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I want to be a selfish quickbrand


Konrad Curze.5130

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I recently took out my guardian (gathering dust since HoT days) for a test drive. bet you'd never guess what happened next

My health went down but...wait for it....wait for it....wait for it...it wasnt coming back right up.!?!!

WHAT is this sorcery!? the sight was terrifying. I simply didnt understand what was happening.

some explanation required: in aaaaaaall that time since I parked my guardian in Verdant Brink I've been playing plenty other profs, such as......reaper/scourge, mirage, herald/renegade, holosmith or daredevil.........the smartest among the audience will probably have spotted the commonality by now. All those builds can simply dps and their health will stay topped by doing...absolutly nothing special at all. and none of them are specially known for being such a god's given gift to their groups.

dude, where's my car? no wait, who cares, forget about the car.where are my guardian's runes of tormenting? where my soul eater? heat therapy? parasitic contagion? invigorating precision? assassin's annihilation?BABY WANT

so I read the guardian forums looking for insight, and insight I found, thats for sure. someone there said "dps, sustain, support, choose 2, never 3" . Made perfect sense. that was it.

cue in catch 22.

quickbrand cant choose between dps, sustain and support, because support is simply hardwired into FB harder than gravity is hardwired into the universe.I can give up almost all sustain for dps, or I can give up almost all dps for sustain, but I can never give up support for either.

all this leads me directly into my modest proposal. its simple, really

Anet please, replace shattered aegis on the zeal line (a trait that you could delete today and it'd take people months to notice) and change it thus:

Personal CrusadeYou are healed for a percentage (15%) of outgoing critical damage while under the effects of retaliation.Your boons are no longer shared with allies

taa-daa! dps and sustain without support! it's even doubly balanced by coexisting along with symbolic avenger, the go-to dps GM in zeal so you have to pick one. looking at you holosmiths and your heat therapy for free

I can't sleep at nightI don't wanna fightMy best friend is II'm so selfishGuess I'm in denialMaybe I'm wrong, you're rightHeard it all my lifeI'm so selfishAh ah ah ah huhI'm so selfishAh ah ah ah huhI'm so selfish

ANet please, pretty please with a cherry on top, make it happen

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Oh yeah I know all those, they are nice sustain options at the cost of dps falling off a cliff while keeping your support high

I just want a nice sustain option at the cost of support falling off a cliff, while keeping dps (more or less) high.

you know just like necro, mesmer, revenant, thief or engi get to keep, so I dont think its unreasonable to ask at all

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Oh yeah I know all those, they are nice sustain options at the cost of dps falling off a cliff while keeping your support high

I just want a nice sustain option at the cost of support falling off a cliff, while keeping dps (more or less) high.

you know just like necro, mesmer, revenant, thief or engi get to keep, so I dont think its unreasonable to ask at all

Thief dps drops alot aswell If you pick invigorating precision.

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Oh yeah I know all those, they are nice sustain options at the cost of dps falling off a cliff while keeping your support high

I just want a nice sustain option at the cost of support falling off a cliff, while keeping dps (more or less) high.

you know just like necro, mesmer, revenant, thief or engi get to keep, so I dont think its unreasonable to ask at all

Thief dps drops alot aswell If you pick invigorating precision.

they drop no quarter, its roughly a similar dps loss soloing and MUCH smaller with people around providing fury, than dropping symbolic avenger which is what I propose as tradeoff

the problem of quickbrand is that the moment you slot honor or valor you might aswell go full "group hug" support, because your certainly not doing any dps worth a damn without both radiance + zeal, its a dps suicide, which in turn means you end up having LESS survivability cuz you cant kill fast, therefore making you worse off by traiting for sustain, which is hilariously self-defeating

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........ no..... your idea is just bad.

If you're gonna be bad at buildcraft, at least try and look up other builds before proclaiming is not capable of doing something.

"....can't choose between support, dps and sustain..." It doesn't choose because it doesn't need to. You can have all 3 at the same time, and has been since Core. Firebrand just lets it do all those things a lot better now.

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@"starlinvf.1358" said:........ no..... your idea is just bad.

If you're gonna be bad at buildcraft, at least try and look up other builds before proclaiming is not capable of doing something.

"....can't choose between support, dps and sustain..." It doesn't choose because it doesn't need to. You can have all 3 at the same time, and has been since Core. Firebrand just lets it do all those things a lot better now.

If you're gonna be dumb, at least try to be less condescending, so you don't make an ass AND a clown of yourself at the same time

That build is deader than dinosaurs, ANet killed it. RI nerfed from 50% crit to 25%, sigil nerfed from 33% boon duration to 10% (thank you chronos for ruining the fun for the rest of us), and thats just the headlines, it also suffered a thousand cuts along the way like the rune losing another 5% boon duration, zealous blade no longer healing in light fields, and fb tomes keep piling nerfs every patch.

That build is utterly impractical nowadays, absolutly anywhere close to the performance or functionality of old which just to be perfectly clear, despite his claims wasn't super OP or anything because it had no utility, reactiveness nor mobility and the sustain outside of Litany (which was used on CD to keep boon uptime instead of as needed) was mediocre.

Why do you think that Lord Hizen hasnt updated that build in over 1 year? why do you think he shelved his guardian and play condi mirage scourge or spellbreaker this days? Because they outperform guardian so freaking hard in every single respect it's almost laughable

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@"Dadnir.5038" said:Honor: writ of persistence: Your symbols heal you, are larger and last longer.

Again, traiting honor means quickbrand's dps goes down the drain

Man, people keep coming with suggestions to increase sustain at the cost of tanking my dps

I thought I was very clear on my OP. I want to increase sustain at the cost of tanking my support

I want to have good sustain and good dps, and don't care if I can't buff others for it,as I pointed in the OP there's tons of proffs that are allowed to play selfishly (choose traits to support themselves, others can get bent)I'm asking for FB to get access to the same option instead of living chained to the paradigm of "you have good support capabilities, therefor you will never be able to have both sustain and dps too" .

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@Konrad Curze.5130 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Honor:
writ of persistence
: Your symbols heal you, are larger and last longer.

Again, traiting honor means quickbrand's dps goes down the drain

Man, people keep coming with suggestions to increase sustain at the cost of tanking my dps

I thought I was very clear on my OP. I want to increase sustain at the cost of tanking my
support

I want to have good sustain and good dps, and don't care if I can't buff others for it,as I pointed in the OP there's tons of proffs that are allowed to play selfishly (choose traits to support themselves, others can get bent)I'm asking for FB to get access to the same option instead of living chained to the paradigm of "you have good support capabilities, therefor you will never be able to have both sustain and dps too" .

To gain survivability all profession's dps go down the drain. Be it thief, necromancer, guardian or whatever, it's true for all profession. I could have said to you to just use mace which heal you every 3 auto attack, and grant you regen on the symbol and even have a way to block incoming attack but I'm sure it wouldn't satisfy you more because you just want you build to have more survivability without having to sacrifice anything for it.

You might not be aware of it or you just don't want to be aware of it but virtue of resolve already heal you every second as a passive effect (tome of resolve continue to carry this passive effect). Signet of courage heal you passively every 3 seconds. You gain aegis passively every X second for free sustain that no other profession have thanks to tome of courage. You got plenty access to regen, protection or even block. You got utility skills that litterally heal you, you can even trait meditation to heal you for 2k more. You can trait to be healed each time you grant yourself a boon... etc.

If you go for Zeal-honor-FB, you can capitalize on symbols. Writ of persistence litterally grant 50% increase in damage to all symbols, make them larger and make them heal you. With quickness, since you are a quickbrand, it mean that your symbols are permanently up. Zeal grant symbols tons of effects, ranging from vulnerability to percentage of damage increased... etc. Honor increase your endurance regen, can make aegis heal you, make your dodgeroll heal you... etc.

Valor grant you monk focus or altruistic healing and focus on aegis. Virtue allow you to increase your passive sustain. Radiance and zeal are the only traitline that don't grant you a direct increase of sustain.

The guardian is overflowing with sustain, it's up to you and only you to make use of it.

NB.: Your OP just say that you want zeal (which isn't a trait really known for it's support) to give you an OP sustain trait. There is no such thing as "tanking your support" involved in this. You just don't want to make the choices and explore other traitlines than the traitlines that make your confort zone.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:To gain survivability all profession's dps go down the drain. Be it thief, necromancer, guardian or whatever, it's true for all profession.

false. in all the cases I pointed it go down a bit, usually because they are given the choice to pick between the sustain trait and another dps trait in the same line, which is usually the main DPS line overflowing with other dps traits and minors they get to keep anyway.

not fall down a cliff like with ,guardian because they are forced into an entirely different trait line that has almost literally nothing, zero, zilch, nada for dps

more on that at the end

@Dadnir.5038 said:You might not be aware of it or you just don't want to be aware of it but virtue of resolve already heal you every second as a passive effect (tome of resolve continue to carry this passive effect). Signet of courage heal you passively every 3 seconds.

yeah, 100-200 heal per second on a game where white trash mobs auto for +4k

@Dadnir.5038 said:You got utility skills that litterally heal you, you can even trait meditation to heal you for 2k more. You can trait to be healed each time you grant yourself a boon... etc.

and you can also drop your sword and attack the enemies with a foam stick. because if you trait for those, thats exactly what your doing anyway

@Dadnir.5038 said:If you go for Zeal-honor-FB, you can capitalize on symbols.
Writ of persistence
litterally grant 50% increase in damage to all symbols, make them larger and make them heal you.

and you drop 35% crit chance to EVERYTHING, 10% flat damage, ToJ resetting with every kill, 6 stacks of free might and 150 ferocity.in what kind of bizarro alternate universe do you live where this is even remotely balanced tradeoff?

see what I said before? dps, meet cliff.cliff, meet dps

@Dadnir.5038 said:The guardian is overflowing with sustain, it's up to you and only you to make use of it.

yes, he is. and in case someone ever missed where it is, here is a hint, its on the polar opposite side of the world where you'd find its dps. trace a line to the place furthest to dps potential and there you'll find his sustain, no possible mistake.

NB.: Your OP just say that you want zeal (which isn't a trait really known for it's support) to give you an OP sustain trait.

condi mirage and renegade - runes of tormenting - in the runes that buff torment they get absolutly jawbreaking amounts of healing too.not like stacking torment is what they do for dps anyway. they are free to trait everything entirely for dps knowing that RoT will carry them thru almost anything that doesnt oneshot them.

power renegade and herald - assassin's annihilation: conveniently placed on Devastation, their main DPS line

holosmith - heat therapy. conveniently placed on the e-spec itself. what, there's more. they dont even have to spend a trait for it, it comes for free. this shit heals more than the vast majority of actual healing skills in the game...on a lower cooldown in practice.....entirely passively.....while dpsing

condi scourge - parasitic contagion. conveniently placed on Curses, their main DPS line. this thing takes the cake. everything I mention in this list is busted but this is on an entirely different level, its downright retarded how much healing this grants for doing nothing but dpsing, and even continues AFTER you stop dpsing

power reaper - soul eater , conveniently placed on the e-spec itself. but wait, there is more. its both sustain and dps increase. buuuuuut waiiiiiit, there's moooooooore. in case this wasnt convenient enough, its not even a GM, just a master, we dont want reapers to waste a GM on a sustain-but-also-dps trait uh? that'd be soooo unfair.

I mean, shit, symbolic avenger is the go-to GM in zeal and it's a 10% damage increase that makes you go thru hoops. Reaper gets that without hoops plus damage to health conversion, on a master. That's so fucked up lol.

Power daredevil (rather thief in general, but in dd's case is even more aggravating) - invigorating precision, conveniently placed on Critical Strikes, their main DPS line. this thingt is just ludicrous, it allows them to literally facetank while outhealing nearly everything thrown their way but the biggest hits...which then ofcourse can just dodge, since the class also has 3 unlimited dodges anyway thanks to ridiculous access to vigor and endurance traits.

health drops to dangerous levels -> dodge backwards -> switch pistols -> unload -> back to full. do that every 10 seconds if you want, why bother pressing your heal skill? That's for plebsoh and did I mention that their bread and butter staff dps skill also applies weakening? base?

If you have read this far you'll have to agree with me that what I proposed in my OP is more tame and better balanced tradeoff than a lot of stuff on this list lol

@Dadnir.5038 said:here is no such thing as "tanking your support" involved in this

oh but there is, thats the crux of the issue. ANet see firebrand (well, the guardian in general, but firebrand in particular moreso) as a prof with such amount of support that they wont literally let them have sustain AND dps too. Thats what the OP tries to address. I dont want to get all 3 dps sustain and support, thats entitlement. but I want to get to choose which two out of three I get, instead of being locked into support and having to pick between the other two.

@Dadnir.5038 said:You just don't want to make the choices and explore other traitlines than the traitlines that make your confort zone.

in a certain way, you could say that, yeah. I just don't want to make the choices because many other proffessions dont have to make them either. I also want to trait everything for dps except for 1, that's ONE thing that is so overtuned that keeps the sustain high on its own

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While I don't agree with your presentation you are technically right, plenty of these professions get near immortality for a miniscule DPS loss (Thief trades in a less than 10% DPS loss to heal for 6000 HP a second for example), which Guardian doesn't have (outside of Litany).

The thing is, I'm not sure Guardian needs it, nor do I think it's great those Traits exist in the first place, at least not at their current power levels.For Guardian and especially Firebrand though, the trick is to avoid damage in the first place with Aegis.

Sure, it's not as brainless as Thief's sustain, but neither should it be.

So no, the problem is not Guardian lacking one of those OP sustain Traits, it's rather that they are so plentiful and strong on other specs.Especially Invigorating Precision and Impact Savant are just stupid, considering how low or non existent the tradeoff is and them being even over 10%, as well as with no restrictions like only for Condi, only in a certain range threshold etc.

And yes, Symbolic Avenger is kind of a joke for a GM and should get some double Trait secondary effect.

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@"Asum.4960" said:So no, the problem is not Guardian lacking one of those OP sustain Traits, it's rather that they are so plentiful and strong on other specs.

This reminds me of that old discussions about Eles a while ago

"it's not that Eles are underpowered, it's the other 8 professions that are overpowered"They weren't very productive, really, and as a result Ele was left to suffer for a lot longer than it should have

That traits have been here long enough, let's assume they arent a fluke nor an oversight, but premeditated and here to stay. The productive thing to do is discussing how to better implement them in the profs that still lack them

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@Konrad Curze.5130 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:So no, the problem is not Guardian lacking one of those OP sustain Traits, it's rather that they are so plentiful and strong on other specs.

This reminds me of that old discussions about Eles a while ago

"it's not that Eles are underpowered, it's the other 8 professions that are overpowered"They weren't very productive, really, and as a result Ele was left to suffer for a lot longer than it should have

That traits have been here long enough, let's assume they arent a fluke nor an oversight, but premeditated and here to stay. The productive thing to do is discussing how to better implement them in the profs that still lack them

You might as well flip that into: Those traits have been missing on those professions long enough, let's assume that isn't a fluke nor an oversight, but premeditated and here to stay that way. The productive thing to do is discussing how to nerf them on profession that do have them.

Plus, when was Ele ever underpowered?

Also, just in general gamedesign terms, just giving every profession a "Heal 20% of all damage done" Trait is terrible design. The game already favours building for 100% damage way too heavily, and it shouldn't also come with near immortality level sustain with one Trait pick, invalidating any damage done to players across the entire game short of oneshots.

And really, you don't even need to get creative to tone down Traits like IP, Anet just needs to revert the insane buffs they have given them.Idk why they thought it was a good idea to buff it from 5% to 20% over the years, but healing for 6k+ HP/s while doing 30k+ DPS these days is just stupid.

The game doesn't need more of that, it needs less, and should they exist at all imo 10% for highly conditional Traits or 5% for general leech Traits should be the maximum.

Intelligently blocking with Aegis is half the fun and engagement with Firebrand. If you just get 20% leech, it's just going to be yet another brainless machine rolling over any and all (already brainlessly easy) content.

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I am in the same situation as you. While I enjoy the massive damage output and easy access to the most vital buffs, I lack the skill and experience to play without receiving damage. As a Scrapper/Engineer main, the damage feels unbelievable high. However I want to play the class more frequently, so I had to figure out a few tricks to get along with the Quickbrand without spending 95 % of my time as a corpse.

What I noticed/use:

I. GearI run Diviners on Weapons & Armor, Berzerker's on Trinkets and Backpiece. In addition I use some food that grants me 100 Concentration, like e. g. the Soul Pastry. I also use the Superior Rune of the Flame Legion, because I cannot maintain 90 % HP during combat.

II. QuicknessThis setup allows me to maintain permanent Quickness by just using the two Mantras and the Elite Skill. I do not need the tomes for Quickness uptime. As in the official description, cast "Feel my wrath!" when it is up, but then cast first Potent Haste (Mantra of Potence) and then Restoring Reprieve (Mantra of Solace). Then wait 8-10 seconds and repeat the mantras. Repeat that until the Elite is ready again.

III. Let's heal for ~ 7,000 HPFirst of all, you need to replace the Sword of Justice with the Hammer of Wisdom. You also have to replace the Bane Signet for Merciful Intervention. As an Engineer main, I am used to work with combos. I found a pretty funny chain that does some healing:

  1. Swap in Tome of Resolve
  2. Cast Epilogue: Eternal Oasis
  3. Hammer of Wisdom (place it nearby)
  4. Cast Chapter 4: Shining River
  5. Swap out into Greatsword
  6. Leap of Faith
  7. Merciful Intervention

If everything is executed correctly, you end up with ~ 7,000 HP healed. Looking on our HP pool, that is a lot. Cooldown of this combo-chain: 50 seconds :S. Thanks to the Tome of Resolve. There is sadly no other water field from any Guardian skills. Still, better than only the Mantra.

Merciful Intervention has 40 seconds of cooldown and can be combined with the heal mantra to generate ~3,800 HP recovery. Positive side-effect with this one is, it works very well with green NPCs. So you also use the teleport in dangerous situations, if green NPCs are close by.

The Hammer is also a good, more reliable CC source, as it knocks down normal NPCs if you are getting attacked from all directions.

Note: At first I wanted to replace the backpiece + trinkets with something like Zealot. But then I remembered how weak combos scale with Healing Power.

IV. AegisThe Virtue of Courage / Tome of Courage is a nice Aegis tool. You can easily apply 1 stack just by grabbing it, another with skill 2 (cooldown 3 seconds) and skill 5 (cooldown 8 seconds). You have access to 5 pages. So you can get up to 6 separate Aegis buffs in short time. Can be used in phases where you have to avoid more damage, swapping between the tome and dodging. Requires some practice, but works out quite well.

-

Firebrand is a support specialization. You cannot turn a Warrior into a healer, a thief into a buffer or a druid into a DPS. Every class has its limits, that is the challenge.

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@HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:I am in the same situation as you. While I enjoy the massive damage output and easy access to the most vital buffs, I lack the skill and experience to play without receiving damage. As a Scrapper/Engineer main, the damage feels unbelievable high. However I want to play the class more frequently, so I had to figure out a few tricks to get along with the Quickbrand without spending 95 % of my time as a corpse.

Yea, the biggest thing you have to learn about Firebrand is to not use the heal skill to heal, but to prevent the damage with the Aegis from it in the first place, which once you get the hang of it is actually quite engaging and satisfying.

@HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:III. Let's heal for ~ 7,000 HP...

Also keep in mind Focus 5 as blast finisher for various combos with tomes (extra Might, healing etc.)

IV. Aegis

@HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:Firebrand is a support specialization. You cannot turn a Warrior into a healer, a thief into a buffer or a druid into a DPS. Every class has its limits, that is the challenge.

Actually Boon Thief is a thing and meta and Warror is getting some Tactics reworks soon, which together with Warhorn might open up some support avenues.But then again, Firebrand is also a meta DPS.

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@Asum.4960 said:

@Asum.4960 said:So no, the problem is not Guardian lacking one of those OP sustain Traits, it's rather that they are so plentiful and strong on other specs.

This reminds me of that old discussions about Eles a while ago

"it's not that Eles are underpowered, it's the other 8 professions that are overpowered"They weren't very productive, really, and as a result Ele was left to suffer for a lot longer than it should have

That traits have been here long enough, let's assume they arent a fluke nor an oversight, but premeditated and here to stay. The productive thing to do is discussing how to better implement them in the profs that still lack them

You might as well flip that into: Those traits have been missing on those professions long enough, let's assume that isn't a fluke nor an oversight, but premeditated and here to stay that way. The productive thing to do is discussing how to nerf them on profession that do have them.

My standpoint however seems to be an ongoing trend. e.g in the last big balance patch ANet added nearly as much flat dmg modificators to the sustain line (water) as it had in the dps line (fire), which allows Eles to retain reasonably competitive dps while traiting for self sustain.

That's another way to reach the same destination, and I wouldn't be opposed to giving valor or honor a flat 20% dmg bonus that softens the blow of speccing into them over zeal

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