Guild Wars 2

Tyche.4072:

Axe felt really horrible to play with during the tests. Something about it just wasn’t right.

I really like firebrand, but the animation locks on some of the abilities will pose quite a problem in quick paced play I think.

There are several problems with the axe. The visuals don’t match the attack range at all. It looks similar to Ele’s Lightning Whip (300 range), but it has less than half that (130 range). Then add the delayed blue axe swing to that, and it just feels clunky.

The super long cast time on #2 is thew cherry on top.

nuaa.4962:

You are undervaluing quickfire way to much. This things puts out 10 burns at 3 sec.
While tome of justice does 1 sec of burn every 3 hit(If traited.). Can you do 30 ToJ proce every 10 sec, on figths that aren´t AoE.
And i was being nice there using traited ToJ. Since quickfire build can drop virtues for zeal and get even better dps output. Since only good dps trait in virtues is last one.

Quickfire should be the go to option for bosses and single target. Loremaster is option for AoE or enough mobs that it can outperform quickfire.

Quickfire scales with your allies’ stats, not your own, so it only works in the condi subgroup, and even then, mesmer will waste their 2 stacks. Same for magi druid, so better hope your subgroup has a condi druid instead.

Even then, condi classes like druid, soulbeast, thief and scourge won’t have max burning duration like firebrand, further reducing Quickfire’s potential.

And more importantly, you need to provide quickness to your allies for it to work, so it’s not compatible with the condi dps build, only the “support” one. And in practice, it won’t proc every 10 seconds, but every 12 seconds most of the time.

New tomes are not tomes. Yes, they have the name, but that’s all. They are pages.

Malthurius.6870:

I don’t understand what’s so cool about having a giant book in your face. The open-handed caster aesthetic is so much cooler, imo.

It’s the epitome of laziness. It’s not an “open-handed aesthetic”, it’s literally nothing. They didn’t design anything, they just have your character use the default combat stance, holding invisible weapons. They didn’t even disable the idle animations, so your character is sitting there throwing an invisible weapon to the air and catching it again.

It’s by far the worst skill effects they’ve designed, because they simply didn’t design anything.

The cast time is 1.25s, so you timed it correctly at a little over 1 second. But the block timer is seperate and the skill will continue blocking for the full 2 seconds, after the cast is over.

Kerivek.5740:

They have mentioned that they have made changes to the new elite specs, they just haven’t gone into detail on the changes yet. So while we don’t know if they will really address the problems, at least we do know that the elites we have been playing are not the final product.

Don’t get your hopes up. They will focus on mirage, that got some high-profile complaints from the likes of Helseth.

If we get anything, it will only be some number tweaks, like they did with DH, ignoring the fundamental design flaws of the spec. And then, they will nerf the damage down the line anyway.

Renewed Focus already has 90s/72s cooldown, the increased cd is only for pvp.

The tome cooldowns have to be wrong, though, or at least you rounded the numbers. 21s cooldown when traited (15% cd reduction) doesn’t correspond to any natural number untraited, so either you are misremembering things, or the cooldown is 21.25s when traited and 25s untraited.

In any case, it’s a drop in the ocean, tomes started with 50% higher cd for F1 and F2 than base virtues, and double cd for F3, such a tiny cooldown reduction doesn’t help at all, when the tome skills themselves on F2 and F3 are as bad as ever.

The spec is dead on arrival.

When you have names like Weaver and Soulbeast, I would never complain about Firebrand’s name.

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.

Malthurius.6870:

RabbitUp.8294:

Mantra of Potence is a utility skill, FmW is an elite skill. They are not even competing. Given how Firebrand has no dps elites, or any good elites for pve, it goes without saying that FmW will be used if quickness builds have a place in raids/fractals.

FmW won’t be used by firebrands most likely; they appear to be able to maintain 100% uptime (or close to it) on quickness with the help of concentration gear without FmW.

Also, I’d say the elite mantra, on demand stun break and stab, as well as renewed focus, recharging all tomes/virtues (which is shaping up to appear mandatory for Firebrand), make for stiff competition for a guardian ever bringing FmW again in their elite slot… especially if Mantra of Potence can do it better, or at least competitively, in a less valuable utility slot.

Concentration gear is a huge dps loss. Renewed Focus will always be a niche skill in pve because of the loss of dps uptime.

On the other hand, if you use Mantra of Solace, Potence and FmW, you can maintain perma-quickness with only 31% boon duration, which is covered with just a single Sigil of Concentration. Which means, all your gear, runes, food and your other sigil will be full condi dps.

Kuya.6495:

Doesn’t stalwart speed make mantra of liberation a better choice for quickness than feel my wrath?

It’s slightly better, but the fact that you have to track an invisible cooldown and the reduced range, make it not worth the effort, if all you care about is quickness. It has some niche uses in content like the new fractal that has so much CC.

I played during stress test, firebrand felt super clunky and very squishy. Of course, the lag made it worse, but by itself I didn’t find anything appealing. It’s just burn guardian, Tome of Justice didn’t change the playstyle, because it’s super bland, just some vanilla aoe burn spells, with awkwardly slow animations. The vaccuum skill was the only interesting one, but its radius is too small to be useful. It’s 240 when the mesmer skill (focus #4) is 600.

The spec as a whole feels rushed. All mantras are the same range, same mechanics, same animations with different colours. It’s just feels so boring, when other specs get so many varied and interesting skills.

Ragnarox.9601:

They should make RF no longer resetrs F1,2,3 cause they are tomes now and virtue line does not reduce cd’s of tomes and then make tomes like engi kits with longer cds of tome skills and page regen over time. Best solution for firebrand.

They are still Virtues, just named “tomes”, like how DH’s virtues were named spear, wings and shield.

And yes, Virtues reduces their cooldown by 15%.

Mantra of Potence is a utility skill, FmW is an elite skill. They are not even competing. Given how Firebrand has no dps elites, or any good elites for pve, it goes without saying that FmW will be used if quickness builds have a place in raids/fractals.

lordbachus.6091:

Actually i would be delighted if cooldowns would be calculated trough this formula..

Cooldown = max coolldown * pages left/ max pages

This would make for much better gameplay witouth any real huge ballance issues… i.e. It would not force you to use all pages for optimal gameplay… but would add a gamplay decision.. should i use all my chapters, or only use the 2 i need most and then move on..

So for example with the cooldown reduction and the 3 extra pages, this would mean you could use 3 healing chapters from tome of resolve and have the tome in resolve available after 30 *3/8 = aprox 11 seconds

Now this makes a real support class much much more viable…

The cooldown reduction trait doesn’t affect Tomes, it affects the 1-5 skills inside the tomes. The tome themselves are “Virtue” skills (not “Tome” skills) and their cd is only reduced by the Virtue minor trait (-15% cd).

Brutaly.6257:

And i am not so certain that SyG is bugged. The way it worked during preview is the exact same way AH works, every applikation of a stacking boon counts. Hallowed ground did the exact same thing as SyG, even though quickness didnt stack as it supposed to do when using multiple skills or repplications from the same skill.

Stalwart Speed, the trait that grants quickness with stability/aegis, has a 5s cooldown. Altruistic Healing has no cooldown.

Hallowed Ground, on the other hand, worked as intended.

And you dont have to trait shouts or use the runes. I had a Valor/virtues/Fb setup in wvw that was nice. And in the end i used only one mantra (remove condition) as utility skill and shelter/RF as heal/elite. I swapped the other mantras for Retreat and SyG and there was huge difference in impact. The advantage with AH is that you can actually tell when you are doing a good jobb at distributing boons to allies and shouts are way better then mantras for support.

Shouts are not new skills. We had them for 5 years and shout builds have proven to be mediocre. Of course, there was a huge difference when you swapped your skills, you were playing wvw with a mantra build, and mantras are garbage there. So, while shouts are better than mantras, we have other skills that are better than both.

SyG will be used anyway, but Retreat does nothing that useful, 1 stack of aegis on a 30s cooldown is nothing, and swiftness is completely superfluous. I’d much rather use WoR or Sanctuary, especially if I go Virtues.

Lalainnia.3598:

I could be wrong but stand your grand might be working as intended because it grants 5 stacks of stability at once which would be 10 seconds of quickness. Between that the shout elite feel my wrat, and the mantra cone quickness and heal skill traited it might be possible to up keep it on a party. Add in some boon duration and you have something.

Stalwart Speed has an internal cooldown of 5 seconds. Multiple stacks shouldn’t be able to ignore this icd. This is how Venom Echantment works, for example. Even if you inflict multiple stacks of torment at the same time, the poison is the same.

Keeping permanent quickness was never the issue. You can ignore SyG completely and use the 2 quickness traits, the heal mantra, the quickness mantra, and Feel my Wrath. If you spam all charges of Mantra of Potence and recast it every time, you can keep perma-quickness with only 31% boon duration, or 14% with alacrity.

The issue was always that the area you affect is extremely small, which makes this build only usable in pve, and even then it will be a struggle.

AlphaWolvesGamer.5790:

The Monk’s Virtuous Prayers do not restock normally, and will only recharge once the last prayer has been used.

This here is the entire reason they introduced the ammo system in the first place. Because with old mantras, after the fight was over, you either started the next fight with less charges, or you spammed your skills to trigger the cooldown. And you want to make this the profession mechanic?

As for the rest of the spec, do you realise how boring it would be to play? Using the new skills is pretty much pressing one button and going afk for 5 seconds.

Really, the only thing that looks usable here is Spiritual Pressure, and that’s because it’s a copy of Overload Air, can be used for tagging mobs in pve, and it’s the only skill that does damage, so it’s nmbers can be balanced to make up for the 5s afk.

Brutaly.6257:

Might go with boon duration runes as well and use Retreat which also (if traited) gives quickness.

In its current iteration FB will use at least 2 shouts (Retreat and SyG) since they actually hit allies and also provide quickness. I believe most FB will invest in superior aria if going support and i also think trooper runes might be an option and use the condi removal mantra for personal use only.

Shout elite is also better compared to the mantra elite and also provide quickness in a much more reliable fashion.

Tbh i cant se any one using mantras as asupport tool in an affective fashion.

So support will go with 2-3 shouts one mantra for personal use and shelter as heal and renewed focus as elite.

When they fix SyG so that it grants 2s of quickness instead for 10, what’s the point in using shouts? You are dedicating 2 traits and a rune set to make them work, and the only thing that’s changed is they now each grant 2 seconds of quickness on a 24s cooldown, and provided that you don’t use them at the same time.

What’s going to happen is that quickness share will be a pve thing only, and wvw/pvp firebrand will just forget it exists, apart from personal use.

Chorazin.4107:

The Mantras I doubt will change unfortunately. The Mesmer’s power break is still on a 240 radius around the mesmer. Guess how many mesmers slot this utility?

And that would actually be an improvement, compared to the stupid cones. At least you would be able to melee and cast mantras at the same time.

And it just so happens that Liberator’s Vow is 240-radius circular AoE, so now it’s very possible to hit an ally with your melee mantra, but not grant them quickness.

Chorazin.4107:

You do realise the Tome of Courage has two sources of stability as skills within the tome? Unbroken lines grants 5 seconds of stab on a 12 sec icd, 600rad. Unflinching Charge grants 4 seconds of stab to everyone in a cone 600rng in front of you and can be spammed as long as you have pages left. These numbers are with 0% boon duration any support Firebrand will be rocking around with decent boon duration.

So in 90 seconds you have
Opening the tome: Indomitable Courage stab 4sec
Unbroken Lines stab 5sec
Unflinching Charge stab 4sec

This is also assuming you use these tome skills once only whilst the tome is open within that 90 second interval. You could easily get multiple activations out of Unflinching Charge.

Compared to two uses of the 45 seconds Indomitable Courage stab 4sec for base guard within that 90 second interval.

You still get the indomitable courage stab from opening the tome and renewed focus will still reset the tome.

Yes, I know Tome of Courage has skills with stability. So, you get more stability out of a skill that’s already granting stability, and the price you pay is it having double the cooldown.

You lose stability frequency to gain a bigger burst of stability, in a meta that stability will be stripped by boon removal/corruption, which remove all stacks.

The tome skills also have noticeable cast times, so you will be spending 3+ seconds being effectively removed from the fight, when base guardian insta-casts F3.

Anyway, just the fact alone that there are arguments that can be made about guardian vs firebrand speaks volumes. You would never have a serious discussion about whether mesmer or ranger are better supports than chrono and druid.

Chorazin.4107:

Brutaly.6257:

while you give up the most important part in this game, damage.

Stability isnt worth spamming, stabiliy is situational so it is of very little interest from a balancing perspective if a FB can spam stab.

Spamming stab with ToC means you are effectively one player down.

From a WvW perspective your support classes are not there to do damage, they are there to provide support for the group. You certainly arnt going to be seeing big DPS numbers from a minstrel Firebrands staff autos lol.

DPS will come from your DPS specced classes, however the group is set up. Epi reapers CoR Rev’s etc.

A full healing/minstrel Tempest does virtually 0 damage, you are hardly a player down having one in your group.

Every point of damage counts. You are also unable to do anything else, like healing and cc.

And who said you have to use Minstrels gear? You can use Commander, Wanderer, Celestial, or even condi gear.

mazut.4296:

Brutaly.6257:

Btw, tome cd should start when you cast the tome. And the tome should be reset even if its active. Ie ToJ on kill.

No, because on top of the all standard effects and traits you also get 5 new skills per tome.

Druid gained 5 new skills for no price at all, it’s a bonus on top of everything else the base class can do, yet the cooldown is super short, the cast is instant, and even the resource they have to build is more forgiving than the cooldown itself in group situations.

Holosmith exchanges one toolbelt skill for 5. And their Photon Forge is instant-cast and has no cooldown, unless they overheat, and even then it’s very low.

Firebrand exchanges 3 skills for 15, and we get multiple limitations, that are not only more in total number, but each one alone is more harsh than what druid and holosmith have to deal with. 3/4s cast time to the 0s of CA and PF. 5 skill limit to the generous resource/time-based limit of CA and PF. 30/45/90 cooldowns to the 10s of CA.

Then, you have to examine what those 15 skills offer. Our F2 has no way of interacting with foes, so we are stuck in support mode when using it, yet the whole tome is overshadowed by a single CA skill, when CA also has good cc. F3 also has no damage, and only a single cc ability to interact with opponents.

Brutaly.6257:

RabbitUp.8294:

Having more mobility won’t make mantras any better in pve. Your group will still be forced to stack on top of one another, which just doesn’t happen in raids and fractals.

I know, that is the reason why i find that having access to 6 blinks in 6 seconds with the elite isnt unbalanced, that and poor survivability in a 5 mantra build.

And i disagree mobility at this level will make the mantras better, you can use 2 blinks to move and support your group at their position.

If you need 6 blinks to patch the problem, maybe you need to focus on the mantras themselves instead. Especially when you are suggesting something so extremely convoluted.

With that been said, yes, I insist that mobility solves absolutely nothing in pve. The problem is not with the firebrand’s own positiong, it’s the positioning of your allies compared to each other. You can be as mobile as you want, if your allies don’t stack so that they can all be covered by the mantra, you achieved nothing.

Chorazin.4107:

You bring stab, you will always be wanted in WvW, now it’s just about making it useful outside of being a boon bot.

You know who else brings stability? Base guardian.

And firebrand fails to be an upgrade over base guardian when it comes to stability uptime, because VoC has half the cooldown of ToC, which means you can proc Indomitable Courage twice as often.

The only other source of stability for Firebrand is the elite mantra, which is both unusable in wvw due to its range, but it also competes with Renewed Focus, which can act as AoE stability by proccing Indomitable Courage a second time.

The only other benefits Firebrand has is aegis spam, which is useless in wvw, especially compared to barrier, and quickness, which you can’t use because mantra area coverage
is garbage.

If it weren’t for the staff nerf, firebrand would be inferior even in condi damage. Now with all our mid- and long-range weapons being trash, Tome of Justice is a reason to go FB, at the price of being a worse support.

Brutaly.6257:

Dirame.8521:

Might be a nerf to Renewed Focus users but those guys need a nerf anyway.

Qft, that single skill and its relative strength is blocking build diversity

Meanwhile, other classes get invulnerabily as a weapon skill or a profession mechanic, and they can freely cast while invulnerable.

The only thing that makes Renewed Focus so good is that all other elites suck, and guardian only has RF and Shelter as panic buttons.

TheShniper.1852:

Every forum has some sort of post like this. How are people making reliable judgements on the class in ither modes besides pvp? This class brings amazing visuals along with pve power if perma quickness. Whivh could replace a mesmer in high lvl content. Firebrand bas great aegis application. You cant really tell what the dps will be like due to pvp gear but i was able to keep perma quickness with vipers and just 15% boon duration. The tomea are fine. With quickness the cast times are pretty much gone so it doesnt matter to much. I do not think this will be good in spvp. I do believe it will be great in wvw. But only time will tell. People have been making negative judgements to quick.

You are right about the damage, you have to test it in pve to know how it performs. But you don’t need to test the support.

If you managed to maintain perma-quickness with only 15% boon duration, then you made use of Stand Your Ground with Stalwart Speed, which is not intended behaviour. When this is fixed, you will need 64% boon duration.

Second, you ignore the radius of effect of those quickness skills and traits. It’s extremely small, to the point that it cripples the whole spec. Then, replacing a chrono is not just a matter of having quickness. Chrono brings alacrity, distort, portal and they are the best tanks. Just the last point alone means that in raids, the best firebrand can hope for is replacing the second chrono as a 1 in 10 class.

It’s also quite ironic that if chronos are gone, Dragonhunters take a significant DPS hit, by losing perma retaliation.

As for the cast times, you cannot take quickness for granted, especially in competitive modes. It’s also idiotic design to make quickness mandatory for the spec to work, when it’s supposed to be a buff, like it is for every other class in the game, not a requirement.

Having more mobility won’t make mantras any better in pve. Your group will still be forced to stack on top of one another, which just doesn’t happen in raids and fractals.

Kuya.6495:

Ragnarox.9601:

Kuya.6495:

Ragnarox.9601:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVgxqj_-ihU

scourge barrier, 10k perma barrier haha. Firebrand tomes would melt. FB is worst spec on 90 sec cd.

What are you even complaining about here?

I am complaining cause barrier should be guardian spec thing also, weaver got it why shouldn’t we?
Scourge is clearly better for support (you can see that in the video).

If you want barriers make a scourge.

What i don’t understand is why you’re acting as if anet killed your puppy by not giving firebrand something they never promised you.

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.

Still, it’s not about barrier in particular, Anet gave firebrand absolute nothing unique. The closest thing to unique utility we have is the useless +300 toughness buff on Tome of Courage.

But we spent the whole HoT 2-year period being a worse Tempest, guardian being the interior version of other classes is nothing new.

Saiyan.1704:

Jourdelune.7456:

I still want an explanation from Anet for this nerf.

You kidding? We know the exact reason for the Nerf, to prevent a power creep particularly in WvW.

I played Firebrand well enough to know exactly how powerful it is. I’d even use it in SPvP because of F1 and sustains alone if it wasn’t for the range Nerf. It still may be a strong, damaging and support, 2-hander utility weaoon. I just have to see if it’s stronger than a 1-hander/offhand replacement.

Powercreep is becoming an empty buzzword nowadays. If anything, the condi staff build is worse with FB, since the ToJ passive is garbage.

You wanna know why staff was nerfed? Because Firebrand has a 600-range cone auto in Tome of Justice, which you can keep recharging with the Radiance minor.

It’s about selling the new product, don’t act like firebrand would break staff.

Of course you can expect anet to make changes. One year after release, and they will be focused on making firebrand a better condi dps.

Okay, they might reduce Sanctuary’s cooldowns a bit, too, it’s a tradition at this point.

Ragnarox.9601:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVgxqj_-ihU

scourge barrier, 10k perma barrier haha. Firebrand tomes would melt. FB is worst spec on 90 sec cd.

Lol, not a single Firebrand in that squad, all guardians chose to stay base.

Nice “support” spec, anet.

draxynnic.3719:

RabbitUp.8294:

ToR’s “healing bombs” are weaker than Celestial Avatar’s, and that’s before considering the immense difference between their cooldowns.

The numbers looked roughly comparable baseline, although Celestial Avatar does scale better with healing power.

I made a thread comparing the two.

Tome of Resolve is gated by charges, so there’s a limit to how much you can heal. Even then, using all your charges is less base healing than Druid using only Rejuvenating Tides and Lunar Impact. Yes, you might call them “roughly comparable”, but Tome of Resolve has more than 4 times longer cooldown, the numbers shouldn’t be roughly comparable, especially with Tome of Resolve on the lower side.

On top of that, druid can remain in CA and do more healing using Seed of Life and Cosmic Ray, and with alacrity, they can easily use Rejuvenating Tides a second time. This will drain their energy and delay their next Celestial Avatar, but in a raid setting, it will be only a couple of seconds of delay, nothing comparable to Tome of Resolve’s 45s cooldown.

To be fair, you can squeeze some more healing out of Tome of Resolve, because other skills and traits you use will have a 33% modifier, but that requires some build dedication to healing.

Which brings us to the second comparison, firebrand vs druid with healing gear. The difference is not even funny, 1 cast of Rejuvenating Tides is stronger than the entire Tome of Resolve.

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.

draxynnic.3719:

RabbitUp.8294:

Knighthonor.4061:

whats bad about the tombs? Was the best part of PoF that I was looking forward to.

Resolve has weak healing, Courage’s only defensive skill is some protection and +300 toughness, but more importantly, extremely long cooldowns (Tome of Resolve 45, Tome of Courage 90s).

Baseline, yes, but you need to look at how they interact with traits.

Loremaster cuts those recharges by a third – so it becomes 30 and 60, respectively, on the order of dragonhunter virtues. You can reduce that even further by adding the Virtues traitline. (While on the note of reduced recharges, there’s also Renewed Justice for ToJ.)

Legendary Lore makes all of your ToR skills apply 6s regeneration, which pretty much means that if you invoke a ToR healing bomb, people are pretty much going to have Regeneration until you’re ready to invoke ToR again. YMMV on how useful that is, but I think it would have its uses. Generally speaking, the ability to drop healing bombs doesn’t actually seem to be that much less than Celestial Avatar to my eye, but I will note that I haven’t done any thorough analysis there.

Possibly more interestingly, ToC with Legendary Lore grants Aegis to all of your affected allies as well as the listed effects. In and of itself, this basically makes it a longer-lasting, more flexible Well of Precognition. Unlike mesmers, though, guardians have traits that key of aegis blocks. Throw in Shattered Aegis, and while you may not be doing damage directly, the enemy will have to back out of melee range (good time to drop that projectile reflect!) or stop attacking or they’ll start getting hit by a lot of exploding Aegises. Add in Wrathful Spirit and Pure of Heart, and they’ll also be healing your allies when their attacks bounce off your aegis, and they’ll be copping retaliation for every attack that does get through. The skills might not cause damage directly, but I could see that making a big difference in a teamfight for something you can do once a minute, while also packing other sources of aegis to make use of those traits during the time in between.

And that’s just scraping the surface. I think one of the things I’m most looking forward to with firebrand is figuring out how all these various synergies can work out, both those that make heavy use of the tomes and those for which the tomes are something you pull out for special occasions.

But I have to say that if your suggestion to remove weaponswap was implemented, then that would probably kill my enthusiasm faster and more effectively than anything else I see as being reasonably plausible.

Yes, Legendary Lore is an overperforming trait, that I can agree with. Tomes by themselves still have a myriad problem, even if a trait like that exists.

Especially when “support” Firebrand can’t use it to begin with, since it competes with the necessary quickness trait.

As for regeneration, it’s a non-stacking boon and chronos passively grant perma-regeneration already.

ToR’s “healing bombs” are weaker than Celestial Avatar’s, and that’s before considering the immense difference between their cooldowns.

Knighthonor.4061:

whats bad about the tombs? Was the best part of PoF that I was looking forward to.

Resolve has weak healing, Courage’s only defensive skill is some protection and +300 toughness, but more importantly, extremely long cooldowns (Tome of Resolve 45, Tome of Courage 90s).

They still haven’t fixed a lot of bugs, and there other issues with them, like extremely long cast times, and underwhelming skills (like Shield and Bow). I find them worse than their pre-work counterparts, at least old Sword was great in condi builds.

I just hate the auto animation, it looks weird, and even worse with quickness. I would be more than happy to get an auto chain that does the same attack x3, only to get different animation on each swing.

Ranged cleaving isn’t really an issue, because there needs to be some downside to using a ranged weapon that has comparable damage to many melee weapons, and you do have the symbol for some aoe.

The lack of cleave isn’t the issue, but I don’t like that scepter is actually worse against multiple targets, because the little fists that come with the symbol are not piercing and so the damage is split randomly on multiple foes.

So, while a weapon like mesmer’s greatsword has limited cleave and a single target auto, at least they don’t lose single-target damage when fighting multiple opponents.

The change to Radiance is all sorts of fun, I just wish we had a dps alternative to Valkyrie, something like power, ferocity and condi damage.

I did make some valkyrie gear for open world, and I hope they fix the retaliation trait on firebrand, because it wasn’t working with the heal’s mantra charges.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

To be honest, I don’t agree with the idea of removing weapon swap for Firebrands, and there’s one simple reason for that. Not everyone who takes firebrands wants to build into or use tomes exclusively. Some might want to focus on more core builds but supported by Firebrand traits (for example, I can see quickness focused builds that focus less on tomes being a thing).

One thing we need in this game is more build options, not less, and pigeonholing players into using tomes more exclusively is not the way to go.

That being said, one viable alternative I could see being implemented is a trait that causes you to lose weapon swap, but greatly reduces tome cooldown. That way, those who want to focus more exclusively on tomes can do so, while those who don’t can keep their versatility and simply avoid said trait.

I don’t agree with that, the spec doesn’t have to be the right for everyone, it’s already geared towards conditions over power, so it will not be compatible with all core builds. But we are talking about the main mechanic here, you can’t gear the spec towards the people that are willing to never use it at all.

It’s the same with Scourge, you lose your shroud either way, regardless if you want to bother placing shades around. Holosmith dedicates all their traits to Photon Forge, if you don’t use it, you are missing one traitline.

With firebrand, adding 15 new skills in place of 3 is a big change. It absolutely should be the focus of the spec. Elite specs are supposed to be designed around a certain playstyle, and if you can ignore it entirely for the sake of picking a couple of traits, then the design failed.

Then you say you have to use tomes exclusively. I didn’t say remove all weapons, you still have one weapon set to use. You use tomes when you need them, they will still have limited charges and smaller but non-zero cooldowns.

There’s no guardian build that would not want to use the tomes. They provide damage, healing, boons, and general utility. You don’t have to focus on them and use the tome traits, but they are compatible with every build.

As it is, you already sacrifice a lot simply by activating the tome because of their very focused skill sets (for example using tome of justice means losing access to defensive tools, etc, while using tome of courage of resolve means losing access to damage).

It’s no different than weapon sets. Some weapon sets are pure damage, some have mobility, other have range, defense, etc.

So, if you are using Tome of Justice and want some defenses, equip Tome of Courage. If anything, the problem is more pronounced now, because the high cooldowns of Tome of Resolve and Courage means that you don’t get easy access to those defenses.

Ghotistyx.6942:

RabbitUp.8294:

Everyone has certain expectations from their class. Those expectations are subjective, but whether the class meets them or not is not.

That’s true, if a bit pedantic. That reasoning only applies to the topic as seen by the individual and isn’t helpful in other situations. There’s a notable difference between thinking a class is bad and a class being bad. And then of course commenting on those thoughts and the related bias is a whole ’nother ballgame.

It’s not about guardian being bad or not. This is a simplistic view that serves no purpose.

And this is not a quarrel anyhow. I never understood this need people have to take sides, you don’t need to defend guardian from criticism, neither shoot people’s arguments down.

It’s not subjective that people who prefer a supportive playstyle haven’t been able to get that out of guardian in pve these past couple of years. And now that firebrand is released as as support spec, this is more relevant than ever.

Brutaly.6257:

Also a route to go, would love it.

Make the axe auto 300 ranged, the symbol 900 ranged jump with symbol when landing and 600 range on skill 3.

Remove cd on tomes to compensate for one weapon only and global usage of pages.

Great, good to go…

My issue with the axe is the cast time on the symbol, I don’t think they need to change any skills.

A good place to add a short range teleport would be #3 on tome of resolve, Azure Sun, so that it’s always accessible for firebrand regardless of weapon and since it feels like a bland skill.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Fashion Mage.3712:

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.

Everyone has certain expectations from their class. Those expectations are subjective, but whether the class meets them or not is not.

Skuzz.6580:

“The devs themselves said that you would have to move back every time you wanted to cast the mantras”
Well yea, to CAST the mantra, you’d better not try that in the midst of combat, good luck trying to cast a 2.5sec spell… The mantra usage itself when it is already cast can be done in the mits of combat,

Not to prepare the mantra, to spend the charge. They themselves said that you are swinging your axe in melee range, and then step back to hit your allies with the mantra cones for quickness. This is an awful disjointed playstyle, and one that directly invalidates the point of mantras being instant casts, when you have to break your rotation and reposition.

- Ooh 2 guys on my right need healing, I turn my camera some degrees and use my CONE spell..
Seriously, how hard is it to understand this type of play style… and why am I even trying to help you understand.

Because this kind of playstyle doen’t work in real scenarios. In pvp, the people you are trying to heal with probably dodge or dash away if they are low. In wvw, you have extremely small coverage of the battlefield with your skills, which means you will affect 1-2 people at best.

It’s not just about turning your camera, it’s about having to be at 300 range away from them. Guardian already has cone spells, shield #4 and Receive the Lights. But those are 600 range. If mantras were 600 range cones, they would be fine.

And if you think a heavy armored class with aegis, protection, stability, and retaliation at its disposal should be on the same power level “healing wise” as a ranged medium armor class that can heal, quickness, fury (more offensive instead of defensive boons) then you sir, need to re-evaluate.

Heavy armor means nothing in this game.

Druid has access to Stone Spirit for huge protection uptime on 5 people, when guardian has to play hammer for that. Druid also has range and biggers AoEs.

If you think a class that’s already gated by clunky mechanics, long cooldowns, limited charges and short range skills should on top of that have less healing, not just less than druid, but less healing than dragonhunter, it’s you who needs to re-evaluate.

Applying Aegis is like healing someone for 5-10k, yes Aegis is that strong, think about that next time you want to compare them with Druids.

Only in the most handpicked of situations. Every big damaging ability in pve is either unblockable, multihit, leaves an DoT on the ground, or all of the above.

Zalarious.9168:

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).

This is about pve, and the numbers are up there.

REKKRAP.1759:

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.

So in the end, the only benefit is the stability, and that’s hardly useful in pve, when you can have Tempest take Gale Song.

Aegis directly competes with raw healing and now barrier. There are tons of unblockable attacks in both raids and fractals, boss auras that strip aegis, and multi-hit attacks and aoe fields that will do their bulk of damage even through aegis.

Meanwhile, a druid can keep healing their allies through any kind of damage, and a scourge can apply barrier, which has none of the drawbacks of aegis.

At the same time, you talk about pugs and how firebrand would benefit them, but you forget that in a pug situation, you cannot rely on the one druid to maintain 5 stacks of GotL by themselves, at which point, the second druid is the optimal choice.

Druid is safe and easy. Magi druid in particular makes a lot of encounters braindead easy. Firebrand will never compete with that, unless they have both good aegis output and good raw healing, and they don’t have that.

Even if it becomes an argument about dps, since magi druid has no personal damage and condi druid less healing, Scourge has both condi dps like firebrand and tons of defensive utility. The quickness of firebrand will continue to be supplied by chrono.

Skuzz.6580:

They designed FB with the mindset of them having to be in the middle of the fight to support their allies, hence why they went with cone skills, which works exactly the same way as almost all weapon attacks with a cleave componend do.. How can none of you see their design philosophy about this cone based playstyle…

First of all, to use cones, you have to stand behind your allies. That’s the problem, you are not in the middle of the battle, you have to be standing one step behind. At that range, you can’t use your melee axe, so the 2 core components of this elite spec directly clash.

And there’s no “design philosophy” behind this. It’s just a clunky mechanic that forces you to go out of your way to make it work, instead of flowing smoothly with the playstyle.

The devs themselves said that you would have to move back every time you wanted to cast the mantras, which makes for an awful experience, slow response time (especially when one of the mantras is a stun break), and removes the entire benefit of mantras, which is being instant casts, as you have to break your rotation every time you want to cast a mantra on your allies.

You really can’t expect FB to play like a druid or any other basic support class that uses ground AoE’s or other circular AoE’s, the sooner you lot get over that the better for the sake of this whiny sub-forum.

Why not? Why can’t I expect firebrand to act like a “basic support class”?

Is there something firebrand gets extra to make up for this limitation? Because that’s all it is, a limitation, skills that for all other classes are easy-to-use aoes, firebrand has to jump through hoops to use.

So what do firebrand gain? If they are meant to put themselves in harm’s way more than other supports, what’s their upside compared to those other supports?

This is how game design works, not making up stupid gimmicks for the sake of “flavour”.

Sure the cone might be a bit too short/not wide enough, you don’t hear me disagreeing on that I even advocate them increasing this a bit, but it being a cone is actually what got me excited about FB (having played Holy Pala in WoW where the cone healing spell was a big part of its playstyle, yes that cone was a bit wider and a lot longer but still, it required you to anticipate ally movement and position yourself to get the most out of your spell).

So it was nothing like mantras, then.

And buff tomes to compensate. No cast times on equip, severely reduced cooldowns.

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.

Right now, you could replace them with the core Virtues or the Dh ones, and Firebrand would play exactly the same.

mazut.4296:

RabbitUp.8294:

mazut.4296:

RabbitUp.8294:

mazut.4296:

People forget that Guard is not all about healing, but its other half is about damage prevention and mitigation.

Do you see any damage mitigation in Tome of Resolve? The tome itself is focused on healing, and it does a bad job at it. That’s why this thread is about the tome, not about the whole guardian profession.

And if we compare Firebrand to DH in terms of damage mitigation, Shield of Courage can tank hits for the whole team, the best thing Tome of Courage can do is stop projectiles or conditions after a delay.

You have them on utilities and weapons. And traits*

There’s no mitigation on axe, and the only mantra that has mitigation is the heal that grants aegis, but at the cost of being a very weak heal.

No, base guardian weapons and skills don’t count, because those are accessible to DH, too, and we already established that as it is, DH can heal for more.

Roll eyes… Ofc they count

Roll them all you want, Dh is still a better healer than Firebrand and base gaurdian is a better overall support.

Juular.4729:

Warrior is not wanted in wvw zergs anymore, only thing left is a banner bot in pve thats it, ok roamer vs scrubs but anyone half good will kill warrior.

Condi dps zerker is doing top damage, and condi PS is doing 31k, as much damage as some pure dps builds for other classes.

But sure, they are banner bot because they waste exactly 1 utility slot for a banner.

Aeolus.3615:

Azoqu.8917:

RabbitUp.8294:

You also set the parameter for top tier dps, which for me personally is of less important and would rather have a druid/chrono tier support build than do 35k.

And this is the whole argument, people did not roll Guardian to deal DPS but because it was said to be THE support class. Anet even said it would be for those Paragon, Monk, and Ritualist players who wanted to do support.

Yeah guess what, that defensive spec since ANet(and their awfull balance) wanted players to be carried by damage spam capabilities,guard was getting behind, and it was always a easy target if played on defensive/support way while its support was justabout stacking some boon bots, while ANet kept bufifng other classes (buffing what was already strong in some cases).

Azoqu.8917:, people nowadays only roll for damage(main objective of the game, its not hard to get carried in some classes either), that is what this game is about… FB has the support of core on steroids plus what always laked on support, a bit of DPS, and even has CC on mantras .

We are talking about PVE. Look at druid or chrono to see what support means.

Guardian never had good support in pve. Aegis is bad because all attacks worth blocking are unblockable, stability is unecessary, their base healing is low and inaccessible. They are focused on defensive support, and yet they are nowhere near close to mesmer that can share invulnerability, and now scourge whose barrier absorbs even unblockable attacks.

If you think the problem with guardian support is that they lacked damage, you haven’t played pve for years.

I love the fact that they gave us a cone-shaped stun break for allies. By the time you turn to aim the cone, the cc will probably already be over. And if you get stunned alongside your allies, you better hope you were looking towards them, otherwise it’s useless.

Alteran.9510:

Taking away the cooldowns from the tomes would break the F1-F3 traits completely so it won’t happen until anet reworks the guardian completely in its traits.
They can reduce them to the level of core guard or DH but that’s it.

They can easily reduce them to F1 15s, F2 20s, F3 30s or 35s.

F1 would have to be nerfed a little, F2 can stay as is, it’s already weak, and F3 only needs the stability from #1 removed, it can instead apply barrier.

Then, remove the 33% cd reduction trait so that skills are not as spammable.

Fashion Mage.3712:

SlayerSixx.5763:

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.

Queue the tired old argument the devs use “but guardian is heavy armour”, because guardian can’t lift its own armour in combat, but warrior is fine dashing and hopping their way through and both rev and warrior get superspeed.

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.

Maybe we can go back to that Merciful Intervention suggestion?

otto.5684:

RabbitUp.8294:

otto.5684:

RabbitUp.8294:

NemesiS.6749:

Guardians is in the best spot IMO among all the classes. At least from a wvw perspective core guard it still a strong build, dragonhunter can also exchange the core guard a little. You have burn guard also. I just tried firebrand and honestly i think it will be very requested for wvw, so much support and boons, with staff it will probably be among the new meta, loved it. So guard is in a good spot, all 3 are usefull, core, DH and firebrand seem liek will have its place.

Remove Stand Your Ground then come tell me about that good spot.

Also consider there’s a game outside of wvw.

Guardian is fairly strong in sPvP, PvE and WvW. In addition, it is one of the few classes where core builds actually work somewhere.

Fire Brand though is a different story.

More than half of the base profession see use in some game mode, so not that few.

Yes, but how many classes capable of doing 35K damage? How many classes have none elite builds viable for anything? How many classes have multiple top tier builds in sPvP and WvW?

The only other class that is this versatile is elementalist.

Guardian
Base class: Used in wvw
Pve: Top tier power build (as of last patch, much weaker before that), no build* or role variety
Pvp: Usable, but definitely not a top class
Wvw: strong support build, condi build pretty much obsolete with staff nerf, mediocre roamer
(* as in power vs condi, swapping a few traitlines around, but keeping the weapons, skills, rotations and general capability of the class the same is not build variety for me)

Warrior
Base class: Not really used
Pve: Top tier damage build, meta PS build at 2 in every squad
Pvp: was weakened after the last nerfs, I don’t know how this patch affected it, let’s say equal to Guardian
Wvw: heavy use in zergs, strong roamer

Revenant
Base class: Used in pve
Pve: Condi dps (not truly top tier, but better than pre-patch Dh), healer/support build used primarily in w4
Pvp: about equal to Guardian
Wvw: heavy use in zergs, good roamer

Ranger
Base class: Used in pve
Pve: strong condi build (used to be top tier, was nerfed with this patch), meta support build at 2 in every squad
Pvp: Top tier class
Wvw: Not used in zergs, strong roamer

Engineer
Base class: All over pve
Pve: Top tier condi build, good power dps build
Pvp: Top tier class
Wvw: Not used in zergs, strong roamer

Thief
Base class: Used in pve
Pve: top tier condi build, strong power builds (staff DD and D/D thief)
Pvp: Top tier class
Wvw: Not used in zergs, probably the best roamer

Elementalist
Base class: Technically inferior to Tempest, but it can be used as dps in pve and is better than what DH used to be before the patch
Pve: Top tier condi and power builds
Pvp: Probably not top tier, Iet’s say equal to Guardian
Wvw: Heavy use in zergs, good roamer

So, it seems to be the above classes are at an equal standing in a spread of different parameters. That’s 7 out of 9. All have strong dps builds, but guardian has no role variety in pve, ranger engineer and thief don’t see zerg play but can roam, revenant has 2 good builds in pve but not truly meta, and warrior doesn’t use its base class. Let’s say ele doesn’t use the base class either, but that’s only because it loses to its own spec, not other classes. So everyone has a weak point.

So, Guardian is not in any unique spot. The thing with the “good spot” meme is that people use it every time someone asks a change or buff for guardian to shut them down. Other classes of similar and in certain areas stronger power level get buffs all the time, and while guardian did get buffs recently, it has never been to the point of ranger or tempest, that got an entire new build.

You also set the parameter for top tier dps, which for me personally is of less important and would rather have a druid/chrono tier support build than do 35k.

I agree that final charges need to stronger.

Mantra of Solace needs to be reduced to 20s cooldown, 30s is too restrictive to ever use the final charge.

That way, it has a nice balance of sustained healing, frequent aegis, as well as an easy proc of on-heal traits, but you are not punished severely if you use the final charge in a pinch.

Healing Signet is a good comparison, and that one you won’t even have to recast for 2.75s.