Guild Wars 2

Wonderfully written OP. I would like to put forth my ideas about Firebrand, also coming purely from a WvW perspective.

While the Tomes might be all fine and dandy in a pve or Raid setting, where a lot of things are scripted, things don’t happen the same way in WvW (As I’m sure many of you know).

Base Guard/DH didn’t have a problem with their Virtues, as they felt like they had a “fair enough” cooldown for their use, and their use was strong. F1 was great on both base/DH as far as a quick aoe boost to your might/some fire damage etc.
Tome of Justice does not give this “quick boost” to anything. It’s more like a “Slow boost to some might, and you either choose to camp this, to actually get something out of it, or waste it completely”

Same goes for ToR and ToC. Virtues was good clean healing, kitten good cleanse, good Stability and protection etc etc.. we all know how Guardians/DH worked, I don’t need to explain.

Tomes are amazing. Even with ToR low healing properties. I do agree, though, that the base healing SHOULD be buffed. You know why? Because you’re heavily sacrificing ANY dps for the time you’re in the Tome. It’s a huge issue I feel, and therefore, I have a few Ideas for what could be changed.

Loremaster (Grandmaster trait)
Tomes gain reduced cooldown based on remaining pages.
(This replaces the current cooldown, and removes the passive on cooldown aspect, as it’s less necessary)

Idea 1: Remaining pages unused after you leave a tome should reduce the cooldown by a % amount. My thought, 50% max. If you’re not using Archivist of Whispers, each page =10%. With the trait, each page = 6.25%.

Example: Open ToR, use Epilogue, then Shining River, then Radiant Recovery. You’ve increased healing power, created a healing combo field and then removed conditions off allies. You then leave SoR and have a 20% reduced cooldown.

Idea 2. Tomes do NOT go on cooldown until you have used ALL the pages. Remove Archivist of Whispers and change it to something. Honestly, I’m not feeling creative.