New meta ?

[Law D Dorma.9362]

so, after the november update patch, what do you thinks is gonna be the new meta ? or is it still mech and firebrand ? 

[Beddo.1907]

I doubt there will be any large meta change this year.
Mech got difficulty increase so nothing too big and Firebrand should still so it's job and just needs some relearning.

For meta to change drastically we would need WAY more buffs to multiple builds per class.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

Kinda depends on what you define as meta. For solid reliable raid/strike/fractal clears id say that FB is out of the meta. 

 

HAM/druid are best healers by far atm. Quick Herald looks like the best Qdps since they get some big buffs. Virtuoso (condi and power) and Pmech will be the meta for dps. 

For speedclears the dps will most likely be cata again. Its expected to deal up to 45k dps in perfect execution. 

 

[Dadnir.5038]

For firebrand, it will likely lose some damage output but it's really it's ability to share aegis/stab on top of quickness that make it "meta". So, I doubt that it will lose it's appeal.

For mechanist, it's the ease to play that make it meta so... well... It's not gonna change...

It might have an impact on high end team but, for most pug teams, I don't see why they would change their habit.

[Hallow.7368]

4 hours ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Kinda depends on what you define as meta. For solid reliable raid/strike/fractal clears id say that FB is out of the meta. 

 

HAM/druid are best healers by far atm. Quick Herald looks like the best Qdps since they get some big buffs. Virtuoso (condi and power) and Pmech will be the meta for dps. 

For speedclears the dps will most likely be cata again. Its expected to deal up to 45k dps in perfect execution. 

 

hard doubt

hqh is already a very viable replacement for hfb in most content IF fb comes out undertuned after it's rework that will replace it. I highly doubt that fb will be replaced in fractals by any other healer though it's high access to aegis and stab is way too good for that content.

hfb actually *should* get better with this rework because it'll let them continually dip into their f2 and f3 for healing and utility as where right now actual hfb isn't really that great since using stats that only benefit healing and boon application is mostly redundant since pretty much all of their healing is locked behind f2. the broken fb build that people are referring to as hfb is a hybrid cele build. it literally just does what a full healer fb does except it also has damage stats so it brings solid personal dps too and between aegis and the healing it has it provides more than enough healing than like 95% of fights will ever need. the tome rework specifically targets hybrid builds (including dpsfb's ability to provide benefits from it's f2 and f3 with no dps cost) hence the shared pages and splitting the absurdly broken gm trait that every single fb build currently uses.

so yea meta probably isn't changing at all, just what stat sets the fb is using.

[the krytan assassin.9235]

37 minutes ago, Hallow.7368 said:

I highly doubt that fb will be replaced in fractals by any other healer though it's high access to aegis and stab is way too good for that content.

Hmm true. there's a good chance FB will remain meta for fractals. However i'd argue it probably won't for strikes/raids since frequent access to aegis/stab tends to be less relevant. Because staxe is getting a big hit and alac untamed being to complicated for real encounters there aren't that many decent alac dps builds left. Ham and druid currently provide good quality and reliable healing, Alacrity and some extra utility. 

There are many decent quick dps builds currently. Bers, Herald, Harb, Cata, FB, scrapper. I dont know which will end up on top/most frequently used. Probably won't matter to much anyways. 

[Vidit.7108]

The PvE meta has been gravitating toward alacrity healers since EoD came out.

What I think the firebrand change has done, and i want to stress first we still don't know, is kill off celebrands and hurt quick dps firebrands. Qfb is probably situationally better than some of the other quickness dps options, especially in fractals. But that playing field might be more even. qfb taking a hit might make the drawbacks of some of the other alac healers worse. Looking at you tempest.

On the healer side, it's not super clear to me yet how close hqh (healing quickness herald) and hb will be. And there really isn't another quickness healer in PvE. Where stability is a concern it seems like HB probably still wins out most of the time. In fights where stability isn't a huge concern HB already had a run for it's money from HAM, but they sort of don't compete anyway.

For something else to be as good as firebrand or better they would have to actually buff the other supports. I've tried building out other quickness healers, like heal quick chronomancer, and their problems aren't going away because firebrand is nerfed. On the alac side there is no change, druid is pretty good, ham is mostly better, tempest has issues but can be fine in raids/strikes (don't know about cms). 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

42 minutes ago, Vidit.7108 said:

tempest has issues but can be fine in raids/strikes (don't know about cms). 

Tempest will probably get pushed out of the meta due the loss of water Trident heal (loses over 50% of its active ranged healing). Probably is still capable to fill in some niche solo heal roles incase the party is willing to change out of the 2 heal support 2 dps support 6 dps meta but for normal groups/encounters this is usually not the case. 

For standard dual heal setup HAM and druid will 100% outclass HAT. Ofcourse you'll still be able to clear all raids on HAT, but it definitely won't be meta. 

[Mell.4873]

22 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

The PvE meta has been gravitating toward alacrity healers since EoD came out.

What I think the firebrand change has done, and i want to stress first we still don't know, is kill off celebrands and hurt quick dps firebrands. Qfb is probably situationally better than some of the other quickness dps options, especially in fractals. But that playing field might be more even. qfb taking a hit might make the drawbacks of some of the other alac healers worse. Looking at you tempest.

On the healer side, it's not super clear to me yet how close hqh (healing quickness herald) and hb will be. And there really isn't another quickness healer in PvE. Where stability is a concern it seems like HB probably still wins out most of the time. In fights where stability isn't a huge concern HB already had a run for it's money from HAM, but they sort of don't compete anyway.

For something else to be as good as firebrand or better they would have to actually buff the other supports. I've tried building out other quickness healers, like heal quick chronomancer, and their problems aren't going away because firebrand is nerfed. On the alac side there is no change, druid is pretty good, ham is mostly better, tempest has issues but can be fine in raids/strikes (don't know about cms). 

Honestly it over all is a good change since there is room for other Classes since Healbrand was best in slot for healing and quickness (not in raids/strikes) for along time.

I love the fact now I can truly fill a slot with a Chronomancer Healer Alacrity or Quickness.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Literally what meta?

You'd think by now they'd split this sub into categories by mode but nope--we just get ambiguous 'meta', and assume PvE because it's the least dead thing in the game....

[ArjukKagrim.6049]

On 11/13/2022 at 7:02 PM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

For speedclears the dps will most likely be cata again. Its expected to deal up to 45k dps in perfect execution. 

 

For Cata the energy generation is nerfed with the change, with new energy generation it will be way lower. D/D deadeye is projected between 46k-47k in the new patch. Also Vindicator has a bug wich is ~45k on large hitbox and ~42k on small hitbox after patch.

[Kodama.6453]

11 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Literally what meta?

You'd think by now they'd split this sub into categories by mode but nope--we just get ambiguous 'meta', and assume PvE because it's the least dead thing in the game....

Well, the patch also has a very big focus on PvE this round, so I guess it is safe to assume that they mean the endgame PvE meta.

[Law D Dorma.9362]

On 11/15/2022 at 6:53 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

Well, the patch also has a very big focus on PvE this round, so I guess it is safe to assume that they mean the endgame PvE meta.

yes, open world, pve, events and story ( and yeah, I know that every class is good in story mode, but no the same " good " )

[Ruisenior.6342]

On 11/13/2022 at 7:47 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

For firebrand, it will likely lose some damage output but it's really it's ability to share aegis/stab on top of quickness that make it "meta". So, I doubt that it will lose it's appeal.

For mechanist, it's the ease to play that make it meta so... well... It's not gonna change...

It might have an impact on high end team but, for most pug teams, I don't see why they would change their habit.

    It seems that  you are completly lost and coments like yours make devs work more difficult, forcing them to destroy good spec designs to please people like you who do not even play the game.

    First you claim firebrand being a good aegis provider but at the same time you call mech to be really good too, but since 2022 Firebrand no longer provides aegis to allies via mantra of solace so they removed his primary aegis source on PVE (Still remains the same on WvW), and you call mechanist to be so good and that's why i asume you are talking of pve cause mechanist wvw is just a disaster XD.

   But hey dont worry soon those clases will be uterly trash and you will be happy claps.

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Ruisenior.6342

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, Ruisenior.6342 said:

    It seems that  you are completly lost and coments like yours make devs work more difficult, forcing them to destroy good spec designs to please people like you who do not even play the game.

    First you claim firebrand being a good aegis provider but at the same time you call mech to be really good too, but since 2022 Firebrand no longer provides aegis to allies via mantra of solace so they removed his primary aegis source on PVE (Still remains the same on WvW), and you call mechanist to be so good and that's why i asume you are talking of pve cause mechanist wvw is just a disaster XD.

   But hey dont worry soon those clases will be uterly trash and you will be happy claps.

 

It's a thread about the possible impact of a PvE patch on the meta... What does WvW come to do there? I mean, after 10 years of the game we should all be clear that a pet spec is bound to be a disaster in WvW, right? Or maybe you were under the delusion that, somehow it would be different for mechanist than it's been for ranger and mesmer since lauch of the game?

Also, guardian as a whole is the very best spec at providing aegis and stability, there is no denying it.

Fact is that the appeal of guardian (mostly quickbrand) in PvE isn't it's dps since it's already mediocre and bested by many other quickspec. The thing that set FB apart is it's ability to provide aegis and stability.

[Joxer.6024]

On 11/14/2022 at 4:02 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

. Virtuoso (condi and power) and Pmech will be the meta for dps. 

. 

 

Am hoping some Holo as well as i love the class, so much more engaging than just pew pew.!!

[Ruisenior.6342]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

It's a thread about the possible impact of a PvE patch on the meta... What does WvW come to do there? I mean, after 10 years of the game we should all be clear that a pet spec is bound to be a disaster in WvW, right? Or maybe you were under the delusion that, somehow it would be different for mechanist than it's been for ranger and mesmer since lauch of the game?

Also, guardian as a whole is the very best spec at providing aegis and stability, there is no denying it.

Fact is that the appeal of guardian (mostly quickbrand) in PvE isn't it's dps since it's already mediocre and bested by many other quickspec. The thing that set FB apart is it's ability to provide aegis and stability.

What i was saying is that you were missuninforming on your last post calling stuff like guardian being a good aegis group provider, which it isnt anymore since eod launch.

That shows how much you play this game devs should take your voice into account.

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

1 hour ago, Ruisenior.6342 said:

What i was saying is that you were missuninforming on your last post calling stuff like guardian being a good aegis group provider, which it isnt anymore since eod launch.

That shows how much you play this game devs should take your voice into account.

Hmmm it wasn't just aegis that wasn't mentioned earlier. 

Guardian does have the best access to aegis AND stability and will continue to do so. I also doubt guardian will lose it's appeal.

[Dadnir.5038]

10 hours ago, Ruisenior.6342 said:

What i was saying is that you were missuninforming on your last post calling stuff like guardian being a good aegis group provider, which it isnt anymore since eod launch.

That shows how much you play this game devs should take your voice into account.

Guardian isn't good at providing aegis? Which other profession is better at it than guardian exactly? Mace and shield both have skills that provide the boon, "Advance!" offer group aegis on a relatively short CD, you got a core trait to grant allies aegis went you block an attack, core's virtue of courage's active grant aegis to your allies, DH's Shield of courage do it as well without forgetting the occasional fragment of faith, Tome of courage's epilogue grant aegis.

Apart from willbender, any of the guardian's spec can have 5-6 unique source of aegis for it's allies.

And like Zerotheruler said, you're ignoring it but I'm also pointing out the dominance of guardian in sharing stability. And stability is very important in all gamemodes. In PvP it can make the difference between life and death, in WvW that's what prevent your zerg from being uterly destroyed and in PvE that's what allow your group to focus on dealing damage instead of being tossed around by the mechanics (Yes you can do without but it's harder).

[draxynnic.3719]

There's two aspects to this discussion, I think: Fractals, and non-fractals.

 

Why?

I think one aspect that people ignore when they think fractal popularity is a yardstack for power is that in fractals, convenience is often a very big deal. Playing a build in tier 4s requires investing in agony resistance infusions and the slots to put them in. Even once you do have the resources for multiple builds, you're a lot less likely to swap characters because unless you've invested shared inventory slots into fractal potions, changing characters also requires moving them around.

This is likely a big push for making firebrand more popular in fractals than in other endgame content. You can have one set of Viper's gear with Firebrand runes and do pretty well either as quickdps or straight dps with a few trait and utility changes. With a second set you can be a healer as well, putting yourself in a position where you can fill any role apart from alac with one character and only two gearsets. To further inflate firebrand numbers, due to the low performance of DH and WB there's no point to switching to either of those for DPS, so it looked like firebrand was really popular when it was more that guardians were always going to be firebrands by default, when in a strike or raid, a guardian player who isn't needed for quickness might swap to another character altogether. Firebrand as a specialisation appeared so dominant in fractals in part because anyone who LFG'd as a guardian didn't have a competitive non-firebrand build to swap to without switching character (when character switching is more convenient and expected in non-fractal endgame content). 

In this context, outside of regular CM players who are dedicated to have multiple fractal-ready characters, I think there's a high likelihood that what will become dominant in fractals, if firebrand was to become uncompetitive, will be something that allows as many roles as possible to be filled with as few gearsets as possible. The forerunners I have in mind for that are engineer (alacmech looks to still be dominant for a while, quickness scrapper in power and healing forms isn't firebrand but it isn't bad, and holosmith is getting buffed) and revenant (quickherald in power and heal variants, a couple of decent DPS options, and alacren is a bit behind the curve nowadays but it still works). My metaphorical money's on the former because it's easier to use and mechanist is already well established, but I could see revenant taking off, especially if a lot of people end up shifting their fractal gear from guardian to revenant. Elementalist also has the theoretical potential, but I'm not convinced that quickness catalyst will ever take off in the general playerbase, and fractals tend to have more enemy CC than raids and strikes making alactempest risky in its current form.

 

For non-fractals:

Again, my response is assuming that firebrand ends up being pushed out, since if it still performs well there'll be little change apart from maybe seeing the competitors a little more often.

I'm very concerned that not only could guardian be dumpstered entirely in that scenario, but also alacdps of all kinds. Healbrand has been the primary resistance to the "alacrity heals, quickness does DPS" paradigm that many people follow, and at least one content creator actively pushes for. Heal quickness herald is said to be close to healbrand, but it's also more complex to operate and, when looking at the overall meta, ease of use matters. Now, if my prediction for fractals comes true and heal quickness herald and/or heal qrapper start popping up a lot in fractals because revenants and engineers can fill any role without swapping character, that might keep alacdps in the meta. But even within the parameters of said prediction, I think it might be more likely to reinforce the paradigm of relying on the alacrity for healing while the quickness is the hybrid support.

Edited November 19, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[the krytan assassin.9235]

58 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

There's two aspects to this discussion, I think: Fractals, and non-fractals.

 

Why?

I think one aspect that people ignore when they think fractal popularity is a yardstack for power is that in fractals, convenience is often a very big deal. Playing a build in tier 4s requires investing in agony resistance infusions and the slots to put them in. Even once you do have the resources for multiple builds, you're a lot less likely to swap characters because unless you've invested shared inventory slots into fractal potions, changing characters also requires moving them around.

This is likely a big push for making firebrand more popular in fractals than in other endgame content. You can have one set of Viper's gear with Firebrand runes and do pretty well either as quickdps or straight dps with a few trait and utility changes. With a second set you can be a healer as well, putting yourself in a position where you can fill any role apart from alac with one character and only two gearsets. To further inflate firebrand numbers, due to the low performance of DH and WB there's no point to switching to either of those for DPS, so it looked like firebrand was really popular when it was more that guardians were always going to be firebrands by default, when in a strike or raid, a guardian player who isn't needed for quickness might swap to another character altogether. Firebrand as a specialisation appeared so dominant in fractals in part because anyone who LFG'd as a guardian didn't have a competitive non-firebrand build to swap to without switching character (when character switching is more convenient and expected in non-fractal endgame content). 

In this context, outside of regular CM players who are dedicated to have multiple fractal-ready characters, I think there's a high likelihood that what will become dominant in fractals, if firebrand was to become uncompetitive, will be something that allows as many roles as possible to be filled with as few gearsets as possible. The forerunners I have in mind for that are engineer (alacmech looks to still be dominant for a while, quickness scrapper in power and healing forms isn't firebrand but it isn't bad, and holosmith is getting buffed) and revenant (quickherald in power and heal variants, a couple of decent DPS options, and alacren is a bit behind the curve nowadays but it still works). My metaphorical money's on the former because it's easier to use and mechanist is already well established, but I could see revenant taking off, especially if a lot of people end up shifting their fractal gear from guardian to revenant. Elementalist also has the theoretical potential, but I'm not convinced that quickness catalyst will ever take off in the general playerbase, and fractals tend to have more enemy CC than raids and strikes making alactempest risky in its current form.

 

For non-fractals:

Again, my response is assuming that firebrand ends up being pushed out, since if it still performs well there'll be little change apart from maybe seeing the competitors a little more often.

I'm very concerned that not only could guardian be dumpstered entirely in that scenario, but also alacdps of all kinds. Healbrand has been the primary resistance to the "alacrity heals, quickness does DPS" paradigm that many people follow, and at least one content creator actively pushes for. Heal quickness herald is said to be close to healbrand, but it's also more complex to operate and, when looking at the overall meta, ease of use matters. Now, if my prediction for fractals comes true and heal quickness herald and/or heal qrapper start popping up a lot in fractals because revenants and engineers can fill any role without swapping character, that might keep alacdps in the meta. But even within the parameters of said prediction, I think it might be more likely to reinforce the paradigm of relying on the alacrity for healing while the quickness is the hybrid support.

Nah, stability and aegis are simply extremely good in FotM. Most strikes/raids simply arent affected that much by aegis/stab. Sure 1 stack of stabi/aegis once a while is extremely powerful to avoid some raid mechanics, but is completely different from FotM where you get continuously hit and knocked back. 

 

Ofc what you mentioned matters, but the effectiveness of aegis and stabi in FotM matter alot more 

[draxynnic.3719]

47 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Nah, stability and aegis are simply extremely good in FotM. Most strikes/raids simply arent affected that much by aegis/stab. Sure 1 stack of stabi/aegis once a while is extremely powerful to avoid some raid mechanics, but is completely different from FotM where you get continuously hit and knocked back. 

 

Ofc what you mentioned matters, but the effectiveness of aegis and stabi in FotM matter alot more 

Depends on the specific fractal in question. Most of them you can get away without them, but there are a couple where they make a big difference. Granted, for the reasons I discussed, people are going to want to bring something that can handle everything. I'd also say that stability is more important than aegis, since it's relatively rare that aegis specifically is really needed as anything beyond not needing to time a dodge.

When it comes to stability, both of the proposed replacement paradigms I hypothesised have means of bringing that to the table. Scrappers can bring Defence Field, mechanists have stability, any non-healing revenant can switch to Jalis at a modest DPS loss. Both engineers and revenants also potentially have the ability to bring boon removal if needed for an instability.

But in any respect, what you raise is still just another case of "there's something about fractals specifically that encourages this".

Another such factor that just crossed my mind is the existence of the aquatic fractal - which is painful for mechs, healrevs, alacmirages, and probably more that I don't recall, but which firebrands are fine with. But again, that's a factor that's specific to fractals.

And that's the overall point I was trying to make there. The firebrand changes are, honestly, probably a better overall design than the current one... but it's going to be balance chaos for at least three more updates, I think. I'm more concerned about the timing than the design change. But I think people should keep in mind that whatever comes afterwards, if it's different to the raid and strike meta, might be the result of convenience as much as performance, especially if it's being used by PUGs for regular runs rather than CMs. If it's still firebrand, it might be because as long as firebrand is still good enough, it's easier to keep running it rather than switching (and virtually all guardians are going to be using firebrand for every run until and unless DH and/or WB are buffed to become better DPS, so firebrand numbers will be inflated for that reason). If it becomes something else, it might be the result of the overall versatility of the profession rather than a specific build being too strong.

For instance, if my prediction comes true, holosmith will probably have a big spike in popularity: not because holosmith itself is suddenly the bee's knees, but because you can lfg as engineer with the potential to fill any role, and if the group already has support covered, there's three slots for DPS. In this scenario, holosmith will appear to be overpowered by people who just look at the popularity statistics, when it's likely actually being carried by scrapper and mechanist.

Edited November 19, 2022 by draxynnic.3719

[Cyninja.2954]

Bar any wierd changes or unmentioned changes:

 

Main healer for non fractal content will likely remain HAM. Why? Because it isn't changed and any decent HAM player was already manging their mech to stick near the party. 

 

Quickdps for non fractals might shift away more from cqfb, depending on how big the dps hit is. Quickscrapper or quickherald might pull ahead even more. The utility loss on cqfb means even less stab/aegis than before.

 

Main healer for fractals, if run, will remain hfb. Why? Because it remains the biggest provider of stab and aegis. The loss of F1 is minor, the loss of F2 and F3 is compensated by the continous access now. Hfb will be less spammy with their tome skills and cycle between F3 and F2 more using skills as needed.

 

Main alacdps for fractals will remain as is now, meaning whatever flavor of alac you have been using you will continue to use. The only requirement is bring perma alac and as much damage as possible ideally with as much cc and potentially boonrip for NPNG.

 

I doubt this patch will shake things up, yet.

[Serephen.3420]

On 11/19/2022 at 9:39 PM, draxynnic.3719 said:

There's two aspects to this discussion, I think: Fractals, and non-fractals.

 

Why?

I think one aspect that people ignore when they think fractal popularity is a yardstack for power is that in fractals, convenience is often a very big deal. Playing a build in tier 4s requires investing in agony resistance infusions and the slots to put them in. Even once you do have the resources for multiple builds, you're a lot less likely to swap characters because unless you've invested shared inventory slots into fractal potions, changing characters also requires moving them around.

This is likely a big push for making firebrand more popular in fractals than in other endgame content. You can have one set of Viper's gear with Firebrand runes and do pretty well either as quickdps or straight dps with a few trait and utility changes. With a second set you can be a healer as well, putting yourself in a position where you can fill any role apart from alac with one character and only two gearsets. To further inflate firebrand numbers, due to the low performance of DH and WB there's no point to switching to either of those for DPS, so it looked like firebrand was really popular when it was more that guardians were always going to be firebrands by default, when in a strike or raid, a guardian player who isn't needed for quickness might swap to another character altogether. Firebrand as a specialisation appeared so dominant in fractals in part because anyone who LFG'd as a guardian didn't have a competitive non-firebrand build to swap to without switching character (when character switching is more convenient and expected in non-fractal endgame content). 

In this context, outside of regular CM players who are dedicated to have multiple fractal-ready characters, I think there's a high likelihood that what will become dominant in fractals, if firebrand was to become uncompetitive, will be something that allows as many roles as possible to be filled with as few gearsets as possible. The forerunners I have in mind for that are engineer (alacmech looks to still be dominant for a while, quickness scrapper in power and healing forms isn't firebrand but it isn't bad, and holosmith is getting buffed) and revenant (quickherald in power and heal variants, a couple of decent DPS options, and alacren is a bit behind the curve nowadays but it still works). My metaphorical money's on the former because it's easier to use and mechanist is already well established, but I could see revenant taking off, especially if a lot of people end up shifting their fractal gear from guardian to revenant. Elementalist also has the theoretical potential, but I'm not convinced that quickness catalyst will ever take off in the general playerbase, and fractals tend to have more enemy CC than raids and strikes making alactempest risky in its current form.

 

For non-fractals:

Again, my response is assuming that firebrand ends up being pushed out, since if it still performs well there'll be little change apart from maybe seeing the competitors a little more often.

I'm very concerned that not only could guardian be dumpstered entirely in that scenario, but also alacdps of all kinds. Healbrand has been the primary resistance to the "alacrity heals, quickness does DPS" paradigm that many people follow, and at least one content creator actively pushes for. Heal quickness herald is said to be close to healbrand, but it's also more complex to operate and, when looking at the overall meta, ease of use matters. Now, if my prediction for fractals comes true and heal quickness herald and/or heal qrapper start popping up a lot in fractals because revenants and engineers can fill any role without swapping character, that might keep alacdps in the meta. But even within the parameters of said prediction, I think it might be more likely to reinforce the paradigm of relying on the alacrity for healing while the quickness is the hybrid support.

I mean I get some of your points, but for many years it was the quickness heals and alac does dps paradigm.

As some others have saidI think it's unlikely hfb will lose it's spot in fractals.  It still has the largest share and easiest access of stab and aegis out of all the other options available. 

[draxynnic.3719]

3 hours ago, Serephen.3420 said:

I mean I get some of your points, but for many years it was the quickness heals and alac does dps paradigm.

As some others have saidI think it's unlikely hfb will lose it's spot in fractals.  It still has the largest share and easiest access of stab and aegis out of all the other options available. 

It was, because for many years the paradigm had to be that, since the only alacheal that was available before EoD was healren and that got hit hard with the nerf to Soulcleave's Summit (before that nerf, healren and quickbrand was at least a valid alternative to healbrand and alacren). Nowadays, though, the alacheals are clearly winning, spearheaded by HAM, with HB being the anchor of the alternative structure.

From what I can see without playing it, I don't think the current changes are going to kill healbrand either. But it might hurt it more than expected. Or it might come out stronger than they wanted and it gets nerfed again. Or people might keep demanding firebrand nerfs until it gets absolutely destroyed, as happened in sPvP. Total redesigns like this usually bring a period of balance chaos, and the way that inertia in perception of build performances works, it'd likely only take one stint of healbrand being bad enough to fall out of the meta to crystallise the 'alac heals, quick dpses' teamcomp meta for a long time if heal herald doesn't rise to the occasion.

Mind you, I would note that it would be harder to kick it out of fractals because people might not want to have to set up new fractal builds, and might hold out until and unless firebrand gets completely neutered in fractals. But the way some people think, that just makes it more likely that the 'people keep demanding nerfs until it dies' scenario plays out.