Firebrands now basically have 1 Virtue slot...

[Bear on the job.6273]

This is coming from WvW/PvP perspective, but applies in general to a lesser extent.

The combination of shared pages, page regen time, and skill cooldowns has changed things significantly for FB, and in essence we now have 1 Virtue "slot" instead of 3 different Virtues. 

You basically choose which skill you want to use among the 15 available (3 books x 5 skills), you open the relevant book, use that skill, then go back to your weapons while you wait for that skill cooldown to elapse (which is the same time it takes for the pages to regen). Once the cooldown is done, you can pick the next skill you want to use out of the 15, go into the book, use it, then back to weapons. Repeat. Things are slightly different at the start of a fight, since you have pages stocked. But once you've spent them on those opening 2-3 skills, you are in the situation described here.

So in essence, you have 15 virtue skills, but you can only use 1 at a time. 

😑

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

Seems like that's just how it was intended, to think before using abilities. Does it need some tuning? Absolutely, but as far as I understood the devs, the whole point of this change was to not just have guardian spam pages and abilities on CD's, since they provide powerful boons both defensive and offensive and now you have to choose wether you want to go offense or defense.

[Ragnar.4257]

Its fine that they want you to pick just 1 or 2 of the tome skills to use, rather than using all of them.

The problem, is that the numbers on them, at least for PvP, are balanced on the assumption that you will be using all of them.

So now rather than using 5 weak skills, and the total adding up to something worthwhile, now you just use 1 weak skill.

[oOCitadelOo.2381]

As a roaming FB, it has really restricted the playstyle I have. If I go offensive I hope to kill, if not, then I am plagued with conditions and utilizing my defense skills is severely limited. It will take the brain to adjust. 

Not the greatest move for the FB. There are better ways.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

12 minutes ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

Seems like that's just how it was intended, to think before using abilities. Does it need some tuning? Absolutely, but as far as I understood the devs, the whole point of this change was to not just have guardian spam pages and abilities on CD's, since they provide powerful boons both defensive and offensive and now you have to choose wether you want to go offense or defense.

I think we all understood that intent, but even before the release, a lot of us could see that we wouldn't even be able to do offence or defence. It's more like, "Def-- oops! Out of pages!"

Edited November 29, 2022 by Gaiawolf.8261

[oOCitadelOo.2381]

Exactly. 

[Ragnarox.9601]

This should be from the start, now they just need to adjust and maybe buff some duration and effects. I like this change but way too late cause damage has been done...

Edited November 29, 2022 by Ragnarox.9601

[The Boz.2038]

Good.

[Buran.3796]

   So Core Guardian is now the stronger support build for groups, as in PvP?

[Kulvar.1239]

I would rather see it more in line with Thief Initiative.

Maximum of 8 pages slots baseline.
Recover 1 page every 3 seconds.
Tome skills consume 1/2/2/3/3 pages.
With skills 4 & 5 being more potent but with longer cooldowns.

Archivist of Whispers: Lower tome skills cooldown by 20%.

[Infusion.7149]

It's more penalizing for hybrid builds than anything. DPS firebrand should be fine just casting ashes, heal firebrand can save pages for unbroken lines or Eternal Oasis.

It's kind of early to be alarmist about this since you don't need tomes whatsoever to apply quickness in PvE so it mainly nerfs down support firebrand in WvW.

[Hotride.2187]

3 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It's kind of early to be alarmist about this since you don't need tomes whatsoever to apply quickness in PvE so it mainly nerfs down support firebrand in WvW.

Which considering its the main stab backbone, still means you'll have to take one. Hopefully not 2 🙂

[Infusion.7149]

6 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Which considering its the main stab backbone, still means you'll have to take one. Hopefully not 2 🙂

You can get away with stance share soulbeast (LotP +Dolyak Stance is 6 stacks of stab) as a DPS or chrono with well of precog (in PvE) / mantra of concentration depending on the situation but that's only if you're replacing a DPS quickness firebrand of some sort and not a healbrand.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

1 hour ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

I think we all understood that intent, but even before the release, a lot of us could see that we wouldn't even be able to do offence or defence. It's more like, "Def-- oops! Out of pages!"

Are you expecting them to do a rework and nail it 100% on the first go? There are so many variables to consider and it is almost impossible to get something like this right the first time. And not being able to offence or defense is just untrue, it is true that atm. you aren't able to do anything BUT either offence or defense but guardians are certainly capable of both still.

 

And if you try and look at it a different way, if the devs had to take EVERYTHING that players were saying into consideration, the game would be an absolute mess of inconsistant and incoherent nonsense that would either be so broken 1 skill would kill everything on every class, or 1 simple class would be so insanely better than everything else, that it would be pointless to even attempt anything else. Have patience, things like this takes time.

[deffy.1320]

This is an absolute mess for support FB in wvw its guess ur tomb that's not on cool down cause they are hidden, u open them and they're down and dead bit like i would be if i was in a 3 way blob fight, they have over complicated it, they might of just as well left us with just the 1 tomb for wat its worth, i certainly won't be playing it anymore, the tombs now to me are as good as useless, were under enough pressure without wondering if and when our tombs might be relevant and up, its just awful that's my opinion after over 10k hours playing on support guardian i'm calling it day for my FB in wvw. 

Edited November 29, 2022 by deffy.1320

[Gaiawolf.8261]

30 minutes ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

Are you expecting them to do a rework and nail it 100% on the first go? There are so many variables to consider and it is almost impossible to get something like this right the first time. And not being able to offence or defense is just untrue, it is true that atm. you aren't able to do anything BUT either offence or defense but guardians are certainly capable of both still.

I expected them to start small and work toward a balanced change with measured steps, yes. That's the smart way. Not jumping off the cliff and trying to climb back up to the even ledge. 

Then, even if there are missteps along the way, they are smaller, so it minimizes the period we have to wait before we can start having some fun again. Games are meant to be fun, not waiting rooms to the fun zone. 

Edit: To put another way, firebrands were considered overtuned because they could provide offense, defense, and healing without having to trait for each individually. Cutting them down piece by piece would at least allow them to do any two of the three, or with a deeper cut at least any one of them. Biting off more than you can chew, only leaves us with off-- or supp-- or hea-- instead. Easily avoidable by taking measured actions toward the goal instead of trying to cut to the end in one go. 

Edited November 29, 2022 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

This makes me sad.  Was looking forward to the flexibility but this change is actually really bad for dps of any sort.  There needs to be some way better page and CD reductions somewhere.  Guess I’ll just stick to my Willbender and just delete my FB template.

[Ferus.3165]

1 hour ago, Kulvar.1239 said:

I would rather see it more in line with Thief Initiative.

Maximum of 8 pages slots baseline.
Recover 1 page every 3 seconds.
Tome skills consume 1/2/2/3/3 pages.
With skills 4 & 5 being more potent but with longer cooldowns.

Archivist of Whispers: Lower tome skills cooldown by 20%.

just like thief the cooldown on the individual skills should not be there. You have the cooldown on your pages already and that is enough.

[Ragnar.4257]

2 hours ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

Are you expecting them to do a rework and nail it 100% on the first go? There are so many variables to consider and it is almost impossible to get something like this right the first time. And not being able to offence or defense is just untrue, it is true that atm. you aren't able to do anything BUT either offence or defense but guardians are certainly capable of both still.

 

And if you try and look at it a different way, if the devs had to take EVERYTHING that players were saying into consideration, the game would be an absolute mess of inconsistant and incoherent nonsense that would either be so broken 1 skill would kill everything on every class, or 1 simple class would be so insanely better than everything else, that it would be pointless to even attempt anything else. Have patience, things like this takes time.

You must be new around here.

ANet have a track record of dropping massive reworks that need adjusting, and then not following up on them for several years.

I dare-say if its totally broken in PvE they'll fix it sooner, but for PvP/WvW we can assume that this is it until 2025.

Seeing how things play-out and making iterative adjustments would make sense, if it ever happened. But it doesn't.

Edited November 29, 2022 by Ragnar.4257

[DarkSoul.2348]

why such a huge dropped nerf for this firebrand spec and all i have seen since eod is OP mechs everywhere and afk farmers with bots protecting them so like wtf why gut a spec so rough like this..sure maybe it lays the foundation for tuning but being an established spec this seems like the wrong approach tbh espicially since i am still working out the kinks with willbender nothing to fall back on now but core guardian.Dh is fun but not how i like to play all the time so.just talking about the spec here not all the riad/strike issues to do with the spec.

  Like as a pve player a once playble spec is bugged and boring to play now in low level tyria....a bit unfair tbh.

Edited November 29, 2022 by DarkSoul.2348

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

1 hour ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

You must be new around here.

ANet have a track record of dropping massive reworks that need adjusting, and then not following up on them for several years.

I dare-say if its totally broken in PvE they'll fix it sooner, but for PvP/WvW we can assume that this is it until 2025.

Seeing how things play-out and making iterative adjustments would make sense, if it ever happened. But it doesn't.

Not at all new and not following up? They're a development studio and if you think they can just implement changes instantly, that's really not how programming works. But the premise that a rework should be 100% optimal on release, is in all honesty a statement of ignorance.

 

And you talk about a track record, I would very much like for you to show me any development studio that (Unless it is completely broken) will just fling-out changes to a patch without doing any sort of testing at all. There's been plenty of times were anet has thrown out hotfixes for game breaking problems and yes, there's been plenty of times where it hasn't gone as fast as any of us would've liked but unfortunately that is how life works, are you expecting the developers to sit at their desk 24/7 and work on something that isn't an immediate issue because it in one way shape or form absolutely annihilates the entire gaming experience? Theese are people, not machines and sometimes fixing or changing something, is a bit more than just implementing a simple 30 letters line of code.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

45 minutes ago, DarkSoul.2348 said:

why such a huge dropped nerf for this firebrand spec and all i have seen since eod is OP mechs everywhere and afk farmers with bots protecting them so like wtf why gut a spec so rough like this..sure maybe it lays the foundation for tuning but being an established spec this seems like the wrong approach tbh espicially since i am still working out the kinks with willbender nothing to fall back on now but core guardian.Dh is fun but not how i like to play all the time so.just talking about the spec here not all the riad/strike issues to do with the spec.

  Like as a pve player a once playble spec is bugged and boring to play now in low level tyria....a bit unfair tbh.

Nothing in life is often fair and I will assume here that you didn't watch the devstream were they went through this patch, they noted that they are aware of mechanist currently being overtuned and are working on how to resolve it. Mechanists will get their nerf sooner than later but this patch was about Guardian and specifically HFB to bring it down to a more balanced support level compared to other support classes. I am pretty sure Mechanist will be a focus in the next patch.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

2 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

I expected them to start small and work toward a balanced change with measured steps, yes. That's the smart way. Not jumping off the cliff and trying to climb back up to the even ledge. 

Then, even if there are missteps along the way, they are smaller, so it minimizes the period we have to wait before we can start having some fun again. Games are meant to be fun, not waiting rooms to the fun zone. 

Edit: To put another way, firebrands were considered overtuned because they could provide offense, defense, and healing without having to trait for each individually. Cutting them down piece by piece would at least allow them to do any two of the three, or with a deeper cut at least any one of them. Biting off more than you can chew, only leaves us with off-- or supp-- or hea-- instead. Easily avoidable by taking measured actions toward the goal instead of trying to cut to the end in one go. 

I can get behind the thinking here, however you forget a crucial thing, before the patch pages were tied into the virtues mechanic. Meaning changing either would cause either insane imbalance to op or underpowered. That is why they've seperated the 2 and reworked how the virtues works. It gives them a lot more freedom to change the stats for one or the other and it even gives them a quick way to rebalance should it be too broken or the other way around.

 

This is an overall great change in terms of balancing because it gives them a far wider range in how they can manipulate skills and abilities so guardian eventually becomes a part of a wide assortment of support build classes, rather than THE support build class.

[Ragnar.4257]

10 minutes ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

Not at all new and not following up? They're a development studio and if you think they can just implement changes instantly, that's really not how programming works. But the premise that a rework should be 100% optimal on release, is in all honesty a statement of ignorance.

 

And you talk about a track record, I would very much like for you to show me any development studio that (Unless it is completely broken) will just fling-out changes to a patch without doing any sort of testing at all. There's been plenty of times were anet has thrown out hotfixes for game breaking problems and yes, there's been plenty of times where it hasn't gone as fast as any of us would've liked but unfortunately that is how life works, are you expecting the developers to sit at their desk 24/7 and work on something that isn't an immediate issue because it in one way shape or form absolutely annihilates the entire gaming experience? Theese are people, not machines and sometimes fixing or changing something, is a bit more than just implementing a simple 30 letters line of code.

Mate, everyone understands that patches take more than a few hours to cycle through.

But they don't take three years.

Not if its something that is even vaguely a priority.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

Just now, Ragnar.4257 said:

Mate, everyone understands that patches take more than a few hours to cycle through.

But they don't take three years.

Not if its something that is even vaguely a priority.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but are you saying that they've made no attempts to balance hfb in 3 years? Because they've certainly made changes that weren't really noticeable because it's difficult to balance something that outright gives everything required without nerfing it into the ground.

 

Not to mention there's been a steady delivery of balance patches coming out lately, which is a very good thing and my reply was to your premise of anet having a track record of slow updates, massive balancing updates every 3-4months is not at all slow if comparing it to other games.