Anet so what about Willbender in PvE? Balance patch feedback.

[Carnifex.3275]

Alright.. first i'd like to say that it's alright to nerf FB. HFB/cFB/cqFB are full of utilities and have tons of tools that are very useful in group content. So i get it - maybe pushing 38-40k is too much. Let FB as a spec be focused on healing and quickness, let's forget the DPS role. But why other specs have to suffer because of something that was targetted at cFB? Nerfing core traits damages the class in general, not just FB. (in this case Amplified Wrath nerf was too much).

The idea of new elite specs is basically giving people more roles and different ways to play it right? In a perfect world each spec can do a different thing. So let's say on Dragonhunter you go Power DPS. On FB you go support. So now what's the point of willbender? Before the patch it was alright as a cDPS spec in PvE.

Now after the Amplified Wrath nerf (and ofcz sun spirit and other class specific boons) cDPS willbender is gone. Since it can't do anything else (quick/heal/alac) what's the purpose of it? What i really want anet to think about is how nerfing one spec (FB) can also cascade into other specs. You can nerf FB if you want, nerf dmg of FB or utilities or whatever. But this amplified wrath nerf also leaked into cWB and killed it. HFB is in a good spot still, QFB is alright even with nerfed damage, cFB now is questionable and cWB is even more questionable (benchmarks went down to 30-33k range from 38-40k range). I guess maybe anet tried to do it an alac spec but gave up somewhere in the middle? So what's the goal now? To leave it purely as a PVP spec? I'm seriously tired of how anet is balancing their game.. Target your nerfs to a specific spec, not the core traits that damage everything.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Ferus.3165]

too bad it will take years for the random crowd to acknowledge that guard is not op. Tbh Firebrand is fine the way it is now, maybe qFB dmg is a little low but you have utility in the form of your tomes and as long as the quickness stays FB will be used in pve.

Dragonhunter and Willbender however are in a sad state right now. But noone cares about that because the current circlejerk is that guard is op and should be nerfed into the ground. You cannot talk to the circlejerk people, they live in their bubble and are unable to realise what this patch did to guard.

This reminds me of what happened to warrior years ago when the circlejerk opinion was that warrior was op and should be nerfed into the ground and that circlejerk continued untill most of warrior was trash. The warrior forum activity back then was extremely low so noone spoke up to it.

I have not played guard for long and i liked the cWB and DH gameplay but right now it's simply not worth it to play guard for the dps role anymore. Support FB is all that is left atm.

Maybe the nerf to guard was accidental though, you never now with anet, and they did not take into consideration how big of an impact sun spirit would have on guard, so there is a chance that WB will receive some buffs in exchange for it.

[Massimoni.9453]

4 hours ago, Dave.6819 said:

let's forget the DPS role

Err...no. Firebrand has - by design - a DPS role attached to it, as do almost all classes except Druid. Axe being a condition weapon and F1 tome existing aren't things that happened by accident. I can live with it not being the top DPS class (which btw it wasn't...), but it should still be at least on the level of power classes *cough* Slb *cough*, as there are - again by design - quite a few tradeoffs compared to other condi classes and as there aren't any competitive power setups on firebrand you gotta see it as pure condi. Nerfing cFB by virtue of qFB being very good (which was most likely the case this patch) is definitely the wrong step and combined with the inability of ANet to test stuff before they change it (as Ferus mentioned, the trait nerf was overkill in the way that sun spirit alone nerfed guard more than other specs) you got yourself a soon-to-be dead DPS spec. You already see cFBs very rarely as pure DPS and it will only get worse. Imo it's not even the problem of qFB necessarily being OP but rather missing competition, which - lets be honest - this "balance" patch basically did nothing about. There were already quite a few Quickness Scrappers in use before and with the release of EoD I've seen a lot of groups using Harbinger instead of qFB. Make other classes good alternatives for Quickness and you can maybe reduce the number of crybabies, radiating especially from the Ele community it seems as they are quite toxic RN cuz their love Catalyst doesn't break every raid record anymore with its 46k Power DPS...

[Nephalem.8921]

7 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

too bad it will take years for the random crowd to acknowledge that guard is not op. Tbh Firebrand is fine the way it is now, maybe qFB dmg is a little low but you have utility in the form of your tomes and as long as the quickness stays FB will be used in pve.

Dragonhunter and Willbender however are in a sad state right now. But noone cares about that because the current circlejerk is that guard is op and should be nerfed into the ground. You cannot talk to the circlejerk people, they live in their bubble and are unable to realise what this patch did to guard.

This reminds me of what happened to warrior years ago when the circlejerk opinion was that warrior was op and should be nerfed into the ground and that circlejerk continued untill most of warrior was trash. The warrior forum activity back then was extremely low so noone spoke up to it.

I have not played guard for long and i liked the cWB and DH gameplay but right now it's simply not worth it to play guard for the dps role anymore. Support FB is all that is left atm.

Maybe the nerf to guard was accidental though, you never now with anet, and they did not take into consideration how big of an impact sun spirit would have on guard, so there is a chance that WB will receive some buffs in exchange for it.

Enlighten me. what did the patch do to guard? sunspirit added almost the same dps to cmech. guardian lost like 2% burn dmg. fb is still op. mandatory in lots of encounters because of all the stability.

dh, reaper, vindicator, DD and other power builds are all in a sad state.

[Carnifex.3275]

20 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Enlighten me. what did the patch do to guard? sunspirit added almost the same dps to cmech. guardian lost like 2% burn dmg. fb is still op. mandatory in lots of encounters because of all the stability.

dh, reaper, vindicator, DD and other power builds are all in a sad state.

Sun spirit + amplified wrath (5% nerf)  dropped cwb to 30-32k range (ofcz banners, spotter etc etc, but those hurt everyone). And yes, FB is fine. But that's the issue. Everything is about FB. It does quick, heal and also DPS (though DPS also dropped alot more than other classes). It's just a bandwagon/circlejerk thing with guards.. every1 thinks they're OP so they must be OP. Well no they arent. HFB is the only spec that is OP. qFB is alright, cFB is mediocre now and cWB is dead. See the issue here? Basically we have 4 specs and 3 of them are useless now. Before patch cWB wasnt useless, now it's just another guardian spec that has to go to the bin. I already see in groups how they advertise themselves. They're specifically asking for cvirtu/slb/mech dps players.

When it comes to DPS i'd say cVirtu, mech is in a very good spot. I think most of the players dont bother waiting.. whenever something becomes OP they just switch to it and enjoy. So i guess instead of hoping for guard to get fixed i'll just switch to mecha and enjoy my LI 37k dps. 🤦‍♂️ Alt friendly game became alt neccessary game.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Kodama.6453]

DISCLAIMER: TL, DR can be found at the very end.

How I see it, elite specs can be roughly seperated into 3 different categories: dps, support and bruiser

Dps specs, as the name basically already says, primarily have mechanics, skills and traits which will increase the damage they deal. Damage is their primary function in the game, examples of elite specs for this category are holosmith, deadeye, soulbeast.

Support elite specs focus on healing/barrier, boon share and generally empowering their allies. Examples of this category are druid, firebrand, specter.

Bruiser elite specs have tools that enhance their personal survival, especially in outnumbered situations. They also specialise in CC output/exploit and oftenly also mobility. Examples of bruiser elite specs are scrapper, spellbreaker, willbender.

Of course, many elite specs don't solely fall into one category. Many are mixing some of these aspects to some extend, but they will usually still get delegated to associate with one of these sub categories primarily. For example, firebrand has mechanics which makes it function as a support and dps. But as latest balance changes have shown, they will put their primary power in their support capabilities and the dps role is more of an off role for this elite spec.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Now why is this relevant.

Willbender, as mentioned above, is a member of the bruiser elite spec sub category. Elite specs of this type usually struggle to find a viable role in high end PvE content, because their upsides (personal defense, CC, mobility) are not really favoured in that environment.

Your survival is ensured by the support elite specs, which will protect the group with their heals/barriers. Having the highest CC capabilties in the game is oftenly not needed, since the base CC abilities the entire group provides is usually already sufficient to deal with the break bars of enemies. And high end PvE content also tends to stack on top of the boss, so most of the time, high mobility is not oftenly needed. On top of that, most bruiser specs also just have personal mobility and most of the time don't increase the mobility of their team (scrapper with their superspeed share being an exception).

Basically the only 2 roles which are really important for PvE end content are support and dps.

The only way bruiser elite specs sometimes find use is if they get access to important boons while still being able to bring acceptable dps. The 2 big boons, alacrity and quickness, can't be shared both by the same class. So usually one of these boons will get provided by the (healing) support, while the other boon needs to get covered by someone dealing dps.

So for example, scrapper can find a use case as a dps that provides quickness for the team. It is still not as strong as a firebrand dealing damage and providing quickness, but it is usable and it also doesn't have to compete with an elite spec of it's own class (holosmith deals more damage, but doesn't have access to quickness, which rules out the usage of that elite spec).

But if your bruiser elite spec doesn't have access to either quickness or alacrity, then you will have a pretty hard time to justify it in high end PvE, since you will usually have another elite spec on your class which does the needed job better.

Willbender does have access to group alacrity. But this still means that it will just and only find use cases in this small niche of being an alacrity providing dps. And in this niche, it still has to compete with builds like condition alacrity mechanist, condition alacrity renegade, condition alacrity specter...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

TL, DR

Willbender is supposed to be a bruiser spec, whose primary strengths are personal survival, CC and mobility. None of these strengths are really sought after in high end PvE, which is also the reason why stuff like spellbreaker suffers in that game mode. Being a bruiser elite spec in PvE usually sucks (with some exceptions).

Edited July 5, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[draxynnic.3719]

@Ferus.3165 Yeah, I've seen this over and over again. People as a group are terrible at recognising when something that was formerly OP or UP is brought back into balance, out of a combination of confirmation bias and the fact that it takes time to master new builds. It generally takes making something completely unviable for the peanut gallery to recognise that it's no longer god-tier, while anything perceived to be trash tier needs to be made at least a little bit OP for people to try it.

 

@Nephalem.8921 Yeah, the patch hit most power builds hard - but that's part of the problem. DH was power. pWB was, obviously, power. And the combined effect of the Amplified Wrath nerf and the Sun Spirit removal has left cWB and cFB in the dust. Pretty much leaves guardian with no DPS options at all and quickness firebrand as the only thing they can bring to the table.

 

@Kodama.6453 I pretty strongly disagree with the categorisation of willbender as a bruiser. DH was guardian's bruiser spec. Willbender shares DNA with the likes of herald, daredevil, and power mesmer - it's a ganker, built around getting in, tearing a target apart with high burst, and then getting out. Its dominance came because after being too weak in betas, its sustain was overcorrected and it became a ganker with good sustain, a combination that has a track record of dominating sPvP when it arises.

Even if we put that aside, though, there's really no reason why a profession's PvP role should impact on its ability to achieve DPS in PvE. Skills are split, they can buff the 'bruisers' up to a point where they are practical. What's happened here is that they applied a nerf, probably aimed at firebrand, that was certainly justified in the previous balance environment, but they didn't account for how the environment has changed.

[Kodama.6453]

55 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I pretty strongly disagree with the categorisation of willbender as a bruiser. DH was guardian's bruiser spec. Willbender shares DNA with the likes of herald, daredevil, and power mesmer - it's a ganker, built around getting in, tearing a target apart with high burst, and then getting out. Its dominance came because after being too weak in betas, its sustain was overcorrected and it became a ganker with good sustain, a combination that has a track record of dominating sPvP when it arises.

In the system I described, I also put daredevils and heralds into the bruiser category.

I get where you are coming from that you think of dragonhunter as the bruiser elite spec, it definitely shares some similarities. But I still see it more as a dps elite spec instead of a bruiser.

It's a similar case like holosmith, which many people claim to also be more of a bruiser type of elite spec instead of a dps spec. The bruiser capabilities that holosmith has, like personal defense through damage reduction or the healing from heat therapy, are tools to enable holosmith as a melee dps class.

If you are forced to go into melee, but have absolutely no defense, you might just instantly blow up, which results in you dealing no damage. The defense holosmith gets is to ensure that it survives long enough in melee range to deal it's damage, but it's survivability is not really in the same ballpark as scrapper's, which is engineer's bruiser spec.

The biggest feature that dragonhunter shares with bruisers is their CC capabilities. But once again, I think these are more just supposed to be tools to enable dragonhunter as a dps spec. Especially with traps as it's utility skill type, you would need some means to keep your enemies in place to apply your damage.

And if you compare the tools a dragonhunter has for survival with the tools a willbender has, especially during outnumbered situations (as I mentined as an aspect of bruisers), then I think willbender still tops the dragonhunter here.

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Even if we put that aside, though, there's really no reason why a profession's PvP role should impact on its ability to achieve DPS in PvE. Skills are split, they can buff the 'bruisers' up to a point where they are practical. What's happened here is that they applied a nerf, probably aimed at firebrand, that was certainly justified in the previous balance environment, but they didn't account for how the environment has changed.

For bruiser specs to be "practical" as dps classes would mean that you have to increase their damage numbers to be comparable with the damage numbers of dps elite specs.

And if that is the case, then we have the reversed problem. Now you have a bruiser spec which comes with baked in defensive abiltities and properties, which is also able to deal comparable damage to a dps elite spec. If my spellbreaker deals comparable damage to a berserker, while also having more defense than it, then why would I still keep playing the berserker?

Every class basically should have a power budget. If you get power in survival, then this is power not put into damage, for example. It just happens that how the power budget is distributed for bruiser specs is not desirable for high end PvE content.But giving them more damage and therefore a higher power budget in total is also not a fair change.

And if you take away the defensive abilities a bruiser spec has in PvE... then it affects other environments. I enjoy playing my scrapper in huge masses of enemies, basically becoming immortal while simply farming. If they take that away to increase it's damage, making it basically the same as my holosmith, that would feel bad. The only environment which would benefit from such a change would be high end PvE (raids, strikes, etc.), which is not even holding the majority of active players.

[draxynnic.3719]

Bruiser, to me, is a midpoint between bunker and damage. It does enough damage to be a threat, while having enough durability to survive being focused in a teamfight without exploding in seconds.

DH fits in this category, through access to blocks, lots of healing, and so on. Holosmith can as well if it builds accordingly.

Willbender, daredevil, and Shiro herald do not. If they stay in a teamfight and get properly focused, they explode. Yes, even willbender a month ago. Saw it happen several times. They'll wipe you out in seconds 1v1 if they catch you by surprise or they jump you in a teamfight and your team does nothing to help, but if they draw attention too early in a teamfight they tend to be downed in seconds. Just like power herald and non-staff daredevil builds.

Surviving via mobility is a very different part of the PvP ecosystem than surviving via durability as scrappers and spellbreakers do. When converted into a PvE context, sure, you could argue that a scrapper or spellbreaker can lose a bit of DPS in exchange for being able to take a hit that others would have to dodge, but that's the thing: by and large, the mobility professions and specialisations still have to avoid attacks, just as those you class as DPS have to. Sure, you can bring a few more defensive utilities instead of focusing on damage, but that's a tradeoff everyone can make - there's no balance reason why a full glass, no support willbender or daredevil shouldn't be able to output similar numbers in PvE to harbingers and mirages that also have a fair amount of built-in mobility.

[draxynnic.3719]

As an addendum to demonstrate my point:

47 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

I enjoy playing my scrapper in huge masses of enemies, basically becoming immortal while simply farming. 

Can you really imagine doing this as a willbender or a daredevil? Herald you might be able to get away with due to a number of factors (although that involves not taking the ideal DPS build, and other revenant elite specs with higher PvE DPS are capable of similar levels of durability), but willbenders and daredevils absolutely rely on killing everything around them before their defences run out. Ultimately, they're both designed as high-mobility DPS specs, and being able to run away just isn't as valuable in PvE as it is in PvP.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure that if I went over to the thief subforum and classified d/p daredevil as a 'bruiser', I'd be bombarded with "you heard it here first" memes. 

Edited July 5, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[Kodama.6453]

20 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

As an addendum to demonstrate my point:

Can you really imagine doing this as a willbender or a daredevil? Herald you might be able to get away with due to a number of factors (although that involves not taking the ideal DPS build, and other revenant elite specs with higher PvE DPS are capable of similar levels of durability), but willbenders and daredevils absolutely rely on killing everything around them before their defences run out. Ultimately, they're both designed as high-mobility DPS specs, and being able to run away just isn't as valuable in PvE as it is in PvP.

Seriously, I'm pretty sure that if I went over to the thief subforum and classified d/p daredevil as a 'bruiser', I'd be bombarded with "you heard it here first" memes. 

Yes, I can imagine doing that as a daredevil or willbender. If you are willing to actually build for it instead of just taking the usual max damage traits and skills, then I think you can definitely survive in huge masses of enemies.

Daredevil expands your cleave, especially with staff. You have a trait that increases your vitality through your power, offsetting the low health bar you get from the thief core. You have a trait that heals you for critically striking foes and hitting more foes means you get more healing. You have tons of traits and skills from daredevil which refill your endurance to let you keep spamming dodges.

Willbender, as stated by the devs even, is designed to dive into huge masses of enemies. The virtues are designed to proc by achieving many hits on enemies. If many enemies are around, you achieve many hits, especially with the included willbender flames hitting enemies in an AoE.

Hell, willbender in the beta test even had an interaction that was so hilariously broken that it allowed the class to dive solo into an entire WvW zerg, not only surviving that dive but even killing the enemy zerg with millions of damage in seconds. This whole interaction is the reason why shattered aegis has specifically a 1 second icd just and only if willbender is equipped.

[draxynnic.3719]

If you build enough for it, you can make anything tanky, but we don't see builds using berserkers or vipers with full DPS utilities because tralblazer's with survival utilities exist (and are also available to what you classify as "DPS").

As you acknowledge, the Shattered Aegis interaction was nerfed, so we're basically in a position where procs from F2 or F3 scale according to the number of enemies... but only at the same rate as the number of attacks increase, and that only if the number of enemies are clumped and there are less of them than the cap on how many can be hit at once (3 or 5 for most skills). If the number is greater than that, or some of the enemies are ranged, the incoming damage outscales the willbender's sustain. And eventually, your F2 and F3 are going to run out. You can't just dive into a pile of enemies unless you can expect to burst them down in fifteen seconds 

Similar comments apply to daredevil. That trait you refer to? Nerfed to pretty much uselessness, and even when it wasn't, it had the same scaling issue as the willbender stuff above. Unless you really invest everything into self-sustain such as running dual staff with defensive utilities (but that's going to be reflective of that specific build, not the specialisation as a whole) you're inevitably going to run out of dodges and evades and then you're going to suffer.

Speaking from experience in both cases here.

Sure, you can MAKE higher-durability builds out of them, but the same is true of soulbeast and holo (prot holo anyone?) and if you took the same approach with the likes of scrapper and spellbreaker you could get something even tougher. At the specialisation design level, they're not bruisers. They're high-mobility DPS. 

[Kodama.6453]

17 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

As you acknowledge, the Shattered Aegis interaction was nerfed, so we're basically in a position where procs from F2 or F3 scale according to the number of enemies... but only at the same rate as the number of attacks increase, and that only if the number of enemies are clumped and there are less of them than the cap on how many can be hit at once (3 or 5 for most skills). If the number is greater than that, or some of the enemies are ranged, the incoming damage outscales the willbender's sustain. And eventually, your F2 and F3 are going to run out. You can't just dive into a pile of enemies unless you can expect to burst them down in fifteen seconds 

Now tell me: How is this different from scrapper, which you acknowledged to be a bruiser elite spec?

Scrapper produces barrier by dealing damage to enemies. But it is also limited in that regard by the target cap of it's damaging abilities, as well as if enemies are ranged (most scrapper builds deal the majority of their damage in close combat). If the zerg of enemies you face gets big enough, then their damage will outscale the scrapper's sustain and he will die.

It is the exact same thing. Their defensive tools scale with the number of enemies they face up to a cap, but beyond that cap it doesn't scale anymore and the enemy damage will outscale their sustain.

Their F2 and F3 are running out? First of all, the F1 can also provide sustain. There is a trait that makes you heal whenever your willbender flames hit an enemy. F1 also creates these flames.

Second, they will not run out so easily if you properly chain them instead of using all of them at the same time. You can keep up willbender flames for a very long times, which can sustain you.

[Carnifex.3275]

7 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

DISCLAIMER: TL, DR can be found at the very end.

How I see it, elite specs can be roughly seperated into 3 different categories: dps, support and bruiser

Dps specs, as the name basically already says, primarily have mechanics, skills and traits which will increase the damage they deal. Damage is their primary function in the game, examples of elite specs for this category are holosmith, deadeye, soulbeast.

Support elite specs focus on healing/barrier, boon share and generally empowering their allies. Examples of this category are druid, firebrand, specter.

Bruiser elite specs have tools that enhance their personal survival, especially in outnumbered situations. They also specialise in CC output/exploit and oftenly also mobility. Examples of bruiser elite specs are scrapper, spellbreaker, willbender.

Of course, many elite specs don't solely fall into one category. Many are mixing some of these aspects to some extend, but they will usually still get delegated to associate with one of these sub categories primarily. For example, firebrand has mechanics which makes it function as a support and dps. But as latest balance changes have shown, they will put their primary power in their support capabilities and the dps role is more of an off role for this elite spec.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Now why is this relevant.

Willbender, as mentioned above, is a member of the bruiser elite spec sub category. Elite specs of this type usually struggle to find a viable role in high end PvE content, because their upsides (personal defense, CC, mobility) are not really favoured in that environment.

Your survival is ensured by the support elite specs, which will protect the group with their heals/barriers. Having the highest CC capabilties in the game is oftenly not needed, since the base CC abilities the entire group provides is usually already sufficient to deal with the break bars of enemies. And high end PvE content also tends to stack on top of the boss, so most of the time, high mobility is not oftenly needed. On top of that, most bruiser specs also just have personal mobility and most of the time don't increase the mobility of their team (scrapper with their superspeed share being an exception).

Basically the only 2 roles which are really important for PvE end content are support and dps.

The only way bruiser elite specs sometimes find use is if they get access to important boons while still being able to bring acceptable dps. The 2 big boons, alacrity and quickness, can't be shared both by the same class. So usually one of these boons will get provided by the (healing) support, while the other boon needs to get covered by someone dealing dps.

So for example, scrapper can find a use case as a dps that provides quickness for the team. It is still not as strong as a firebrand dealing damage and providing quickness, but it is usable and it also doesn't have to compete with an elite spec of it's own class (holosmith deals more damage, but doesn't have access to quickness, which rules out the usage of that elite spec).

But if your bruiser elite spec doesn't have access to either quickness or alacrity, then you will have a pretty hard time to justify it in high end PvE, since you will usually have another elite spec on your class which does the needed job better.

Willbender does have access to group alacrity. But this still means that it will just and only find use cases in this small niche of being an alacrity providing dps. And in this niche, it still has to compete with builds like condition alacrity mechanist, condition alacrity renegade, condition alacrity specter...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

TL, DR

Willbender is supposed to be a bruiser spec, whose primary strengths are personal survival, CC and mobility. None of these strengths are really sought after in high end PvE, which is also the reason why stuff like spellbreaker suffers in that game mode. Being a bruiser elite spec in PvE usually sucks (with some exceptions).

Ok so replying only to what you said in TL, DR: you're saying basically some specs should be useless in PvE and we have to face the fact that they're PvP/WvW only? Then my question is.. why nerf Firebrand? Since it's the only spec in high end PvE and it has now fallen behind other classes (in terms of DPS). Healing/quick is alright. I guess people really hated so much on FBs that anet had to do something. I for example think every class should have atleast 1 high-end PvE DPS build + atleast 1 more extra build that's quick and/or alac and/or heal. FB is abit different now. It's just 1 quick 1 heal builds. Sure you can continue playing cFB but you won't reach the end game "standard" so to speak.

[Kodama.6453]

24 minutes ago, Dave.6819 said:

Ok so replying only to what you said in TL, DR: you're saying basically some specs should be useless in PvE and we have to face the fact that they're PvP/WvW only? Then my question is.. why nerf Firebrand? Since it's the only spec in high end PvE and it has now fallen behind other classes (in terms of DPS). Healing/quick is alright. I guess people really hated so much on FBs that anet had to do something. I for example think every class should have atleast 1 high-end PvE DPS build + atleast 1 more extra build that's quick and/or alac and/or heal. FB is abit different now. It's just 1 quick 1 heal builds. Sure you can continue playing cFB but you won't reach the end game "standard" so to speak.

If a firebrand would bring the same level of dps to the table as a dps focused elite spec like deadeye, for example, then why would anyone ever play these dps specs at all?

Firebrand has inherent support qualities which you can't opt out of, because of the tome of courage and tome of resolve. If, for some reason, emergency heal is needed, you have it baked in while you literally invested 0 to get it. Or you can share powerful boons like aegis and stability with the group, just because you slotted in firebrand and nothing else was needed to get it.

If you want every elite spec to be able to reach the same potential of PvE end game dps, then major reworks for the big majority of elite specs would be needed to even the playing field. Because what a firebrand inherently offers to a group is very different from what a reaper provides.

[Massimoni.9453]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

while you literally invested 0 to get it

Just because it is there doesn't make it "free". That'd be the case if you could use it without any disadvantages. You don't have to slot it as its a by-product of your elite spec, that is right, but you can't ignore the following:

Going into tomes except F1 shortly, greatly reduces your utility with moderate loss of damage as you can maybe get 1-2 skills off and going into tomes for more than a few seconds rips your DPS apart, not even talking about very low healing and boon duration output thanks to not stats dedicated here. Example: I'm playing cFB in my fractal group, sure thing I can carry the ice shard mechanic on Snowblind with F3 tomes' skill 3 but guess where my DPS sits then: Below the support tempest -> very OP utility. Either way tome F2 and especially F3 will both go on reasonably long cooldowns after that, denying their utility for big chunks of the usual fights. How does this really differ from the usual approach of changing skillbar skills from damage to utility? Sure one is a tiny bit longer commitment, but those classes usually outperform cFB from the get-go. Firebrand never had OP DPS, so nerfing this aspect by alot and therefore putting it below power specs doesn't sit right with me. cWB will probably be trash tier now as it took exactly the same unreasonable hit, yet trades tome utility (which the majority of people use as a reason for this hardcore nerf) for a bit more CC... There are alot of classes that have very unique and great utility, many with smaller commitments than firebrand, yet firebrand is the only class people seem to complain about, completely ignoring how niche it actually is with healers basically carrying everything anyways.

[Kodama.6453]

11 minutes ago, Massimoni.9453 said:

Just because it is there doesn't make it "free". That'd be the case if you could use it without any disadvantages. You don't have to slot it as its a by-product of your elite spec, that is right, but you can't ignore the following:

Going into tomes except F1 shortly, greatly reduces your utility with moderate loss of damage as you can maybe get 1-2 skills off and going into tomes for more than a few seconds rips your DPS apart, not even talking about very low healing and boon duration output thanks to not stats dedicated here. Example: I'm playing cFB in my fractal group, sure thing I can carry the ice shard mechanic on Snowblind with F3 tomes' skill 3 but guess where my DPS sits then: Below the support tempest -> very OP utility. Either way tome F2 and especially F3 will both go on reasonably long cooldowns after that, denying their utility for big chunks of the usual fights. How does this really differ from the usual approach of changing skillbar skills from damage to utility? Sure one is a tiny bit longer commitment, but those classes usually outperform cFB from the get-go. Firebrand never had OP DPS, so nerfing this aspect by alot and therefore putting it below power specs doesn't sit right with me. cWB will probably be trash tier now as it took exactly the same unreasonable hit, yet trades tome utility (which the majority of people use as a reason for this hardcore nerf) for a bit more CC... There are alot of classes that have very unique and great utility, many with smaller commitments than firebrand, yet firebrand is the only class people seem to complain about, completely ignoring how niche it actually is with healers basically carrying everything anyways.

Having the option to protect your team with aegis or stability is always a strength, even if the boon durations are low. These 2 boons are best used shortly before an incoming attack you want to prevent, anyway.

Also you competely ignore the concept of power budget here. If we give firebrand the same damage potential as a dps spec like holosmith, then how is that fair in any capacity? So firebrand should be allowed to be a top performing support AND a top performing dps.

Meanwhile the holosmith literally brings NOTHING to the table except dps. Then you will have holosmiths complaining that they want their support capabilities buffed, so they can start supporting on the same level as firebrand. And they would demand that rightfully. Because why is firebrand allowed to excel at both these roles, while holosmith can do nothing but damage?

Having a strength in one aspect of the game takes some of your power budget. A class like firebrand with great support abilities should pay somewhere else for them. And an elite spec which does nothing but damage (and therefore has it's entire power budget located there) should outperform a class which has other strengths like support.

[Massimoni.9453]

16 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

AND a top performing dps

Who even asked for that? I don't see people wanting it to be the highest DPS in the game. We just want it to not be dogshit.

 

16 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

If we give firebrand the same damage potential as a dps spec like holosmith, then how is that fair in any capacity?

Well, holosmith is power, so it already got a big advantage there. Also holo can - for example - bring very high DPS uptime on specific bosses due to the way its heal skill works and has far more ranged DPS potential than firebrand. There are certainly even more aspects to this, I am just pretty unfamiliar with holo.

I absolutely despise that people want firebrand to be brought down below so many other specs just because of the theoretical utility it provides. When I play it as DPS, do you actually think I will dip into my support tomes regularly? Hell no, I wanna see reasonably big numbers, which they were pre patch. If those disappear my firebrand and those of so many others will become untouched. However I'd really advise you to go and look for DPS firebrands in groups. Personally I RARELY see them, even in fractals outside of CM groups they largely disappeared. Its usually just stacks of cVirtuoso, cMechs, any condi necro variant and sometimes even specters as those just perform better in their role as DPS, cuz the absolute majority of fights laugh at guard utility as its just NOT NEEDED but DPS nerfs affect it everywhere so great balance here.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Massimoni.9453

[Carnifex.3275]

6 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

If a firebrand would bring the same level of dps to the table as a dps focused elite spec like deadeye, for example, then why would anyone ever play these dps specs at all?

Firebrand has inherent support qualities which you can't opt out of, because of the tome of courage and tome of resolve. If, for some reason, emergency heal is needed, you have it baked in while you literally invested 0 to get it. Or you can share powerful boons like aegis and stability with the group, just because you slotted in firebrand and nothing else was needed to get it.

If you want every elite spec to be able to reach the same potential of PvE end game dps, then major reworks for the big majority of elite specs would be needed to even the playing field. Because what a firebrand inherently offers to a group is very different from what a reaper provides.

Again.. u r talking about FB. I'm saying that why did WB had to also go down because of something that was probably targetted at FB? Change FB traits if neccessary but leave other specs alone. Now the Amplified Wrath nerf can be felt throughout every spec and it was enough to kill cWB in PvE. I agree that FB is very versatile, so ok nerf it leave it purely a HFB/qFB spec for all i care, but nerf it in a way that it won't touch other specs.

There is a clear distinction between FB, DH, Guard, WB. Every1 seems to only be aware of FB and hates it for how "good" it is. This post is about Willbender in PvE endgame and not really FB. I believe FB can be toned down if every1 is so hateful towards them. But toned down in a way that doesnt touch WB.

Edited July 5, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Nephalem.8921]

On 7/5/2022 at 5:51 AM, Dave.6819 said:

Sun spirit + amplified wrath (5% nerf)  dropped cwb to 30-32k range (ofcz banners, spotter etc etc, but those hurt everyone). And yes, FB is fine. But that's the issue. Everything is about FB. It does quick, heal and also DPS (though DPS also dropped alot more than other classes). It's just a bandwagon/circlejerk thing with guards.. every1 thinks they're OP so they must be OP. Well no they arent. HFB is the only spec that is OP. qFB is alright, cFB is mediocre now and cWB is dead. See the issue here? Basically we have 4 specs and 3 of them are useless now. Before patch cWB wasnt useless, now it's just another guardian spec that has to go to the bin. I already see in groups how they advertise themselves. They're specifically asking for cvirtu/slb/mech dps players.

When it comes to DPS i'd say cVirtu, mech is in a very good spot. I think most of the players dont bother waiting.. whenever something becomes OP they just switch to it and enjoy. So i guess instead of hoping for guard to get fixed i'll just switch to mecha and enjoy my LI 37k dps. 🤦‍♂️ Alt friendly game became alt neccessary game.

there is still no alternative to qfb in the new cm strikes because of stability monopoly. and they do the 2nd highest quickness dps on top of it.

quickness mesmer is trash now. nerfing an additive mod that only worked on burning from 15% to 10% is not a 5% nerf. mech is not in a very good spot. the benchmarks are still without confusion and mech brings a ton of it. why does power mech do more dps than holo with a 90% aa rotation? why does power mech do more dmg than 90% of the builds in the game with an almost only aa rotation to begin with?

fb is like 800dps behind cvirtuoso btw. vindicator is 20% behind. vindicator is below quickness harb on small.  the nerf hit willbender and dh far harder than fb. not sure where willbender sits currently but it might require buffs like 80% of the nerfed specs currently. its not as useless as vindicator or reaper though.

fb is so mandatory in a lot of encounters that you almost cant replace it. the new strike cms are balanced around its stability which is just stupid af.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[Carnifex.3275]

10 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

there is still no alternative to qfb in the new cm strikes because of stability monopoly. and they do the 2nd highest quickness dps on top of it.

quickness mesmer is trash now. nerfing an additive mod that only worked on burning from 15% to 10% is not a 5% nerf. mech is not in a very good spot. the benchmarks are still without confusion and mech brings a ton of it. why does power mech do more dps than holo with a 90% aa rotation? why does power mech do more dmg than 90% of the builds in the game with an almost only aa rotation to begin with?

fb is like 800dps behind cvirtuoso btw. vindicator is 20% behind. on massive hitbox. vindicator is below quickness harb on small.  the nerf hit willbender and dh far harder than fb. not sure where willbender sits currently but it might require buffs like 80% of the nerfed specs currently. its not as useless as vindicator or reaper though.

fb is so mandatory in a lot of encounters that you almost cant replace it. the new strike cms are balanced around its stability which is just stupid af.

Well that's the whole point of my post. FB is ok to get nerfed but nerf it in a way that it doesnt touch other specs. Nerf cooldowns on tomes, nerf quickness duration so they need to slot more ritualist gear for boon duration and that way they lose dps and so on. Im sure there are multiple quite easy ways to nerf quickness on fb cuz ppl seem to be mad mostly about quickness+dps. So just cut down quickness duration but un-nerf other changes. Make it so that if you wanna play qFB u have to invest more into something and give up dps. But just to go to Radiance core trait and nerf it in such a lazy way like anet did... that was just terrible. I cant think of a worse way.
 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Dave.6819

[otto.5684]

On 7/5/2022 at 9:19 AM, Kodama.6453 said:

If a firebrand would bring the same level of dps to the table as a dps focused elite spec like deadeye, for example, then why would anyone ever play these dps specs at all?

Firebrand has inherent support qualities which you can't opt out of, because of the tome of courage and tome of resolve. If, for some reason, emergency heal is needed, you have it baked in while you literally invested 0 to get it. Or you can share powerful boons like aegis and stability with the group, just because you slotted in firebrand and nothing else was needed to get it.

If you want every elite spec to be able to reach the same potential of PvE end game dps, then major reworks for the big majority of elite specs would be needed to even the playing field. Because what a firebrand inherently offers to a group is very different from what a reaper provides.

This absolutely incorrect. The dps of a specific elite (or any dps) is not balanced by the potentially support the elite can provide, but the support the dps actually provides. Example, FB dps only support is providing a bit of protection. Anything else comes at the cost of dps, as you have to drop damage utilities and/or traits for support ones. So if FB dps does less damage than similar condi builds, why would anyone ever play it? Ot is either support or none.

 

ONLY utility that does not cost damage should be considered when balancing a damage build. To be more specific, damage ramp-up, range, ability to stay on target and survivability factor in as well.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 7/5/2022 at 7:21 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

Now tell me: How is this different from scrapper, which you acknowledged to be a bruiser elite spec?

Scrapper produces barrier by dealing damage to enemies. But it is also limited in that regard by the target cap of it's damaging abilities, as well as if enemies are ranged (most scrapper builds deal the majority of their damage in close combat). If the zerg of enemies you face gets big enough, then their damage will outscale the scrapper's sustain and he will die.

It is the exact same thing. Their defensive tools scale with the number of enemies they face up to a cap, but beyond that cap it doesn't scale anymore and the enemy damage will outscale their sustain.

Their F2 and F3 are running out? First of all, the F1 can also provide sustain. There is a trait that makes you heal whenever your willbender flames hit an enemy. F1 also creates these flames.

Second, they will not run out so easily if you properly chain them instead of using all of them at the same time. You can keep up willbender flames for a very long times, which can sustain you.

Because scrapper has a much better chance of actually surviving diving right into the middle of a pile of enemies, between having a wide range of blocks, evades, CCs, generally good access to healing, and other means of mitigating damage.

This isn't a binary proposition, since builds can vary. Trailblazer gear can make pretty much any DPS build survivable, for instance. But to give an anecdote... the other day, I ran into a daredevil in 2v2. I was playing a condi specter variant (not the meta build, but similar enough in how it operates), my ally was a core support guardian. The DD's ally was a reaper.

First two games, we focused on the reaper, and generally by the time the reaper was down, the DD was down as well. I don't even know how. I was mostly throwing sceptre projectiles with little or no cleave, my ally had cleave but support-level damage. My best guess is that because I was throwing sceptre projectiles at my ally regularly, their AoE attacks had my venom attached, and the DD was dying to that.

Bruiser my foot.

It wasn't that the DD was a bad player - the third time, we decided that because he seemed to be fragile, we'd try focusing him to make it 2v1 earlier. That was the one game we lost. Guy danced around us while the reaper freecast, and while we did actually get the reaper down and dead, we were both pretty depleted at the time, the DD was near full health, and we couldn't get enough damage on him to bring him down while he was able to finish us both off by outmanoeuvring us.

But when we went back to focusing on the reaper, he once again died to the cleave that a support guardian and a a sceptre spectre put out, because he needed to get in close to have an impact and when he did, he apparently had nothing to protect him from the random cleave of a healer and a single-target-focused condition build.

Now, I know scrapper isn't doing so great in sPvP right now, but can you really see a situation where a decently played scrapper is going to die from the random cleave coming from that combination? I certainly can't. When scrapper is viable, it's because they're tough. They're designed to be able to charge onto the point on the teamfight and be able to survive anything short of a coordinated and sustained assault from multiple enemies. In exchange for this toughness, scrapper usually has less mobility than the ganker-style professions.

Daredevil? Willbender? Shiro herald? Tend to be pretty close to "make one mistake and you die" builds. They have the mobility and damage that scrapper doesn't have, since their role is to get in, take someone out with massive damage, and get out before they can take a lot of damage themselves. Characters of these builds that take too much cleave in a teamfight, or that get focused by the enemy team, tend to meet the dirt pretty quickly.

What it basically boils down to is that when push comes to shove, scrapper (and holosmith, to an extent) can often stand in the fire and be fine (although there are limits, of course, and the EoD nerf was not justified by balance concerns). However, they need to be able to do this, because their mobility is only around average. The likes of daredevil and willbender, on the other hand, rely on their mobility, because they don't have the durability to just stand there and take it.

Now, which of those setups is going to be more useful in a farming situation, or when fighting a boss that's throwing out significant damage? The scrapper who's just sitting in the middle of the group taking it on the chin because it has the durability to do that is able to dish out sustained DPS. If you have to frantically dodge around to avoid attacks and stay out of circles, though, your DPS is going to drop (even things like daredevil which have the potential to deal damage through dodging are still likely to have problems due to having to choose between dodging to survive and dodging to deal damage). My own experience with daredevil and scrapper pre-EoD was certainly that, when using gear of equivalent glass levels, the scrapper was able to survive a LOT more, with less effort on my part, than the daredevil. Daredevil, even with the heal-on-damage trait, generally felt like a "kill them before they kill you" build against anything that presented a credible threat at all.

They are absolutely different categories. Bruisers are builds that, while not full bunkers, can nevertheless perform the bunker role for a while as long as they don't bite off more than they can chew, while also doing enough damage back that they represent a credible threat. Gankers, +1ers, decappers, whatever you want to call them - they rely on mobility, surprise, and dealing enough damage when they get that surprise that they've essentially won the battle before the enemy can react, because they can't afford for the battle to turn into one of attrition. And while disengaging is a useful capability in competitive, in PvE running away from a fight generally means you're not doing damage, may even be at risk of resetting the fight, and likely will still be subject to undodgeable ranged attacks that a scrapper or holosmith might be able to just tank. While I'm not saying mobility is completely useless in PvE, I'd certainly say it represents significantly less of a power budget than being able to sit there and tank whatever comes.

 

On 7/6/2022 at 1:12 AM, Kodama.6453 said:

Meanwhile the holosmith literally brings NOTHING to the table except dps. Then you will have holosmiths complaining that they want their support capabilities buffed, so they can start supporting on the same level as firebrand. And they would demand that rightfully. Because why is firebrand allowed to excel at both these roles, while holosmith can do nothing but damage?

 

Correction: The (previously) meta holosmith build brings little to the table except DPS (there are a few blocks, a fair mount of CCs, a fair amount of self-healing, etc etc). But a pure condi DPS pretty much only has F2 and F3, which it generally doesn't want to pull out unless it's an emergency due to the sharp loss in personal DPS when they do so. It's a useful ability to have, to be fair, but cFB is currently benching at 36k, about 10% less than the forerunners. I think that's a fair trade for what are generally "oh kitten" buttons.

Now, you can get more utility by trading in other utility skills to replace the pure DPS skills, but each time you do that, it comes at a DPS loss... and most of the skills you'd take for that are coming from core guardian anyway. Now, if you were willing to trade out some of the DPS skills on holosmith, what can you do? You can projectile block with Photon Wall (and particle accelerator is still 70% of a Surprise Shot), and you can take pressure off the healers with Hardlight Arena. You've also got access to all of the utility of core Engineer if you're willing to trade off a bit of DPS. That's not as good as what guardian has to offer? Well, there's the real problem. Too much of core engineer's stuff has been left to rot so that there just isn't a good range of utility to choose from to adapt to different circumstances the way that other professions like guardian, revenant, and mesmer often can. That, and pure DPS holosmith probably does deserve to bench at somewhere closer to 40k than 36k.

[Nephalem.8921]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Because scrapper has a much better chance of actually surviving diving right into the middle of a pile of enemies, between having a wide range of blocks, evades, CCs, generally good access to healing, and other means of mitigating damage.

This isn't a binary proposition, since builds can vary. Trailblazer gear can make pretty much any DPS build survivable, for instance. But to give an anecdote... the other day, I ran into a daredevil in 2v2. I was playing a condi specter variant (not the meta build, but similar enough in how it operates), my ally was a core support guardian. The DD's ally was a reaper.

First two games, we focused on the reaper, and generally by the time the reaper was down, the DD was down as well. I don't even know how. I was mostly throwing sceptre projectiles with little or no cleave, my ally had cleave but support-level damage. My best guess is that because I was throwing sceptre projectiles at my ally regularly, their AoE attacks had my venom attached, and the DD was dying to that.

Bruiser my foot.

It wasn't that the DD was a bad player - the third time, we decided that because he seemed to be fragile, we'd try focusing him to make it 2v1 earlier. That was the one game we lost. Guy danced around us while the reaper freecast, and while we did actually get the reaper down and dead, we were both pretty depleted at the time, the DD was near full health, and we couldn't get enough damage on him to bring him down while he was able to finish us both off by outmanoeuvring us.

But when we went back to focusing on the reaper, he once again died to the cleave that a support guardian and a a sceptre spectre put out, because he needed to get in close to have an impact and when he did, he apparently had nothing to protect him from the random cleave of a healer and a single-target-focused condition build.

Now, I know scrapper isn't doing so great in sPvP right now, but can you really see a situation where a decently played scrapper is going to die from the random cleave coming from that combination? I certainly can't. When scrapper is viable, it's because they're tough. They're designed to be able to charge onto the point on the teamfight and be able to survive anything short of a coordinated and sustained assault from multiple enemies. In exchange for this toughness, scrapper usually has less mobility than the ganker-style professions.

Daredevil? Willbender? Shiro herald? Tend to be pretty close to "make one mistake and you die" builds. They have the mobility and damage that scrapper doesn't have, since their role is to get in, take someone out with massive damage, and get out before they can take a lot of damage themselves. Characters of these builds that take too much cleave in a teamfight, or that get focused by the enemy team, tend to meet the dirt pretty quickly.

What it basically boils down to is that when push comes to shove, scrapper (and holosmith, to an extent) can often stand in the fire and be fine (although there are limits, of course, and the EoD nerf was not justified by balance concerns). However, they need to be able to do this, because their mobility is only around average. The likes of daredevil and willbender, on the other hand, rely on their mobility, because they don't have the durability to just stand there and take it.

Now, which of those setups is going to be more useful in a farming situation, or when fighting a boss that's throwing out significant damage? The scrapper who's just sitting in the middle of the group taking it on the chin because it has the durability to do that is able to dish out sustained DPS. If you have to frantically dodge around to avoid attacks and stay out of circles, though, your DPS is going to drop (even things like daredevil which have the potential to deal damage through dodging are still likely to have problems due to having to choose between dodging to survive and dodging to deal damage). My own experience with daredevil and scrapper pre-EoD was certainly that, when using gear of equivalent glass levels, the scrapper was able to survive a LOT more, with less effort on my part, than the daredevil. Daredevil, even with the heal-on-damage trait, generally felt like a "kill them before they kill you" build against anything that presented a credible threat at all.

They are absolutely different categories. Bruisers are builds that, while not full bunkers, can nevertheless perform the bunker role for a while as long as they don't bite off more than they can chew, while also doing enough damage back that they represent a credible threat. Gankers, +1ers, decappers, whatever you want to call them - they rely on mobility, surprise, and dealing enough damage when they get that surprise that they've essentially won the battle before the enemy can react, because they can't afford for the battle to turn into one of attrition. And while disengaging is a useful capability in competitive, in PvE running away from a fight generally means you're not doing damage, may even be at risk of resetting the fight, and likely will still be subject to undodgeable ranged attacks that a scrapper or holosmith might be able to just tank. While I'm not saying mobility is completely useless in PvE, I'd certainly say it represents significantly less of a power budget than being able to sit there and tank whatever comes.

 

Correction: The (previously) meta holosmith build brings little to the table except DPS (there are a few blocks, a fair mount of CCs, a fair amount of self-healing, etc etc). But a pure condi DPS pretty much only has F2 and F3, which it generally doesn't want to pull out unless it's an emergency due to the sharp loss in personal DPS when they do so. It's a useful ability to have, to be fair, but cFB is currently benching at 36k, about 10% less than the forerunners. I think that's a fair trade for what are generally "oh kitten" buttons.

Now, you can get more utility by trading in other utility skills to replace the pure DPS skills, but each time you do that, it comes at a DPS loss... and most of the skills you'd take for that are coming from core guardian anyway. Now, if you were willing to trade out some of the DPS skills on holosmith, what can you do? You can projectile block with Photon Wall (and particle accelerator is still 70% of a Surprise Shot), and you can take pressure off the healers with Hardlight Arena. You've also got access to all of the utility of core Engineer if you're willing to trade off a bit of DPS. That's not as good as what guardian has to offer? Well, there's the real problem. Too much of core engineer's stuff has been left to rot so that there just isn't a good range of utility to choose from to adapt to different circumstances the way that other professions like guardian, revenant, and mesmer often can. That, and pure DPS holosmith probably does deserve to bench at somewhere closer to 40k than 36k.

cvirt is benching 36.9k thats not a 10% difference. slb is 37k too. only bladesworn does 39k on a stationary golem and is as relevant as the old rifle DE bench. that build has so many downsides, it better does high dps to compensate.

harb is 38.6k or something. 40sec+ ramp up though unlike cfb. you are wrong about the support holo provides. hardlight arena? thats just prot and fb has a better way to apply that too without any cost. use your heal mantra.

photon wall has 35sec cd and lasts 3 seconds.wall of reflection lasts 4 ttimes as long and has 24sec cd. a bit better? "all of the utility of core engi" means nothing in instanced pve except for some cc skills or blind skills.

rev cant adapt easily either. you want stab? better take these 4 other useless utilities with you. most rev utilities are pvp only. holosmith doesnt have a 36k bench anymore. there was a balance patch. its closer to 33k-34k now below rifle mech.

scrapper has low sustain now. 5% barrier conversion. guardian litany of wrath heals more and all guardian specs do more dps than scrapper aswell.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[draxynnic.3719]

21 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

cvirt is benching 36.9k thats not a 10% difference. slb is 37k too. only bladesworn does 39k on a stationary golem and is as relevant as the old rifle DE bench. that build has so many downsides, it better does high dps to compensate.

harb is 38.6k or something. 40sec+ ramp up though unlike cfb. you are wrong about the support holo provides. hardlight arena? thats just prot and fb has a better way to apply that too without any cost. use your heal mantra.

photon wall has 35sec cd and lasts 3 seconds.wall of reflection lasts 4 ttimes as long and has 24sec cd. a bit better? "all of the utility of core engi" means nothing in instanced pve except for some cc skills or blind skills.

rev cant adapt easily either. you want stab? better take these 4 other useless utilities with you. most rev utilities are pvp only. holosmith doesnt have a 36k bench anymore. there was a balance patch. its closer to 33k-34k now below rifle mech.

scrapper has low sustain now. 5% barrier conversion. dh litany of wrath heals more and dh does more dps than scrapper aswell.

Condi spectre also does 39k, with a similar "you need to have allies" requirement to firebrand. And we still have a bunch of benchmarks that haven't been done. Broadly speaking, though, 40k does seem to be the approximate target for what a 'pure DPS' spec is supposed to have. Which raises the question of just how much of a DPS loss is justified in exchange for two emergency buttons that you generally don't want to press in a smooth run.

As for the rest, you're completely missing the point I was making here:

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

That's not as good as what guardian has to offer? Well, there's the real problem. Too much of core engineer's stuff has been left to rot so that there just isn't a good range of utility to choose from to adapt to different circumstances the way that other professions like guardian, revenant, and mesmer often can. 

Fix engineer's many, many problems, and then we'll have a better idea of where things will actually sit, rather than comparing a profession that actually works to one that has a broken leg and one hand tied behind its back. It's indicative of engineer's real problems that the only skills the mechanist builds are using are signets, kits and Healing Turret - ArenaNet sidestepped having to fix pretty much every other utility group by just replacing them with signets.