Solstice.5790

A class/role concept of a heal-/boonsupport that has to make a trait choice between either stronger heals or the core boon of alacrity, a role concept of pure (c)dps losing access to damage because of its utility, a slow, methodical ranged sniper that applies the quickness boon around themselves instead of the agile, elusive melee thief, major boons crammed into elite specs destroying class identity in general, pointless spec/weapon combinations, splitting stats off of runes to justify an additional jade bot relic equipment, yet another legendary armor set which for a lot of people will probably be nothing but an expensive skin, the upcoming daily /weekly / quarterly (!) grind of the vault, devs pulling through with every single design decision the community has spoken up against, immediately or delayed by one patch, (gold to gems consistently going up showing there's either too much gold or too little cash in the market), "Sleuthing a Solution" and the quality of story content after EoD in general, and (to each their own, but imo:) cuddly jade bots, adventurous cat outfits and lazy, overpriced cape / hood combos. I'm not worried. Just growing really tired. And I do accept that people don't find anything bad and defend what's happening to the end. I wonder if the servers will stay up for just them.

Amazing. 8 weeks of ~20 minutes each for the EoD strike infusions. 12ish weeks of an average 12 hours each for the wvw one - same currency as the legendary armor. 🤷‍♂️

fb dps is condi damage, so the "dps nerf to fb" will hit cfb and qcfb alike. And I did not agree that / why / how the nerf needs to happen. I just didn't make the sarcasm obvious enough, even with the second line in my initial response, I guess.

OP was talking about CFB in general, I was just as confused as you why it was being compared to qscrap.

Correct, as long as pure CFB does more damage than a quick scrapper, it needs to be nerfed. I guess as long as it is even remotely capable of doing more than one thing, it needs to be nerfed...

... so we shotgun-nerfed a bunch of burn talents to make sure we break qcfb as well. Good job as always.

You're right, you've won.

*removed*

If you accepted opinions other than yours you would have noticed some amount of forum posts where experienced guardians state that they don't want the revert back to the old mantra system. I also wouldn't consider myself new to the class at ~4.5k hours on it. It is true though that I don't understand in what way moving, which you do anyways during combat, prevents being interrupted by dazes / ccs - unless you dodge them of course, which as you said, also interrupts it. Also, it is an ammo nerf if you don't use the last charge to prevent having the prep cast, which was a common playstyle before (according to experienced guardians). And no average healbrand was spamming mantras anyways because it was pointless, plus that spec can afford to prep mantras again for 2.25s minus quickness. Bursting mantras, as you're aware, is done by QFB and CFB, 2 specs that don't really want to stop attacking with their weapons. What I'm complaining about is an unnecessarily clunky system that was already done away with. You're the one inflating it to "people would not ask for healbrand anymore in PvE/WvW, period". And I'm sorry it's not just my personal issue, if you need help finding the threads let me know.

You'll also need the additional damage stats if you want to wiggle your hands around doing no weapon damage for even longer because you've spent all q-providing mantras...

Imagine equating "a semi-long duration preparation cast that does absolutely nothing" to "using the skill you get after doing it". And then imagine having a conversation as if you were not on reddit. I wasn't talking about cooldowns, which are the actual opportunity cost - mantras had recharge timers in them before as well. What we have now is a channeled cast that is not the skill you want to use, before you can then activate the same utility to do what you actually want. Why does an engineer traited for tools not tie his shoelaces for 3 seconds before actually gaining access to his 2 rocket boot charges? Or why does a shout warrior not do a couple of seconds of vocal warmup before yelling at people to shake it off? Because it's silly, it's clunky, it stops weapon usage i.e. dps, and it is exactly what actually turns mantras into "the exception". And just to be clear, I am fine with the way they changed the elite mantra, because that is the only one where you actually got a choice between an additional more powerful last charge and then the prep, or your previous two charges and no prep.

Haven't seen benches yet, so I'm not interested in expectations or should be's. I also don't see that many power deadeye dps in raids or strikes, so there seems to be some other element involved... What I have seen is prep-animations get interrupted repeatedly in actual encounters, and 3ish second Houdini handwaving (per mantra!) preventing any weapon damage to the target (thus also voiding the F1 passive or weapon condi application). And if you don't use all charges (ignoring the elite), it is a flat ammo nerf. Maybe guard mains are just on to something there...

As long as Stability and Aegis counter the amount of mechanics they do right now, and as long as Firebrand has more access to those boons than any other class - so, basically, as long as Firebrand is still playable in any way, it will be considered overpowered. It's pointless to say that the damage (F1) is non-existent when you're on a heal build, because you technically have skills that do a non-zero amount of damage. It doesn't matter that the F2 doesn't heal for kitten on dps builds, since you have healing skills and even cleansing in there (which are on weapons, consecrations and shouts anyways...) And the F3 giving Stability / Resistance, that's just the Devil's Work... With certain streamers harping on the blue class for years (not playing one themselves btw) and the devteam being unable to create viable alternatives, Firebrand will have to go down way further before some people maybe eventually wake up. And to all you "change is good" parrots - a key aspect of change management is making sure you dont' fall back into the pre-change state.

Currently Orders from Above with Righteous Rebel gives 9 seconds of Alac, you can keep it up permanently (solo) with boon duration close to 80%. I'm not sure if "around 33% boon duration should be enough" is meant in general, which does not work. Or were you talking about the upcoming balance patch, where that 33% alacrity duration might get added?

It's about as much to ask players to understand that some are worried about not being able to use a skill at the right moment. Because it is locked behind a 3 second animation that will either trigger enemies' "on interrupt" effects or simply get prolonged by a bunch of unfavorable mist instabilities (especially in Chaos, Mai Trin, Siren's Reef, Twilight Oasis...) Other opinions are available, not everyone knows or likes the old mantra system - Is having 2 options really going to blow your mind?

Really looking forward to having my 3-second precast for a stunbreak mantra interrupted in WvW. QCFB will probably be just as amazing, ignoring the fact we're already stuck with this kitten high-vit ritualist nonsense. But hey, bringing firebrand down was the plan, I will continue to curiously watch how much further. Maybe.

Can we start having an honest, eye-to-eye discussion about what's going on in Lake Doric at the moment? And maybe not have idle-enjoyers harp on active players or map completionists call every reaper a bot? The current farm is affecting many players' map performance, what would be constructive solutions in your opinion?

Yeah, I get it as a cooldown indicator for indomitable courage and traits like that. I just don't like that you get the "boon"-icon for benefitting from the trait's passive, then getting the icons in red for those passives being on cooldown, except for the traited one which is there in blue and red, and then also having the F-skills turn red. Just have the tomes blue when the passive is up and red when it's down - the boon/condi bar is overloaded enough already.

HoT was the first expansion the developers released, after quite a long period of players gearing up and getting proficient with their classes in the core game. The difficulty of that expansion was set accordingly. You don't suck, that zone is deliberately hard. There is a lot of good advice in the other posts as far as builds and personal adjustments are concerned, so all I will say is "hang in there, many of us had those bumps in the road" 🦎

I am so glad the page cost is back to normal on the Justice tome, even if the increased CD on skill 2 somewhat messes up the damage burst. The last nerf simply reduced QCFB damage while at the same time taking away any versatility (on tomes). Now if they could solve the visual issue of virtues going red with or without the respective grandmaster trait, and maybe also decide whether that info should be given on the tomes or on the boons - imo it'd be fine for now.

So you agree, you just want to say you disagree. With the pre nerf page cost of 1 per skill you were able to use "the stronger" 5, and 4 once, 2 twice at the beginning and end, and the "weak" 1 once as a filler in your F1 burst. With the increased page cost now, in a prolonged fight your regen can hardly keep up with 5 and 4 on cooldown, which makes three skills in that tome and all skills in both other tomes pointless. If you up the maximum pages to counter that you will still run into the regen issue. If you up the page regen to then counter that, you're back to the pre nerf "flow", just with inflated numbers. The goal, from what I understood, was to make it harder / impossible to utilize all tomes at the same time (which you couldn't do effectively anyways, but that ship has sailed). So put them on a single budget of shared pages - cool. But what was achieved, was not being able to use a single tome to it's full capabilities. So get rid of what prevents that.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like might generation could be dropped from staff entirely. It's a WvW pre-engage empower tool for the first spike maybe. But if you look at your boons in strikes or raids, everyone just vomits out might anyways (including the guardian on some specs). Personally I'd prefer the ring of warding from hammer on staff, but currently have to second @urieldhynne.2743's statement. Better not have them fiddle with it, or it might turn into a 648 range stick that forces you to choose between healing or swiftness...

If you're full on 5 pages and trait for 8, you will now be stuck on 5/8 until you use one of the five to trigger the regen.

Imo the fix would be to remove the increased page cost. Keep the intended "opportunity cost" via the shared pages system - if you choose to use your healing tome as a dps-brand, your dps should suffer. But as it is right now, our household has been reduced to a single income instead of three. Prices on goods have increased by up to 300% and we earn less money per hour. Calling that an opportunity cost is just an insolence.

Not on FB, no.