Guild Wars 2

Lalainnia.3598:

Anyone that actually cares about healing already knows druid isn’t wanted in pve raids and fractals for its healing its for special buffs being empower, spirits, and grace of the land. Tempests, Guardians, and Revs can all outshine druids in the healing department they just lack special buffs and because raiding honestly doesn’t require a massive amount of raw healing unless ppl miss a mech druids will remain the go to healer.

I really hope that this way of thinking changes. Raids only really benefit from one druid. Grace of the Land is by far the most important buff they give, and one druid can stack it on a full raid since it affects up to 10 people. A second druid for that is redundant. Spirits are helpful but do not make or break dps, so 2 aren’t required. And with such a heavy condi dps meta, Empower is pointless to bring. It doesn’t affect condi damage; it only benefits power dps.

It’s true that Firebrand doesn’t have the same kind of direct dps-enhancing abilities as druid, but it has other huge benefits. The biggest difference is the insane amount of aegis. Aegis upkeep could do amazing things for raid groups, especially pugs. Keeping people alive and on their feet is a higher dps boost than anything a druid can do. With the tons of aegis, stability, and stun breaks, they’ll be able to do that much easier than a druid. For example, think about No Updrafts Gors – Aegis/stability upkeep means you don’t have to trust people do dodge his knockdown smash (thus greatly increasing dps), and spamable Aegis will protect against his CC phase, rather than relying on mes distorts (which I’ve seen get messed up a lot), meaning fewer people are likely to go down, which also increases dps.

Then on top of all of that, aegis doesn’t need any healing power and guard passive healing can work well with just a little healing power, so you could run more dps-oriented gear (I’m thinking run something like Seraph’s). That also increases overall dps because a condi Firebrand could pull more dps than a condi Druid.

And to get back to the post topic… My only complaint really is the CD on the Tome. I think mechanically it’s fine, but how the skills are now, it feels much more like something that should be easily and frequently swapped in and out. I’d love to see a shorter CD, or if they want to keep the CD as is, they should buff up the abilities to really make it feel like it’s powerful. Maybe have all of the skills affect 10 people rather than just 5.

I’ve definitely run into this issue too. I think it happens when SoJ is off cooldown, and an ammo stack successfully recharges. Basically the completion of the recharge starts the ability cooldown.

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.

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.

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

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.

Groups won’t instantly kick you for wanting to play a Guardian DPS. I’ve been able to get into raiding with my guard. However, groups will prefer other dps classes (especially ele). So it can be difficult to find a raiding group if that’s your only class.

Their DPS is actually really good, but most people who play them don’t play them well. But the only viable build they can play right now is Dragon Hunter power, so they’re limited that way. Hopefully that’ll change with the expansion, but we don’t know enough yet to say.

I started playing a condition PS warrior (their job in raids is to stack might, but they also do good dps). I think they’re very fun, and the current meta requires two per group, so it’s easy to find groups to join.

“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?

I completely agree as well. I was so excited to hear that we would have tomes again (like the old elites Courage and Wisdom), but I was pretty disappointed when I saw that there are just papers flying around. That’s not a tome… The blue flaming books really made you feel powerful – like you were truly drawing power from ancient, magical books.

I would be so happy to see this changed. And since the old elites already existed, we know that Anet has the assets already. So I would think it’d be minimal effort to add those in. Keep all the spell effects (even the pages!), but please please please add the floating tomes back!