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Isn't Firebrand the real problem?


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@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.

No, FB doesn't change the fact Rev or Slb have massive burst or that Holo is so powerful sidenoder, noone of those require FB to do the BS they do.

EDIT: However if your point is what I think it is, then, ye.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

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@praqtos.9035 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Kindof. To include this comment:

@crepuscular.9047 said:??? nope, the real problem is dev's lack of courage to nerf everything HARD, super HARD

Idk why Anet does this but all they do is buff (other than occasional nerf hammers, that absolutely destroy a certain build). Especially since HoT pretty much all they did was balance for PvE - aka Raids and fractals, where you only have one forkin massive boss, that soak up damage and most of the time dishes out like crazy - so they increased basically everything to the point where you don't know anymore if the absurd damage or the absurd possibilities to mitigate damage is worse (I mean.. the condition system got reworked so they can be stacked more and tick way harder against bosses.. gives you an idea I guess - which had terrible impact on any pvp content ofc... and even thief got a block!).Especially self-granting boons, boon sharing and boon uptime got to a ridiculous point. My guess is, that Anet had to react to this a bit because ESL was still a thing back then, so while they were working on PoF, they designed Scourge to be the counter to all of this. Since they then apparently realized that scourge usually has a shitload of boons to corrupt and absurd amounts of area denial and mostly unavoidable AoE damage, and none of the classes can sustain this in a teamfight, they introduced Firebrand to counter that (I know they both came to the live servers at the same time but we don't know the development schedule for PoF so this would still be possible).And since Firebrand can carry fights to the point where you basically can't win if you don't have one on your team as well, Anet constantly increased power output (because more conditions don't counter firebrand, since its purpose is to cleanse so you gotta kill it quick with direct damage).It's an eternal spiral of counters to one specific thing, which affects EVERYTHING in a pretty bad way.

Admittedly not necessarily 100% the way it is/was (I'm exaggerating a bit) but I think the core stays the same. Anet tries to resolve problems by introducing new ones and even if the new ones are only slightly worse than the original one, it stacks up over time and here we are now.

Also.. PvE is PvP's enemy because you can't balance for both without seriously splitting skills (like they did in GW1 - which had it's own balance issues due to the sheer amount of possible builds due to the dual class system but that's another story.)Change my mind.

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Problem is how important is stability in pvp/wvw and fb is kitting with stab and Aegis as well which is next important skill in teamfights. It has to many tools to give other supports any right to be competitive.Reduce fb boon spam or/and give other supports stab access.Tempest for example should have stability share on earth overload imo, it would be good start. Maybe revenant support idk. Just don't buff scrapper even more"omg u nub, fb doesn't even have that good healing" Yea it doesnt but it shit with boons, and it's way to much for 1 spec"omg u nub, fb was nerfed already so many times, u want more?" Yea it had so many nerfs and its still meta, it needs more adjustments imo

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Yes, Firebrand is the problem in most balance issues but nobody wants to believe it.

Revenant is only able to mindlessly spam skills to do high damage because of the sustain firebrands give, without it revs can't keep pressuring in teamfights.Same goes for scourges.

This game gives each class healing and sustain even though said class is dps. I have never seen another game where a character is able to heal himself without being a healer PLUS the ability of someone else being a dedicated healer.

I understand a healer is necessary in PvE, but I strongly think a healer of the capacity of Firebrand is completely toxic to the PvP genre.

Most high damage classes have been designed in a way that they cannot handle pressure so they can't deal high damage whilst being targeted. Firebrands completely remove this negative aspect of damage dealers and allow them to dps whilst being targeted.

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With the amount of burst dmg in the game I think it is not necessarily the issue. The notion there should be no dedicated support/healer has been gone since HoT at latest (even before supp guard was a thing). The issue rather is that most other supporters are now underwhelming, so FB stands completely alone with that role since PoF Launch. In organised teams an FB is pretty much a must have, but in the average ranked you're often actually better off without one because of the lack of coordination between teammates. So I wouldn't say that FB is THE problem, even though a nerf to the Teamfight DPS meta builds would also make a shave of firebrands support capabilities necessary. This wouldnt necessarily have to be the healing, since FB offers a lot of support besides it (stability, aegis spam, boons, projectile hate, cleanse).

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On one hand yes Firebrand is the best support hands down.

On the other hand, healing and protecting allies is what the paladin archetype is supposed to do and the guardian embodies that archetype and I think it is massively important guardian fulfills that role just from a game design flavor role.

On the other hand, if we see firebrand nerfed to the point where it is competitive with other side noders we likely won't see support in ranked at all period. It'll be a ranked only sort of thing.

On the otherhand it would be great to see more variety in support like true support scrappers and support tempests and support druids.

On the other hand Firebrand is the only time we've seen a true support act like a dedicated support and not primarily wind up like a selfish side noder the way druid did before it got nerfed.

It's complicated and hard.

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@praqtos.9035 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Firebrand isn't actually that great at team condi-cleansing. Yes F2 gives lots of cleanse, but this is on a 50s cool down and locks the FB out of weapon skills. Outside of this what cleanse does FB bring? Typically the cleanse mantra is not used. Tempest is actually much superior at team cleansing over time.

It would be interesting to see that difference be more pronounced. Have FB be boon-support, Tempest be cleanse-support, and Druid be raw-heals-support, then people must choose which they want.

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When you have a bunch of fairly sturdy hard hitting builds like we have now, FB is only part of the problem.

They do need to be nerfed though, if we intend to balance the survivability and damage of other classes.Otherwise you have Scourge's, Holos, Spell breakers, and Soul beats, that'll never die after reducing all the damage.

Realistically you can't significantly bring down the damage until you bring down FB.

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@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Firebrand isn't actually that great at team condi-cleansing. Yes F2 gives lots of cleanse, but this is on a 50s cool down and locks the FB out of weapon skills. Outside of this what cleanse does FB bring? Typically the cleanse mantra is not used. Tempest is actually much superior at team cleansing over time.

It would be interesting to see that difference be more pronounced. Have FB be boon-support, Tempest be cleanse-support, and Druid be raw-heals-support, then people must choose which they want.With the amount of condis scourge vomit I dont think tempest can handle this, at all (I havent seen them for a long time, may be its secretly better than FB? ;) ) .... Aside from cleanses fb brings -> boons/heals/revive signet, it has everything while others...I think both need a tone down, scourge and its condi spam and FB.
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@praqtos.9035 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@Crab Fear.1624 said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Firebrand isn't actually that great at team condi-cleansing. Yes F2 gives lots of cleanse, but this is on a 50s cool down and locks the FB out of weapon skills. Outside of this what cleanse does FB bring? Typically the cleanse mantra is not used. Tempest is actually much superior at team cleansing over time.

It would be interesting to see that difference be more pronounced. Have FB be boon-support, Tempest be cleanse-support, and Druid be raw-heals-support, then people must choose which they want.With the amount of condis scourge vomit I dont think tempest can handle this, at all (I havent seen them for a long time, may be its secretly better than FB? ;) ) .... Aside from cleanses fb brings -> boons/heals/revive signet, it has everything while others...I think both need a tone down, scourge and its condi spam and FB.

I never said Tempest was better than FB. Why are you twisting my words and making up things I never said? Could it be you have an agenda?

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@Ragnar.4257 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:fb has to be op since everything else is op.There is no support spec that come close to firebrand@"Crab Fear.1624" said:We have a game not designed for a trinity, yet one of the deities has been present since PoF release.Imagine what would happen without firebrand massive support against thing like scourge, even with firebrand people still have billion conditions.. Do you think firebrand is the issue when scourge put so much pressure to entire team that firebrand barely can hold against it but eventually run out of cd's?

Firebrand isn't actually that great at team condi-cleansing. Yes F2 gives lots of cleanse, but this is on a 50s cool down and locks the FB out of weapon skills. Outside of this what cleanse does FB bring? Typically the cleanse mantra is not used. Tempest is actually much superior at team cleansing over time.

It would be interesting to see that difference be more pronounced. Have FB be boon-support, Tempest be cleanse-support, and Druid be raw-heals-support, then people must choose which they want.With the amount of condis scourge vomit I dont think tempest can handle this, at all (I havent seen them for a long time, may be its secretly better than FB? ;) ) .... Aside from cleanses fb brings -> boons/heals/revive signet, it has everything while others...I think both need a tone down, scourge and its condi spam and FB.

I never said Tempest was better than FB. Why are you twisting my words?It was an obvious joke, come on.At least what I wrote in " ( ) "
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with a support FB. If you solo queue as a heal FB - it's basically a death sentence since 90% of the time you will have your scourge suddenly decide to go far and other nonsense. If you duo queue, FB performs OK - but that's because of coordination between the duo, not the class being OP. Also, try holding a node as a support FB for more than 5 seconds vs 2 dps classes and you will see how "strong" the FB support is.
Rants like this from players who most likely have never played the actual class, but happened to come across a good FB player/duo so they couldn't insta pew-pew them, lead to kitten unnecessary nerfs to classes, as it seems like the devs "balance" the classes based on the amount of "NERF CLASS XXX" threads on forums.

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They nerfed Firebrand and Scourge in a "recent" patch, Firebrand lost the Tome reset + base CDs on Tomes (and more), Scourge lost its passive Spectral Armor, and more.

This made them debunkable from a node, they could die, and they could die quite easily, classes that did more damage became more relevant because of this.

Then Portal got nerfed to 30 seconds. Now you couldn't even port your Firebrand/Scourge out consistently from a bad fight.As a Duo, Firebrand/Scourge didn't mean alot, its just part of the team fight now, not too much more.

I don't know how OP or anyone in this thread can say Firebrand or Scourge are the issue of why we have this meta, second they aren't even a thing in Ranked, any Firebrand/ Scourge you see will fold to things they shouldn't and will ALWAYS rotate improperly, if not due to their skill and rotational knowledge, because of their other teammates forcing different and improper rotations.

And last off, Firebrand/Scourge are easily killed and debunked in this current meta, the nerfs they had done to them made this meta what it is, this is why theres 2 Revenant teams in half of the EU rosters, that's why you see less Thieves and instead more Revenants.

If anything, Firebrand and Scourge should be buffed, it was skillful to have Portal in the game, it was skillful to have a roadblock that took proper rotations to work around.

Incase you're not talking about 5v5s or Firebrand/Scourge in any regard, and just Firebrand in Ranked, full support Firebrand is VERY bad in ranked, for reasons that it takes high awareness and rotational skill to play properly, and you're made useless when your teammates rotate incorrectly or are picking a bad fight.DPS Hybrid Support Firebrand is very obnoxious, even more so with a Revenant, but not OP, easily killable and punished, its a snowball machine, it might snowball the other team, or it'll feed and you'll get snowballed.

give fb back its tome reset k thx

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