Do you think this can compete with Chrono/Druid/Healer Ele

Hi everybody,

I always wished to use Guardian as healer on the raids but usually its spot was reserved to Chrono, Druid. or Ele...

Do you think following build can compete with them?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeSnsADNCj9CB2DBEEhlHCbfemPDoZng5TGALA0A+AA-jRhXQBIU5XDVCGK9A+T9HAs/ApACcmF-e

It can provide perma quickness, lot of sustain and burst heal, really good up time at protection/aegis....

It can even provide more healing and blocks buy switching Stalwart Speed with Legendary Lore and still able to provide perma quickness....

I know it can give the damage buffs of Druid but it can do tank and heal duties and opens another DPS spot.....

So what do you think...

or this variation http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeSnsADFBj9CB2DBEEhlHCbfeuPDoZng5TGALA0A+AA-jRhXQBNUJICV+5P1fAw+DhSPApACcmF-e

I don't think a support Firebrand will fully replace them. Perhaps the Firebrand could supplement a Druid in raids. So if the Firebrand goes support, the Druid will have to go Ranger/Soulbeast with Spotter/Spirits. You would still need at least one Druid to supply Grace of the Lands to the 10 players in the squad. It also might only work on stationary raid bosses since the Firebrand doesn't have high mobility and range on their Tomes, weapons and utilities. Also the cool down and lack of offensive buffs on Tome of Resolve worries me. Whenever the Firebrand uses Tome of Resolve they have no access to damage and the heals aren't as good as a Druid's Celestial Avatar or support Tempest.

I'm not entirely sure about the possibility to replace Chronomancer though. I think Mantra's cone radius and radius of other Quickness traits have a potential risk of not reaching all party members with Quickness in an environment with large hit boxes and instabilities such as social awkwardness.

I think its sustain will be comparable to Ele, if the Legendary Lore works as I guess, every Tome invocation providing Aegis which is preventing damage and heal....

Anet have stated FB wont be a druid in healing output.

@Aeolus.3615 said:Anet have stated FB wont be a druid in healing output.

Druid healing is actually pretty trash (Auramancer, Ventari, and even Bow of Truth/RtL do way more than Druids). The reason Druids are good is because of their offensive buffs.

probably, ive seen kewl stuff on ventari rev but ANet have stated it will be inferior to druid on the live demonstration.

^^equip bow of truth on FB... healing Fb fixed lol

@Azoqu.8917 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:Anet have stated FB wont be a druid in healing output.

You confuse burst healing with sustained healing. Auramancer may boast some numbers, but not at the frequency a druid does and ventari rev and auramancer cannot frontload heals anywhere close to a dedicated druid.

More importantly, druid can do all this healing while providing side benefits like lunar impact for easy defiance bar breaks. Ventari and ele heals are stationary, while druid has pretty mobile, long ranged heals.

Nothing keeps necro minions healed up as well as the druid staff 2 healing orb either.

Umm ... ventari can pump out 12k heals every 2 seconds and 4k heals for moving the tablet while maintaining full protection uptime. Druid has nothing that good.

@Swiftwynd.1685 said:Umm ... ventari can pump out 12k heals every 2 seconds and 4k heals for moving the tablet while maintaining full protection uptime. Druid has nothing that good.

A magi druid does have no problems keeping up scholar rune bonus, so more healing is overkill. Also druid can use stone spirit for protection uptime. But most of the time protection is not needed because magi druid will heal any damage anyway.

The direction balance seems to be going to is not to create unique support that becomes a must use going forward. Neither FB or any of the new elites fit into that the way chrono and druid do. FB does provide some support though quickness and condi support, while being a full dps elite.

In general, there were a couple of reasons that Guardian wasn't a great Raid healer in HoT:1) The vast majority of Guardian healing only happens in 240 radius around the Guardian. (heal on dodge roll, symbol heal, regen application, Faithful Strike, etc... etc...)2) The vast majority of Guardian healing is sustain (small heals that happen frequently), and sustain healing doesn't scale very well with +healing.

Lets talk about an example from your build with the stats you've chosen:The symbol of Faith Regen tooltip says 3080 (if you factor in the +250 healing while you have quickness up). But that's for 5 targets, and the entire 2.5 second duration. Regen will actually only tick for ~246 health per second.Virtue of Resolve (with both traits) will end up being only ~212/sec.Symbol heal from Writ of Persistence will be ~214/sec.With good vigor uptime you can dodge roll every 5ish seconds, so that equates to around 310/sec.Faithful strike with perma-quickness heals around 1110/sec if you camp auto attack and never use skills or dodge.Occasionally Aegis will heal for 1356.

All that together averages around 2k heals per second.Once you calculate in the +% outgoing heal from sigil, rune, oil, and Bulwark, you can probably expect to see a bit over 3k/sec healing to 5 players in melee range.So on its face, that looks really good. Over 15k hps output that is constant and reliable.It's fairly obvious that firebrand will be better in the healing role than Dragonhunter or Core Guardian were; HOWEVER, it still suffers from the same two problems above that prevented Guardian from filling that healer role in HoT. Too much healing is relegated to melee range, and too much is sustain (almost no burst).

33% outgoing healing effectiveness + other traits runes sigils + RtL = insane burst heal probably.

Since you are talking about replacing those classes, I can only assume you are looking at this from a pve perspective. The answer, is, no, it cannot replace any of those classes. Firebrand is not a support class, like chrono, druid or ventari.

What firebrand does is share quickness and deal damage. The best comparison is condi PS, as both builds focus on condi damage and keeping uptime of a boon. Of course, cPS also has tons of unique utility.

The more you focus on other aspects, like healing or other boons, like protection, the weaker firebrand becomes, because it relies on its personal dps to stay relevant. Firebrand will never be a good healer, with a 40s tome, even if it did 100,000 heals. Burst healing on high cooldown has very limited usefulness.

And more importantly, nothing can replace druid, because of its unique buffs. Having a druid in your group means there's already a good source of healing, making firebrand's heals useless. Your job is to play dps, and maybe pop F2 when absolutely necessary. But playing mace and building as a healer will only weight the group down.

@RabbitUp.8294 said:And more importantly, nothing can replace druid, because of its unique buffs. Having a druid in your group means there's already a good source of healing, making firebrand's heals useless. Your job is to play dps, and maybe pop F2 when absolutely necessary. But playing mace and building as a healer will only weight the group down.

Indeed. A Druid provides Grace of the Land (10% extra damage), Spotter (150 Precision), Frost Spirit (periodic damage bonus), and Sun Spirit, on top of the additional utility from their Pets (e.g. Defiance Bar breaks). I think it's overreaching to assume a support Firebrand can replace all of that on their own. Rather, I would argue that it will allow us to relook at the raid composition as a whole, tweaking multiple roles and builds, instead of just one.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

@RabbitUp.8294 said:And more importantly, nothing can replace druid, because of its unique buffs. Having a druid in your group means there's already a good source of healing, making firebrand's heals useless. Your job is to play dps, and maybe pop F2 when absolutely necessary. But playing mace and building as a healer will only weight the group down.

With firebrand being what is it, and no other practical alternative to chrono's alacrity, there won't be much change to the raid composition.

Best case scenario for firebrand is that the mirror comp is broken, with the power subgroup remaining as it is live (with chronotank), and the condi subgroup having power alacrity chrono, quickness firebrand, cPS, condi druid and one condi dps. Really, it almost seems to me like firebrand was introduced just so chrono has more built variety, by dumping the chore of maintaining quickness and having boon duration on firebrand, so that chrono can afford to focus on its own dps. Chrono gets a new build and still remains a mandatory 2 per 10 in raids.

To be honest, I find it equally likely for firebrand to stay as dps only, due to the limited coverage of mantras. Only exception is if SyG launches without the fix, in which case, it might be relevant until the eventual change.

@Abelisk.4527 said:33% outgoing healing effectiveness + other traits runes sigils + RtL = insane burst heal probably.

It actually read as 33% incoming healing last I checked. So that could work on top of and after outgoing modifiers. Pretty big if it's the case.