Support Firebrand?

I just used my free max boost on a guardian.

I was wondering if there is a support build for open world. I see lots of quickness and im thinking is it possible to have permanent quickness to my party?

The radius is practically meele range so the quickness is not that great.

Yes, it is possible to give your party 100% Quickness uptime using Mantra of Solace and Mantra of Potence, and various other applications of Stability and Aegis available to the Firebrand. Your biggest challenge is positioning as the Mantra area of effect (120 radius around character and 300 unit distance cone) makes them finicky, especially in chaotic fights.

I've tried out a couple of open world builds to maximize the quickness up-time.To make it possible, you'll want Superior Runes of Leadership (which can be farmed and purchased in Dragon's Stand) and a Superior Sigil of Concentration (which is super expensive on the Trading Post.) I don't think you can hit 100% quickness up-time without at least that much boon duration.

In theory it sounds great. Quickness is an insane DPS buff in GW2.But as Jacobin and Ojimaru said, the idea comes up short in practice for a few reasons:

• The range is small. Your Mantras only hit in a 120 radius around you and a 300 cone in front, but then the quickness from Liberator's Vow hits a 240 radius. So to hit with Mantra of Solice and grant both the quickness from Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed, the entire party has to be practically standing on you.
• The traits that help you throw out quickness have internal cooldowns. (Liberator's Vow - 12sec, Stalwart Speed - 5sec) You don't see the timers for those cooldowns anywhere, so if you use skills too quickly they won't apply quickness. If you use them too slowly, then you drop quickness. Definitely makes the build more difficult to play.
• If your party already has Aegis or Stability, then Stalwart Speed won't proc. So it works best when there is a lot of AoE damage constantly removing everyone's Aegis so that you can reapply and grant more quickness.

So while it is technically possible to keep 100% quickness up-time for your party, it is wildly impractical for an open world build.I ended up moving back to Dragonhunter after just 3 days of playing around with it.

IMHO, the only way Firebrand "works" is if you don't think of yourself as support.
Build for DPS and don't think about 100% quickness uptime. Just think of it as a bonus every time you proc it. (which will be quite often, just not 100%).

This is what I've been screwing around with lately. It seems like it could have potential, being meta, naw, but fun and different.Edit: Totally missed something and redoing the whole build >.<

Screwing around a bit more in PVP lobby, with 37% boon duration I was able to keep up quickness permanently pretty easily, just rotate mantras with any other form of aegis/stab (mace3, shield4, tome of courage, retreat all come to mind) and using Feel my Wrath. So just leadership runes + food and you should be able to do perma quickness aside from the practicality of the range of effect.

@phor.7952 said:I've tried out a couple of open world builds to maximize the quickness up-time.To make it possible, you'll want Superior Runes of Leadership (which can be farmed and purchased in Dragon's Stand) and a Superior Sigil of Concentration (which is super expensive on the Trading Post.) I don't think you can hit 100% quickness up-time without at least that much boon duration.

In theory it sounds great. Quickness is an insane DPS buff in GW2.But as Jacobin and Ojimaru said, the idea comes up short in practice for a few reasons:

• The range is small. Your Mantras only hit in a 120 radius around you and a 300 cone in front, but then the quickness from Liberator's Vow hits a 240 radius. So to hit with Mantra of Solice and grant both the quickness from Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed, the entire party has to be practically standing on you.
• The traits that help you throw out quickness have internal cooldowns. (Liberator's Vow - 12sec, Stalwart Speed - 5sec) You don't see the timers for those cooldowns anywhere, so if you use skills too quickly they won't apply quickness. If you use them too slowly, then you drop quickness. Definitely makes the build more difficult to play.
• If your party already has Aegis or Stability, then Stalwart Speed won't proc. So it works best when there is a lot of AoE damage constantly removing everyone's Aegis so that you can reapply and grant more quickness.

So while it is technically possible to keep 100% quickness up-time for your party, it is wildly impractical for an open world build.I ended up moving back to Dragonhunter after just 3 days of playing around with it.

IMHO, the only way Firebrand "works" is if you don't think of yourself as support.

Build for DPS and don't think about 100% quickness uptime. Just think of it as a bonus every time you proc it. (which will be quite often, just not 100%).

You don't need Superior Rune of Leadership to reach 100% buff duration; in fact, Superior Rune of the Firebrand gives 5% more Quickness duration. The cooldown for Liberator's Vow sync up with Mantra of Solace's count recharge, and by my testing, Stalwart Speed procs regardless of pre-existing Aegis or Stability. So all in all, it's basically weapon swapping every 12 seconds to proc Sigil of Concentration, and activating the two Mantras.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:You don't need Superior Rune of Leadership to reach 100% buff duration; in fact, Superior Rune of the Firebrand gives 5% more Quickness duration. The cooldown for Liberator's Vow sync up with Mantra of Solace's count recharge, and by my testing, Stalwart Speed procs regardless of pre-existing Aegis or Stability. So all in all, it's basically weapon swapping every 12 seconds to proc Sigil of Concentration, and activating the two Mantras.

In a support build you wouldn't drop 15% duration on your protection, regen, stability, vigor, retaliation, etc... just to get 5% more quickness.OP asked about Support builds. You would use Rune of the Firebrand in a DPS build. That why I mentioned Leadership.

If you're only using Rune of the Firebrand and Sigil of Concentration, that's only 68% boon duration.

You'd only get 10 seconds of quickness out of the 2 mantras. That's not 100% uptime.Which is fine, you don't NEED 100% uptime, especially in a DPS build.But OP asked about Support builds and Permanent Quickness.

I just got done putting together and trying out this build. Just open world bounties but still, it was fun and yes I was able to keep 100% quickness as well as regen and high protection up time. Comes free with a fresh aegis every 6s which also heals for around 2k if used. Positioning in raids/fractals I'm sure would be harder, but I'm looking forward to playing it in Fractals.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQJApOnsADFBjlCBEEhlHCbfemPDoZng5TGALA0AySA-jxxHQBAU5XhU/5hKBRjOAwdCAtAA4BA8j9HIFgfDjA-e

That's the support build. Just rotate the 2 mantras with some other Aegis(shield4, mace3, tome of courage, or retreat) every 6s and keep Feel my Wrath on cooldown.

Putting that together and playing it I wonder if you could do a DPS version and this is what I got:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRArf3ensADFBjlCBWCBEEhl4BzaD8CeUVBgtU9a/lWT3pA-jxhAQBQU9HbqEEkK/+3+DQ7JAAgTCAA1PQKAe2VB-e

You'll certainly lose dps with the gear, and having to use shield to maintain quickness, but hey it's interesting and I might try it while I still have a full vipers set left over from my warrior with aristocracy in it so it'd just be some rune swapping.

@phor.7952 said:I've tried out a couple of open world builds to maximize the quickness up-time.To make it possible, you'll want Superior Runes of Leadership (which can be farmed and purchased in Dragon's Stand) and a Superior Sigil of Concentration (which is super expensive on the Trading Post.) I don't think you can hit 100% quickness up-time without at least that much boon duration.

In theory it sounds great. Quickness is an insane DPS buff in GW2.But as Jacobin and Ojimaru said, the idea comes up short in practice for a few reasons:

• The range is small. Your Mantras only hit in a 120 radius around you and a 300 cone in front, but then the quickness from Liberator's Vow hits a 240 radius. So to hit with Mantra of Solice and grant both the quickness from Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed, the entire party has to be practically standing on you.
• The traits that help you throw out quickness have internal cooldowns. (Liberator's Vow - 12sec, Stalwart Speed - 5sec) You don't see the timers for those cooldowns anywhere, so if you use skills too quickly they won't apply quickness. If you use them too slowly, then you drop quickness. Definitely makes the build more difficult to play.
• If your party already has Aegis or Stability, then Stalwart Speed won't proc. So it works best when there is a lot of AoE damage constantly removing everyone's Aegis so that you can reapply and grant more quickness.

So while it is technically possible to keep 100% quickness up-time for your party, it is wildly impractical for an open world build.I ended up moving back to Dragonhunter after just 3 days of playing around with it.

IMHO, the only way Firebrand "works" is if you don't think of yourself as support.

Build for DPS and don't think about 100% quickness uptime. Just think of it as a bonus every time you proc it. (which will be quite often, just not 100%).

You can get perma quickness with 31% boon duration.

The secret is activating Mantra of Potence fully, instead of waiting for charges. That way, it goes from 2s every 12s (16.6% uptime) to 8s every 25s (32% uptime). Combined with Mantra of Solace and and Feel my Wrath, you can get 76.4% uptime, and that's without calculating alacrity, or other sources of stability/aegis, since this build only uses Stalwart Speed every 12s.

Of course, all the shortcomings you mentioned still apply. And a bit of a sidenote, everyone do themselves a favour and don't bother with Leadership runes, Firebrand runes are a thing now.

Thanks for the rune tip, for some reason I thought leadership's "all stats" gave expertise and concentration which it doesn't >.<

@RabbitUp.8294 said:You can get perma quickness with 31% boon duration.

The secret is activating Mantra of Potence fully, instead of waiting for charges. That way, it goes from 2s every 12s (16.6% uptime) to 8s every 25s (32% uptime). Combined with Mantra of Solace and and Feel my Wrath, you can get 76.4% uptime, and that's without calculating alacrity, or other sources of stability/aegis, since this build only uses Stalwart Speed every 12s.Tried this out tonight, and it's not 100% accurate.If you factor in the activation time for Mantra of Potence every time it comes off cooldown, and also the 1 second activation time on the skill itself each time you use it, then the numbers change. Instead of 8 seconds every 25 seconds, it's more like 8 seconds every 30.75 seconds. That's only 26% uptime. Solace with Liberator's Vow and Stalwart Speed is only ~33% uptime. FMW is only ~11% uptime. So you'd need ~43% boon duration to reach perma-quickness with just those skills/traits.To get down to the 31% number, you'd have to add either Retreat or Stand your Ground, and you'd have to use it exactly halfway between each Solace use so that you didn't hit the ICD of Stalwart Speed.

But you are still mostly correct. You don't need anywhere near 100% boon duration to reach 100% Quickness up-time.

If you don't want to use Retreat/StandYourGround and count seconds between skill uses, you can get very close (95%) with just Runes of the Firebrand and 100 concentration food.

And it seems that I was wrong about Stalwart Speed. It does in fact apply the Quickness if party members already have stability/aegis. I guess I was running into the 5sec internal cooldown before, and that's why I thought it wasn't working.