3 Simple Things to Improve Firebrand in PvP

[Shao.7236]

Tomes are worst than Virtues because cooldowns are too high. Reduce them to at least DH levels otherwise the elite is a pure downgrade.

 

Firebrand should be able to use an entire tome in less than 3 seconds, Quickness per Tome skill should be built in and applied for 1 second so that players can flow through skills rather than be vulnerable for long period of times not even able to compensate with said skills. The duration of boons are so low that it's impossible to strategically chain buffs together, you cannot achieve anything useful compared Core Virtues that do everything needed by a simple button press. Tome skills aren't weak per say, not having anyway to efficiently use them all quickly makes them weak. Giving quickness per page is not in anyway OP as it can be countered.

 

Mantra's deserve to have slightly longer condition and boons for effects to be any meaningful after changes. Solace required to be nerfed, but to such extend is a joke, at the base of healing it should at least be a 1,000 without any changes.

[Fueki.4753]

I'd rather not see any buffs to Firebrand in sPvP.

Firebrand has been too oppressive in sPvP before. That doesn't need to come back.

[Ragnar.4257]

The cooldowns and cast-times on Tome skills are fine, we don't want them to be any more spammy than they already are.

They just need to have a proper pay-off for the investment made in those cast-times. Getting 1s stability or cleansing 1 condition is not a sufficient pay-off for how long those things take to cast, to the point where you're better off just not casting them at all. 

Having slower, less spammy skills with bigger payoff is a way better design direction than having weak skills which you have to spam 10 times per second to add up to something useful.

[Bewt.9258]

16 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'd rather not see any buffs to Firebrand in sPvP.

Firebrand has been too oppressive in sPvP before. That doesn't need to come back.

Yes, let's advocate for pvp to be less diverse...

Firebrand needs to come back... in a less oppressive way. It should see play because more viable specs to choose from other than support core or trapper rune dh is healthy for our gamemode and for Guardian mains.

 

Right now FB is one and done. He opens up a tome and feels powerful for 2 seconds, closes the tome and dies from the 10 year long cooldown. 

 

I personally want to see the return of Harriers Support FB, because there was such a risk/reward with that spec. 

[Shao.7236]

30 minutes ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

The cooldowns and cast-times on Tome skills are fine, we don't want them to be any more spammy than they already are.

They just need to have a proper pay-off for the investment made in those cast-times. Getting 1s stability or cleansing 1 condition is not a sufficient pay-off for how long those things take to cast, to the point where you're better off just not casting them at all. 

Having slower, less spammy skills with bigger payoff is a way better design direction than having weak skills which you have to spam 10 times per second to add up to something useful.

But that direction was what caused Firebrand to be too good to begin with, so that's not gonna work if we look at the numbers of things that are either too far up or too far down.

 

What Tomes need is about the equivalent of regular Virtues as benefits, but the extra time investment at reaching for those benefits can be rewarded as such with Eternal Oasis or Unbroken Lines unique buffs to compensate for the extra buttons.

 

Adding cooldowns to Tomes showed that it didn't work, it wasn't until the skills themselves were nerfed that we saw it slowly phased out after Symbol Nerf. As of now we should demand for Tomes to be used more often with their current state more quickly, see if skills are truly bad because I don't think they are, what prevents them from having any impact is how long and tedious it is to full use a Tome alone. Perhaps add a bit of duration to Boons and one extra condition removed here and there.

 

It's only logical that more buttons should mean less benefits per press, but no less not take forever. Before we that, we had more buttons that did way way more than one alone.

 

I come from the aspect of Ventari which is while not sought upon but have lot of potential when well played. Trying to do Firebrand made me realize how unfair the nerfs were, pretty much like how they decked Mallyx out of the realm of reasonable viability. Nerf after nerf without consideration that past actions may have been the wrong call as a nerf and better off reverted before trying another kind of nerf.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Shao.7236

[Ragnar.4257]

10 minutes ago, Shao.7236 said:

 

It's only logical that more buttons should mean less benefits per press, but no less not take forever. Before we that, we had more buttons that did way way more than one alone.

Not at all.

See: Elementalist.

You could make a class with 1000 buttons if you wanted, if each of those buttons has a 5s cast-time then the class will still be garbage.

FB is trash because the cast-times do not match the payoff.

There are 2 options here, you can either:

Keep same payoff, but reduce cast-times

Keep same cast-times, but increase payoff

One of these two options is promoting spammy gameplay.

Edited February 8, 2022 by Ragnar.4257

[Shao.7236]

Just now, Ragnar.4257 said:

Not at all.

See: Elementalist.

You could make a class with 1000 buttons if you wanted, if each of those buttons has a 5s cast-time then the class will still be garbage.

I knew you'd bring Elementalist, they are not comparable due to the fact that their skills are part of the entire profession ability to do anything at all, likewise "accessible" and "effective" compared Firebrand which is a Guardian that devolves away from it's core mechanic, they still have everything else that makes the profession what it is other than the Virtues.

 

You can't give the efficiency of an Elementalist to Firebrand, that's what broke the game in the first place. Only indulge as much as the core mechanic can comparatively allow, that is something PoF seems to have completely ignored.

[otto.5684]

7 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'd rather not see any buffs to Firebrand in sPvP.

Firebrand has been too oppressive in sPvP before. That doesn't need to come back.

This is fail logic. It should be balanced, not none-existent.

 

@Shao.7236 The issue with FB right now is mantras. Not only in PvP. In PvE they are ridiculously strong. 
 

The heal mantra needs a longer CD. Having a spammable aegis with short CD will always be an issue. And you cannot balance a healing skill by making it not heal… Anet genius pvp devs. Best solution is to give it a 15 sec CD and scale the healing accordingly in all game modes. 
 

The fire and quickness mantras are okay, mostly. Mantra of truth needs a buff. Just remove the weakness and have the effects last 4 secs again. The 4 secs was a major issue only cuz of weakness spam. At 1 sec in pvp it is not useable.

 

Elite mantra, mostly same issue as mantra of truth. No one is using 1 sec, 1 stack stability, with 45 sec CD. This garbage. If it will remain 1 sec, then its CD should be reduced to 25 sec, like PvE. If it is to remain 45 secs it should get stacks and 3-5 sec duration.

 

Once the mantras are settled I would look into tomes. I do not think they are in great place in pvp, but I would rather fix mantras first, see where FB stands then determine if anything else should be buffed.

[Fueki.4753]

8 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

This is fail logic. It should be balanced, not none-existent.

The main reason sPvP is so disgustingly imbalanced is due to certain over-performing aspects. This means, those things should be brought down first and test the game afterwards to see how sPvP turned out. After that, one could think about buffing aspects that are still considerable as under-performing. However, I suspect Firebrand would do just fine, if the over-performance was properly reigned in (instead of merely getting slaps on the wrist like Necromancer's latest "nerfs").

Simply cherry-picking one specialization on an already over-represented profession wouldn't add to diversity to sPvP, nor would it help trying to go for something even remotely resembling an attempt at balance.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Ragnar.4257]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

The main reason sPvP is so disgustingly imbalanced is due to certain over-performing aspects. This means, those things should be brought down first and test the game afterwards to see how sPvP turned out. After that, one could think about buffing aspects that are still considerable as under-performing. However, I suspect Firebrand would do just fine, if the over-performance was properly reigned in (instead of merely getting slaps on the wrist like Necromancer's latest "nerfs").

Simply cherry-picking one specialization on an already over-represented profession wouldn't add to diversity to sPvP, nor would it help trying to go for something even remotely resembling an attempt at balance.

Oh jesus.....

FB is nearly at the bottom of the pile of specialisations. Its right down with core Ele and Berserker. Just nerfing one or two of the most overperforming specs won't make FB viable, you'd have to nerf 90% of existing specialisations to make FB on-par. I thought people were done with wanting to nerf literally everything?

And who's cherry-picking? Who's saying that you can't also buff some of the other underperforming specs? This is the guardian forum, you aren't going to see proposals here for how to buff berserker.

[Brokensunday.4098]

Fire brand on spv need atleast the heal on tome back even if is just 2k per tome and increase the cd of each tome to like 20 sec each. Then maybe it can be viable again maybe…

[Buran.3796]

My main complaints  about the FB in PvP at the moment are how bad are the healing options and how a lot of the tomes skills seems redundant. F1 skills are mostly fine, but half of the ones in F2 and F3 had almost no use for me due they are too weak for the effects they grant and the loss of damage we have remaining at them.

   I also don't buy the "don't buff FB, they were too "oppressive in the past"; FB lost damage (with tons of nerfs to the symbols in both radii, damage per pulse, burn ticks, etc.   ...which collaterly affected other core and DH builds), they lost tons of sustain and they are also now a much weaker support spec than core Guard (which is ridiculous since they were conceived as the support focused spec for Guardians). So: EITHER buff sustain (heals -would be my choice-) or damage or support abilities (that would hurt support core Guardian, tho).

   Anyway, they should do anything, because in a week the support core Guard will be nerfed so that will make stealth DH the most pupular PvP build, with two entire specs (FB and WB) being mostly useless in a whole game mode.