Gaiawolf.8261

Neither. Must have gotten smoked by a FB. 😅

You don't care about the noises, you just want to do battle because you're a warrior! 🤣

This is part of my suspicion. I don't think they are just treating instance pve meta builds as ceilings but also using them to determine where weapons (and traits) have a place for the entire profession. I use Honor in my OW celestial/support build, and it's definitely appreciated but still way too small. I guess it's a small consolation that I can swap out a pistol for my axe, but scepter is still sometimes superior due to the GT symbol. I also like the theme and skin for my scepter better, so I'm not too salty about that. I just wish I had a decent ranged condi dps option for my Vip/Rit build.

Yeah, we have a few threads discussing how to make it better, but it seems the devs have no intention of changing it on that level, at least for now. At this point I'm just trying to figure out what the kitten the balance team are thinking. I have one theory that they only care how it performs in instance PVE/golem benchmarks, and I hope I am wrong, but... 🤷‍♀️

That's really the problem I'm having. The weapons' effectiveness is pretty good when you are on top of something, but it just drops off outside of the tiny symbol radius. Every time I try to get something out of its range, I feel like I'd be better off switching back to my scepter. I mean, what's the point of making them pistols?

Oh? They moving away from sc/p + p/t on wb? Still, that's only one use, and other combos are still viable.

Next up on Battle of the Bands: Thief Axe vs Guardian Scepter!! Can the King of Cacophony be overthrown?

On my FB, I consistently use LB and OH sword. I love the additional range and mobility they bring to an otherwise slow, close range player, especially in wvw. Absolutely fantastic. The pistols are fun, but some dizzying choices by the devs seem to hamper MH pistol's range. Still too much reliance on being in melee range to use that kitten symbol while every other pistol skill can be used at 900 range. 😞 I'm also having a lot of fun with a dagger on my mirage. It's a cool changeup to relying on a staxe. I can finally drop my axe and leave it lying in the muck behind me, forgotten! YAY! I tried the rifle, but haven't really played with it yet. It was fun, so I'm looking forward to getting more into it. Unfortunately, everything about weapon mastery and the new pistol for elementalists have been... not useful, to put it kindly. Lastly, I actually having fun keeping a staff on my second set with my deadeye. I haven't had much luck with the axe yet. Maybe I'll try a rifle daredevil next? 😄

I've spent some time in the open world and world vs world with the new pistols, and I keep coming up with strategies that use a few different weapon combos other than p/p. In particular, pistol/torch feels like a solid option.... UNTIL the time comes to drop Symbol of Ignition with no good projectile skill to follow up when I'm outside 180 inches of my target. I know a bunch of us complained during the beta that the slot positions for Peacekeeper and Hail of Justice should be switched to help resolve this issue (or change the symbol's range/placement), but the devs obviously have other plans. I can't figure it out. Can anybody help me decipher the intent here? There seems no situation where the current skill loadout is in favor except when chasing optimized benchmarks on a golem while standing in melee range the whole time, and even then Snowcrow's builds aren't using p/p. So what am I missing?

Sounds like you need to get out for some Fresh Air. 😆

I disagree, or at least I think we are talking about two different things here. Many players I know, myself included, don't start a game and pick their character based on game specific mechanics. They don't say, "I want to use kits to get temporary skills or open tomes as my main play experience." They won't even know what that means yet. They say, "I want to play a big, raging warrior," or "I want to play a priest," or occasionally something more specific, "I want to play a stealthy sniper." Learning right off the bat that an engineer can eventually summon a mech, may sway someone that likes the theme of the engineer, but picks ranger instead because they want a pet. They pick their character at creation based on what class gives them that fantasy. First time players learn mechanics later, after you pick your toon and start the game. Elite spec intros should not focus on "firebrand uses skills like kits" or the mechanics going into that. It should be something more like, "They inspire allies by shouting mantras that heal and provide powerful boons, purging their impurities and their enemies alike. Firebrands can use axes on their main hand, combining fire and light to burn foes with vengeance, and pull them to their reckoning. Firebrands are very versatile, and can specialize as either damage dealers, supports, or healers."

Oops, sorry. I was wondering as much. 😄 I probably could have gone further back up the thread to get it.

How is km more accurate? Unless you mean without using decimals? Edit: I ask because game units are in inches, so less conversion to feet and miles than meters and kilometers.

Knowing you eventually have to buy an expansion to access advanced classes is not a rare concept in MMO gaming. New players will accept this. I'm not exactly an new player; a returning player, but I expected to shell out some green after going through core again if I decided to keep playing. I did the same as a new player for FF14 too. Even considering that, I would have jumped on board even faster if I knew I could play more of a cleric class with firebrand rather be locked into the paladin concept presented with guardians. I was heavy into priests from other games when I came back to gw2, but I don't generally like paladins. I wanted a priest/cleric and didn't think the game had one until someone told me about FB. Similarly, I would have jumped at being able to play a stealthy sniper instead of my old thief that I never bothered to level because I didn't like their lack of ranged weaponry. It was the main reason I didn't pick thief at launch. I wish I had known about the deadeye spec. Advertising elite specs can inform new players that there are other ways to manifest your desired character concept and other ways to play a profession that may match your style more. And if you think firebrand is anything like willbender or even core guardian, you play them much differently than I do. I absolutely advocate an intro to elite specs and how they change the base class in concept and mechanics before locking your character into a profession.

Let's be real, any profession or spec in this game is a low bar to entry, especially with Anet giving away level 80 boosters. But mastery takes considerably more study. Even leveling takes a matter of a few hours with the new player bonus XP AP track. Depending on your chosen build and account wealth, switching from firebrand to vindicator is a lower bar than switching to dragonhunter because of gear purchase/grind and learning the new profession mechanics (both FB and vindi can use cele but dh doesn't). And it's not much effort either way. It's especially exasperated between FB and WB, arguably the slowest and second fastest classes in the game, respectively. If you think they are anything like each other, you play a different game than I do. Just because fb, dh, and wb share the same base class, doesn't mean they have anything close to the same gameplay. You have to learn different skill combos and styles for each. I consider myself a fairly decent FB player, I can't play DH or WB for kitten. I'm better on my mirage, virt, and vindi than WB, but not chrono. They are that different.

I use a dom/duel/mirage build for WVW, but with cele stats. It's pretty fun. The sw ambush is great with full clones.

Not specifically related to just cFB, but did they change the animation on Epilogue: Ashes of the Just?

Wear the grudge like a crown. Desperate to control, unable to forgive and sinking deeper. Defining, confining, and sinking deeper. Saturn comes back around, lifts you up like a child, or drags you down like a stone to consume you 'til you choose to let this go. Choose to let this go. Give away the stone. Let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and fated anchor. Give away the stone. Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold. Let go! Other than that, I agree with the rest of your topic.

Let's make something clear. It's usually not a big deal when they tweak a trait or make an adjustment to a feature that only affects your stats or even buff an underperforming trait hardly anybody uses to give you more options. The latter is usually welcome, and the others are manageable as you suggest. No problem there. The problem is that the balance team regularly reworks key traits that help form the basis of builds, or at least a feature that provides a useful tool for that build. I main firebrand, so I can give you an example for my build. Recently, they reworked Radiant Fire so that it no longer passively pulses burning around you. Now you have to use a torch to get the effect. (This is a big QoL change for torch, so I get it, but there were better ways to do that without giving up the current function, which were suggested to the devs and ignored.) Then not more than a month later, they rework Glacial Heart to no longer apply chill (one of the only ways to get it on a guardian). My build used Glacial Heart to apply chill on opponents and then used Radiant Fire and other tools to help cover that chill. I don't use a torch or a hammer in that build. There is no replacement for that, and changing out a trait is only the first step. I also have to find another effective source to slow down/chill my opponents and then integrate that new method into my muscle memory. Basically developing and learning a new trick. Sorry I don't have time or desire to do that every 3-6 months. This would be fine if it was something that only happens every few years, but it's been happening on multiple builds I run every few months. And I only run 3-4 characters, not dozens. Slow the kitten down on reworking traits and spend more time fixing the tons of bugs with the existing traits and features so they work properly!

@SoulGuardian.6203 is not wrong. The problem is inflated drastically with 34 characters, but even with 3 or 4 builds that you play regularly it gets annoying. I use to write game rules. It's generally more effective to balance a system when you shift smaller, outlier features that are causing target builds to over or under perform rather than upset fundamental components that shape the basis of many, many builds like keystone traits do. I could say more, but @XenesisII.1540 said it better:

You know you can eat a chicken salad appetizer before a burger, right? It's a pretty good meal. I'd go so far as to recommend it. 😉

Sorry, I just had a laugh at this in game quote. Did the concept team forget to inform the balance team of this?

It's usually a waste for WvW roaming too. In zergs or GvG, you can usually get others to cover you while charging, but you have to be careful unless the other team is just totally unorganized.

You're against pet classes and have time to charge Jurisdiction? What kind of noobs are you fighting? Wait, are you one of those lunatics that charges mantras in pvp too? 😅 Disrupting finishes and revives is a solid use I didn't think of. So that's cool. We all agree it would be better to auto-detonate, but ANet don't care. (In case it isn't obvious, the 😅 means that's tongue in cheek.)

I actually don't think it's random at all. I think it's very targeted and a detriment to most of the players in the game. I've noticed a pattern over the past few years since the latest balance team took over. They're trying to reconcile their vision of what the meta should be. The problem is that the players determine the meta, NOT the devs! We don't agree with their vision, because we find other solutions that we like better than theirs. It's not in line with the balance philosophy. I'm starting to wonder if the balance team even wrote the balance philosophy! 😅 Their own mission states that want to bring balance and fun to the most amount of players, but those are casuals. The balanced team's decisions seem strictly geared towards instance PVE with a secondary focus on PVP. Neither of which most players actually play. They're ignoring most sensible feedback while also ignoring the inane feedback and hoping that most of us don't notice or don't have enough voice to disrupt the game's reputation. Lucky for the devs, we don't. 🙄 The good news is that the foundation of the game's lore, story, overall gameplay, combat system, and last but certainly not least, wardrobe system, are solid and varied. It's still fun to play for the most part, and most players can still find a game mode that satisfies them, despite the balance team ignoring us. For me that's wvw, a good chunk of of the open world (both combat/events and exploration), and all the beautiful skins. The ones that the devs truly failed, I think have moved on. Sad to see them go, and I hope they found a game that better suits them. Some check back in with us. So thank you for that! 💜