Vinny.7260

As much as people are a downer about Firebrand in PvP. I think it's becoming closer to a good support than most people realize. It's just arguably an issue with the key pressing amount. (It's pretty dang obnoxious in high intensity matches, such as P1-P2 stuff). Might just be a matter of keybinds on my part, I'm a bit of a masochist and still use F1-F3. There are a couple traits that stand out to me for needing QoL. One of them is a trait in Honor. But you'll understand why it's under Firebrand. Honor: There's only really one trait I want looked at, aside from maybe Purity of Body granting a measly 15% Endurance regeneration increase. Force of Will This trait is currently halved in sPvP (and WvW). You get a maximum of 9% outgoing healing increase at 1800 Vitality. Here are some comparisons: Natural Mender (Druid) Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also improves a mechanic. This is also a MINOR trait. Aquamancer's Training (Elementalist) Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also reduces Water Skill Recharges. This is also a MINOR trait. Illusionary Inspiration (Mesmer) Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also heals allies whenever summoning an illusion (phantasm or clone). This is also a MINOR trait. You're having this trait compete with Pure of Voice. While making the Shout recharge reduction baseline, there's still real benefit to using Force of Will. Core Guardian is locked into using it due to having less cleanse, but Firebrand has a significant amount of it compared to its Core form. Rewarding Firebrand into taking Force of Will would increase both its self-sustain via the vitality boost and, hopefully, increasing it to 1% per 100 Vitality would bump it from 9% to 18% Outgoing Healing, a worthy amount for a Grandmaster trait. You could even tweak it from 0.5% to 0.75% to have us at 13.5%- if reverting is off the table. Firebrand: I mainly just want to look at the Support Aspect of Firebrand. Imbued Haste This trait has reduced stats in sPvP (and WvW). You get an, impressive, amount of attributes. 150 Condition Damage, 150 Healing Power, 150 Vitality. I personally want these stats redistributed to focus more on healing with the same amount of allocated points. 100 Condition Damage, 250 Healing Power, 100 Vitality. If they're truly focusing on Support Firebrand, this seems like a reasonable choice for a redistribution. I really doubt they want Firebrand to be a team fighter given the brief history it had with Sagebrand and Symbolbrand.

From a PvE trying to get max DPS standpoint, yes. Maybe it's useful somewhere else like PvP or solo content, but it's a net DPS loss over using Dagger/Dagger or Rifle.

Amongst the doom and gloom, I figured I'd remind people that maybe Anet will do this. Suggest any other runes you'd like added even! Reminder that they're just stat combos~

I'm going to politely disagree. Could you provide some sources of what DH counters in this active meta? At best, DH is gimmicky due to Aegis on Trap activation. Most notably Test of Faith being turned into both a high damage PBAoE (essentially) and providing reactive aegis. Other than that, it's just a matter of mind games (if it's a GOOD DH) or just waiting for the F1 throw.

Your complaints about complaints is making me want to complain. I won't explain why I want to complain, but the reason is rather plain. Sorry to rain on your parade. It's snowing on Mount Fuji.

Yep! I was more-so just demonstrating the extremes of what would have to happen. Yeeeeep. I was being a little bit of a devil's advocate about the person's stance on the concern of powercreep... I agree with your statement. Allowing bursts to be used outside of combat could open up some neat traits like something in Tactics that causes using a burst skill to grant allies Barrier.

For Scepter it's an issue of not having the torment damage increase trait on core; for Rifle it's because you can't stealth as easily and don't get to deal remotely as much damage or regenerate initiative remotely as quickly. For Staff, the other elite specs have better options. For DE with Staff, the stealth attack isn't worth using. For Specter, Specter doesn't have much power damage compared to DE. The weapons are unfortunately just too niche and use-case. They're awesome for their elite specs, but slack otherwise. This is me also ignoring the argument about ally targeting on Scepter, but yeah.

Initiative decaying outside of a fight sounds like the exact antithesis of having initiative. There's a difference between a combat mechanic and a profession mechanic. Think of Staff Burst for the upcoming weapon for Warrior. You want to be able to use Staff at the beginning to ensure allies get healed at the start of a fight. Roaming between nodes to heal/cleanse allies and accidentally get OOC'd? You'll be able to keep your adrenaline. Maybe limit it to keeping only 1 bar of adrenaline. It'd be great for Spellbreaker, functional enough for Berserker and Bladesworn. There's also the thing of mentioning that things like Energy Costs on Revenant would have to be adjusted to consider the circumstances of accidentally OOCing and suddenly all your energy vanishing.

I remember the days of when it wouldn't decay pre-HoT. Those were nice times, but Warrior was also a stronger contender back then too. I think they changed it due to complaints about Warrior having no down time or something goofy. Probably LB F1s caused the biggest trouble. 😞

Funny enough! Water Attunement skills underwater were the hardest hitting out of all the attunements while underwater for some time! So I thought it was a pretty neat detail. :3c

I found it to seem almost intentional and loved it. I was a little irked about the Impale note on the Wiki. It seemed to got unsplit at some point and uses the PvE coefficient now. Icky.

Sword Ambush has ALWAYS been so painful to land, if it were to be able to successfully land before Rush on Warrior... I think I'd start to question their biases. I kinda just send out a small prayer each time I use Sword Ambush, begging it lands when I've accurately timed the attack frame to interrupt their heal... Only to have nothing happen... It's weird cuz I think it has the same issue Reaper Shroud 2 has, but Reaper Shroud 2 at least has an AoE at the end of the attack, making it easy to just detarget and aim anyway. Edit: Also in regards to Mirror Blade tracking, it's farrrr better than Magic Bullet's tracking at a slight incline.

I could see it doing what it does when GS5 gets reflected, just passively ticks the effects it has (but only the baseline ones). Passively ticking burn and cripple would be icky. Impale but more annoying.

It's kinda funny with the whole alts in PvP thing. It's a mixture of a few things: Not wanting to lose rating due to bad RNG Having an account to test the waters Having an account to manipulate matches (not as common, at least during peak hours). Having an account that allows you to test things (builds, stuff like that) without consequences. Gist of it is, people are willing to spend money to have safety nets to ensure at least one of their account gets a title or placement. It's a shame on them, but also rewarding the company for allowing them to do this. It messes with the rating system too with artificially inflating the matchmaking pools, most likely (not confirmed), and makes it even harder for newer people to get fair matches. A majority of good players, or players who take themselves (FAR) too seriously, tend to do this method to later on do things that would most definitely breach ToS. (Such as account selling due to having fancy titles). I personally think it's gross to do, but at the same time, if they manage to actually make a profit off it, or just enjoy being able to get constantly lopsided matches, good on them.

Uhm... Uhhh.... Audibly swallows .. Totally was a genuine response! 🙂

Psssst. I didn't see anything about Warrior. You mean the spec that doesn't get paid attention to in this game mode? 👀

I got the solution. Let's make blasting or leaping in light fields give Aegis. AoE or self respectively. You said combos.

And then they add some sort of condition damage to it. Further encouraging the CZerker triathlon.

Quietly walks through the forum to see any new posts... Drops a nicely decorated box. Wow, it looks nice! Looks like a lot of time was put into the intricacies in the folds of the wrapping paper, the dainty little red ribbon bow on top, the 'To: Reader' written in Comic Sans. You catch yourself salivating at the aroma emanating from it! Do you open it? Yes: No: Skitters away in a panic.

I suspect they will get different sounds, they did clarify in each of the weapon preview posts that sounds, images, and effects are temporary during the beta.

I'd prefer it be on the first hit most definitely. That way you can get the huge 10% damage buff from Pyromancer's Training. 😉

1: Not very favorable in your way at all. Best I can think of is somehow catching them between their defensives and getting them locked down. Most of them use Signet of Rage, so their main stun break is between EP/"Shake it Off!", and Berserk. You'd have to spend so much time catching around and avoiding them that it's not practical in an actual match setting. They also have 1900 Toughness, making it exceptionally difficult to hit them hard with Power. Best you can do is just continually kite them and manage to catch them between blowing all their defensive skills. 2: Rotating is always a good choice, if you have someone who is particularly bunker-ish, you can have them holding a node while someone else rotates to catch their openings. Bell is the hardest part of that map without a strong team fighting comp, but if your team can catch the support at the right time, such as before they get to bell, it should theoretically be in your favor. 3: Your stats are taken into account if you transfer conditions.

Power Virtuoso turns DH into food. GS Bladesong scaling + boon stripping + unblockable + ranged pressure + invuln + disengage. That being said. I think the only thing people could arguably find problematic is all the Aegis their traps have now. Opens up avenues like Defender Relic to be used. Makes ToF a defensive. If people are having issues with Dragon's Maw... Maybe there should be a video made on how to dodge it- I imagine a lot of people dodge too late or something. There's plenty of time to react to it, such as dodging back. A lot of specs currently have access to Stability, even if it's a minor amount. If people are having issues with damage, just reduce the duration on ToF to 4s instead of 6s. Reduces the window of 'oopsie' as they walk on the literal blades jutting up from the ground.

Bladesworn has been a victim of Shield Master bugs as well. They went and nerfed the Aegis sources, the defensives, and even their best GM (Unyielding Dragon) got butchered. This is a result of Anet's sideways approach to not dealing with the problem and only dealing with things that 'appear' to be happening because of other things. > "Woah, Bladesworn is really popular right now." >> "We need to nerf Bladesworn right?" > "Right." >> "Should we check for any odd interactions?..." > "Are you kidding?" >> "Haha, you're right. Let's butcher this fella." Catalyst, which had a notoriously obnoxious build, caused similar things to happen but to Core Elementalist. (Signet Catalyst :>) Fix Shield Mastery, fix Bladesworn's issues... Aegis should not be a pseudo Magnetic Aura... But also don't neglect the specs that are teetering on the edge due to a bug. Maybe give those specs a little love too. 😆

Just bumping this after doing some testing. The aftercast seems to go away if you intentionally jump-cast the skill. Obviously, this shouldn't be necessary to avoid an animation-related issue. It also appears to be using Death Blossom's animation, and I think Death Blossom has that weird aftercast issue too. Why does Slicing Maelstrom ALSO have a lower coefficient than Breaching Strike? It's a -0.07 difference, but still. There is ZERO provided benefit to using Slicing Maelstrom at all. The damage is lower, the animation is slower, the range is lower, and it isn't even unblockable. They want to support weapon diversity and 'play your way' approach, but they refuse to do something about this weapon. Is it because it's Zerker...?