Best Stats for Firebrand? New combos?

Hello Guys !

As the title says, what about the stats for your firebrand builds?

Fire duration cap (viper) and sinister for full condi makes sense... but, what about a condi support build? Are Seraph stats wise for the firebrand? Maybe one of the new stats that you can read in gw2skills? (Marshal, Grieving, Harrier)

Maybe something to achieve perma quickness and nice condi damage.

Let's discuss! :)

Harrier is pretty sexy for power support. Marshals only if you don't want to provide Quickness - but why would you that?

Grieving is a nice alternative for existing stats like Vipers but nothing too new.

Seraphs is fine for condi support Firebrand but I personally feel that the precision is wasted on condi Guard. I'd only pick up enough Seraph pieces to get the amount of concentration I need.

If you want want to go full healing and boon support, it's Minstrels, I guess?

With Balthazar runes, Malice and Smoldering sigils, Toxic Focusing Crystal and Rare Veggie Pizza, I could put full Sinister on my Firebrand, considering I'm not really trusting the potential of Bleeding on it.

@Xaylin.1860 said:Seraphs is fine for condi support Firebrand but I personally feel that the precision is wasted on condi Guard. I'd only pick up enough Seraph pieces to get the amount of concentration I need.

And how much oncentration is that? Is there a soft cap already for the class? (to keep perma quickness) I think it depends on the future of "Stand your ground" effect

I'm interested in the new Marshal's set. Power, Concentration, and Healing. Basically, DPS support/healer. Probably best to use mace and shield, with a scepter. Kinda curious how it'd work with Shattered Aegis - since, if you're doing rotations to share as much Quickness as possible, a lot of those rotations will also give Aegis. So why not turn every Aegis application into an AoE bomb that scales with power?

Unless the scaling gets tweaked I think any +healing on Firebrand is going to be wasted. It just doesn't scale well enough to make it worth allocating stats to it. I think it will be best to just heal with baseline stats and instead focus on other stats for more survivability or DPS. That being said...if they make the healing scale well then I definitely think that the hybrid healing sets will be viable options.

Here's a good theorycraft build for Firebrand

Only thing I am scared about Firebrand, is that it's trying to fulfill roles which other classes can do excellent in and then some. For example,

1. Quickness. Mesmers can output perma quickness plus a whole heap of other boons, while also providing Alacrity.
2. Condition/Burns. There's a plethora of professions which would do more Condi DPS than Firebrand, I feel.

Unfortunately Harrier seems like the weakest choice for dps support. As a power support, while using support skills you are doing little to no damage. As a condi support your conditions will continue to damage your target while you are casting support skills. Also, the new "venom" Ashes of the Just will keep the damage rolling as you support your allies.

Hands down, I believe power support may be something in PvP or WvW but it looks that Condi support will outshine it in every game mode.

A lot will change when the expansion drops because as it is now there is too much synergy with firebrand and the other specializations that really allows for some crazy use of firebrand and specifically tomes.

My main concern with firebrand right now is that Axe/Torch is our only condi weapon set right now. Everything else is power. What do we use for our second weapon?

@firelightx.3980 said:My main concern with firebrand right now is that Axe/Torch is our only condi weapon set right now. Everything else is power. What do we use for our second weapon?

axe torch again

harrier is pretty bad for damage. Power without precision and ferocity is just bad..

You get free ferocity and crit chance from Radiance. I also wouldn't expect full Harrier's, but a majority should be good. Combined with Sigils, Runes (Wurm), and a little Valk, You could get some decent damage numbers for all the healing and concentration you also get.

I just really love Celestial stats on Guardian - thanks to the mounts, I'll switch my Rune of the Traveler to Rune of Balthazaar for that extra condi and synergy with Quickness

Guards also have pretty solid traits and stats modifiers so Celestial will still be solid! I just have to switch a few traits to spec into power or condi, etc

@Aceofsppades.6873 said:

@firelightx.3980 said:My main concern with firebrand right now is that Axe/Torch is our only condi weapon set right now. Everything else is power. What do we use for our second weapon?

Yepp, there is no second suitable weapon in a condi build tbh. The nerf to passive VoJ took care of that and add that direct damage seems to be better on the axe as well.

I think Anet missed out on the numbers crunching here.

They should make vanilla voj work the same way on fb and remove the burning from the axe chain.

@Brutaly.6257 said:The nerf to passive VoJ took care of that and add that direct damage seems to be better on the axe as well.

I think Anet missed out on the numbers crunching here.

They should make vanilla voj work the same way on fb and remove the burning from the axe chain.

I think that was just a tooltip bug. The observed behavior of the VoJ passive during the test weekends was working like the existing VoJ for base guardian.

@Knox.8962 said:I think that was just a tooltip bug. The observed behavior of the VoJ passive during the test weekends was working like the existing VoJ for base guardian.

Could be. Also, the tooltip with PW traited still seems to be old numbers, at least as far as I've seen. It's what you'd be wanting for burn anyway.

Marshal could be great - but will Firebrand support/healing be great? That is over Druid/etc. - with some changes yes. I do think DPS wise Greivers works well with Firebrand I think.

@Hellios.4108 said:Hello Guys !

As the title says, what about the stats for your firebrand builds?

Fire duration cap (viper) and sinister for full condi makes sense... but, what about a condi support build? Are Seraph stats wise for the firebrand? Maybe one of the new stats that you can read in gw2skills? (Marshal, Grieving, Harrier)

Maybe something to achieve perma quickness and nice condi damage.

Let's discuss! :)

Since firebrand has only 1 condi (bleeding is completely ignorable), you can get 100% burn duration without any expertise. Add to that the fact that even as condi, guardian has a lot of power damage, and griever seems superior to viper.

@Knox.8962 said:

@Brutaly.6257 said:The nerf to passive VoJ took care of that and add that direct damage seems to be better on the axe as well.

I think Anet missed out on the numbers crunching here.

They should make vanilla voj work the same way on fb and remove the burning from the axe chain.

I beg to differ, my observation is an other but it might be that what i actaully measured wasnt the difference between old and new VoJ but the difference between axe and the other weapons in a condi build.

And it doesnt matter. The issue isnt VoJ explicitely, it is how unbalaced axe is a as a conditionweapon. The imbalance is still there even if VoJ works as vanilla in an FB build.

@Hellios.4108 said:

@Xaylin.1860 said:Seraphs is fine for condi support Firebrand but I personally feel that the precision is wasted on condi Guard. I'd only pick up enough Seraph pieces to get the amount of concentration I need.

I think it can be assumed that the interaction with Stand Your Ground is not intendend. The question is if they can fix it without breaking it. Not to sure about that one. So maybe it will stay like that at least for a while. It's probably going to be the most convenient way to gain Quickness for a while.

The question how much concentration you need can't really be answered that easily. More importantly, what do you want to acheive aside from Quickness? When testing in the Mists I found that I could maintain a very high Quickness without 100% boon duration nor Stand Your Ground. We now could do the math on a soft cap. But I think the more important question is how applicable it will be in realistic situations (e.g. Mantra cone).

For me, personally, it sadly comes down to what I can afford so Leadership Runes probably won't be it. But I love the new Firebrand ones.

On a different note: If anyone wants to make Force of Will work, Shamans (Firebrand) or Sentinels (probably more core) are quite nice as well.

Just a quick related question to the experienced players out here: I am trying to collect some gear for my new Firebrand and could use some advice about stats. I won't run any high-level fractals or raids any time soon (and possibly never), so its mostly about fun. And while I don't want to min-max absolutely, I'd like the gear to make sense. To clarify: we are talking about exotics here.

Because FB mixes power and condition damage, I actually thought about combining Berserker (around 20% of total stat pool), some Seraph (for boon duration) and rest Sinister. Would it make sense? I would like to use Balthazar's runes. Any input welcome.

P.S. Viper's is a bit too expensive for me and also I feel like expertise is not really nessesary...

@Brutaly.6257 said:I beg to differ, my observation is an other but it might be that what i actaully measured wasnt the difference between old and new VoJ but the difference between axe and the other weapons in a condi build.

And it doesnt matter. The issue isnt VoJ explicitely, it is how unbalaced axe is a as a conditionweapon. The imbalance is still there even if VoJ works as vanilla in an FB build.The VoJ proc was definitely 4s in PvP zone during the PvP test weekend despite the tooltip stating 1s. I didn't measure it in WvW because there weren't any convenient WvW test golems around, but I am 100% sure that the tooltip was not matching the actual applied burn AT LEAST in PvP.

PvE wise I do not see much point of the support. Dishing quickness is not unique to be worth taking FB as support. It will surely be condi dps so viper is ideal. Rune Balthazar. Sigils smodlering and probably malice. The bleeds are to weak to consider the duration.

PvP wise I do not see any dps builds possible using FB. Support will be it and probably using meanders.

FB will be burn heavy.. so i think it will be mix of sinister/viper with balth runes, bursting and smoldering sigil like the actual qtfy condi tempest.You reach easily with viper chest and 1 weapon 100% burn duration..all other will be condi damage.I think this will be my stat combo to go

I would go with sword/torch scepter/torch and griever stats, lets be honest axe bleeding is laughable and you can cap burning just with balthazar runes, sigil of smoldering and food.