences or mobility. And they are not rewarded in any way for putting themselves at risk.

Xaylin.1860:

All the arguing about range on Tomes and Mantras: It’s a design choice, really. Saying those don’t work att all is like saying Shield #4 has no application in the game. It just isn’t true. And as others said: Making Mantras AoE or too long ranged would harm Shouts. The effects are just fine and some are pretty powerful.

Firebrand obviously wasn’t designed to be a full range caster – even though it would have fit the theme of Tomes, no debate there – nor to be the one leading the charge. It is best somewhere inbetween. You either like it or you don’t.

Axe is 130 range so the only teammates you hit are dagger players when they stack in you. Every other meele is behind you.
So you need to turn around or attack the enemy from the back lonely.

RabbitUp.8294:

Shield #4 has 600 range and is a wider cone, Mantras are 300. I don’t see the point of your argument, if mantras had the same hitbox as shield #4 they would be fine, but they don’t, they are half that.

Sure, the range is different, I’ll give you that. But people are complaining about ‘I have to turn around, that’s just not right!’ just as much. That’s just silly. The mechanic is the same.

RabbitUp.8294:

It’s not mid-range either, it’s full melee range with no defences or mobility. And they are not rewarded in any way for putting themselves at risk.

Maybe I wasn’t clear here. I was talking about playing in a mid-range position. Not about mid-range range. If that makes sense? Playing mid-range doesn’t necessarily mean all your skills have to be 450 – 600 range. You can drop in and out. Even without blinks if it’s not an A chases B situation. By foot.

The mobility of Firebrands is brought up quite frequently and I really don’t get it. You – I think it was you – made a very reasonable post showing off the subpar healing values for F2. Let’s do the same for mobility. Firebrand vs. Core Guardian: No difference. Firebrand vs. DH: Wings of Resolve. That’s it!

If you feel you lack mobility, take Meditations and/or Sword.

I did like the suggestion I read somewhere about giving Mantra of Flame a short Blink, though. Not 600 or longer, mind you. But 450 range could work. The Flame Burst just feels like a second offensive vehicle to transport the Immobilze provided by the Mantra trait.

Alteran.9510:

Axe is 130 range so the only teammates you hit are dagger players when they stack in you. Every other meele is behind you.
So you need to turn around or attack the enemy from the back lonely.

Almost all melee weapons are at 130 range. People make it sound like this is an unbearable situation on frequent occasions (on all classes) but it never kept melee weapons from being relevant. Using a melee weapon doesn’t automatically mean you are the first in line in large scale. And in small scale it doesn’t mean you can’t turn around or about face.

If you don’t like the Axe or feel it is undertuned, fair point. There might have to be adjustments. But good news for you: It is not the only weapon a Firebrand has access to. It’s the same on the Warrior forum where people get stuck on not liking Daggers while neglecting all the other weapons they already got.

Xaylin.1860:

The mobility of Firebrands is brought up quite frequently and I really don’t get it. You – I think it was you – made a very reasonable post showing off the subpar healing values for F2. Let’s do the same for mobility. Firebrand vs. Core Guardian: No difference. Firebrand vs. DH: Wings of Resolve. That’s it!

There’s a huge range difference, especially with DH. DH gives access to our only 1200 range weapon, and F1 is another tool to help you keep your opponent in range. The utilities also are a lot more impactful and you can lure others into them, instead of having to chase them.

Guardian was already a profession with limited mobility, and they dropped a purely melee spec on top of that, without any compensation.

And I have to wonder, if I’m being forced to stay in melee range despite the devs making sure I am given no tools to help me do that, what’s my reward? Because neither the damage nor the support justify the limitation, our support is worse than chrono that has extremely strong defences, and worse than druid that has both mobility as base ranger, has range on Celestial Avatar and another 1200 dash+evade on staff. As for our damage, core burn guardian can keep up.

If you don’t like the Axe or feel it is undertuned, fair point. There might have to be adjustments. But good news for you: It is not the only weapon a Firebrand has access to.

Only that they nerfed the condi output of all our weapons by nerfing the VoJ passive. At that point, if you are to use another weapon, base guardian is better for condi, and DH is better for power.

Tome of resolve is the worst one. Tome of courage does better healing with the honor trait that heals when you lose aegis.

RabbitUp.8294:

There’s a huge range difference, especially with DH. DH gives access to our only 1200 range weapon, and F1 is another tool to help you keep your opponent in range. […]

…and worse than druid that has both mobility as base ranger, has range on Celestial Avatar and another 1200 dash+evade on staff. As for our damage, core burn guardian can keep up.

For the first paragraph we’re not talking about mobility, though, aren’t we? We are talking about range. Let’s leave aside how many DHs actually do not use Longbow, we still got Scepter. It’s not 900 but it’s the next best thing. And again: It’s the same core Guardian got. No sacrifice to be made here.

If you want to keep it Firebrand only: Axe does have a pull. It might not be as sexy as DH F1. But seriously, people… If we are start arguing something like this it becomes an ‘I want it all!’ discussion.

My point remains: The mobility isn’t worse than core and core does just fine frontline. Neither is the range. Therefore, I don’t really get that Druid argument. It’s like you are arguing that Soulbeast healing is supbar to Druid, not Ranger vs. Soulbeast.

I personally do see Firebrand offering something new and different options to play Guardian. Maybe you don’t? Or maybe that’s not what we are talking about? I feel like you are looking more for a ‘Spec A always is best for X’ and ‘B is always best for Y’ scenario? I can see how Firebrand is not satisfying that mindset.

RabbitUp.8294:

Only that they nerfed the condi output of all our weapons by nerfing the VoJ passive. At that point, if you are to use another weapon, base guardian is better for condi, and DH is better for power.

Yeah, they did. But it was kind of necessary due to F1 Tome and really is nothing new. Similar stuff happened to other classes. It simply is needed for balance even though people like to make it about gating skills or pay to win. Needless to say that the devs miserably failed on the balance part for the HoT launch…

Regarding Axe I’m not too suprised it is not the revelation of condition weapons some people were hoping for. It can’t be too efficient when it comes to condi application because Guardians – in contrast to most other classes – are designed to apply their condition(s) through other means. I mainly see it as a way to get some damaging cover conditions.

Wether core Guardian is better for condi (assuming Radiance + Virtues) than Firebrand… I doubt they will be too different overall but there will be differences depending on the game mode. I imagine core condi Guardian (or DH) being more suitable for solo or 1vs1 scenarios while Firebrand surpassing it in group scenarios. That would be a reasonable trade-off.

RabbitUp.8294:

SlayerSixx.5763:

RabbitUp.8294:

Tomes are instant casts.
Cooldown: 15s for all 3 tomes. 0 cooldown doesn’t work because of the traits.
Pages:

• You have no pages when not wielding a tome.
• When you open a tome, you don’t gain 5 pages, instead you gain 1 page every 0.5s while wielding the tome (in-combat only)
• Skill #1 cost no pages.
• You lose all pages when you drop the tome.

Remove stability from #1 of Tome of Courage and add a small amount of barrier.

Rework Legendary Lore: Now applies an effect around you when you equip a Tome
Justice: Burn foes around you
Resolve: Apply regeneration to nearby allies
Courage: Apply aegis to nearby allies

It doesn’t ACTUALLY have to interact with the traits that reduce virtue CD (you could alternatively add a clause that converts virtue CD to tome ability CD).

Also, I think that it’d be smoother to allow you to recover pages faster when out of combat, like every other resource in the game (like HP and initiative).

The cd reduction trait is not the problem, the problem is with other traits, like blind on F1, condi cleanse on F2 and stun break and stability on F3. Those have no internal cooldowns, so you would be able to spam them. And other traits that give boon on virtue activation, you would get permanent protection, regen, retaliation without any cooldowns.

With all of the boon stealing/ boon ripping/boon corrupting this game is about to get, there will be far from perma boons stated above.

You miss the point I was making. Firebrand is entirely melee focused, when guardian is not. So, the mobility is not worse, but the necessity for mobility is higher.

Yes, you can play core guardian stuff to somewhat reduce the issue, but at that point, you have the base class carrying the build, and the elite spec weighing it down.

It’s also about sacrifice vs reward. Firebrand doesn’t reward you with superior damage or superior support if you manage to pull it off.

It competes with both guardian and DH at its own game, let alone other specs that don’t have the same limitations. Hence my druid comparison.

Regarding Axe I’m not too suprised it is not the revelation of condition weapons some people were hoping for. It can’t be too efficient when it comes to condi application because Guardians – in contrast to most other classes – are designed to apply their condition(s) through other means.

The means that were nerfed? That you said they were necessary to be nerfed?

Do you think other classes spam 1 for their condi output? They have other utilities and profession mechanics that apply conditions, too.

As for how necessary the nerf was, if the devs couldn’t balance a new mechanic like Tome of Justice based on the existing parameters the class sets, it just shows their incompetence.

Avos.3297

The cd reduction trait is not the problem, the problem is with other traits, like blind on F1, condi cleanse on F2 and stun break and stability on F3. Those have no internal cooldowns, so you would be able to spam them. And other traits that give boon on virtue activation, you would get permanent protection, regen, retaliation without any cooldowns.

With all of the boon stealing/ boon ripping/boon corrupting this game is about to get, there will be far from perma boons stated above.

If the cooldown is 0, they will be permanent either way, because the application would have no cooldown, while the boon strips do.

Maybe more realistic approach.

Cast time of Tomes: 1/4 second.
Cooldown of Tomes: 25/35/65. (when traited: 21/30/55).
Page regeneration: 1 page in 1 second.

This way, assuming you have also traited additional pages, when tome is used, if you spam just the #1 skill, you get 17 casts (7.5 seconds).

Honestly, the spec won’t be salvaged by simple number tweeks. It needs to get back to the drawing board, which won’t happen.

So what will happen is that it will be released as is, maybe with some minor tweaks. It might work as condi dps in pve, or rarely as a quickness bot in some specific group compositions.

If it doesn’t work as condi dps, a year later it will receive some dps buffs. So, to the majority of the playerbase, it will be a succesful elite spec, because it does damage.

And that will be the story of support guardian. Firebrand will forever be our “support” spec. So, for the next couple of year, if not for the rest of the game, guardian, the class advertised as the support class, will have 2 damage builds and possible a quickness bot build, that will be strictly inferior to chrono.

That’s my problem with firebrand, that it takes the spot of guardian’s support spec. That it’s our one shot and there won’t be another. With HoT, I criticised DH, but as problematic as DH was, I could look forward to the next expansions and the possibility of a supportive elite spec.

Now that the day came, I would rather get no elite spec, than know that firebrand will be it.

RabbitUp.8294:

Honestly, the spec won’t be salvaged by simple number tweeks. It needs to get back to the drawing board, which won’t happen.

So what will happen is that it will be released as is, maybe with some minor tweaks. It might work as condi dps in pve, or rarely as a quickness bot in some specific group compositions.

If it doesn’t work as condi dps, a year later it will receive some dps buffs. So, to the majority of the playerbase, it will be a succesful elite spec, because it does damage.

And that will be the story of support guardian. Firebrand will forever be our “support” spec. So, for the next couple of year, if not for the rest of the game, guardian, the class advertised as the support class, will have 2 damage builds and possible a quickness bot build, that will be strictly inferior to chrono.

That’s my problem with firebrand, that it takes the spot of guardian’s support spec. That it’s our one shot and there won’t be another. With HoT, I criticised DH, but as problematic as DH was, I could look forward to the next expansions and the possibility of a supportive elite spec.

Now that the day came, I would rather get no elite spec, than know that firebrand will be it.

Sums up my view on the matter. This is precisely why I’m not going to bother playing anymore, and I regret sticking around till this expansion. Everything I liked in this game has been completely kittenslapped and disrespected right back to when monks weren’t included, and it only got worse as the game went on with the removal and butchering of tomes. Guardians are never going to have a real support spec now and there’s no way in frozen hell that ANet is going to rework Firebrand.

Not sure how to fix but things I noticed that felt horrible. The class itself needs quickness to even function properly which to me doesn’t feel right. Mantras 300 cone is also not a good idea while I realize they don’t want it to overshadow shouts a cone just doesn’t to well imo.

Xaylin.1860:

Almost all melee weapons are at 130 range. People make it sound like this is an unbearable situation on frequent occasions (on all classes) but it never kept melee weapons from being relevant. Using a melee weapon doesn’t automatically mean you are the first in line in large scale. And in small scale it doesn’t mean you can’t turn around or about face.

If you don’t like the Axe or feel it is undertuned, fair point. There might have to be adjustments. But good news for you: It is not the only weapon a Firebrand has access to. It’s the same on the Warrior forum where people get stuck on not liking Daggers while neglecting all the other weapons they already got.

You are totally right there and I exaggerated there too much. But as you said, the condi weapon for a condi designed specialisation lacks in mobility. #2 takes to long to cripple the enemy.
Thats’s why I also play FB with scepter and sword, healing mantra, 3 mediations and quickness elite skill. And it works really well but isn’t really fun as you only spam #1 in F1.

I just wanted to point out what does harmonize with the new mechanics using only what is new and what doesn’t. Also this is just pvp where DH should be the better choice because it’s mostly a single target class.

RabbitUp.8294:

You miss the point I was making. Firebrand is entirely melee focused, when guardian is not. So, the mobility is not worse, but the necessity for mobility is higher.

How is this going to be a reasonable comparison if you’re taking 5 traitlines and x weapons versus ONE elite specialization?

If the necessity was higher, what is wrong with taking the respective utilities or weapons which are already available? Again, what you seem to be asking is to have the mobility be included in the Firebrand.

How is this a downside of the Firebrand rather than baseline Guardian? It is a trade-off when compared to DH. It is not a limitation when compared to core Guardian because Firebrand got access to just the same stuff. Instead of saying ‘Those additional skills require me to be close… I need mobility.’ why not say ‘I got more options when being close!’?

If you’re looking for a mobile class Guardian just isn’t the thing. Firebrand obviously doesn’t change this. However, gaining more close combat capabilities doesn’t innately dictate the necessity for more mobility.

RabbitUp.8294:

It’s also about sacrifice vs reward. Firebrand doesn’t reward you with superior damage or superior support if you manage to pull it off.

The healing of F2 on its own sucks. I think nobody is arguing that. But beside that Firebrand does offer support baseline Guardian doesn’t offer. Wether it will be enough will have to be seen.

It competes with both guardian and DH at its own game, let alone other specs that don’t have the same limitations. Hence my druid comparison.

So in the end you just don’t feel that Firebrand is enough of an ‘upgrade’ when compared to core Guardian? I guess I personally just disagree.

Regarding Druid: It does have ‘limitations’ – although I feel that ‘trade-offs’ is a less misleading term. Just not in the areas you’ve mentioned. But sure… there are many elite specs which offer more benefits than trade-offs. I’m quite happy that this has partly changed since HoT launch.

RabbitUp.8294:

The means that were nerfed? That you said they were necessary to be nerfed?

Do you think other classes spam 1 for their condi output? They have other utilities and profession mechanics that apply conditions, too.

As for how necessary the nerf was, if the devs couldn’t balance a new mechanic like Tome of Justice based on the existing parameters the class sets, it just shows their incompetence.

I said that I think F1 was nerfed because of Tomes, not because of Axe. Because it doesn’t offer too many conditions while there are classes which do apply a major amount of their conditions through weapons.

Condi bombs with F1 + Loremaster obviously were going to be an issue with Permeating Wrath. They had two options here. A fire Tome with lackluster Burning which requires you to also trait Virtues to be somewhat sufficent. Or nerfing core Guardian to make a more sufficient fire Tome and giving Firebrand a more defined identity. They decided for the latter. Notably, they left Radiance alone – smart move, because Virtues clearly got enough other synergies with Firebrand anyway.

Now, you call this incompetence. Sure, maybe there could have been a different solution. Wether the effort for such solution could be justified is a different topic. However, I feel that they picked a reasonable and straightforward solution this time. It’s not like they salvaged a whole traitline (‘cough’ Acrobatics). And it’s not like they totally wrecked baseline condition Guard.

Xaylin.1860:

RabbitUp.8294:

You miss the point I was making. Firebrand is entirely melee focused, when guardian is not. So, the mobility is not worse, but the necessity for mobility is higher.

How is this going to be a reasonable comparison if you’re taking 5 traitlines and x weapons versus ONE elite specialization?

If the necessity was higher, what is wrong with taking the respective utilities or weapons which are already available? Again, what you seem to be asking is to have the mobility be included in the Firebrand.

How is this a downside of the Firebrand rather than baseline Guardian? It is a trade-off when compared to DH. It is not a limitation when compared to core Guardian because Firebrand got access to just the same stuff. Instead of saying ‘Those additional skills require me to be close… I need mobility.’ why not say ‘I got more options when being close!’?

If you’re looking for a mobile class Guardian just isn’t the thing. Firebrand obviously doesn’t change this. However, gaining more close combat capabilities doesn’t innately dictate the necessity for more mobility.

Well you can use F1 on core guard without a problem with scepter on range but F1 on FB only works in meele range. So you need mobility, cripple, chill, or imobilize. Also Anet realized that and added 3 traits which are compared to the other ones not good enough.
F2 and F3 does’t have that limitation of course.

Tomes and Mantra’s should work together more. And Tomes themselves need buffs.

Each page used should reduce the cooldown and charge recovery of Mantra’s by 10%.
The Final Charge of each Mantra should return 2 Pages of a Tome.

Tome cooldowns are too long and should be reduced slightly. Also they have the same cooldown if i equip and stow without using any pages, the number of remaining pages when stowed should take 2 or 3 seconds off the cooldown.

Each tome when held should give off passive effects while in combat.
Tome of Justice – Burn Targets around the guardian and pulse out retaliation.
Tome of Resolve – Heal targets around the guardian, stacks with virtue passive heal, pulse out protection.
Tome of Justice – Pulse out light Aura and convert a corruption to a boon

We can drop large fields with tome skills but have no way to blast them, all 2 Skills on tomes should blast. Also some of the Mantra’s should be blast finishers.

Tome of Resolve: All healing should also revive allies, Eternal Oasis should prevent morale loss on downed players, maybe should even teleport downed allies to the guardian.

Lower tome cooldowns to 10 sec each. I don’t know what’s up with Anet and their long cooldown obsession on Guardian…

Simple, reduce cd reduce cast time for tomes and the abilities you get and buff the heal tome

Xaylin.1860:

RabbitUp.8294:

You miss the point I was making. Firebrand is entirely melee focused, when guardian is not. So, the mobility is not worse, but the necessity for mobility is higher.

How is this going to be a reasonable comparison if you’re taking 5 traitlines and x weapons versus ONE elite specialization?

If the necessity was higher, what is wrong with taking the respective utilities or weapons which are already available? Again, what you seem to be asking is to have the mobility be included in the Firebrand.

How is this a downside of the Firebrand rather than baseline Guardian? It is a trade-off when compared to DH. It is not a limitation when compared to core Guardian because Firebrand got access to just the same stuff. Instead of saying ‘Those additional skills require me to be close… I need mobility.’ why not say ‘I got more options when being close!’?

If you’re looking for a mobile class Guardian just isn’t the thing. Firebrand obviously doesn’t change this. However, gaining more close combat capabilities doesn’t innately dictate the necessity for more mobility.

If you’re forced to stay in close-range and you don’t have mobility or some kind of self-defense, the build will not work. It’s a very basic concept that applies to every class, and the class in question being guardians doesn’t suddenly make that concept disappear. The firebrand keeps you in close-range even more so than a normal guardian (because of tomes), except with DH you actually have significant self-defense (and more range, and more mobility) and with the core guardian you have intant-cast virtues, which make a surprising amount of difference. The firebrand gives you almost melee-range tomes that make you a sitting duck unless you’re at long-range, at which point you can’t do anything because tomes aren’t ranged weapons anymore.

RabbitUp.8294:

Guardian was already a profession with limited mobility, and they dropped a purely melee spec on top of that, without any compensation.

You don’t get compensated for additions. Just… why does that need to be mentioned?