Firebrand needs to be getting the same treatment as Scourge

Before anyone cites my signature, I play Scourge less than I do core Necro or Reaper. In fact I barely touched it at all until late this year because I never cared much for it.

On to my opinion."Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction (though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground. Thoughts on how that could be done would be appreciated. Reducing the number of targets on Firebrand healing skills would be one option I think could work, but again, I don't know much about Guardian as a whole, so that might be too much.

What ever adjustments are made, I think something needs to be done. Every time Scourge (and to a lesser extent Necromancer as a whole) gets nerfed, Firebrand inadvertently becomes stronger. Necro as a class is still as much a part of the meta as ever and is in no way in danger of losing it's viability in that respect, but I don't think it's fair for ANet to keep balancing zerg play almost entirely around Necro while mostly ignoring Guard (and when I say "Necro" and "Guard" I more or less mean their elite specs Scourge and Firebrand, but I'm talking the classes as a whole as well).

I don't think anyone wants unkillable boon balls to be meta forever, and I doubt if anyone wants to see the pirate ship meta return either. It's difficult to find a happy medium and I don't expect ANet to create that over night. But something needs to be done about Firebrand for a change instead of continually reducing the number of targets and boons corrupted on Necro skills with little in the way of compensation. Meanwhile, Guard occasionally gets some healing power co-efficients reduced and that's basically all.

I want to be clear before I finish that I'm not asking for buffs to Necro nor am I asking for Firebrand to be gutted. But I do think Firebrand deserves some more significant adjustments than anything it has seen since it's arrival. Support is equally as broken and capable of power creeping as damage.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:Before anyone cites my signature, I play Scourge less than I do core Necro or Reaper. In fact I barely touched it at all until late this year because I never cared much for it.

On to my opinion."Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction (though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground. Thoughts on how that could be done would be appreciated. Reducing the number of targets on Firebrand healing skills would be one option I think could work, but again, I don't know much about Guardian as a whole, so that might be too much.

What ever adjustments are made, I think something needs to be done. Every time Scourge (and to a lesser extent Necromancer as a whole) gets nerfed, Firebrand inadvertently becomes stronger. Necro as a class is still as much a part of the meta as ever and is in no way in danger of losing it's viability in that respect, but I don't think it's fair for ANet to keep balancing zerg play almost entirely around Necro while mostly ignoring Guard (and when I say "Necro" and "Guard" I more or less mean their elite specs Scourge and Firebrand, but I'm talking the classes as a whole as well).

I don't think anyone wants unkillable boon balls to be meta forever, and I doubt if anyone wants to see the pirate ship meta return either. It's difficult to find a happy medium and I don't expect ANet to create that over night. But something needs to be done about Firebrand for a change instead of continually reducing the number of targets and boons corrupted on Necro skills with little in the way of compensation. Meanwhile, Guard occasionally gets some healing power co-efficients reduced and that's basically all.

I want to be clear before I finish that I'm not asking for buffs to Necro nor am I asking for Firebrand to be gutted. But I do think Firebrand deserves some more significant adjustments than anything it has seen since it's arrival. Support is equally as broken and capable of power creeping as damage.

cmc already talked about that topic and said firebrand must be broken to give players the chance to play wvw, since every zerg relies strongly on firebrand stability. so yes, anet balancing is BIASED and it is intended, they dont hide it. they dont want to change it.

Well zergs are bad thing. Think if you would have to use some tactics and not just run in blob all boons and auras on 24/7.

@Zero.3871 said:cmc already talked about that topic and said firebrand must be broken to give players the chance to play wvw, since every zerg relies strongly on firebrand stability. so yes, anet balancing is BIASED and it is intended, they dont hide it. they dont want to change it.

How the heck does logic like that promote a new player base to WvW ? The first thing that happens is the new players are ordered to follow a specific META or get kicked from the group because they can neither comply or don't want to comply . And why should they ? This does not support inclusion but promotes exclusion so why would new inexperienced players even bother ? It gives a really bad first impression of WvW and that's why they never come back. On top of that it promotes server stacking there by skewing the whole population issue that has been a problem since day one . It's completely self defeating .

@Zero.3871 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

Before anyone cites my signature, I play Scourge less than I do core Necro or Reaper. In fact I barely touched it at all until late this year because I never cared much for it.

On to my opinion."Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction

(though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground.

Thoughts on how that could be done would be appreciated.

Reducing the number of targets on Firebrand healing skills would be one option I think could work, but again, I don't know much about Guardian as a whole, so that might be too much.

What ever adjustments are made, I think something needs to be done. Every time Scourge (and to a lesser extent Necromancer as a whole) gets nerfed, Firebrand inadvertently becomes stronger. Necro as a class is still as much a part of the meta as ever and is in no way in danger of losing it's viability in that respect, but I don't think it's fair for ANet to keep balancing zerg play almost entirely around Necro while mostly ignoring Guard

(and when I say "Necro" and "Guard" I more or less mean their elite specs Scourge and Firebrand, but I'm talking the classes as a whole as well).

I don't think anyone wants unkillable boon balls to be meta forever, and I doubt if anyone wants to see the pirate ship meta return either. It's difficult to find a happy medium and I don't expect ANet to create that over night. But something needs to be done about Firebrand for a change instead of continually reducing the number of targets and boons corrupted on Necro skills with little in the way of compensation. Meanwhile, Guard occasionally gets some healing power co-efficients reduced and that's basically all.

I want to be clear before I finish that I'm not asking for buffs to Necro nor am I asking for Firebrand to be gutted. But I do think Firebrand deserves some more significant adjustments than anything it has seen since it's arrival. Support is equally as broken and capable of power creeping as damage.

Is that true? Can we get a citation? Not having a go at you or anything, but that logic just seems completely nuts to be legit. Let alone openly admitting to deliberately keeping a class brokenly OP so that new people can play it.

To be fair though the main problem is minstrel. Why they thought adding minstrel stat to the game was ever a good idea bewilders me.

Boon ball exists as the only viable counter to the ridiculous amounts of damage that can be put out. Particularly from condi spam but also from power damage. No one enjoys being one shot, so you can't removed the boon ball meta until you firstly nerf all the damage, so that people can actually play the game mode.

@Mokk.2397 said:

@Zero.3871 said:How the heck does logic like that promote a new player base to WvW ? The first thing that happens is the new players are ordered to follow a specific META or get kicked from the group because they can neither comply or don't want to comply .

This is not a problem derived solely from the significance (or instead you might say dominance) of the Firebrand class in WvW. In every single serious WvW guild that I know, there are designated builds that the members of the guild are required to comply with or to at least adapt from.

Now, I do not know about your server, but in mine, there are plenty of chances to join an open squad for individual players who prefer neither to join a dedicated WvW guild nor to run a build designated by someone else. I myself for one have been doing so for years, and while my build has never been meta by any means, I contribute to the group in my own way and get recognized for that.

And I believe new players who are not (yet) affiliated with any dedicated group can as well achieve the same thing with ease, provided that they have put into some effort to study it and know what they are doing with their own builds. Or alternatively, if they are too lazy to do so, they can of course join an existing guild and go along with the designated builds that someone else designed for them.

@Anomander.6791 said:Boon ball exists as the only viable counter to the ridiculous amounts of damage that can be put out. Particularly from condi spam but also from power damage. No one enjoys being one shot, so you can't removed the boon ball meta until you firstly nerf all the damage, so that people can actually play the game mode.

and how will you remove the boonball exactly? nerfing damage is easy. but what about protec? will it give 16% damage reduction instead of 33% ?

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:

@Anomander.6791 said:Boon ball exists as the only viable counter to the ridiculous amounts of damage that can be put out. Particularly from condi spam but also from power damage. No one enjoys being one shot, so you can't removed the boon ball meta until you firstly nerf all the damage, so that people can actually play the game mode.

Reduce its spamability.Same with condis. Both of them can be applied too quickly and too easily. They need cooldowns so people have to think rather than spam abilities.

@Anomander.6791 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:

@Anomander.6791 said:Boon ball exists as the only viable counter to the ridiculous amounts of damage that can be put out. Particularly from condi spam but also from power damage. No one enjoys being one shot, so you can't removed the boon ball meta until you firstly nerf all the damage, so that people can actually play the game mode.

...which I believe will not address the "boon ball" problem the OP is concerned with, since Dwarf/Dragon Herald will easily make up for the loss of Stability. Personally though, I'd be glad to see in every sub group there's a Herald, or at least demand for one.

@Zero.3871 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

Before anyone cites my signature, I play Scourge less than I do core Necro or Reaper. In fact I barely touched it at all until late this year because I never cared much for it.

On to my opinion."Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction

(though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground.

Thoughts on how that could be done would be appreciated.

Reducing the number of targets on Firebrand healing skills would be one option I think could work, but again, I don't know much about Guardian as a whole, so that might be too much.

What ever adjustments are made, I think something needs to be done. Every time Scourge (and to a lesser extent Necromancer as a whole) gets nerfed, Firebrand inadvertently becomes stronger. Necro as a class is still as much a part of the meta as ever and is in no way in danger of losing it's viability in that respect, but I don't think it's fair for ANet to keep balancing zerg play almost entirely around Necro while mostly ignoring Guard

(and when I say "Necro" and "Guard" I more or less mean their elite specs Scourge and Firebrand, but I'm talking the classes as a whole as well).

I don't think anyone wants unkillable boon balls to be meta forever, and I doubt if anyone wants to see the pirate ship meta return either. It's difficult to find a happy medium and I don't expect ANet to create that over night. But something needs to be done about Firebrand for a change instead of continually reducing the number of targets and boons corrupted on Necro skills with little in the way of compensation. Meanwhile, Guard occasionally gets some healing power co-efficients reduced and that's basically all.

I want to be clear before I finish that I'm not asking for buffs to Necro nor am I asking for Firebrand to be gutted. But I do think Firebrand deserves some more significant adjustments than anything it has seen since it's arrival. Support is equally as broken and capable of power creeping as damage.

I agree with OP that something major needs to be done. Any highly organized zerg stacks to the width of a few players, avoids or distributes all aoe so that it tickles or is useless.

Specifically reducing the target cap on boons or healing for firebrands.in wvw would drastically improve the complexity and tactics of the current boring and predictable boonball meta.

Regarding this statement, CMC increasing the target cap on aoes ahile lowering it on boons will improve the individual impact of new players and old. Such a change would be -more- welcoming to new players who often feel useless amidst the sea of organized competitive play vs boonball meta.

This would change that and I think CMC would support it.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground.If you understand that, the question then becomes what you consider a "boon ball" and what your experiences of it are (ie., where you play). At the whatever highest tier of scale many fights are still decided within the first few ranged "bombs" and rolling the train in is mostly something done to capitalize on an advantage that has built up (eg., you drop a couple of players with a non-committed range bomb in a fake push, you do another but then committ larger ranged attacks and finish off a couple of more downed players and then you push). That is a sort of middle ground.

Any other situation where one side just rolls over the other side with a melee train only really exists when the sides are more imbalanced from the start and that also tend to present itself on a smaller scale and not at 50v50+ (or any scenario of 50v50c50+ where tags are cautious as pushing a side risks sandwich).

As always, not saying this to come off as a snob, it's just that over the past year or two we can see a steady trend of how players experience less and less of the same kind of content so perspectives differ more and it is important to steer conversation towards what "can" be done rather than what someone's singular experience of something is. Experience is still important, but broad experience or being able to connect whatever your experience is to the realm of possibility is important. The older a game grows the larger the gaps in experience tend to grow and what one side or group does can take mythical proportions even though what they do is nothing otherworldly. That can be seen in other related discussions like when people discuss the possibility of zerg busting when that flavour of the mode is getting rare.

As far as the topic goes, it feels like it has already been exhausted and while some people rip into Cmc's statement it feels as if they are being very selective in how they've interpreted it. They shouldn't really do anything to the Guardian before they've figured out a better balance of hard control effects (or any control effects to be honest, because overbearing soft control also makes the game worse). Not pushing buttons is not fun. If people listened to the whole dev-stream comment you would also have heard that it was in reference to the importance of stability and whether other classes could get more of it to encroach more on the Guardian's "role". They said that they could explore that but would probably not give another class as much stability-sharing as the Guardian. That, however, means that they may consider giving several other builds more stability sharing and thus open up more composition diversity.

That suggests that they are at least within the realm of reason, have aknowledged the concerns and may do something positive with it, that will adress the importance of Guardians but not necessarily adress what some people may consider a "boon ball" (presumably a melee train that outclasses [outcomps, outmans, w/e] an opponent that can do little more than cloud). Yet, again, that last issue is more a question of perceived situational advantage and population balance rather than class mechanics. Also, population balance is just bound to get worse until Alliances hits so you might as well strap yourselves in for that ride. The fewer sizable communities that remain organized, the more mythical will those that do appear. The fewer proverbial "Vabbis" and "Desolations" remain to match up to and balance out the "Whiteside Ridges" the more of a "Blackgate" the "Whiteside Ridge" will appear, so to speak.

Region matters for experience too because EU has always been bigger than NA and EU has never really had the kind of dominance that can't be broken by double-teaming that NA has had. The regions have a different collective experience of how broken the pillars of the mode has been as a result.

i think firebrand is fine, the problem is the combo of AOE stability and heals on a single class.

soulbeast has great AOE stab, but you can't make a support soulbeast. mesmer has it, but the duration is too short and support mesmer sucks. earth ele has it but it's also super short. ranger has it on the elite spirit, but spirits SUCK.

if anything needs a clear nerf, it's the no-cooldown, unlimited proc "purity of purpose" scrapper GM trait that single-handedly obliterates all condition specs.

if I were going to change anything, i would REMOVE stab from guard, and slightly buff the other sources of AOE stab.

and give purity of purpose a 3sec CD.

imagine a boonstripper class player cries about boons, cannot make that up :astonished:

necro specs are still top of the gamemode, dropping the wells lets stuff explode quite well

Just take 1-2 chronos alongside your scourges and spellbreakers.

IIRC chrono can rip more boons than scourge rn.

I just want Firebrand to be deleted. Its not even the meta I dislike. I just hate Firebrand, and its dull playstyle.

I disagree with the premise of what a 'boonball' is, but even further than that I disagree that firebrand is the reason it exists.

No alacrity, no fury unless using axe variant in which case the fury is incredibly unreliable.Very minimal vigor, resistance, and might.Useful, but not perfect quantities of protection, quickness, and stabilityPerfect uptimes of swiftness, regen, aegis, and retaliation.

So respectable use of 7 out of 12 boons, of which none are offensive boons. If you see them as problematic, your real issue is just with stability to which I say kitten off with your 400 CCs anet felt appropriate to creep into the game with elite specializations.

The 'boonball' has always been the firebrand + herald + scrapper combo, and primarily from the herald and scrapper which refresh various boons at a fairly high rate and let the important firebrand boons sit unmolested.

Edit:

"Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction (though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I also find this statement comical. Duo firebrands were in mass use because there was no other way to even hope to maintain stability in the face of PoF release scourges. You know what opened up use of other supports? It wasn't firebrand nerfs. It was scourge nerfs (Though scrapper buffs played a part as well). So, chalk that interpretation up as wrong.

@Doug.4930 said:

@Zero.3871 said:

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:

Before anyone cites my signature, I play Scourge less than I do core Necro or Reaper. In fact I barely touched it at all until late this year because I never cared much for it.

On to my opinion."Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction

(though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I'm no expert on Guardian as a whole, so I can't give any educated suggestions on what should be changed. I do however know that nerfing it too significantly could reintroduce the "pirate ship" meta, so very precise adjustments would need to be made to find a good middle ground.

Thoughts on how that could be done would be appreciated.

Reducing the number of targets on Firebrand healing skills would be one option I think could work, but again, I don't know much about Guardian as a whole, so that might be too much.

What ever adjustments are made, I think something needs to be done. Every time Scourge (and to a lesser extent Necromancer as a whole) gets nerfed, Firebrand inadvertently becomes stronger. Necro as a class is still as much a part of the meta as ever and is in no way in danger of losing it's viability in that respect, but I don't think it's fair for ANet to keep balancing zerg play almost entirely around Necro while mostly ignoring Guard

(and when I say "Necro" and "Guard" I more or less mean their elite specs Scourge and Firebrand, but I'm talking the classes as a whole as well).

I don't think anyone wants unkillable boon balls to be meta forever, and I doubt if anyone wants to see the pirate ship meta return either. It's difficult to find a happy medium and I don't expect ANet to create that over night. But something needs to be done about Firebrand for a change instead of continually reducing the number of targets and boons corrupted on Necro skills with little in the way of compensation. Meanwhile, Guard occasionally gets some healing power co-efficients reduced and that's basically all.

I want to be clear before I finish that I'm not asking for buffs to Necro nor am I asking for Firebrand to be gutted. But I do think Firebrand deserves some more significant adjustments than anything it has seen since it's arrival. Support is equally as broken and capable of power creeping as damage.

i was in an interview on twitch between mighty teapot, cmc and someone else talking about balancing in pvp and wvw. cant find this now since twitch is a mess for finding videos.

@God.2708 said:The 'boonball' has always been the firebrand + herald + scrapper combo, and primarily from the herald and scrapper which refresh various boons at a fairly high rate and let the important firebrand boons sit unmolested.^This. That is what it is all about to convert conditions into boons instead of just cleansing them off. To pre-cast Stability and then screen it with other boons has always been how it works.

Edit:You know what opened up use of other supports? It wasn't firebrand nerfs. It was scourge nerfs (Though scrapper buffs played a part as well).^Agreed. I always say that that it is pointless to nerf the Guardian class. You want to halve the numbers of target of Guardian skill? People will just bring more in to make up for the loss if there's no presence of other options that are better or at least as competitive. And I don't even main Guardian.

@"God.2708" said:I disagree with the premise of what a 'boonball' is, but even further than that I disagree that firebrand is the reason it exists.

No alacrity, no fury unless using axe variant in which case the fury is incredibly unreliable.Very minimal vigor, resistance, and might.Useful, but not perfect quantities of protection, quickness, and stabilityPerfect uptimes of swiftness, regen, aegis, and retaliation.

So respectable use of 7 out of 12 boons, of which none are offensive boons. If you see them as problematic, your real issue is just with stability to which I say kitten off with your 400 CCs anet felt appropriate to creep into the game with elite specializations.

The 'boonball' has always been the firebrand + herald + scrapper combo, and primarily from the herald and scrapper which refresh various boons at a fairly high rate and let the important firebrand boons sit unmolested.

Edit:

"Boon balls" exist almost exclusively because of Firebrands. Yes, there are many other things that contribute to this, but Firebrand is the backbone of zerg support and single-handedly replaced the roles of many other professions on it's introduction (though subsequent nerfs have again opened those roles to others, eg. Scrapper, Tempest).

I Agree. Though i think just Scrapper is where the boonball really comes from. Firebrand as you said, exists only to produce stability in zerg setting, and everything else they do is mostly negligible. Scrapper is the converter of boons after the fight has exchanged some conditions, including stability and firebrand is only meant to provide stability during consolidation where the group needs it prior to the engagement. (You already pointed this out)

Herald is very nice as well, but IMO i don't think they provide even a fraction of the boons that scrapper puts out.

With regards to boonball, removing stability on Guardian from zerg play will only promote Revenants as the new stability generators...so long as Scrapper remains untouched, we will always have boonball....even bigger issue is that if you remove stability in totality from boonball, zerg play in general becomes unplayable like you said because of massive CC output in large scale...it would be IMPOSSIBLE to fight anything larger than 5 man scrims. Guild grouping would disappear overnight and WvW will be dead for real this time.

Stability is literally the only thing that keeps CC meta in check on larger scales...Some folks might see it as a problem, but i think it's an elegant balance between the CC meta and the Boon meta. What we really need is more diversity in compositions, that promote more unique compositions. Necromancer MM way should be a thing....why isn't it? 25 man ele ball should be a thing....why isn't it? There should be a lot more variety in team compositions that we don't see...and that's part of the problem because none of those things are good enough against a balanced FB/SC combo. Not saying that stability should be distributed to all classes, but there should be other mechanics that can effectively deal with other groups on large scales in some way...Maybe Aura's that reflect CC or reduce it's duration inherently...we just need SOMETHING....some kind of diversification among mechanics that help promote other ways to play the game.

True: firebrand does not create a boonball. That's a mix of several classes these days. Support scrapper boon conversions (the "purity of purpose" trait) having the strongest potential (but the least control).

You're actually looking at heralds traited with draconic echo if you mean "boon spam" as the boons are reapplied every 3s to ten people. Scrappers' purity of purpose has been nerfed to roughly 1.5-3s base duration for most of the boons ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity_of_Purpose ) and because even Altruism rune has a 10s cooldown it is not nearly as often a boon application as a herald.

If you look at cooldowns:Purge Gyro : 20s (5 pulses on up to 5 targets , PBAOE)Cleansing Field (Med Kit 3) : 15s (4 pulses up to 5 targets , PBAOE)Fumigate (Elixir Gun 3): 12s (5 on up to 5 targets in a cone , does not target self)Super Elixir (Elixir Gun 5): 20s (1 on up to 5)Mortar kit with Altruism rune : 10s (1 on up to 5)

The only boon Firebrand puts out a lot is aegis while running Mantra of Solace, which has a high risk now that the heal has been lowered.

If Firebrand stability is nerfed, expect everyone to run heralds with Dwarf for stability across chokes, Bulwark gyro on scrappers, chronos with mantra of concentration in place of some other utility, Dolyak stance on stanceshare soulbeasts, and scrapper/tempests for heals. Firebrand healing has been nerfed heavily and the heal radius on skills (not the resolve passive) is typically far smaller than that of scrapper or tempest.

@Mokk.2397 said:How the heck does logic like that promote a new player base to WvW ? The first thing that happens is the new players are ordered to follow a specific META or get kicked from the group because they can neither comply or don't want to comply . And why should they ? This does not support inclusion but promotes exclusion so why would new inexperienced players even bother ? It gives a really bad first impression of WvW and that's why they never come back. On top of that it promotes server stacking there by skewing the whole population issue that has been a problem since day one . It's completely self defeating .

Literally every class has a playable build in WvW groups. If people choose not to run it that's on them:Guardian: Firebrand support or even hybrid (Stand your ground, mantra of liberation)Warrior: Spellbreaker support or DPSRevenant: Power herald or less common condi herald (PVP Condi herald nerfs don't exist in WVW)Ranger: power immob soulbeast (make sure to use sword or greatsword when fighting vs reflects)Engineer: support /cleanse scrapper, power scrapper/holo DPSElementalist: heal/cleanse tempest or less common power weaver backlineNecromancer: scourge with well of corruption , power reaper variants with well of suffering as wellMesmer: boon rip support or power chrono (use Vicious expression either way)Thief: Staff daredevil

The reason why firebrand is run is for stability, otherwise everyone would be pirate shipping because pushing without stability would be playing pinball.

@"Infusion.7149" said:You're actually looking at heralds traited with draconic echo if you mean "boon spam" as the boons are reapplied every 3s to ten people. Scrappers' purity of purpose has been nerfed to roughly 1.5-3s base duration for most of the boons ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Purity_of_Purpose ) and because even Altruism rune has a 10s cooldown it is not nearly as often a boon application as a herald.

i mean if you are clearing 500 conditions in a 3 minute fight, you applied 500 boons...and not just might or fury...we are talking important boons like stability, alacrity, aegis and resistance. Your right though Herald outputs boons, and they are part of it...but when they apply boons that are common like Fury, regeneration and Might, we really aren't talking about boon ball because almost all classes can output those boons already. The boon ball part of boon ball is that alacrity, stability, aegis, and resistance that's coming from scrappers PoP.

Anyway i'm on ur side...just wanted to be clear about what im talking about when it comes to the boonball.

Might durations have been cut to ~6s across the board regardless of source.Fury is not likely to be applied readily to anyone unless you run spellbreakers with For Great Justice (not even close to 100% uptime) , tempests with air traitline (which means you aren't running fire for more cleanses), or axe firebrands (which means sustain is far lower and people would need to be stationary for full duration).

I'd be amazed if scrappers could reliably convert fear/taunt into stability : they would have to be near enough such that they convert yet have stability on themselves so that they don't need to burn a stunbreak in order to use a condi clear. Conversion of burning into aegis just stacks even more aegis ; unlike a timed aegis you might only block an auto-attack. Only immob transfers into resistance. For chill conversion into 3s alacrity at most (100% boon duration cap ; minstrel is not 100% boon duration), well that isn't gamebreaking is it?

Glint herald applies about 5 to 9 times more boons when running Shared Empowerment in your hypothetical 3 minute fight and with zero effort because not consuming a facet doesn't put it on cooldown.

@"kamikharzeeh.8016" said:i'm just tired of people wanting to pirateship and gank in peace and therefore constantly cry about "overpowered healers"... its acutally insane how fast some strong dps chars can kill a firebrand if he sleeps for one second (or lags)

Too many people don't play more than one or two classes it seems.

Apart from the usual 2 people, there is so much ignorance here...