Kuya.6495

Crossing my fingers the pistols are condi focused to finally have a ranged condi mainhand weapon and an alternative to torch for offhand!

So I noticed no changes to alacrity on willbender despite the patch this month largely being focused on quality of life adjustments for boon supports. I get the feeling wb is getting looked over because of its dps but I think we really need to emphasize that making alac/quick boon supports reliant on hitting an enemy to provide their boon is not a good trade-off and using alac on wb is an exercise in frustration. Can we: 1. Change it so wb provides alac on any virtue and not just f2? Also that the alac is provided on pressing f1,f2,f3 and not on the passive? Or 2. Can we consider moving the alac from willbender to dragonhunter if there is a concern that letting wb give alac on any virtue might be too overpowered? I never felt alac made sense on wb and it always felt like the big pumper spec to me. Meanwhile DH can block for allies and give a nice heal on f2. Why not move alac to DH? You could put alac for DH on Hunter's Fortification and tie it to something thematic. Like blocking for allies gives them alac (aegis, shield 4, f3, mace 3, etc). And make HF also lower the CD on f3. If HF gives alac on block and lowers CD on f3, maybe people will even consider taking Bulwark now! Since a block requires an enemy, you could also make it so giving aegis also gives alac so you don't run into the same problem as wb when in between phases. While we're at it, change Fragments of Faith so it sinergizes with this. Make it so instead of it dropping fragments, make dropping the trap give allies aegis and if the trap is triggered, allies get stability and/or a stunbreak (giving fragments both aegis on use and stab/stunbreak on activation for allies gives you a reason to even consider using it over Advance). Doesn't even have to be my suggestion. I'm sure someone at anet can figure out a better way for DH to give alac. Just please, do something about the alac on guardian! 🙏

I would prefer wb stays as the selfish high damage guardian spec and they just move alac to DH that does actually have team support built into it.

I use legendary lore for extra boons on tomes (helps with perma regen and protection when not using mace. Also helps with might if you prefer not using staff 4 for might). I use potence on cooldown and keep 1 charge of solace for the aegis. I only really use weighty terms for condi fb and quickbrand and I only use 2 charges of flame and potence. Although based on what I read on the balance discord, you always take weighty terms on dps and quickbrand regardless of whether you use all mantra charges or not (I assume cause of extra pages from mantra use).

OP was talking about fb dps in general. A completely different person brought up quick scrapper as a reason why the nerf needs to happen and you agreed with that point. Most people complaining about the dps nerf to fb are usually complaining that it will hurt condi fb (not quick) too.

I'd settle for some condi damage on scepter 3 at least. Some burn stacks perhaps. I believe there are burn stacks on longbow despite dh being mainly a strike damage spec.

I'm also ok with dps nerfs to quick and condibrand as long as it comes with buffs to condi willbender. It doesn't make sense to me that the selfish condi guardian spec (c willbender) does less dps than the spec with all the support baked in. I thought they wanted dh to be the power spec, wb the condi dps and fb the support but that's not how it worked out. In fact, If they want to keep wb as top dps on strike damage and perhaps condi damage in the future, they might as well put alac on dh instead because alac never made any sense on willbender to begin with. At least DH actually has some support capabilities (aoe heal on f2 and cone block on f3).

Would it be out of the question to suggest Anet delay the nerfs to FB and WB until they they have decided on how to compensate? I know it's not impossible since anet did delay the mirage and scrapper nerfs due to overwhelmingly negative feedback. It doesn't seem fair that alac willbender, a spec that is already hard to use and very niche, will get its dps reduced without at least being compensated by allowing it to maintain 25 stacks of might like other alac dps builds. It would also be nice if dps condibrand weren't being punished because quickbrand overperforms on the benchmarks. Shouldn't the solution to quickbrand just be to force it to take non dps traits to be able to maintain boon uptime? Right now quickbrand takes the same last two traits as dps firebrand because nothing in the last two trees really provides a good enough increase to boon uptime. Perhaps nerfing baseline quickness on fb so that it can't maintain permanent quickness without taking all non dps traits would be fair. (And the nerf to quickness uptime should be servere enough that you can't work around it by taking two quickbrands with dps traits). Can we get a pause on those nerfs until they come along with more positive alternatives?

I agree with all your suggestions. Another thing that could be useful is having heaven's palm teleport be instant and just have the actual cc/damage happen after the cast time is over. And also, let you use the teleport on heaven's palm even if the target is out of range. Or They could have heaven's palm work like the one the enforcer in KO uses. Remove the animation lock on your character and just have the telegraph be a giant palm over your target. Someone can still see that it's casting and prepare for it but you're no longer animation locked and can chain cc the enemy in anticipation of the elite going off. I would also have the teleport be instant cast and just have the palm only trigger if an enemy is in range (raise it to 300 at least though). Anyway, that's enough Adderall for me today

Not the shouts I suggested, but i appreciate anet did decide to put stab and aegis on shouts regardless. Hopefully this will make heal alac tempest more competitive after the dust settles.

I'm personally not a fan of making these additions to core traits. I also said in my OP I didn't think giving warrior quickness on core was a good idea. Giving more barrier on a core traitline just means you now have to worry, not just what a spellbreaker with more barrier access can do in all 3 game modes, but what it could do for berserker and bladesworn. And bladesworn is already a bit much in spvp. I definitely wouldn't want to give it easier access to barrier. If theme is your concern, spellbreaker, unlike berserker and bladesworn, has a more defensive theme to it so, in my opinion, it makes more sense to give it something like ample barrier access. Again I get some people don't like the theme, but I feel spellbreaker would benefit substantially from having a lot of access to giving allies barrier. It would not just bring it up in pve but also increase its potential in spvp. I also personally fancy the idea, in terms of theme, of having scourge be the barrier support with boon corruption and spellbreaker be the barrier support with boon strip that spreads the stripped boons to allies. Considering that scourge is similar in theme to joko, it would be appropriate for spellbreaker to be the mirror to scourge in terms of team support as it's tied to the sunspears.

I personally think a spellbreaker build that gets barrier when you trigger full counter, remove boons and interrupt enemies would make spellbreaker better in spvp.

I think where I disagree with most people here is their insistence on theme over functionality. You want spellbreaker to keep being just the boon rip build that is just ok in pvp. I think warrior needs a support specialization and currently spellbreaker is the most useless out of the 3 in pve, so it's naturally the focus of my attention. I'm not personally a fan of putting class theme over role or functionality. Class theme is precisely what got warrior 3 elite specializations that essentially all fill the same role. It's not surprising that warrior mains have few options. It's fine if people disagree with reworking spellbreaker into something you can make into a support specialization, but I think the insistence on theme over functionality is not doing spellbreaker nor warrior any favors.

Now you might be thinking: "warriors with barrier!? Next you'll be asking for staff warrior!!!" But the tools for something like a barrier support on warrior are already there: we have barrier on warhorn and we have barrier on banner. And much like scourge, warrior healing is more of a sustained rather than burst healing. I think perhaps a similar approach as with scourge can be taken with spellbreaker to make it a viable and perhaps even meta support. Now for my suggestions: aside from giving warrior more access to barriers via spellbreaker, I also make suggestions to make spellbreaker niches, such as boon removal and cc/interrupts, more relevant in pve. Now without further delay: 1. Now I suggest reworking spellbreaker traits into 3 categories and having each category supported by adept, master and grandmaster traits: support via barrier and healing, offensive support via boons, and cc bar damage/dps. Additionally, one line would be focused on modifying boon removal, another on modifying crowd control and the third would focus on enhancing burst skills/full counter. 2. For barrier/healing: A. I would suggest one trait that makes it so full counter, when triggered, provides nearby allies with barrier, stunbreak and 1 stack of stability. B. Another trait can make it so every time you remove a boon, allies around you receive barrier. Since not all bosses have boons, the trait can also make it so regen provided by the warrior is stronger. C. And finally a third trait would make it so every time a spellbreaker interrupts an enemy or damages a cc bar allies are given barrier. Since cc bars only appear occasionally, the trait can also make it so whenever a spellbreaker uses a burst skill nearby allies are given protection and regen. These 3 traits would be divided between adept, master and grandmaster. 3. For offensive boon support, my suggestions are the following: A. One trait can make it so removing a boon from an enemy copies that boon to nearby allies. Since enemies in pve don't always have boons, the trait can also increase your baseline boon duration or concentration. B. Another trait can make it so when you interrupt enemies or damage cc bars you give allies quickness and when you use a burst skill, your nearby allies gain might and fury. C. And finally another trait can make it so when your full counter is triggered you extend the duration of boons on your nearby allies. 4. Another set of traits can enhance a spellbreaker's damage and cc skills: A. One trait can make it so when a spellbreaker removes boons, they gain a stacking buff that gives the spellbreaker bonus damage. The buff can be something like 5% damage per stack and stacks up to 5 times or something. And again, since boons aren't always available to remove in pve, the trait can also make it so you get a permanent increase in damage baseline. B. Another traitline can make it so interrupting enemies or damaging cc bars also helps you maintain and stack the damage up buff we spoke about previously. This trait can also make it so boons on yourself (and only on yourself) are extended whenever you use a burst skill. C. And finally the last trait can make it so your crowd control skills have increased duration and make it so cc bars take bonus damage from your cc skills. The trait can also make it so when an enemy cc bar is successfully broken you gain another damage up buff that stacks on top of the buff discussed previously. The idea with these suggestions isn't to make spellbreaker replace bladesworn but to create the possibility that in certain encounters where there are a lot of cc bars and boons, spellbreaker could potentially out dps other warrior specializations. Also note I haven't said which of the above traits should be adept, master or grandmaster. That I would leave up to anet. 5. Utilities: in order to support the previous suggestions I feel a few utilities should get additional benefits: A. Fearherfoot grace should, on top of it's previous effects, also stunbreak allies and grant them one stack of stability. As you've noticed, we've given spellbreaker two ways to give allies stability and with a banner, spellbreaker has 3 ways to give stability to allies. This makes spellbreaker a potential competition for firebrand but it also opens up the potential for spellbreaker to complement firebrand: firebrands do direct healing, spellbreakers give barriers. They both give quickness but spellbreakers extends boons. B. Winds of disenchantment should also pulse barrier on allies who are inside the bubble. Spellbreaker, based on my suggestions, has the potential to give out constant barrier, via cc, via full counter, via boon removal, but in situations where mechanics are being done, it's possible a spellbreaker can't get to an enemy to actually activate any barrier at all, other elites such as scourge, mechanist and specter, can give barrier on demand without a need to engage an enemy to provide it. In order to get ahead of that problem, spellbreaker should also receive some on demand barrier application for such situations so it's not completely outclassed by other barrier based supports. C. Break enchantments should also apply regen and barrier to nearby allies. In the same token of not putting spellbreaker at the mercy of always needing to attack an enemy to give barrier, I also suggest giving this utility, which is useless in fights with no boons, the added utility of giving barrier and regen. Since a trait I suggested earlier increases the potency of regen, this synergizes well with the kit. Wrap up: now you might have noticed that I didn't specify how much barrier, how many stacks, how much boon duration or what traits to keep or change. The truth is that the only ones who are going to be able to determine how much barrier is too much barrier and how big the damage up buff can be for removing boons without it being overpowered is anet. My suggestions are only meant to do two things: make "heal" warrior potentially a meta pick by creating a niche for it (a quickness barrier support with boon extension) while also creating opportunities for spellbreaker to shine in pve even in situations where there are no boons to remove or cc bars to break. I personally would have preferred to have spellbreaker be the quickness elite for warrior but since anet already decided to make quickness on warrior baseline, I decided not to reinvent that and just give spellbreaker opportunities to easily maintain quickness with less investment by giving it bonus boon duration and boon extension abilities. The idea is also to let spellbreaker give quickness easier so they can actually use the barrier/stab/aegis from banners for reactive purposes. Same reason I suggested putting might and fury in a trait when you use burst skills so banners aren't as mandatory on spellbreaker and it has more flexibility like firebrand has for providing quickness. While I used scourge as an example, I also wanted to give spellbreaker its own niche. Scourge gives barrier yes, but it also does aoe rez. Mech gives barrier yes, but it also does alac and has easy access to stab and aegis. The idea with spellbreaker is to give it both access to constant barrier like with mech, and also give it its own niche as the quickness provider, that does boon removal and potentially the spec that does the most breakbar damage. Concerns: I could see my suggestions making spellbreaker pretty broken in SPvP. Hopefully if any of these ideas were implemented the base barrier generation would be pretty low without healing power investment in pvp so it doesn't become overpowered. An icd in pvp for the trait that copies removed boons to allies might be a good idea too as well as a very low duration for the boons copied as well.

Easy access to damage related traits? No, the dps traits on firebrand were bad: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/condition-quickness-firebrand/ You took Liberator's vow over unrelenting criticism, you took weighty terms over legendary lore and you took loremaster over quickfire or stoic demeanor on quicknesss firebrand. All these traits were meant to help with quickness uptime over dps. Probably, because thanks to firebrand runes, you didn't need boon duration for quickness. Also: https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks quickness fb does 29k dps now. Quickness harb does 31k. And you know what? People are not going to shut up about firebrand. And why is quickness uptime on fb still called easy? You needed feel my wrath, mantra of potence and the low cd of mantra of solace to upkeep quickness. 3 utilities, off cooldown. Heal alac mech? It can do perma alac by just auto attacking.

Didn't you know? Guard mains aren't allowed to complain because HeAlBrAnD OP!

It lacks better access to stability and aegis. Now what does it do well? Harrier gear using traits air/water/tempest with d/wh using utilies such as heal shout, frost bow, earth shout and rebound can give out perma alac, might, fury, protection, regen and vigor. You can do this by cycling through fire overload>air overload>earth overload>sand squall>heat sync>fire overload and repeat. You use heal shout, wh 5>d 3, water overload and frost bow for heals. That all works fine. You can even go staff for more healing although you might give up some alac uptime due to losing boon extension from earth wh 4. The buff to alac duration has made it easier to dip into water for healing and not lose alac uptime but I do feel tempest could still use a bit more alac duration, maybe another second, so tempest has enough time to heal allies back to full and get back to alac rotation. But for stab? Incredibly hard to provide on a moment's notice. You can take earth traitline to give stability when you switch to earth but the rotation i outlined above requires you overload earth for protection and alac uptime. Healbrand and alac heal mechanist don't have to make these sacrifices to give stab. They can maintain quick and alac respectively just fine. Hell, heal alac mech (HAM) has alac on the very same f2 that gives stunbreaks, cleanse and stab. Healbrand (HB) has a trait that lets it give quick on stab. Aegis is another problem. Alac heal tempest has no access to this in practice. HAM can give it via the same overstacked f2. HB has an incredible amount of options to give aegis (shield 4, tome of courage 5, advance, etc). Now why is aegis and stab so important? A lot of mechanics in instanced content can be negated or made easier with stab and aegis. Minister li' s slash attack can be negated by aegis and stab. Mordremoth phase on HT can be made trivial with stab and aegis. This creates a real premium for classes that can provide these two boons. I can understand why HB has so much of it. Even if HB didn't have elite mantra and tome 3, core guard utilities still have aegis and stab. I think anet rightly understood that for HAM to compete as a support it needed stab and aegis. While tempest having higher healing than either of these two supports is a plus, overhealing has less value than aegis and stab as has been demonstrated by how the community approaches instanced encounters. Now I'm not asking for heal alac tempest (HAT) to have as much stab/aegis as HB. HB can keep its niche of having the most stab/aegis out of all the supports. But for HAT to compete, it needs more practical access to both of these boons. My suggestions are: 1. Put some stability on earth warhorn 4. 2. Put aegis on fire warhorn 4 Now, I have a concern that putting stab and aegis on warhorn might make staff heal tempest undesirable so I also suggest: 3. Aegis on fire shout 4. Stab on frost shout. Now you could always use warhorn and take fire and frost shout to get double access to aegis and stab but you'd give up frost bow and lose even more access to healing (assuming you're always taking the glyph for rezzes) vs using staff and being able to sacrifice frost bow to take fire and frost shout due to superior healing on water staff and not needing frost bow to compensate. I dont want to put stab on earth shout because I feel the magnetic aura, protection and blast finisher already makes earth shout the best shout to take aside from heal and elite shout. Now you might be thinking, "but doesn't this make HAT better than HAM? With these suggestions HAT has double the access to stab and aegis than HAM does." Yes it has better access now, but I feel HAM has the benefit of easier play, better alac uptime, and barrier that HAT does not, so I feel it's a fair trade. Let me know what you all think.

What

Edit: Double post

It's just rabid guardian hate, like always. HT CM attempts have been stacking 3-4 scourges and virtuosos but people just keep memeing about firebrand 10 man stacks for some reason.

I understand how this suggestion is good in pve but for pvp using f1 without a target and still getting the dash is important for mobility and for disengage. Removing the dash if no target would be a mobility nerf for wb in pvp.

OP spoke the truth and nobody listened until it was too late

I think it's about the opportunity cost. Taking feel my wrath means no renewed focus. Timewarp means no moa or mass invis. There are better alternatives. But in the case of power rev, the pvp build already used draconic echo so it's basically free real estate.

The real hilarity is that the person who accused you of being a bot will probably eventually make a thread here complaining about bots in pvp.

WB can solo 5 people in sPvP? You can do that on full trapper dh and on core burn guard if the enemy team is low enough skill rating. This isn't the reason why WB is OP. People really should consider not making a thread on the official forums every time they get stomped in sPvP and are in need of a place to vent. At the very least, if you're gonna make a thread to vent because you got stomped in sPvP, try not to disguise it as a balance issue. WB's problem is its caked in team utility (virtues variant) on top of the damage and mobility that edges out power rev from the meta. Killing 5 people who stack on downs and eat an entire whirling light/whirling wrath is not the problem.