I don’t see why everyone’s so obsessed with Light of Judgment. It doesn’t get more awful than a random single-target/dual-target heal.
I would much rather get Heal Area, now that they destroyed the tomes.
But more importantly, Orb of Light needs to be made into a ground-targeted skill. Remove the detonation gimmick, and add the flip skill with 8s cooldown. The current skill is extremely clunky, unless you have a target, the orb will always fly into the ground and vanish.
I completely agree, although I feel like a removed healing-only auto-attack on the staff would go way over ANet’s tiny creative limit, so I feel like it’d never happen as opposed to Light of Judgment (which is also unlikely) even though it’d be amazing.
It can be aimed outside of having a target, it’s just annoying to do so because you have to lift your camera a fair bit.
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Mantra’s and Tomes are the closest they could get to Monk without it being a carbon copy.
And then they completely kittenslapped anybody who liked monks (again) by removing any reference to monk prayers from tomes, and making them melee support.
Light of Judgment would be really nice, with rebalanced values and if it also bounced to allies like the original does.
Personally I think the best replacement would be something like Heal Area from the original Tome of Courage. It’d be the least clunky way to heal allies with an auto-attack and it’d also be purely supportive like the staff should’ve been from the start.
Firebrand’s Support Build
Mace & Shield + Staff as weapons is the most logical choice. Mace is our best healing weapon and Staff can be used for burst healing.
The staff outclasses the mace in terms of healing in literally every way. The staff’s healing is burst healing, it has a higher hps (I’ve done the calculations, even before the buffs it had higher hps), and it has more range. This is especially true after the recent buffs to the staff. The mace’s healing is 100% sustained without any burst whatsoever, a lot of its healing just comes from regeneration, and the range limit on it makes it useless for healing allies.
I expect them to overtune everything in order to compensate for their terrible design, and then nerf it to the ground much later. So pretty much exactly what they did with DH.
Monks in Guild Wars are essentially priests; ranged supportive casters, not martial artists. It’d be fine if warriors or thieves got a martial artist spec (arguably Daredevil is somewhat that already), but guardians getting that would be an insult to everyone who loved monks.
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It’s another mechanic added to the game that’s thematic to guardian and is given to other classes only. It’s tradition at this point.
Guardians guarding? You’re nuts, that’s crazy. Obviously we should only get dps specs.
They will eventually buff firebrand to do good condition dps, and you won’t be able to have any conversation about the shortcomings of the spec because “it does good damage, man”. Nevermind how this was supposed to be our support spec and it complete fails at that.
If you are a guardian player that wanted to play support, your only option is to quit at this point. There won’t be another “support” spec and firebrand is not it, either. Even warrior PS with healing shouts feels more supportive.
The fact that ANet actually prioritized condition cancer over support on guardians and tomes makes me sick.
It’s really not a weak skill even if the passive is awful, and nothing will ever be as good as RF for self-defense. The elite mantra is next level garbage.
Slightly offtopic, but anyone tested Signet of Courage with Perfect Inscriptions? I am wondering if when allies receive the passive effect, allies heal each other resulting in 5x passive heal.
It does work. Casting it once activates the effect immediately on allies (within 600 range) which doesn’t actually do anything since they’re at max health anyway, and then it activates again 10 seconds later. I haven’t tried it since the trait was buffed, but since the signet is 1200 range and the passive is only 600 range, it seems kind of pointless.
Kind of the other way around. Staff eles tend to be more glassy and dagger eles tend to be tankier.
He’s complaining because he obviously still likes the game and cares about it, but can’t stomach it in its current state. Its a very mature position to take tbh. Much better than what alot of losers do when they play WHILE actively not enjoying what they’re doing.
Never understood that mentality lol. Take it or leave it is such a weak philosophy.
You’re quite right; I really wanted to keep playing the game, but I’m not going to go on when things turn out like this. If things take a turn for the better then I’ll gladly come back, but otherwise I literally have better games to play from developers who don’t consistently crush my hopes.
He wants other players to share his misery which is absolutely not a mature position by any justification.
Normally I’d feel more sympathetic to others, and I don’t really hold ill-will to the communities of other classes, so if they don’t like their elite specs then I’m sorry for them. However, this is the same community who managed to get both tomes completely removed because they wanted more overpowered but less interesting skills to replace them, and then they proceeded to use Renewed Focus anyway (so that’s about 80% of the guardian community). So you’re kitten right in that I’ll absolutely delight in this community getting exactly what they deserve with this boring, weak, and badly designed elite spec, and I especially hope it stays weak just to spite everyone who doesn’t care what they get as long as it’s broken.
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I thought you quit already.
Yes, I did indeed. That won’t stop me from criticizing ANet’s garbage though.
I am disappointed, and I’m done being disregarded as a player by ANet so I’m not playing anymore.
There is nothing about your situation that is objective and it would be foolish to think otherwise.
Ah yes, because providing suggestions to improve the firebrand that won’t stop me from quitting the game is totally subjective.
How can this skill be improved?
Change it back to a tome.
Anyone who liked original tomes wouldn’t like the new tomes since they function completely differently, and thus defeats the point of bringing back tomes in the first place. Aesthetically the new tomes don’t even look like the old tomes, so why even call them tomes. As a fan of tomes, I felt brushed aside when they were removed, and seeing them return in this state is insulting, because it’s clear the devs don’t give two kittens about the players who actually liked tomes in the first place.
Purely mechanically speaking, firebrand doesn’t function properly either due to lack of range (such as mantras in PvE), or due to a lack of a way to defend itself (mobility, range, tankiness, etc) in PvP and potentially WvW. Overall, it’s very clunky and the spec should’ve been designed around tomes rather than tomes being molded around the axe and mantras.
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Enough of these half measures, if you want to build this round of elite specs with trade-offs, then focus on the new mechanic that is tomes, and make them an integral part of the elite spec, not an afterthought.
Sadly, it’s clear from the design that tomes were added as an afterthought. So instead of the weapon and utilities being designed around tomes, tomes got designed around the clunky axe and mantras. The result is the firebland.
I don’t see how people are having issues with healing using firebrand. I consistently got 500k+ healing every pvp match. I even managed to get up to 748k (proud of that one).
Pics or didnt happen.
The base guardian can already achieve that healing in PvP quite easily, if not more easily than a firebrand. Honestly I got a lot less healing when I was using the firebrand than I normally do from just playing a healer guardian.
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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.
To get this out of the way: I’m aware you’re kinda disappointed with Tomes not being ranged. That’s fine. But jeeee… If you don’t want something to work…
Most of the survivability DH has over FB comes from their Virtues – where FB quite obviously is more support oriented. That’s it. Don’t even start with LB which few to no (condi) DH’s use. Sure, FB is probably worse solo than DH. But that’s not what we are discussing here, or is it? Tomes do need some polish but they do work. They are pretty great especially in group fights and there are plenty ways to make sure you can get them off. New ones (Mantras) and old ones (Meditations and Shouts).
The thing which maybe baffles me the most: Especially in large scale content people were fine with 600 range on their lootstick for ages. And suddenly Tomes aren’t viable because of their range.
I am disappointed, and I’m done being disregarded as a player by ANet so I’m not playing anymore. So in that regard I’m speaking pretty objectively as a result. The tomes can be melee range, fine, but if they don’t have some kind of survival mechanic to back it up besides range (mobility/defense), then it will not function. If ANet does add mobility or defense to tomes, I still won’t play. If they don’t add mobility or defense to tomes, I will bask in the tears of the same community who vetoed tomes and got them back in a completely worthless and clunky form.
Do I expect them to add range to the tomes? No. Do I expect them to overtune the Firebrand to compensate for their god awful game design? Heck yeah.
No, they don’t work. Any player with half a brain will focus down a firebrand with ease because they have no real way to defend themselves. I’ve played it, and other people have played it, and they’ve come to the same conclusion.
WvW is a completely different mode with some kind of terrible next level balance. I don’t know if it works there and I don’t care to know if it does either.
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I wouldn’t say mobility. I’d say they need more range on their abilities and a removal of a lot of cast times and cooldowns.
This. Something that’s supposed to be a caster should actually have range. Mobility would suffice in making it viable, but I think range would be a much better fit thematically and gameplay-wise.
A 25% movement speed trait wouldn’t do anything to make it viable though. This spec is going to need at least a blink to function properly, if mobility is chosen to make it viable.
How is this considered too slow. Skill #4 on the rifle is absurdly good for kiting and you also get Shadow Flare, and all of that is in addition to the ridiculous mobility core thieves already have.
I played a glass staff weaver in PvP, and it seemed really bad. The spec locks you out of the life-saving 3/4/5 skills on the staff, and it also messes with the condition you inflict using arcane skills. I switched back to tempest to see if I was just being bad and I pretty much decimated everything.
I don’t know about the other weapons, but it doesn’t seem to function well on the staff to me.
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.
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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.
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You know what else monks had? Real support, and range.
Shield of Courage is one of the biggest reasons DH can survive in close range.
If you’r problem is PvE what’s your problem about Tomes?
Your main problem should be use the F1 to burst down everything AoE every lot of seconds.Maybe that fact that Firebrand was supposed to be the support spec for Guardian?
This, I can’t believe the devs shafted the support-side of guardians again in favour of condition cancer of all things. Clearly they don’t give a kitten about support players, and I’m really tired of it because it’s been that way since the start of the game.
I mean they’re giving a class of magical lore keepers a freaking axe, the only weapon they could have give that would have read less as the armament of an intellectual was if they had given us a club to smash people with. Was that not a big fat sign reading “We’re running out of ideas” to anyone else?
I suppose main-handed foci could have worked, if ANet felt “daring” enough to make an off-hand weapon main-hand that is, but yes I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the axe is ridiculous on this spec.
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.
This thread is proof that people that spout their kitten in here do not play the game at all.
Firebrand mantras and books are insanely powerful and will be severely nerfed in the coming weeks.
With no stability and long cast times, how are mantras and toms extremely powerful? Sure in a fight where you don’t get focused it does damage but any remote focus and you’re history.
Just stand back and cast from a safe distance.
Oh waitGo in quick and use your mobility to escape before getting bursted?
Nevermind.
I don’t understand why more people don’t understand this basic concept. You can have insanely powerful support or damage, but it doesn’t matter if you have no way to reasonably avoid taking damage or being focused.
It’s like playing a glass staff ele except you’re in melee range, it doesn’t work and it never will work unless the spec is so insanely overtuned that it just insta-gibs any enemy it comes in contact with before they can even focus it.
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The difference is: QQing after actually playtesting the elite for a bit is legit and fine. Calling doom and drama based on previews, on the other hand, is laughable at best.
Except that all the problems had been identified before the beta test. Not all of us have to press buttons to know what doesn’t work, we have been playing this game for 5 years and we had both in-game footage, and the tooltip of every skill and trait.
Not everyone has reading comprehension unfortunately.
Firebrand as a whole is deeply flawed. Mantras have no range, very small attack area and massive cooldowns. Tomes, and their skills, have four limitations (Tome cooldown, skill cooldown, cast times and pages).
You forgot about the range limitations too~
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This feels like a condition cancer spec that has a healing/protection tome (on giant cooldowns) to weakly veil the fact that support got shafted again in favour of condition cancer.
Careful what you say.
You know as well as the rest of us that, when it comes to Guardian, Añets response will instead be to nerf DH’s Wings of Resolve, to bring it under the effectiveness of FB’s Tome of Resolve, rather than buff FB’s Tome of Resolve to have comparable performance to Druid’s Celestial Avatar.
They definitely will do that if they want to. Base virtues used to be 1200 range and then they got nerfed as soon as DH popped up.
inb4 base virtues get nerfed to 300 range because of mantras.
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.
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.
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Its support can be the best in the game, it doesn’t matter if you have no range, mobility, or proper defense, because you’ll just get focused and die before you can do anything. Caster support does not function in melee range and it never will.
tl;dr: The support it offers is decent but unsurprisingly caster support doesn’t function properly in close-range, yet most of the tome skills are close-ranged. Tomes need at least 900 range to function in a sensible manner, but for now they basically scream “focus me to down me instantly”.
Mantras are garbage and 300 range, and base guardians have far better support utilities that also function from a far longer range.
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So from what I see from tomes so far, they offer decent support and insane condition cancer, but positioning-wise they leave you dead in the water, and they also make you more or less defenseless because you’re stuck in close-range with no real self-defense or mobility or even instant-cast virtues. So if you’re focused for a moment you’re screwed, just as I knew it would turn out.
lol look at these people cryin’ failing to understand that this is not pvp/wvw oriented
Ah, so it’s useless in over half of the game. Okay.
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I find it ironic (and hilarious) that old tomes were removed because the baddies thought they were clunky, and now the new tomes are more clunky than ever.
Seems great at condition cancer. I’d love to have something like old tomes back around about now; not gonna happen though obviously.
Mantras would be okay-ish if they were long-ranged, but as they are now, they’re trash, as I knew they would be. I’m disappointed, but I already knew I would be.
Yes, it looked good burning those low health golems. Did you see it in wvw getting boonstripped to hell and blown up in seconds? Did you see it in raids being a watered-down chrono? Did you see it in pvp trying to fight at 300 range with no mobility or defences?
^This.
If guardians actually pop up in raids, it’ll be because they can share signet passives. I don’t see why anyone would want to bother with 300-range cone support over just using a druid or chronomancer.
^
Guardian’s phantasy is being a defensive support, protecting and healing your allies and combating conditions.
Meta changes require a dedicated healer to be made, ranger is chosen instead.
A new boon that stops condition is introduced, it is not given to guardian.
What irritates me the most is that monks could’ve been in the game from the start, but were excluded because of ANet’s ass-backward view on healing.
Yes, I’ve already read that, and it doesn’t mention anything about teaching monks specifically.
I would rather see a monk elite spec.
Would be my wet dream. I was so hoping that the Firebrand was gonna be monk-like since the original tomes used monk spells. ANet shattering my hopes as usual~ <3
Guardians are a direct product of paragons escaping Elona, coming to Tyria and taught monks their ways. Generations later the guardian was born.
Guardians originated as a fusion between monks, paragons, and ritualists. I don’t ever recall anything about paragons teaching monks anything, not that that makes sense in the first place because monks already existed in Elona alongside paragons.
You would think a caster spec would be long-ranged, but since ANet’s game design is super smart, the firebrand is actually almost entirely melee-ranged but with all of the downsides of being a caster, such as high casting times and no self-defense or mobility.
Receive the Light is fine because it’s 600 range (could probably be a bit more but eh). Melee-range cone support is not.
Of course I’m against more melee support in general because pretty much every addition of support in this game seems to be close-ranged now for some reason.
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic because Guardian/FB being frontline with short ranged attacks but yet the support mechanism is in a cone… it just doesn’t make sense and seems extremely short sighted and massively overlooked if that’s the case.
It wouldn’t be the first part of the firebrand that’s short-sighted and overlooked. It’d be the part that makes most people defending the firebrand ultra buttmad though. I hope they’re cones just so I can bask in the tears.
Where are you guys seeing that it’s in a frontal cone?
The image shows a 360’degree radius with a center indicating that it’s not a frontal cone ability to me.
That’s just the symbol for range, it’s not meant to match the hitbox.
All mantras are 300 range cones, like the nerfed Staff 1.
All mantras are not cones and the one’s that are specifically say “… in front of you.”
If they aren’t cones, then half of them wouldn’t say “Do X/Y/Z to allies in front of you”, and they would also have a radius skill fact instead of a range skill fact. They’re definitely cones.
I’m glad they’re cones, just for the sake of spiting people who actually like the firebrand.
The description heavily implies that it’s a cone. I can’t wait to hear the “ah mah gahd a 300 range cone is clunky” complaints from the people who like the Firebrand’s amazing design so much.
Personally I never gave a kitten about guardians tanking.
There are a lot of better options if you just want a light mage theme, like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_of_Judgment or https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heal_Area. The only real use Wave of Wrath had was farming. It didn’t deal any real damage, it didn’t have much range, and it didn’t do anything supportive.
They’re pretty close to being decent. Now if they could just fix their absurd cast times.
i don’t understand why people are saying they don’t “function like tomes”, in all threads, but, this one, especially, as this thread is about the poorly textured toilet paper graphics
they… do function like old tomes?
New tomes are melee support, mostly PBAoE >600 range skills. Old tomes were long-ranged support and offered very different skills as a result.
People can like this disgusting perversion of the original tomes all they want, but don’t even try say they’re the same thing.