Firebrand tomes nerf: pick one?

[oscuro.9720]

12 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Ele kits have an even longer cooldown. Eles and rangers don't get weapon swap. Other bar-changers generate resources to enter the second bar, which is an even more deep rework.

Ele “kits” aren’t kits, they summon a weapon for allies to pick up. A better comparison would be ele’s elements, which are 10(?)s CD. Other bar changers sometimes require resources, which is actually a good comparison, as Tomes are constrained by their page resource.

[Antina.5973]

I'd personally prefer insta activated engi kits over tomes which I sometimes interrupt or toolbelt skills, but we have what we got. Old guardian tomes used as elites had a charm but nothing else.

Every class excels at something. Necros have their corrupts going crazy, guardians (well it's in the name, duh) guarding allies abilities, and so on.

We should be looking for more VARIETY in good builds. The best thing for me about firebrand in pve at least is that it can swap around a lot of traits to adjust to situations. And that's what I expected of this class in 2012 when i first played it. It has it's charm and feel to it, and I don't get it why people hate it so much. It's a game to have fun, is it not? Also it's funny how this topic is mostly one armchair commander's rampage.

My guess is we will be seeing more of those builds that will many gaps in the future like EoD brought more Alac/Quick givers. I don't think a reasonable rework of firebrand is a priority or should be. Some other classes could use the love now (glances at sad warrior mains) when mechanist and few more rose to power.

[Vidit.7108]

15 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Firebrand has built-in three addional skill bars full of the best effects in the game: aegis, cleanse, stability, projectile reflect, block, heal, swiftness, protection... All firebrands have this, always, forever, whenever they may need it.

Then it doesn't sound to me like it matters if there is a weapon swap allowed or not. If all of those things are too powerful for the firebrand to do then no change to tomes will correct that other than removing them. 

However if a group is relying on a condi firebrand (or even a healbrand) to provide all those things using only tomes it is either a well-oiled and seasoned static group or a very very dead PUG. Base guardian, between it's weapon skills and utilities, can already do all of that twice in the same cooldown as its tomes. Firebrand isn't even using tome 3 to be able to upkeep protection or tome 2 for swiftness, nor could it. Aegis and block are the same thing, tomes don't have a separate personal or group block. A typical party is not going to be happy their only condi cleanse is on a minimum 30 second cooldown. If you want to sustain reflects you have to stop using weapon skills to attack and wait at least 6 seconds between each dome for about 30 seconds. Or again a base guardian could just bring wall of reflection and a shield to do that.

Could any firebrand still do that and damage? Sure they can, with the utilities Mantra of Flame, Mantra of Lore, Wall of reflection, and Mantra of Liberation loaded up it's probably doing more damage than if it wasted time using tomes and dong half those things you listed.

I'm not getting into what other classes can or can't do. There are fewer things in the world I could care about than people losing their minds over ele giving three boons on attunement swap. Give ele alac and quickness on every auto attack, I don't care.

[The Boz.2038]

13 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I assume The Boz meant Engineer, not Ranger.

Honestly no idea how I managed to write the wrong word. 
Yes. Engineers.

[The Boz.2038]

16 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

You compared a class mechanic to a utility skill and got corrected that they are not the same kind of skill, thus can't be compared. Ele's class mechanic are the attunements, that can be swapped every 10 seconds, Tomes can be used every 30/45/70 seconds. 
Resistance also isn't a common boon on Guard. Tome 3(70s CD) page 4(10s CD) and Save Yourselves(50s CD). 

I guess you didn't read the patch notes when FB's ability to spam Aegis got gutted. Tome 3 page 5 and Tome 3 equip. Rest are core Guard skills, like Advance(30s recharge), Mace 3(15s CD) and Shield 4(20s CD).

Both Ele and Guard have pretty easy job applying Protection as well.

Stability is the only boon Guard has easy time with, SYG is the most common skill, as it's "only" 30s, Hallowed Ground is 45, Elite Mantra is very situational and anything with Tome 3 is a long CD.

I compared it because it is more comparable, considering cooldown, build-in ability, and loss of access on swap, than the tome <> attunement comparison. And in both cases, the elementalist's bar expansion does not compare favorably.
Only a coddled golden child can point out how for free the get access to something pretty much nobody else gets for free, and then say "but it's not THAT good" or "it's not constant uptime" or other stuff like that. 
If you claim nothing here is comparable, then, hey, good job. High marks. Nobody else gets these things built in, and the closest alternatives compare infavorably.

How do you not understand the simple concept of "all firebrands always forever have permanent built-in access to these tomes, and through them, these powerful effects that are usually accessed by other classes rarely, and at cost".
A full-on DPS firebrand will *always* have an option to pull out cleanse, projectile reflect, stability, aegis, protection, etc. No matter what weapon or utilities they take, they will always have the Plan B, C, D and E ready, far and above what any other profession can build for. Once again pointing out how you can build an engineer now to have access to some of these effects at a cost, and oh no it's OP woe is us!

[The Boz.2038]

11 hours ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

The passives are only kept if you take the trait that keep them up.

The tomes have 30s / 50s / 75s base cooldown.
What's the cooldown on engineer kits, elementalist attunements, necromancer shroud, or bladesworn weapons ?

The passives are kept until you use the tome. When you use the tome, you lose the passive *unless you have the trait*. But the context of the claim is that *the passive base functionality is retained when you pick firebrand*.
Also, are engineer kits and attunement swaps and shrouds comparable or nah? 
 

[The Boz.2038]

11 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Ele “kits” aren’t kits, they summon a weapon for allies to pick up. A better comparison would be ele’s elements, which are 10(?)s CD. Other bar changers sometimes require resources, which is actually a good comparison, as Tomes are constrained by their page resource.

I refer you to the previous list of "elementalist weapon skills, that you get in those attunements, that give you aegis, stab, and all the other pretty stuff". 

[The Boz.2038]

8 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

Then it doesn't sound to me like it matters if there is a weapon swap allowed or not. If all of those things are too powerful for the firebrand to do then no change to tomes will correct that other than removing them. 

It's as if you skipped the entire discussion, mate. Bravo.

[Kulvar.1239]

2 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I refer you to the previous list of "elementalist weapon skills, that you get in those attunements, that give you aegis, stab, and all the other pretty stuff". 

So you want to get every boon, condi cleanse, stun-break, and healing available on elementalist weapons alone with a 10s cooldown to have all of that back ?

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

So you want to get every boon, condi cleanse, stun-break, and healing available on elementalist weapons alone with a 10s cooldown to have all of that back ?

...sorry, what?

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I compared it because it is more comparable, considering cooldown, build-in ability, and loss of access on swap, than the tome <> attunement comparison. And in both cases, the elementalist's bar expansion does not compare favorably.

Cooldowns don't matter, since as I said they are not the same kind of ability. Tomes are equivalent to Ele attunements, not to Conjures. 
And even if we go by kits Conjures are time based, Tomes are page based, which means you can only use 5/8(6/9 outside Raids) in a quick succession, while with Ele you can use as many skills as you want in the time the weapon is there, another thing about Conjures is that others can pick them up, you as well. 

1 hour ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Only a coddled golden child can point out how for free the get access to something pretty much nobody else gets for free, and then say "but it's not THAT good" or "it's not constant uptime" or other stuff like that. 

People keep forgetting that Guard wasn't at the top since the start of the game. You can't imagine how much complaints I heard from friends that they must play Warrior or Ele in 2012/13 and when I finally decided to give the game a try after the release of HoT I got told to play Mesmer, because they are loved by Anet. 

2 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

How do you not understand the simple concept of "all firebrands always forever have permanent built-in access to these tomes, and through them, these powerful effects that are usually accessed by other classes rarely, and at cost".
A full-on DPS firebrand will *always* have an option to pull out cleanse, projectile reflect, stability, aegis, protection, etc. No matter what weapon or utilities they take, they will always have the Plan B, C, D and E ready, far and above what any other profession can build for. Once again pointing out how you can build an engineer now to have access to some of these effects at a cost, and oh no it's OP woe is us!

And when will you understand that Tomes are Virtues? Limiting an FB to a single Tome is like limiting Ele to Fire attunement only or a Mesmer to F1.
FBs have access to Tomes, yes, but what's the point in sacrificing your DPS for some measly heal or some boons YOUR HEALER CAN PROVIDE?
If you stopped complaining about what Guard can do and look at Ele's options you might stop saying "but DPS can do this/that".
Power Tempest can give Prot, Stab, Might, Regen, cleanses the same way FB can. FB doesn't press a button and all those magically happen, it has to stop dealing damage to do those, just like Tempest would have to.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

People keep forgetting that Guard wasn't at the top since the start of the game. You can't imagine how much complaints I heard from friends that they must play Warrior or Ele in 2012/13 and when I finally decided to give the game a try after the release of HoT I got told to play Mesmer, because they are loved by Anet. 

...but it has been consistently favored since 2015. So, eh.

3 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

And when will you understand that Tomes are Virtues?

Tomes are virtues. That is one of my points, how did you miss that? Tomes are straight upgrades to Virtues, and you get to keep the Virtue passives anyway, and you get the active effect expanded greatly. How is it possible you are missing me pointing this out previously? Numerous other posters didn't. They even attacked me for it, thinking it meant something different.

The idea here is you get to keep one tome. One. You get that tome, and the passive virtue. The other two? Stay as core guard: Virtues. Suggest you reread OP.

4 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

FBs have access to Tomes, yes, but what's the point in sacrificing your DPS for some measly heal or some boons YOUR HEALER CAN PROVIDE?

Permanent always available built in flexibility is useful for when things don't go according to keikaku. 

5 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

If you stopped complaining about what Guard can do and look at Ele's options you might stop saying "but DPS can do this/that".

What? Do what? Go on. Two seconds of protection on a 30s cooldown? Self-stab when you start an overload? Is that the best you got?
And compare to the rest of the kit. Where's the aegis? Where's the projectile reflect? Do these effects come for free, or do they cost you traits? And in all of those, have you tried to compare the ease and cost of access? 

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

28 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

...but it has been consistently favored since 2015. So, eh.

That's why up until 2018 Guard isn't really present in Raids based on this. It's been consistently favored so much since 2015 it took 3 years for people to play it in numbers.
If we go by Fractals there's more representation, but, so favored Chrono alone was more popular than DH and FB combined up until 2018.
I would also mention that based on that same chart Chrono was more popular in Raids than FB so far, but shh.

33 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Tomes are virtues. That is one of my points, how did you miss that? Tomes are straight upgrades to Virtues, and you get to keep the Virtue passives anyway, and you get the active effect expanded greatly. How is it possible you are missing me pointing this out previously? Numerous other posters didn't. They even attacked me for it, thinking it meant something different.

Virtues have a Passive part and an Active part. If you decided to actually look up what Tome 2 does without Healing Power, since it's a common mistake for people to think that the amount of heals and stuff Tome 2 does is the same on DPS as well as HFB. 
Wings of Resolve heals for 3900 in an AoE you jump into, it cleanses conditions from you, you can do this every 30 seconds. Two button presses for all of that.
Tome of Resolve does ~3200 healing if you spam 1 after using 5, the problem with the 5th page is that it only boosts your healing output for 8 seconds, meaning that in theory you could get ~7300 healing in total from Tome 2 without any Healing Power, IF you had Page 5 buff and you cleanses 3 conditions off each time. Using Page 2 4 times takes 16 seconds, you see the problem, right? Tome 2 is on a 45 second CD.
There are numbers for cooldowns as well as boons and healing. If people stand still and have 8 Conditions(5 cleansed by Page 5, 3 cleansed by Page 2) on them you can heal each for a total of ~5100 if they stand in one spot for 5 seconds. I don't think I need to say this is borderline impossible.

Tome 3 is mostly boons and Reflect, Guard's only "low CD" reflect bubble(8s CD and 5 charges compared to 50 on Sanctuary). Every 75 seconds you can give Swiftness and Stability, or Taunt an enemy, or give like 4 seconds of Resistance. Very OP....

54 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Permanent always available built in flexibility is useful for when things don't go according to keikaku. 

Many professions can help out when things don't go according to plan. We had a BS doing more Cleanses on Matthias than a HFB once. Tempest can cleanse conditions, generate Might, Swiftness, Protection, Regen as well, you forgot to mention those.

56 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

What? Do what? Go on. Two seconds of protection on a 30s cooldown? Self-stab when you start an overload? Is that the best you got?
And compare to the rest of the kit. Where's the aegis? Where's the projectile reflect? Do these effects come for free, or do they cost you traits? And in all of those, have you tried to compare the ease and cost of access? 

I Raided more on my Ele, than on Thief, Warr, Mesmer and Ranger combined. I never had any problem with generating Might and Protection, don't know what you're on about Protection being difficult on Ele.
Aftershock is a reflect, so is Sand Squall, they also apply Protection.
"Mantra of Solace: Aegis removed" Read the - now one month old - patchnotes before complaining about FB and Aegis. FB's only skills that grant Aegis are equipping Tome 3 and Tome 3 Page 5. That's 75 seconds. Core Guard has shorted CD on Aegis skills.(15-20 seconds)

[The Boz.2038]

10 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

We had a BS doing more Cleanses on Matthias than a HFB once.

Sounds like that BS really made good use of that "cleanse yourself and party members for free when you enter berserk mode" trait... Oh, no, wait. He made a conscious effort to exchange one of their utility skills for a cleanse. My bad.

Aftershock? Sounds like a slot skill.
Sand Squall? Literally mentioned it.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 minute ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Sounds like that BS really made good use of that "cleanse yourself and party members for free when you enter berserk mode" trait... Oh, no, wait. He made a conscious effort to exchange one of their utility skills for a cleanse. My bad.

Aftershock? Sounds like a slot skill.
Sand Squall? Literally mentioned it.

Does that trait require you to use press 2 buttons, one being on 4s CD and the other being on 45s or it's just one ammunition skill?
If Aftershock doesn't count then Water Overload, you always have it on Tempest. It must be OP since DPS can cleanse conditions! You can do it every 20 seconds compared to FB's 45s CD on Tome 2.

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil and avoid attacking each other. I've removed a few posts.

Regards.

[The Boz.2038]

20 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Water Overload, you always have it on Tempest. It must be OP since DPS can cleanse conditions! You can do it every 20 seconds compared to FB's 45s CD on Tome 2.

OK, now do the rest.

[Trejgon.9367]

On 4/7/2022 at 11:40 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

...but it has been consistently favored since 2015. So, eh.

By getting nerfed in every balance pass, and probably every second bigger non-balance update. with main source of buffs being either releases of new especs, or wider mechanical changes that just happened to benefit them.

(with one sole exeption I guess of spirit weapons rework, since one could argue they are performing better after that rework than they used to originally....)

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

3 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

OK, now do the rest.

The more I read your OP the more I laugh. If you don't know what each tome is used for don't make ideas on how to "balance" them.

Your proposal of a single tome would get rid of Quickbrand in the first place.
Your proposal for Tome 3 makes zero sense, Tome 3 is only utility, some short reflects, Stab, Swiftness and a bit of Aegis. Noone would pick it over Tome 1 or Tome 2. 

On top of that as DPS your Tome 2 isn't as powerful as you think it is. If you took the time to try out FB you'd know that playing DPS and using Tome 2 won't give you all those good rewards. There's as much reason to use it as there is to swap to Water on Tempest and overload it while playing DPS.
Being able to convert 5 condis and remove 3 at once is irrelevant, since there is no place where you can get more than 3 Condis at once. 
I would also like to mention this here as another response to "so much Condi cleanses". Having access to a lot of them at once doesn't matter as much in the end as you'd think. 

[draxynnic.3719]

On 4/6/2022 at 10:13 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

That's the goal right there, chief. Take your role tome. Have a toolset that fits your role, and not The Best Toolset In The Game Permanently Built In For Free Right Into The Chassis. 

Then, once you have known role-tome combos, maybe then can ANet beef some up in PvP, if needed.

 

Also, lol at "tome reflect's not that strong, it's only 50% uptime". Only a golden child that touched no other profession in the game can say that.

It'd be a solved problem. There'd be no build design that comes out of it, people would just take the tome that fits their role, every time, while it makes the specialisation less interesting to play overall because it removes that "is it worth popping a tome that I'm not built for?" tension. Furthermore, cutting back on versatility is actually bad for group formation, since it creates more roles that need to be filled before the rest can be filled out by DPS.

As for tome reflects: Sure, if you do basically nothing else for most of a minute at a time, you can get 50% reflect uptime from the tome reflect. Or you can take a trait and a single utility slot and get 50% uptime while still being able to use your weapon skills, which if you'd actually paid attention rather than looking for something to quote out of context, you'd have seen that that was the comparison I was making. Or a revenant can swap into Ventari and get around 50% uptime there* - sure, it's a DPS loss, but not nearly as much as a firebrand popping F3 and then doing nothing but putting up the bubble every five seconds and maybe using the odd utility skill until they run out of pages. Pretty sure mesmer can also achieve a pretty good uptime with Feedback, focus, and a trait, although that's arguably a more "expensive" trait to take, and mesmer area projectile hate has taken a few nerfs over the years.

*If you really focus on projectile hate, I'm pretty sure a Ventari rev can get an uptime of over 90% with alacrity, but that requires spending no energy on anything else while channelling Ventari, while blowing throw your energy really quickly while channelling the other legend. And, come to think on it, even higher if you run core rev and use Ancient Echo, although the bubble does have a maximum duration. Still might be a more efficient projectile destruction choice than a firebrand doing nothing but Valiant Bulwark and utilities, since the rev in question can, at least, still autoattack.

[The Boz.2038]

Ventari isn't free.
Tome 3 is.

It's as if you are trying real hard to not understand the issue here.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 minute ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Ventari isn't free.
Tome 3 is.

It's as if you are trying real hard to not understand the issue here.

Time isn't free. Whatever time you spend in a tome is time you're not using your weapon skills.

Believe me, every time I've been in group content where projectile hate is needed, the response has never been "hey, get the firebrands to spend all their time popping their bubble!" Usually, it's the revenant. If there isn't a revenant, guardians slot Wall of Reflection, a core utility skill that's far more efficient. If it's Matthias, you bring a mesmer because the cooldown actually lines up nicely.

But hey, some of us actually trying to explain how it all actually works, while the majority of your posts have been quotes out of context, pithy one-liners, and ad hominems. I think this demonstrates that you don't actually have a response to the points people have actually been making.

[The Boz.2038]

You never pay an upfront cost for tome. It's there in your most offensive DPS build, it's there in your most supportish heal build. It is there and free.
If you even pick Ventari as a legend, your DPS goes into a deep black hole.

You fundamentally misunderstand the issue.

[draxynnic.3719]

Run Ventari instead of Shiro or Jalis, and you're giving up the damage from Impossible Odds or the hammers. That's not insignificant, but it's not enough to stop revs from generally being the first to be asked when projectile destruction is needed. If it's worth going out of your way to get projectile destruction, a revenant (generally the alacren) switching one of their legends to Ventari is how it's done (or, rather, how it was done pre-EoD, the new strikes don't have a lot of particularly threatening destructable projectiles, and I haven't played the old stuff much since EoD).

This isn't theorycrafting. This is experience.

Yes, a firebrand gets the tomes on their bar for free. The price is that as soon as you pop F2 or F3, you lose virtually all of your DPS for as long as you keep it up. Depending on your build, sure, you might be able to keep some going with offensive utilities, but most of it, including the majority of the strikes that do things like charging up Justice and trigger any other on-hit effects that might be coming from your allies, are gone for the time you're in the tome.

That's the real price, the one you seem to be determined to ignore, and the reason why your proposal might actually be a net buff since core Resolve or Courage can still support your team (or yourself) without this tradeoff, potentially in a more timely fashion. If you're not built to use a particular tome, you generally don't want to since while it's up, you're not doing damage. Which, when things start to go south, creates a tension between pressing that button to try to support the party at a steep cost to DPS, or continuing to do what you're doing. This tension makes it interesting. Like how, in theory, most DPS elementalist can switch to water and heal, but they obviously lose DPS while doing so while still being less effective than an actual healer - it's something you technically can do, but you'd prefer if you didn't have to.

Similar points apply to healbrand. A lot of healbrand healing and boons come from weapon skills (this is largely how PvP core support guardian works, after all). Pop F1, and you get a little more damage, but you lose the healing and boons coming from your weapon skills. Pop F3, and you get supportive boons, but both your healing and damage drop to whatever you can eke out of your utility skills. Sure, there are times where it is worth this price, but you need to know when, and the price is absolutely there. If there was an option to trade out F1 and F3 tomes voluntarily in exchange for the base virtues, I think people would be tempted. Instant-action aegis, protection, stunbreak on allies, and stability when supported by traits is... pretty good, actually.

This is the concept of "action economy" - sometimes things are limited not by the number of options they have on paper, but by the fact that they can't do them all at once, and doing one thing means they're not doing something else. While something like the Ventari rev is more of a build economy situation: they've chosen one option in exchange for another, and that means they have less potential DPS, but after you've taken that into account, keeping the bubble up around 50% of the time is basically free (just go through your normal rotation except that you're using the bubble instead of Impossible Odds).

Of course, at this stage I'm pretty sure I'm just spelling this out for third parties, because I doubt you're going to read this any further than it takes to pull a quote out of context and deliver a pithy one-liner accusing me of doing what you're doing yourself: misunderstanding the issue, possibly deliberately, possibly because you have no idea how guardian actually works. 

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, The Boz.2038 said:

You never pay an upfront cost for tome. It's there in your most offensive DPS build, it's there in your most supportish heal build. It is there and free.
If you even pick Ventari as a legend, your DPS goes into a deep black hole.

You fundamentally misunderstand the issue.

Yes, it's there since it's a profession mechanic. 

What you seem to not understand is just because it is there it doesn't mean every Guard constantly uses it. It is not worth using Tome 2 for Condi cleanse or Regen when cFB already has a utility slot that is free choice, a slot that can be filled with Lore Mantra. You can use your Mantras while doing your rotation without interrupting yourself, to use Tome 2/3 you interrupt your rotation.
You see HFBs using Tome 1-2, since you can place a Fire field as HFB using Tome 1 as an example. You don't really see cFBs using Tome 2 all that much.

You seem to be heavily fixated on Reflects and Stability in Tome 3;
If you want Reflect you use Wall of Reflection, you can use it every 20/25 seconds, if you want a dome against projectiles there's Sanctuary at 40/50 s CD. I don't recall using Tome 3 reflect outside Adina and Matthias as backup, simply because the cooldown is so long it's not worth it.
Even on Matthias Mesmer is better for Reflect due to Feedback.
On Adina you bring an Alacren with Ventari, since Ventari bubble is superior to FB's Tome 3 for Reflects.

FBs use SYG for Stability, since it's 6 stacks on a 30s cooldown, not a single stack(up to 5 if you use all pages) on a 75 second cooldown.

Don't look at the tomes and judge them based on the boons you see because we will end up with your Tome 3 proposal.

Tome 1+3 or Tome 2+3 at less than 40 s CD would make some sense, but Tome 3 alone makes zero sense.