Put the range on 750. This should be enough to be behind your teammates buffing them without being to far away to hop back in.
750 is extreme. Just make them the same as old staff auto, wider cones with 600 range.
The thing is, you don’t have to be behind your teammates, you can stand on the other side of the boss, facing your teammates. But with only 300 range, this doesn’t work for large hitbox bosses.
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.
We knew mantras were short-range cones, we knew everything had long cast times, we knew tomes and mantras have huge cooldowns, we knew the final charges are not rewarding enough.
The only thing new is that axe auto can fail to register when you spam it with quickness, and I was under the impression that axe would have 300 range, so that’s another disappointment.
Loremaster isn’t working. Stays 90 on tool tip and on use.
Loremaster reduces the cooldowns of tome skills 1-5. Tomes thrnselves are not “tome” skills, they are virtues.
An excellent post. Sums up the guardian conundrum perfectly.
But, naru, I stacked so much burning on the stationary golem, how can you say firebrand is bad?
For anyone saying it is good blah blah, I know firebrand is good in wvw and pve(prob cuz quickness stacking) This post is PVP only.
Don’t worry, it’s plenty useless in pve, too. At least the support part, it can probably play as condi dps.
In wvw, it seems like an upgrade over core stability bot guard, at least until the boonstrip meta renders it absolete.
Healer’s retribution does not work correctly with the mantra (I think) : it gives retaliation only after you charge the mantra, not when using a charge of the mantra. This contradicts the new firebrand trait that gives quickness when using a healing skill (Liberator’s Vow) which activates when using a charge of the mantra.
Rune of the Water and Smiter’s Boon work with mantra charges, so it’s definitely a bug.
So far it looks pretty great for PvE. PvP…. not so much
The condi portion perhaps. The support is laughably bad for pve.
Best thing about firebrand is you can get up and make a sandwich while waiting for your tomes to recharge.
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 wait
Go in quick and use your mobility to escape before getting bursted?
Nevermind.
Stalwart Speed
When you grant aegis or stability, grant quickness (2s).
Cooldown: 5 seconds
This trait grants quickness for each stack of stability. So, Stand Your Ground is 10 seconds of quickness every 24 seconds (traited with Pure of Voice).
With alacrity, its cooldown is 18 seconds, so with 80% boon duration, you can have perma quickness at 600 AoE with 1 button.
Loremaster should have been a base guardian trait.
Isn’t it 300 range?
You might as well spam axe 1.
That would have been really cool, flexible and functional – kind of like building Jaunt into the dodge itself unlike now where we have to blur and use a separate movement skill to move.
Or move with WASD
Just goes to show how ppl love to whine on the forums. Firebrand looked very good, loads of new stuff, high condi DPS, lot of support. It’s gonna be a beast in WvW
“loads of new stuff, lot of support”
If you can’t specify, it just goes to show you have no leg to stand on. We know every single skill and trait of firebrand, we don’t need a dev stream to wow at.
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?
Why do people assume that the spec was even built for PVP/WvW focus? We already know from past experience that Anet isn’t doing this. For example, scrapper was a PVP focused spec. It doesn’t even make sense to say that the spec isn’t good because it doesn’t do this or that. That’s been true of the game since day one with the core professions.
It won’t have a place in raids either.
Just goes to show how ppl love to whine on the forums. Firebrand looked very good, loads of new stuff, high condi DPS, lot of support. It’s gonna be a beast in WvW
“loads of new stuff, lot of support”
If you can’t specify, it just goes to show you have no leg to stand on. We know every single skill and trait of firebrand, we don’t need a dev stream to wow at.
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?
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Guards were lacking a viable condi weapon/spec more than they were lacking support.
And yet they can’t play support. Riddle me that.
That stance switching was given to Deadeye, btw. Rip bow.
With the reveal of all skills, I started working on the quickness rotation and the required boon duration.
Mantra of Potence and Mantra of Solace every 12 seconds is mandatory, but we can use either Feel my Wrath or Mantra of Liberation for the elite slot. Feel my Wrath is easier, because Mantra of Liberation requires keeping track of a hidden cooldown, and requires alacrity to work.
Sigil of Concentration has great synergy with firebrand, since we share quickness every 12 seconds and thus we can afford to weapon swap every time we do so. Still, I provide numbers without the signet for reference.
(The %number is boon duration, the number in the parentheses is the same in concentration.)
Raids
64% (960) -base-
57% (855) w/ Pure of Voice
55% (825) w/ alacrity
47% (705) both
Using Sigil of Concentration
31% (465) -base-
24% (360) w/ Pure of Voice
22% (330) w/ alacrity
14% (210) both
Fractals
Things are easier here if you are using the Mist Mobility Potion. With 150 AR, you get 225 concentration, which 15% boon duration.
49% (735) -base-
42% (630) w/ Pure of Voice
40% (600) w/ alacrity
32% (480) both
Using Sigil of Concentration
16% (240) -base-
9% (135) w/ Pure of Voice
7% (105) w/ alacrity
0% (0) both
(edited by RabbitUp.8294)
about that GM traits , i think its actually 2 stacks of burn , not the burn itself but the buff icon has number 2 . personal dps or not its still good dps gain
It’s 2 stacks per person, affects 5 people, so it’s 10 stacks total. With 10s cooldown, it’s equal to 1 stack per second.
You can’t say if it is a dps gain or not, it’s just dps, you can just put a condi dps there and they will do a lot more than 1 burn per second. If it didn’t say “allies” and was just straight burning, we wouldn’t be discussing it at all.
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I’m using Ebb and love it. It will look pretty good with Shooshadoo, both being water themed.
actually base guard signet sharing will grant 220 power +220 condi dmg , and a GM trait from firebrand works basically like sun spirit.
216 power/condi, and it’s not permanent.
So, more like 90 power or 120 with alacrity.
Or 108 condi, 143 with alacrity.
Both come at the cost of personal dps.
The firebrand GM is not comparable to Sun Spirit. It’s a fixed amount of burning stacks (10 stacks) with a 10s cooldown, that translates to 1 stack of burn (3s) every second.* It’s not a party buff, like how thief venoms are not buffs. It’s just part of FB’s dps that scales with the party size.
*It’s actually lower, because firebrand gives quickness every 12 seconds, not 10.
alacrity is overrated , if firebrand could provide those with decent dps , people would drop chrono for firebrand , it all comes down to raw dps gain from personal dps and buff . and btw firebrand quickness is much much easier to maintain than our silly well.
Alacrity offers more than damage. It affects rotations, some of which are not possible without alacrity and it affects support/boon uptime. Not to mention, after 2 years, raiders have grown used to having alacrity. Unless firebrand offers significant damage (we are talking about 30k) along with perma quickness, chrono is going nowhere. Not to mention that chrono can just forget about quickness and only provide alacrity, which increases its personal dps. It would compete with renegade then, which will probably come down to utility vs dps, but the kind of utility mesmer provides is irrepleceable.
As for firebrand being easier, have you seen the mantras? They are 300-range narrow cones in front of you, so you have to stand behind your team, when axe is a melee weapon. Well of Action is leagues easier to use.
A hint : DH does not offer much dmg mod for guard.
It offers more than 20% as pure modifiers, then there’s the dps increase of Procession of Blades. I say that’s pretty significant.
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Guardian’s phantasy is about defending your allies, taking hits to protect them.
A new condition called taunt is released that does just that, guardian doesn’t get access to it.
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.
It has been said by devs that guardian is designed around sharing boons to your allies.
Boon copying is restricted to mesmer, a unique buff that increases boon duration was given to revenant, and guardian’s trait that gives concentration gives a lower amount than what other classes get (200 vs 240) and it’s a major trait, when for other classes it’s a minor. It was even restricted to one weapon only before last patch.
Guardian finally gets a dedicated support spec.
It has pitiful healing, doesn’t use the new defensive mechanic, and the support is offers is already covered by an existing support class.
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I expected ranged skills as well and was pretty disappointed by the elite spec. It seems like Firebrand was mainly designed to allow Guardians to use condition damage in PvE raids.
And that could have been accomplished just by buffing Virtue of Justice to its pvp values. All other classes were allowed to play with their condi builds until last patch, when they nerfed most of them to replace them with the new specs. Saying that guardian had to wait for firebrand is short-sighted.
Firebrand was designed to be a support spec. But the new design philosophy is to not make another druid or chrono that sacrifices all damage for support, but more like PS warrior, that has good personal dps.
So they made firebrand, scourge and renegade. But because they gave them more damage, their support is weaker than chrono and druid (heck, even warrior). Only, firebrand still has to dedicate its traits to access quickness and boon duration was nerfed, so even the damage seems to be pretty low.
So, in the end, instead of good support with low damage, we get mediocre support with mediocre damage.
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The condition duration of axe is such a joke though, 2s seconds of bleeding on auto, when warrior sword does 8s and has a trait that increases it by 20%.
The difference is that warrior has bleeds as main condi and for FB it is a cover condi. FB does not need more bleeds.
Comparing apples and pears.
It’s not a cover condi, it’s part of its dps. Plus, warrior has plenty of burn with Berzerker.
Guardian, on the other hand had its VoJ cut in half.
The swords main condition for a war is bleeds. Guardian has a second (primary) tied to the axe, Why should we compare the war sword and the guardian axe?
Building a condi FB will never ever focus on having huge stacks of bleeding and balthazar runes will still be the way to go in any game mode. In pve it bleeds will be minor and in pvp and wvw it is a cover condi, nothing more.
Its apples and pears.
And the axe’s main condi is bleeding, so what’s your point?
So you think bleeding will be main condi in FB equipped with an axe. Is that how i should interpret your post?
Is bleeding the main condi for condi zerkers?
It seems to me like you have difficulty differentiating between the axe and firebrand in general.
Condi guardian already existed and was strictly burning based. And it wasn’t good in pve. The whole point is for firebrand to offer something that is better than that build.
We are already starting with a 50% nerf to VoJ. The condi output of spirit weapons is also nerfed. The axe itself is more bleeding-based that it is burn-based. And the bleeding has very short duration, compared to other condi weapons.
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Crusader is a power combo, why would you use it with Seraph that’s condi? If you want toughness and healing, use Shaman or something.
Revenants already had access to permanent alacrity before the last balance change.
The problem was the build they had to run was useless besides the alacrity. Chrono provides a lot more than just alacrity and as long as revenant doesn’t provide the same amount of utility (or high dps so another class can provide the utility) they are not a mesmer replacement.
No they didn’t. Natural harmony has an energy cost. Without the new elite spec you can at best sustain alacrity for 75% of the time.
I don’t see how this rotation is any better.
Starting with Ventari, you use Natural Harmony and switch to Kalla, NH hits after 1s delay for 3s and OFA is 7s. That’s 10s, enough to last you until the next switch. So far so good.
But you get back to Ventari with 1s of alacrity. Now you have to start spamming NH. Using it 3 times is easy enough, but that’s 9s, only enough to last you until the next swap, so you have to use it a 4th time right before switching to replicate the rotation you began with, so you are back to having the same energy hungry rotation revenant has already and struggles with.
I also know (if my math is right) that Firebrand can grant allies perma quickness.
Distortion share is unique to Mesmer. But now there is nothing unique about Chronomancer.
There’s nothing unique about Firebrand either, just a watered-down chrono, and base guardian has nothing truly unique to begin with.
At least mesmer has distortion, portal and boon share as unique aspects, and also boon removal and stealth, that are not unique, but are rarer and situationally useful. Plus, chrono is a very good tank.
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i heard people wondering about mixing seraph with some gear that imprves boon durations?
Not sure how it will end :\ with that very low health pool, outside pve might be hard…
If i recall nor seraph, nor the armor stats with concentration have Vitality…its already known what the new stats are??
Seraph itself has concentration, why would you need another stat set?
When you get enough concentration, you can use Carrion or Trailblazer, if you want more Vitality/Toughness.
Support firebrand will probably use Seraph gear.
Otherwise, viper.
it is true that chrono i not limited by range but still you need to be in specific position to get quickness from him (where others are). If everyone is spread out most of the quickness qill be wasted, same as in guardian case. I am not saying that its not a huge limitation or that it is better then chrono or anything. My point was that if firebrand quickness was 600 range 360 around you then your group wouldnt need to be on same spot which could be huge advantage for guardian. Thiw way he is kept in “check”.
Why do you go from 300 range cones to 600 radius AoE, like there’s no middle ground?
Having them be 450-600 range cones or 240 radius AoEs is perfectly fine.
Also firebrand quickness is not tied to any weapon, you have 2 free traitlines and 2 free ultility slots. That means you can chose much more dps oriented build then chrono and your rotation is not destroyed by quickness stacking.
Base guardian DPS is garbage, so you rely on firebrand to get good dps. Except that quickness stacking firebrand can’t choose any dps traits, besides the grandmaster, which are all pretty mediocre dps-wise.
I am not saying that he will or wont be viable/competetive. I am just saying that the developers just cannot make firebrand without downsides.
Firebrand is already a watered-down chrono, that’s a pretty big downside. Chrono is offering a lot more than just quickness.
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The condition duration of axe is such a joke though, 2s seconds of bleeding on auto, when warrior sword does 8s and has a trait that increases it by 20%.
The difference is that warrior has bleeds as main condi and for FB it is a cover condi. FB does not need more bleeds.
Comparing apples and pears.
It’s not a cover condi, it’s part of its dps. Plus, warrior has plenty of burn with Berzerker.
Guardian, on the other hand had its VoJ cut in half.
The swords main condition for a war is bleeds. Guardian has a second (primary) tied to the axe, Why should we compare the war sword and the guardian axe?
Building a condi FB will never ever focus on having huge stacks of bleeding and balthazar runes will still be the way to go in any game mode. In pve it bleeds will be minor and in pvp and wvw it is a cover condi, nothing more.
Its apples and pears.
And the axe’s main condi is bleeding, so what’s your point?
The condition duration of axe is such a joke though, 2s seconds of bleeding on auto, when warrior sword does 8s and has a trait that increases it by 20%.
The difference is that warrior has bleeds as main condi and for FB it is a cover condi. FB does not need more bleeds.
Comparing apples and pears.
It’s not a cover condi, it’s part of its dps. Plus, warrior has plenty of burn with Berzerker.
Guardian, on the other hand had its VoJ cut in half.
what do you mean with VoJ cut in half??? The passive burning from Tome of Justice is 541 for 1 1/2 while voJ does the same dmg but with 4s. Isn´t ToJ better because it provides more dmg in a shorter period of time ??
ToJ: 360,67 dmg per second
VoJ: 135,24 dmg per secondanother advantage is that you don´t have as much time to cleanse it.
All burning does the same base dps per stack, you see a bigger number on the tooltip because of traits and condi damage gear.
It’s also not 1.5, it’s 1s, half of what it is now. 1.5 must be the pvp version.
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obviusly it is worse/harder to use then if it was 360 around you but remeber that chrono provide quickness on a spot. It is just diferent limitation. If your group is not stacked properly they wont get quickness from chrono. With guardian it is the same, you can just stand on the other side of the boss right?
I think that 360 around you would be way too good. Just look at the rotation, to provide 100 percent quickness uptime you need to press 2 keys every 12 seconds (and maybe weapon swap before that)
Chrono doesn’t have anywhere near the same limitations. Well of Action can be placed at range and has a decent 240 radius, Tides of Time is a giant projectile with 600 range, and Signet of Inspiration has shout range.
The rotation you described also works only with 100% boon duration, which will murder our dps and make chrono a vastly superior choice.
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Paragon always felt closer to warrior than guardian.
I would rather see a monk elite spec.
The condition duration of axe is such a joke though, 2s seconds of bleeding on auto, when warrior sword does 8s and has a trait that increases it by 20%.
The difference is that warrior has bleeds as main condi and for FB it is a cover condi. FB does not need more bleeds.
Comparing apples and pears.
It’s not a cover condi, it’s part of its dps. Plus, warrior has plenty of burn with Berzerker.
Guardian, on the other hand had its VoJ cut in half.
The condition duration of axe is such a joke though, 2s seconds of bleeding on auto, when warrior sword does 8s and has a trait that increases it by 20%.
Honour doesn’t really offer anything that good, even Pure of Voice is meh, because Hallowed Ground is a better source of retaliation than Save Yourselves.
Virtues on the other hand gives some nice %damage, and another source of retaliation. With firebrand, we get a spammable heal for retaliation and aegis uptime.
Why not wait for the weekend to make sure? Then give feedback if it truly is awful. The idea that they are conal does not in and of itself make them terrible. If, for example, I have to face the direction I want to use the cone, then that makes it far worse.
That’s how it works. It’s not ground-targeted, it’s the same as the staff auto, it’s a cone towards what you are facing. We have already seen the skills in action.
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.”
Have you seen one that is not a cone?
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.
And there it is, now you don’t have to worry to hard about hitting your entire group with Aegis off the mantra heal.
Now you have to worry about hitting them with this, which has the same range?
With 100% boon duration, it’s 5 less stacks of might to worry about, so we might we some new might stackers, like scourge or rev.
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Heavy armor is hardly the reason why investments in toughness are sub-optimal. Personally, I don’t really care which of the two stats the traits scale with, since I’ll have 1000 of either. Maybe ANet wanted to keep scaling in check, but it hardly matters. It scales with toughness now and the probability is close to 0 that they’ll change it in the next years.
Except that if it scales off Vitality, it’s substantially better.
Since combined with the +50% crit chance with retaliation, +10% vs burning enemies, 4% base crit, +20% from fury, and +15.8% from spotter and banner of discipline, you get close to 100% crit chance with 0 personal investment into precision.
As a result, Valkyrie becomes significantly better than berserker gear with good play since it has the same crit damage, more power, and the same crit chance.
If there was a power primary version of Cavalier, then you’d probably be seeing that as a serious contender right now.
Base crit is 5%, so it is 100%, and if you are solo, you can get the trait that gives 15% to one-handed weapons (repacing banner + spotter), or use berzerker weapons with sigil of accuracy and the rest of your gear Valkyrie.
I think it’s a bit too early to judge axe as a whole but in my opinion, they really should have put quickness as the boon associated with axe.
Lets look at the facts:
-Every main-hand weapon has one unique boon associated with it’s symbol.
-No repeats
-4 possible boons left for current and future mainhand weapons
-It is unlikely we will see 4+ more expacs without the creation of new boons (may as well start putting 1 boon per weapon introduced to guard from here on out).
-Thematically, axe shouldn’t be given a defensive boon.
-Only 1 out of the 4 boons left is non-defensive – quickness.Taken together, this argues we should be given quickness. Symbol duration/cooldown/boon duration/pulsing are usually what is balanced, not whether or not the symbol gets a boon.
Another point I’d like to stress: In relation to pvp and wvw, I think Anet balance team has a bad habit of looking at skill balance in a vacuum. They may think “oh no, a 180 radius field for 5s that pulses quickness. And if players throw in a couple traits, the symbol lasts a bit longer and is a bit bigger. Oh nooooo, so overpower, much strengths, such boon.” and yes, it would be powerful…. but not on a somewhat slow, melee-ranged weapon associated with a support-based class. Compared to what other classes are getting, I don’t think tossing us this bone is going to break any camels’ backs.
I’m pretty sure the only reason they didn’t give quickness to axe is so that you are not forced to choose it as a quickness share firebrand. It’s a pure condi weapon for DPS firebrand, while it might be possible to play mace/shield tank firebrand that’s equally effective at giving quickness.
Guardian
Zealous Scepter: Fixed a bug in which this trait failed to grant might when a guardian was also traited with Permeating Wrath.
Does it work now? I didn’t try Permeating Wrath, but Zealous Scepter was working for me fine this morning.
U don’t necessarily have to go the condi route, the power route seems viable as well.
as we all know, there’s a firebrand trait that grant quickness whenever u drop aegis. You pair it with wrathful spirit (which grants retaliation when aegis ends), plus the recently buffed retaliation traits for further empowerment.
Condi is not necessarily the end-all, be-all; power-based firebrands seems intriguing and might even end up as a better hybrid/support spec. We might even see the return of the Mace.
Righteous Instinct + Retribution +Wrathful spirit + Stalwart Speed seems like a powerful combo. of course, until we get to test it, this is all speculation.
Hybrid looks very appealing, but firsg we need the right gear set for it, something without any precision.
Like Power, Ferocity, Condi or 4-stat with Expertise
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On one hand, I agree. On the other, firebrand can play tank just by having this trait and the shield trait, without any gear investment.
I get what you are saying about gear limitations, but you can use Magis with Cleric trinkets, and have Seraph is better than Minstrel for bon duration.
I didn’t even realise people still played with the staff, Learn something new everyday. Handy for tagging in WvW eh, I’ll dust it off and get it ready, oh wait, it WAS good for tagging in WvW, back it goes into the loft.
It wasn’t just used for tagging. Condi guardian could do quite some damage with it.
Isn’t this the same nonsense as ventari/dragonhunter fragments. Having to run around touching mirages seems frustrating, especially when our dodge doesn’t move us.
You can move while dodging.
Lets not pretend like anyone actually liked or used the old SWs
Let’s not go down that road again. The skills were ignored for four years, there are a number of buffs they could have tried instead of reworking them. But it’s done now.