Firebrand needs to be getting the same treatment as Scourge

[Cyninja.2954]

@Nimon.7840 said:I don't think there's a big chance we will see auch changes.As far as I understood in those wvw streams, Those changes would have to be made by the pve design team. But you see, some traits have 300 seconds cooldown in spvp and wvw, and didn't get reworked yet so I highly doubt bigger changes will happen in the near future

That's actually a good point. Last time I listened in on a dev stream, they talked about how splitting skills only works on duration of effects and coefficients and targets. Meaning a skill which gives stability for example, does so across all game modes, just with different duration. A skill which bleeds, will bleed across all game modes, just the amount of bleed stacks, the duration and the coefficient will vary. Which also explains why the Warclaws bleed on Battle Maul was removed in PvE as well when the WvW change happened.

This obviously limits the possibility for meaningful balance changes for WvW even further, besides the already difficult situation to balance between solo roaming, small scale and large scale.

[KrHome.1920]

@Dadnir.5038 said:Guardian/firebrand is strong in WvW because there is a general imbalance between CC and CC counter in the game and Guardian/FB is the best (if not only) source of CC counter.

The way CC are designed is the source of the issue, ANet can nerf FB as much as people want, it won't change the fact that they will be used as a way to cope with the CC mess.The issue is how mobility is designed. The cc is just the solution to deal with the fact, that if it didn't exist in the current way, then everyone could disengage from fights forever.

If I had to suggest a way to lessen the importance of the guardian in zerg, I'd just suggest to spread some stability aoe onto a few other professions. Nerfing the guardian as a source of stability would be just awful.This will break certain classes. Example below:

Thief: make bountiful theft grant stability instead of vigor.Sure, give the most mobile class in the game a stability source on its class mechanic. Thief is the prime example why a cc buff was necessary in combination with the overal damage reduction. Even if you would change the trait to only affect allies but not the thief itself, then a team of two thieves will still be completely broken.

Yes, there is mass cc application, but there are also masses of options to cleanse conditions and to stunbreak. If you want half of your metabuilds to basically be pve style damage dealers, then of course you need some build that increases their defense. Throw together 50 roaming builds and you will notice that they don't need an additional stability source.

The overall wvw issue (more than the mobility design) is that zerg organisation is pretty difficult, if you don't dumb things down to specific roles. The individual player needs to think less then and you gain a lot of success with players, that only have a mediocre understanding of the game.

[Cyninja.2954]

@KrHome.1920 said:Yes, there is mass cc application, but there are also masses of options to cleanse conditions and to stunbreak. If you want half of your metabuilds to basically be pve style damage dealers, then of course you need some build that increases their defense. Throw together 50 roaming builds and you will notice that they don't need an additional stability source.

The overall wvw issue (more than the mobility design) is that zerg organisation is pretty difficult, if you don't dumb things down to specific roles. The individual player needs to think less then and you gain a lot of success with players, that only have a mediocre understanding of the game.

I in part agree, the issue about dumbing down roles, but you are also leaving out the synergy bonuses from specializing.

For Example:There is a net benefit to having a support scrapper cleanse the entire party. In this specific case because:A. he is the best at it form a utility perspective (Purity of Purpose makes Scrapper cleanses superior to all other classes)B. he will be built around that, meaning his total amount of cleanse will outperform individual classes abilities to cleanse.C. point 3 also allows for classes which might lack certain strengths, say self cleanse or boon removal, to still excel in a squad setting while others take over those roles

That's the entire idea behind the old trinity in games. The tank specializes on tanking, so all the others don't have to. The healer specializes in healing, the damage dealers in damage. The goal always being that the sum of the specialized setup outperforms a hosh-posh mix of classes and roles. This remains true in this game as well.

[Shiyo.3578]

True melee builds should have stuff like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Balanced_Stance and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dolyak_Stance but basically "CC immunity" so they do not have to rely on stacking on top of 50 people. "Stack" gameplay is really boring.

[subversiontwo.7501]

@"Shiyo.3578" said:True melee builds should have stuff like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Balanced_Stance and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dolyak_Stance but basically "CC immunity" so they do not have to rely on stacking on top of 50 people. "Stack" gameplay is really boring.

Many of them do, it just isn't sufficient and that is key to the discussion at hand.

The whole Guardians and stability thing isn't that difficult. You can diminish the value of the Guardian by reducing the amount of CC. You can diminish the value of the Guardian by increasing the amount of relative stability and breaks to CC, doing so on other classes that either already shares that to a very limited degree or by adding to classes that lack a role or representation in larger groups (a Ranger is an example of both). You can nerf the Guardian but that will just increase the amount of CC relative its overall counters and the behaviour of most players at a larger scale suggests that there is already more CC than counters (as the boonballs people refer to do not really exist in fights between balanced squads). Regardless, most players agree that more CC means less fun and does not fit into the strengths of this game's combat system. Players who do want more CC are often inexperienced players on ranged classes who think they will stand to benefit from more a scattered range war or from more ranged CC thrown atop a melee party or two.

That's pretty much the entire discussion fit into a single paragraph.

[Shiyo.3578]

Also, does stability stop siege CC? If so, siege shouldn't CC. I get spam knocked back by siege and it's REALLY dumb.

[subversiontwo.7501]

A note on that: I'm not saying that people's experience of a "boonball" isn't real. I'm saying that they do not understand why the opponent behaves like that or why they get that impression and default to thinking about classes and balance. The reality is that the other side is likely much larger, much more organized or just much more experienced/better than what they have at the field at the given time themselves. They think it is a class balance issue when it is really a population balance issue and an opposing commander who is so confident of winning the fight that they just go forward. It happens all the time, but it happens in scenarios of eg., a guild group versus a tagless cloud. Experienced players understand the situation and inexperienced players may not. The issue isn't so much that clouding can't be a valid tactic but rather that the organisation of the guild group is just that much higher with synergies, focus and communication. You can build a powerful clouding/havoc party, but the cloud in the example has not.

Ed., I've made note of it before but it's worth reminding: the way that organisation has been left to decompose and how the playerbase is comprised today you are only going to see more and more of these differences. The fewer guilds or more scarce guilds get the more you are going to see well-composed groups steamrolling less structured opponents and the less you are going to see a well-composed core help out in a pickup group. It is becomming more scarce so it is becomming more valuable and powerful. The servers, friendships or guilds that remain powerful are not necessarily growing more powerful, it is the opposition around them that is dwindling.

Also, for reference, a real "boonball" (where people purposely stack boons for the same end) has not existed since early 2016. What you see today is mostly an inflation of effects on every class and build. There's more of everything. Any group that just stacks on tag is often quite mediocre and will get absolutely smashed by a more experienced group that can take more initiative. Those groups are just becomming... rare.

[TrOtskY.5927]

I played WvW a lot in 2014, guess what? Boonballs existed then too.

[ASP.8093]

@"KrHome.1920" said:

Thief: make

bountiful theft

grant stability instead of vigor.Sure, give the most mobile class in the game a stability source on its class mechanic. Thief is the prime example why a cc buff was necessary in combination with the overal damage reduction. Even if you would change the trait to only affect allies but not the thief itself, then a team of two thieves will still be completely broken.

Add personal stability to Acrobatics, it'll be fine. Give that trait line an identity beyond "Daredevil But Bad."

[KrHome.1920]

@ASP.8093 said:

@"KrHome.1920" said:

Thief: make

bountiful theft

grant stability instead of vigor.Sure, give the most mobile class in the game a stability source on its class mechanic. Thief is the prime example why a cc buff was necessary in combination with the overal damage reduction. Even if you would change the trait to only affect allies but not the thief itself, then a team of two thieves will still be completely broken.

Add personal stability to Acrobatics, it'll be fine. Give that trait line an identity beyond "Daredevil But Bad."Thief and stability is like necro and blocks. A combination of that would require a complete class rework or a new elite spec with tradeoffs.

Limiting the stability spam to firebrand is actually very smart, because it limits the chances of broken team compositions. A support class that takes a spot only for providing stability and some medioce heals while being very immobile is a good mix of benefits and tradeoffs. If you increase the stability access of other classes then you need to create tradeoffs for them too. So since thief is incredibly mobile and impossible to pin down when it can provide stability to itself and/or its group, then that thief would have to be completely useless for the fight besides its stability spam to be balanced.

[Kontrolle.3514]

I think most of you actually don't play much wvw. Organized groups have to run 2 supporters already because support is so lackluster in this game. Most metabuilds are healers now because fb can't heal anything anymore in full minstrel gear. Warrior, ele, mesmer, guard, engineer all running healer builds. Also purity of purpose is overrated in this thread, tempest outshines scrapper in every aspect for support, raw healing, cleansing, cc, auras, lol even damage. Scrapper is just a stealth bot and it's now actually more effective as DPS compared to support because almost all warriors, tempests guards and mesmers run support builds.

[Kodama.6453]

@"scerevisiae.1972" said: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.

3 seconds cd on purity of purpose and that grandmaster trait is worth less than an adept minor trait.

[Mini Crinny.6190]

@Kontrolle.3514 said:I think most of you actually don't play much wvw. Organized groups have to run 2 supporters already because support is so lackluster in this game. Most metabuilds are healers now because fb can't heal anything anymore in full minstrel gear. Warrior, ele, mesmer, guard, engineer all running healer builds. Also purity of purpose is overrated in this thread, tempest outshines scrapper in every aspect for support, raw healing, cleansing, cc, auras, lol even damage. Scrapper is just a stealth bot and it's now actually more effective as DPS compared to support because almost all warriors, tempests guards and mesmers run support builds.

Scrapper is the best off support to have because it turns Condi into boons incredibly easy, Stealth gyro is kinda meh in large groups but better in small groups, Tempest is good but not as good as scrapper

[Kodama.6453]

@otto.5684 said:Hmm... this is a WvW thread that got moved to guardian forums. I think Anet forum moderation is now done by a clueless bot.

This thread is specifically about toning down firebrand, so it kinda makes sense to put it in the guardian forum.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Junkpile.7439 said: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.

Structures need to scale up with the size of the group atacking and defending :\ but m8 be a hard one to pull and balance.

I would not want FB to have the same treatment as scourge, cause scourge was badly design towards the game reason it needed quite some changes that make the class weird...on theme but very weird, imo Anet really needs to redesign the f keys from scourge for players feel a decent experience while playing them.

If there were change on the FB i would point to the quickbranbuilds on mass stack out of stealth that are a issue for rendering on enemy clients.Since Anet is not change condi damage bursts expecially from burn wich IMO is overperformin, maybe the FIREBRANDS, while cleaning burn from alies or from thelselves could gain some sorta personal buff, has in 0.1 % of healing ouputs, or damage reducer for next 5-6 sec stacs X times mx.

Other thing that m8 be making FB OP or giving that feeling is the MINSTRELL stats, since power and heals got cutted those stats m8 be to much, maybe Anet can adapt those stats to precision instead of toughness or at least work on those stats to see if now they are to much for the game.

I think theres to many IF things that need to be checked before say class X.Y is OP tone down eveyrhing, this said nerf HOLO! huehue