Firebrand Rework Preview - Suggestions. [Pages, Tomes, & Traits]

[kroof.5468]

Hey everyone,

With the preview out, I thought it would be nice to have a place to put some of my suggestions for what was shown. I am more of a PvE player, and haven't been hardcore in PvP for a while, so this will be coming from that viewpoint. 

PAGE MECHANIC

I cannot say that I believe this will be good for the actual feel of the spec, I get the impression this will make the skill usage rather clunky and slow. I personally was expecting more of a "choose" the tome you master and use that as your third weapon type thing, but nevertheless. When it comes to the pages, having 5 baseline pages feels a bit rough, especially when certain skills consume more than one.  Archivist of Whispers, the adept trait, will feel SO important to take and might empower the Guardian to fix any problem more efficiently that it already does now. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, goes against the prospect of "holes in roles" in the balance philosophy? I mean I guess having a profession mechanic with 15 skills goes against the Holes in Roles mindset -- 'cause like... utility skills are right there to provide that build craft so players can be more versatile, while actually specializing into it.  

Some Suggestions: 

• Pages: Bring base page count from 5 -> 6. 
• [Trait] Archivist of Whispers: Increase page number by 3  ->  Page recovery is reduced to 5 seconds. 
  • This would take the GM Trait Loremaster and place a portion of it to be more accessible for various builds, while not bloating the pages entirely with 3 additional pages.

 

TOME SKILLS

This section could touch on the page costs, but as we have yet to play it, I can't really say if it will feel good or not -- but I suspect healing is going to feel more limited. I want to focus on Tome of Courage, cause that Chapter 1 skill just isn't giving.  Also to note, the amount of healing the Tome of Resolve pumps out on Chapter 1 has always felt too bursty. Which feels like a trend with a lot of healing in recent years for this game. Just to note. 

Suggestions: 

Tome of Justice

• Epilogue: Ashes of the Just: Grant allies Ashes of the Just and Might (5 Ashes. 5 Might[5s]). 

Tome of Courage

• Chp. 1: Unflinching Charge: Fortify your allies granting barrier and protection. (~800 barrier, 3s Protection). 
  • Probably allow for more worth-while choice, rather than just protection which is not scarce on Guard.
• Chp. 2: Daring Challenge: Taunt your foes while gaining Resolution (PvE: Taunt [5s], Resolution [3s]).
  • PvP/WvW Skill Split: Taunt -> Slow (3s).
    • This could bring more value with controlling enemies for a longer duration rather than have it be such a brief stun. This would also allow it to be empowered in PvE. And honestly, I'd be really interested in seeing Taunt be a PvE only condition and to have it filtered through all of the professions as an option for tanks to control mobs in Dungeons, Strikes, Open World. Hell even having it as a boss mechanic for a more reliable tanking approach. Taunt is only available on 4 abilities in the game, and only two of them had longer duration. 
• Chp. 4: Stalwart Stand: Grant allies in the area a burst of barrier, while pulsing Resistance. (~1000 Barrier, Resis). 

I wouldn't expect any barrier on this tome to scale WILDLY with healing power -- in the way Scourge is structured with its healing being more about "preventing damage" rather than "correcting damage." 

 

TRAITS

This is where a lot of moving around can be done to really nail down this rework, but as it is right now the traits feel a bit "meh." I don't know if I have a lot of lead-in, so let's get to it! 

Suggestions: 

Minor

• Imbued Haste Mastery: Gain increased attributes for the tome you are currently using. (Justice: +100 Condi DMG. +50 Expertise. Resolve: +100 Healing PWR. +50 Concentration. Courage +100 Vitality +50 Toughness). 

Adept

• Unrelenting Criticism: Axe skills gain a chance to inflict bleeding. Bleeding you apply is stronger.  (Chance on hit: 45% Bleeding Damage Increased: +25%) 
  • This trait has felt unnecessarily CC oriented when the game already has so many CC effects flying around, especially when Axe 3 is already providing CC.  Purity of Purpose for this trait would be nice to buff that condi focus. 
• Liberator's Vow: Grant allies quickness when you use your heal skill. (360 radius -> 600 Radius. 6s CD).
• Archivist of Whispers: Page recovery is reduced to 5 seconds. (See above "PAGE MECHANIC" section.) 

Master

• Weighty Terms: Your Mantra skills slow foes. Deal increased damage to slowed foes. (Slow (2s). +10% Damage). 
• Stalwart Speed: Granting Regen, Might, or Stability grants quickness to allies. (Quickness[2s]. 6s CD.)
  • This would allow quickness access no matter your tome -- helping Tome of Resolve users just a bit more.
• Legendary Lore: Healing is improved when you heal allies from a greater distance. (5-10%. 1-1200 Range. Dynamic scaling like Dragonhunter).

Grandmaster

• Stoic Demeanor: Retain your Courage passive effect. When you disable a foe or slow them, fortify allies around you. (Barrier: 580. Resolution[2s]. Protection [2s]. 3s CD). 
• Quickfire: Retain your Justice passive effect. Granting quickness to allies gives them Ashes of the Just. Burning you apply lasts longer while in Tome of Justice. (Ashes of the Just (5s). Burn Duration: +20%). 
• Loremaster: Retain your Resolve passive effect. Regen you apply is stronger and heals them upfront for an amount. (Regen: +25% Healing. Heal on Regen: 80. 1s CD). 
  • Heal on Regen would scale dramatically to incentivize this trait for Healers. (Upwards of a 300~ish heal with more Healing Power maybe). 

I took a lot of inspiration from the Legendary Lore trait that we currently have and infused these elements into the grandmaster to make it feel like you are specializing more than what was previewed for the GMs. 

 

Okay so that's that -- this was actually really fun to spend time thinking about this proposed rework, so hopefully this finds consideration in the minds of other FBs. Still would be interested in seeing an actual specialty being required for FB, but ehhh. Also for the fact that there are two PvE roles and two boons that are always required: Quickness and Alacrity. Maybe it would behoove the game to be structured a bit more straightforward with which roles are providing which boons. If the FB had to choose a tome you could place Quick on Tome 1 and Alac on Tome 2. Alacrity isn't purely a DPS boon in the way Quickness is -- and is actually really great for healers.  I digress - ENJOY! 

Edited November 16, 2022 by kroof.5468

[draxynnic.3719]

I'd prefer that heal quickness remain a viable option. Adopting an 'all healers are alacrity' paradigm will kill alacdps completely, and I don't think that would be good for the game overall. One of my biggest concerns is that this might well be what happens if HB underperforms and neither heal herald nor heal scrapper rises to replace it.

I don't think 'one tome only' reworks really work given that the guardian core assumes having access to three virtues. They're a step away from just replacing two tomes with core virtues, but I think the approach they've taken is more elegant - you have to commit to one tome at the grandmaster level, and while you still have access to the other two, they're on a shared resource so it will cost you.

I expect there will be tweaks to page availability, however. Your proposals there are fairly good, although I suspect most firebrands will still end up preferring the other two adept traits (but some niche builds might not). It also depends in part on how Radiance will interact with the new system - I don't think they've mentioned that anywhere, but that could be another source of additional pages for DPS firebrands in some situations (and in the long run, I think I'd rather see condibender pull ahead for boss fights without adds).

For Tome of Courage, I do ponder the possibility of moving Resolution from skill 2 to skill 1. It's on skill 2 as a holdover from when it was Retribution, setting up a Taunt-Retribution synergy, but that obviously no longer holds. Moving it to skill 1 would make skill 1 a blanket 'you take less damage now' skill. (I also wonder if it's time to unnerf Mantra of Liberation a bit now that there's a lot less stability access through ToC).

[KingJake.6529]

I agree with pretty much everything except with the idea of Archivis t of whispers. Firebrand as a baseline should have the 6-8 pages with a recovery of 5-6 seconds per page. The main reason is that having that option of getting your pages faster or giving you more pages is inherently just a band aid fix. It would be generally easier for them to improve, balance or rework tome skills with a pre-defined amount of pages and flat recovery than having modifiers than improve these cooldowns. Having 8 pages that recharge every 5 or 6 seconds would be the perfect amount for that firebrand versatility in healer builds . (In terms of being able to burst heal team mates and use some of your tome skills reactively)

[kroof.5468]

5 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'd prefer that heal quickness remain a viable option. Adopting an 'all healers are alacrity' paradigm will kill alacdps completely, and I don't think that would be good for the game overall. One of my biggest concerns is that this might well be what happens if HB underperforms and neither heal herald nor heal scrapper rises to replace it.

Well, with that prospect it would lead any AlacDPS providers to swap to Quickness generation. (Willbender = Quickness. Renegade = Quickness. Herald = Alac. Mirage = Actual Quickness Traits etc.) This wouldn't be concrete but would structure the end-game more concisely so that people could understand what to shoot for. This could even lead to a more proper LFG system, if these boons are wrangled more consistently. Of course, when you are playing with your own friends, it inherently increases the flexibility of taking "different" approaches. 

 

5 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

They're a step away from just replacing two tomes with core virtues, but I think the approach they've taken is more elegant - you have to commit to one tome at the grandmaster level, and while you still have access to the other two, they're on a shared resource so it will cost you.

Framing this as "committing" is a bit of a stretch. I also see many people equating this "It will cost you" idea to the healthy state of "You cannot use it, unless you specialize." If you still have it available... you still have it available. The idea of a page cooldown and skill cooldown is an illusion of forcing the firebrand to specialize. Which isn't that like a major point of the rework?? 

Edited November 16, 2022 by kroof.5468

[kroof.5468]

5 hours ago, KingJake.6529 said:

I agree with pretty much everything except with the idea of Archivis t of whispers. Firebrand as a baseline should have the 6-8 pages with a recovery of 5-6 seconds per page. 

I have a feeling this will make the FB even more powerful than it already is today. This shared page, page recharge, & skill cooldown combination is an extremely delicate scale that has to be perfectly balanced. My gut reaction is that this entire rework is overly intricate without a clear vision. It's giving: Owning the bakery, making the cakes, and eating them all too. 

[Trejgon.9367]

5 hours ago, kroof.5468 said:

Which isn't that like a major point of the rework?? 

According to what CMC said on the stream, the point was to increase opportunity cost for exercising flexibility firebrand provide, while also giving them more variables they can balance it with. You may not like the idea of opportunity cost as a concept, but the fact is that as it is rn, DPS FB entering Tome of Courage or Tome of Resolve, was hurting it's primary role (DPS) by this action, and this rework will make that situation even stronger (using a shared resource for utility will mean you cannot use it for DPS - and vice versa). Firebrand is supposed to be versatile class, and the main complaint was that they didn't pay enough price in performance for this versatility.

5 hours ago, kroof.5468 said:

This shared page, page recharge, & skill cooldown combination is an extremely delicate scale that has to be perfectly balanced.

Actually, no, it is going to be far less delicate to balance than having three separate resources that can be accessed on specific CD each. As years of attempts of nerfs of firebrand has shown, current (pre-proposed rework) state cannot be brought to a proper place of balance without making big chunks of the toolkit literally useless, and having dead-weight abilities is never good design idea. This proposed new system means they have more variables to tune it around which means much more room for a "balanced" state.

Also please note, we already have multiple classes, that are being balanced around shared resource, specific resource recharge, and skill cooldowns. And yet I didn't see anyone that has put out a claim that those classes are extremely delicate scale that just has to be perfectly balanced.

5 hours ago, kroof.5468 said:

My gut reaction is that this entire rework is overly intricate without a clear vision. It's giving: Owning the bakery, making the cakes, and eating them all too. 

I can see a very clear vision behind this rework: it's mantaining flexibility, increasing the cost of exercising this flexibility, and still providing room to specialize into specific subsets of general kit.

[Infinity.2876]

Reduce the virtue cooldown for each page you did not use

 

this would fix alot of problems

[Hotride.2187]

13 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'd prefer that heal quickness remain a viable option. Adopting an 'all healers are alacrity' paradigm will kill alacdps completely, and I don't think that would be good for the game overall. One of my biggest concerns is that this might well be what happens if HB underperforms and neither heal herald nor heal scrapper rises to replace it.

Heal quickness gone where though? In whatever 10 player content I've done it was already really meh. Not few HFBs I do daily fractals with don't even use tomes. So that leaves fractal CMs?

[Gaiawolf.8261]

I think the fear is twofold, from posts I've seen, and also my general fears:

1. Tomes will lose their identity. They'll go from repositories of lore that you open with a nicely themed animation, and then unleash a powerful torrent of lore and magic, down to scattered pieces of parchment you just whip out willy nilly whenever you need 1-2 skills, like engineer kits. They're gutting the lore out of the lorekeeper, in spirit.
2. The shared resource will hit too hard. The balance problem with tomes now is you can go from one fully powered tome to another back to back or whenever they're off CD. I'm not opposed to a shared resource. It's probably a good idea, as long as keeping the same basic functionality we have with one tome now, doesn't completely screw us out of anything else. Some theorists are saying we won't even be able to use Tome 1 fully, and that you'll only have enough pages to activate Ashes on CD and maybe one other skill, leaving you no pages left, even for other Tome 1 skills. The good news is they can adjust page refresh, but will they? Will doing that make HFB too strong?

That math seems to check out. At one page per 8s, and Ashes costing 2 pages on a 20s, if you pop any other Tome 1 skill, that's 3 pages, 24s to recover. And forget about Aftermath, that's another 2 pages. That's over the 30s CD we have now on just 2 tome skills! Tome of Justice used to grant 5 pages on a 30s CD. Now, the suite of Tome 1 skills costs 40s to recover (actually 56s, but 16s are recovered from Swift scholar). And that leaves you 0 pages for anything else. We can't even keep up our mediocre DPS with these changes and we give up everything else from the other tomes. It should be one or the other, not both.

[kroof.5468]

6 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Also please note, we already have multiple classes, that are being balanced around shared resource, specific resource recharge, and skill cooldowns. And yet I didn't see anyone that has put out a claim that those classes are extremely delicate scale that just has to be perfectly balanced.

I can see a very clear vision behind this rework: it's mantaining flexibility, increasing the cost of exercising this flexibility, and still providing room to specialize into specific subsets of general kit.

Revenant. It started out with such extreme costs (could be analogous to FB Page costs), and throughout the years the balance has always been reducing and reducing the energy costs, along with cooldowns being reduced.  Having so many elements to use a skill increases the chances of getting the balancing of the skills wrong. Too quick and it becomes too strong -- too slow and it feels underwhelming to play. 

For the flexibility angle, I don't know why we are forgetting the existence of Utility skills -- that is where that flexibility should be stored, and maintaining the responsibility of player choice. So from my personal perspective I don't feel a profession mechanic needs to exponentially increase that versatility with very little trade-off.  

Edited November 16, 2022 by kroof.5468

[Trejgon.9367]

7 minutes ago, kroof.5468 said:

Revenant.

and while it had it's ups and downs, it never quite landed in the position of being mainstay of multiple game modes, despite constant stream of nerfs that would see it completely out of one of them (as did Firebrand - mainstay in WvW and PvE, ended up being nerfed out of sPvP)

also Thieves would seem closer equivalent with initiative being much more similar in mechanics to pages, than rev's energy.

10 minutes ago, kroof.5468 said:

Having so many elements to use a skill increases the chances of getting the balancing of the skills wrong. Too quick and it becomes too strong -- too slow and it feels underwhelming to play. 

the paralel of too quick vs too slow, works against cooldowns only as well - except with cooldowns it is a single number to tweak, and it may need to have to land in that spcific perfect sweet spot to be balanced. But with multiple angles - pages, pages economy, cooldowns of specific skills it is much easier to tackle.

Let's say one particular skill ends up being really powerfull in use, and it is considered too easy to access for it's power - increasing it's page cost could have been overkill, making it not accessible enough to be worthy part of the kit, but slight increment to cd, could do it better. Or alternatively, you could have a situation, where no sane increase of cooldown would make it feel right, (like those 3min+ cd elite skills 😉 ) then you can keep the cooldown, but increase the page cost.

16 minutes ago, kroof.5468 said:

For the flexibility angle, I don't know why we are forgetting the existence of Utility skills -- that is where that flexibility should be stored,

There is quite a limitation for how much flexibility you can give to a class with just a three skill slots. And in case you failed to notice all of the classes considered "flexible" at any point in games development, had something going beyond 3 utility slots. Engineers have kit skills, Elementalists have attunements, Revenants can swap whole heal-utility-elite bar between two presets, and Firebrand has it's tomes.

[kroof.5468]

2 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

There is quite a limitation for how much flexibility you can give to a class with just a three skill slots. And in case you failed to notice all of the classes considered "flexible" at any point in games development, had something going beyond 3 utility slots. Engineers have kit skills, Elementalists have attunements, Revenants can swap whole heal-utility-elite bar between two presets, and Firebrand has it's tomes.

No, that's what I'm getting at... I agree with their balance philosophy of "Holes in Roles" and "Purity of Purpose" but it seems for various specs (FB & Mech most notably), they seem to not want to adhere to it. Though, with specs existing outside the philosophy at such a degree, we will still see them as mainstays in a way that other professions are not. The strength of FB and Mech also has to be considered -- it's not that they are versatile in the way of being a "jack of all trades and a master of none" but rather they are a "jack of all trades and a master of all."  

[Saiyan.1704]

Pros:
Having to enter combat to immediately CC with F1:#3 and F3:#2 will be a nice QoL feel to it especially since both are on a 10s cooldown. This aspect of FB wont feel clunky. It will feel closer to the OG Firebrand build on release of PoF.
(SPvP will benefit most from this change while PvE & WvW will get hit harder)

Cons:
Upon patch release page cast times and page consumption on certain skills will overall cripple FB in PvE & WvW instead of sPvP . The current ability of having 5+ pages available to cast in F3, then freely going to any other tomb to cast 5+ more pages, is what made FB strong. But a downtime of 8s+ of minimal page casting will really hurt a lot (if not all) FB builds in these two game modes.

The change will certainly be a more skillful and reactive style of FB play that I approve of. Higher skillcap isn't a bad thing, but it's going to be a bumpy road for FB when the initial patch releases.... i'm all for the change in meta though :3

[draxynnic.3719]

17 hours ago, kroof.5468 said:

Well, with that prospect it would lead any AlacDPS providers to swap to Quickness generation. (Willbender = Quickness. Renegade = Quickness. Herald = Alac. Mirage = Actual Quickness Traits etc.) This wouldn't be concrete but would structure the end-game more concisely so that people could understand what to shoot for. This could even lead to a more proper LFG system, if these boons are wrangled more consistently. Of course, when you are playing with your own friends, it inherently increases the flexibility of taking "different" approaches. 

I think that's throwing out a lot of babies with the bathwater. It's not a bad thing for there to be more than one way to structure a party/subsquad. It might mean that sometimes people need to adjust what they bring to a PUG, but I think it's reasonable to expect endgame players to show a bit of flexibility unless there's something in the content itself making that difficult (hello, fractals... where you can generally get away without having alacrity unless you're doing CMs).

I know you have the idea that quickness should go with DPS and alacrity should go with healing because these boons are 'better' for these roles, but... first, I'm not sure that holds (some builds can heal with an autoattack, some DPS builds are highly reliant on cooldown skills); second, that becomes problematic for alacrity application in open world group events because healing is generally less useful in open world; and third, having the "optimal" boon for your role only really matters in solo content, where you probably don't want to be a healer anyway, and having alacrity instead of quickness is a potential balance lever for solo content (do we really want quickness mirage in open world)?

I think you're also underestimating how much you're asking for there. Willbender? Was originally self-only alacrity, and that's a setup that makes sense for solo play in order to maintain higher uptime of the virtue effects. For revenant, as yet there's no elite specialisation that can be said to be all DPS or all healing (healalacren was a thing once, and could be again if Soulcleave gets unnerfed). Neither Chrono nor Mirage looks likely to become a healer in the foreseeable future, and it'd be pretty tragic for mesmer to lose alacrity altogether. And even if the issues with healspectre were to be resolved, alacdps spectre should still be a viable option. Meanwhile, while an argument could be made for alacmech being pushed to full support, heal quickness scrapper is not a build I think deserves to be designed out of the meta.

I'd also note that I think what they did to chronomancer was unfortunate at best, and I don't want to see them trying the "give quickness or alacrity based purely off a trait choice" design again.

 

17 hours ago, kroof.5468 said:

 

Framing this as "committing" is a bit of a stretch. I also see many people equating this "It will cost you" idea to the healthy state of "You cannot use it, unless you specialize." If you still have it available... you still have it available. The idea of a page cooldown and skill cooldown is an illusion of forcing the firebrand to specialize. Which isn't that like a major point of the rework?? 

I don't think "you cannot use it, unless you specialise" is actually what ArenaNet is going for. Elementalist, for instance, has pretty much always had access to some party healing (the sceptre rework is taking it off sceptre, but otherwise...) - but how worthwhile it actually is depends on your stats. Firebrand had the same thing, but you still always had those extra tomes sitting there going "Here if you need! Here if you need!" After the rework, that won't be the case - if, say, you pump all your pages doing damage, you don't have them to turn around and pump heals or defensive boons if there's a need to take pressure off the healers. Sure, you have the option to keep some pages in reserve, but then you're accepting a DPS loss just in case the extra support becomes needed, rather than being able to keep doing your full DPS rotation while keeping F2 and F3 in reserve. I'm pretty sure that in ArenaNet's mind, having a bit of support with your DPS is fine, you just shouldn't be able to do that while also doing top-tier DPS. The "hole" then becomes "I can do high DPS, or I can mix in a bit of support, but I can't do both." You might not need to switch builds, you might even be able to move around that hole midfight if needed (a concept that was in the original design manifesto...), but being able to move the hole doesn't mean it isn't there.

I think it's a far more interesting approach than just sticking to "you can only have one tome". The latter approach makes it really obvious which tome it's going to be, and unless you strip out the other two virtues altogether (which would cause problems with core traits), there's always going to be a splash of support in the DPS builds and so on.

One of the other things that they discussed with "holes in roles" which, incidentally, I think your suggestions might be breaking is the idea that even when you're talking about a heal support, one heal support shouldn't be bringing everything to the table, so there are times when one heal support will be better than another based on what else they bring. Guardian makes this difficult in general because core guardian brings so much just from swapping in traits and core utilities - swiftness, stability, aegis, protection, resolution, condition removal, projectile destruction. But this makes it important to limit how much extra a support-oriented guardian elite specialisation can bring to the table. No barrier. No resistance (yes, this will require a rework to courage 4). No easy access to quick revives like blood necros and scrappers.

Now, I get this goes against your principle of having One True Framework for party and squad composition... but the problem with having one framework is that there's always going to be one build that's just a little bit better or more streamlined than the competition, and the community is likely to turn a 1% advantage in efficiency to "this is the build you HAVE to take to fill this role". Holes in roles, however, allows for the optimal build to vary based on the needs of the encounter, or even based on who else is in the group. For instance, one encounter might have a focus on large, predictable, and blockable damage packets, rewarding good aegis use (maybe after the rework MoS will even get aegis back in PvE?), while another encounter might instead focus more on multiple small packets, placing more emphasis on barrier to soak up that damage. If you've got one build that's good at aegis, and another build that's good at barrier, you now have a use case for both builds (kinda like how some bosses reward full melee damage while others require at least some range). If all your heal supports bring both to the table, then the community is going to decide that one of them is best and that's what's going to be expected in both encounters.

12 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Heal quickness gone where though? In whatever 10 player content I've done it was already really meh. Not few HFBs I do daily fractals with don't even use tomes. So that leaves fractal CMs?

YMMV, but I've been in a few strike PUGs that have gone with healbrand+alacdps rather than the other way around. Fractals I generally only do with friends nowadays (I know they're the best gold per hour, but I play for fun and there's only so much repetition of the same content I can stand, and doing fractals with friends a couple of times a week already approaches that threshold), but I've observed that in situations where you really need it, healbrand seems to do a better job of keeping the party standing through pressure than HAM.

I know some people who say heal herald is also pretty good and only being held back by healbrand being better... but I'm sceptical. It probably is a good build in terms of what it can do, but it's a lot more awkward to run, and as the riflemech controversy has demonstrated, ease of play makes a big difference in how popular something can become.

[Ashantara.8731]

Making spell tomes share pages might be acceptable, but making spells cost additional pages isn't.

Not a fan of these upcoming changes.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Making spell tomes share pages might be acceptable, but making spells cost additional pages isn't.

Not a fan of these upcoming changes.

Eh. It makes sense to me that the more powerful skills will cost more, otherwise you'd use those skills pretty much exclusively when you can dip in and out of tomes freely. As long as page access isn't overly stingy, the more powerful skills costing more than one page shouldn't be a big deal.

It's hard to say what it's likely to be without playing it, but I think it's that page availability that will determine how strong firebrand is after the patch.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

I'm not sure how I feel giving guardians barrier. It fits the class's theme, except guards don't have it anywhere else that I know of. Also since other classes use it as "healing," it might step on their toes and on Tome of Resolve's too. But I like the concept. 

 

Like you, I was hoping tomes could become like an extra weapon.

 

Here's an idea for that in line with the new rework:

1. As some people speculated from the preview image, get rid of weapon swap in combat for FB.

2. Balance tome skills as regular weapon sets, maybe on a short CD, like ele attunements. No skills cost pages by default. Now FB has 4 weapon sets like ele, but 3 are locked and narrow in focus. 

3. Boost tome skills with pages. Pages are shared and regen slowly over time, just like the proposed rework. Hitting F4 toggles on/off for burning pages on skill use to give them a boost. 

 

Since you did Courage, I'll do Justice, cuz I like that one.

1. Damage foes in front of you. Page burn adds 3s burning.

2. Damage enemies around you. Page burn adds 10s burning.

3. Pull foes in a small area. Page burn increases radius and adds damage.

4. Burn a symbol on the ground that pulses damage. Page burn adds 2s burning per pulse. 

5. Grant one stack of Ashes to allies. Page burn increases it to 3 stacks. 

 

OK, since this is fun, I'll do Resolve too.

1. Turn your foes suffering into health for allies. Moderate damage to foes and small amount of healing for allies in front of you. Page burn increases healing.

2. Remove conditions on allies around you. Page burn heals per condition removed.

3. Grant allies vigor. Page burn adds regen and swiftness.

4. Place a symbol on the ground that pulses healing and swiftness. Page burn adds Eternal Oasis (increase healing). 

5. Convert 1 condition to a boon for allies around you. Page burn converts 5 conditions.

 

This could give us some play where some players might want to burn pages for a powerful burt of damage or support, but can't do both. Or they can only purn pages occasionally for sustain or a mix of both, also like the proposed rework. And skilled players that like complexity and higher skullcap could toggles page burning in and out of rotations. Baseline damage and support options are still there but manageable and not OP. Spending pages is required to bring them back up to their current uses. 

[draxynnic.3719]

Guardian weapons aren't designed to work without having a weaponswap, and tome design doesn't really compensate for that. It'd end up having the same problems beta revenant had. Maybe not quite as bad, because neither staff nor scepter have the quirk of being less effective at close range that revenant hammer has, but broadly the same issues never the less.

[Mizhas.8536]

In my opinion Shared resources + Cooldown increase + Page cost increase will just destroy any fun the spec had left and people will just simply stop playing it. 

Any of the 3 proposed changes could be enough on their own. All at once? No chance.

In WvW/GvG poeple will most probably just switch to Core build (since aegis will still be neccesary) and find some alternative stab sources like Revenant or Mesmer to fill the gaps.

With an smaller reduction to the stability output capabilities of the FB + some improvement to some other specs to compete in this area it would have been enough.

The only thing this change will lead to is to people switching to the next best viable build for the role OR to people stacking more of these to make up for the nerf. (I feel like they have forgotten about how this game was played at the beggining with 2 guards + 2 warriors per party and almost no room for other classes.)

Regarding PvE, I am not that familiar with it but as other people have mentioned, it would just make the versatility of the build to disappear. A DPS will just lose the capabilities of switching to a certain tome at some point since it would mean a big DPS loss to do so. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Mizhas.8536

[Kodama.6453]

22 minutes ago, Mizhas.8536 said:

Regarding PvE, I am not that familiar with it but as other people have mentioned, it would just make the versatility of the build to disappear. A DPS will just lose the capabilities of switching to a certain tome at some point since it would mean a big DPS loss to do so. 

That is exactly the point of the rework. Firebrand was simply too versatile without much investment. Just slotting in the elite spec gave you damage, great boon support and healing before even chosing your first trait.

Firebrand just does too many things at once without sacrificing alot.

[draxynnic.3719]

58 minutes ago, Mizhas.8536 said:

In my opinion Shared resources + Cooldown increase + Page cost increase will just destroy any fun the spec had left and people will just simply stop playing it. 

I think they were all needed to support being able to swap to any tome freely at any time. Without something to make the higher-level tome skills more expensive, those would pretty much be the only ones that would get used.

I have concerns about what the result will be, since sweeping changes like this are unlikely to be right first time. But I think there are opportunities as well as costs here, particularly in making the tomes less of an all-or-nothing affair.

[Ragnar.4257]

On 11/20/2022 at 5:36 AM, draxynnic.3719 said:

Eh. It makes sense to me that the more powerful skills will cost more, otherwise you'd use those skills pretty much exclusively when you can dip in and out of tomes freely. As long as page access isn't overly stingy, the more powerful skills costing more than one page shouldn't be a big deal.

It's hard to say what it's likely to be without playing it, but I think it's that page availability that will determine how strong firebrand is after the patch.

Except, the reality is exactly the opposite of what you say; the incoming design just reinforces that you ONLY use the powerful #4/#5 skills. By making them cost 3 pages, it means wasting a page on the weaker #1/#2 skills is even more punishing. If they all cost 1 page, you might think about throwing a #1/#2 skill into the mix, but now you have to hoard your pages for the #4/#5 skills.

What you say would make more sense if the tome-skills had no cooldown, only page-cost, like thief initiative. But the #4/#5 tome-skills actually have quite signficant cooldowns (post-rework).

Having shared pages between tomes is a good mechanism to reduce FB's ability to do everything, and force a choice of whether you focus on damage, healing, or boons. But the page-costs themselves within the tomes don't work well with that. Cooldowns would be a better way to stop over-use of the more powerful #4/#5 skills.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Ragnar.4257

[draxynnic.3719]

5 minutes ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

Except, the reality is exactly the opposite of what you say; the incoming design just reinforces that you ONLY use the powerful #4/#5 skills. By making them cost 3 pages, it means wasting a page on the weaker #1/#2 skills is even more punishing. If they all cost 1 page, you might think about throwing a #1/#2 skill into the mix, but now you have to hoard your pages for the #4/#5 skills.

What you say would make more sense if the tome-skills had no cooldown, only page-cost, like thief initiative. But the #4/#5 tome-skills actually have quite signficant cooldowns (post-rework).

Having shared pages between tomes is a good mechanism to reduce FB's ability to do everything, and force a choice of whether you focus on damage, healing, or boons. But the page-costs themselves within the tomes don't work well with that. Cooldowns would be a better way to stop over-use of the more powerful #4/#5 skills.

Nah. If everything cost 1 page, people would dip into the tome, use the top skills, and dip out in order to keep pages in reserve, and there'd be no incentive to use the lesser skills: they'd cost a page either way. With scaling costs, there is an incentive as the less impactful skills are also cheaper. And if two or three uses of skill 1 or 2 turn out to have similar impacts to one use of skill 4 or 5, maybe that will be what you use.

Now, if it turns out that the page availability is pretty stingy and the higher-tier skills are still the most efficient usage of pages, then you'd be right - people will just use the higher-tier skills despite their increased costs, pushing out the cheaper skills. But that's more an issue of finetuning the numbers (including page availability) then the overall design. The statement that having some skills cost more than one page gives them an additional lever for balancing them is an accurate one, they just might need to increase page availability to compensate.

I am expecting there to be a bit of chaos as they do the finetuning, and that's where my main concern lies - if it proves to be overly stingy, it's going to be a kick to the gut not just to guardian (I'm not convinced the DH/WB buffs are going to do all that much, leaving no good guardian builds if firebrand gets kicked out) and to alacdps in general (which are somewhat carried by being paired with healbrand). But I don't think page cost increase for more powerful skills is an inherently unfair concept. The bigger question is whether they've calibrated page availability to take the increased page costs into account.

[Kodama.6453]

17 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Nah. If everything cost 1 page, people would dip into the tome, use the top skills, and dip out in order to keep pages in reserve, and there'd be no incentive to use the lesser skills: they'd cost a page either way. With scaling costs, there is an incentive as the less impactful skills are also cheaper. And if two or three uses of skill 1 or 2 turn out to have similar impacts to one use of skill 4 or 5, maybe that will be what you use.

Now, if it turns out that the page availability is pretty stingy and the higher-tier skills are still the most efficient usage of pages, then you'd be right - people will just use the higher-tier skills despite their increased costs, pushing out the cheaper skills. But that's more an issue of finetuning the numbers (including page availability) then the overall design. The statement that having some skills cost more than one page gives them an additional lever for balancing them is an accurate one, they just might need to increase page availability to compensate.

I am expecting there to be a bit of chaos as they do the finetuning, and that's where my main concern lies - if it proves to be overly stingy, it's going to be a kick to the gut not just to guardian (I'm not convinced the DH/WB buffs are going to do all that much, leaving no good guardian builds if firebrand gets kicked out) and to alacdps in general (which are somewhat carried by being paired with healbrand). But I don't think page cost increase for more powerful skills is an inherently unfair concept. The bigger question is whether they've calibrated page availability to take the increased page costs into account.

There is also the mechanic which refunds a page once you have used 3 tome skills quickly after each other, if I am not mistaken, which gives further incentive to use some of the cheaper skills. Because if you use one which costs 3 pages and 2 which cost 1 page each, then you got the benefits of 3 skills for the cost of just 4 pages in total.

This slight increase in page regeneration might make a difference. And as you said, even if it turns out that people just use the skills 4&5, they can still make some fine tuning to change that. But the general concept of the mechanism seems pretty well in my opinion.

[draxynnic.3719]

1 minute ago, Kodama.6453 said:

There is also the mechanic which refunds a page once you have used 3 tome skills quickly after each other, if I am not mistaken, which gives further incentive to use some of the cheaper skills. Because if you use one which costs 3 pages and 2 which cost 1 page each, then you got the benefits of 3 skills for the cost of just 4 pages in total.

This slight increase in page regeneration might make a difference. And as you said, even if it turns out that people just use the skills 4&5, they can still make some fine tuning to change that. But the general concept of the mechanism seems pretty well in my opinion.

Yeah, I've been lumping that under the general category of 'page availability', but it does mean that if you use two expensive skills, then as long as you haven't completely run out of pages, you can finish off with a cheap skill for free.