Firebrands now basically have 1 Virtue slot...

[Ragnar.4257]

6 minutes ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

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.

There's been no attempt to balance FB in PvP since March 2020. Not quite 3 years, but only a few months short.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

Just now, Ragnar.4257 said:

There's been no attempt to balance FB in PvP since March 2020. Not quite 3 years, but only a few months short.

Well I can't remember when I last saw semi-big changes to guardian in general for pvp, so I can't really argue with that and I must say I've seen a trend with the updates lately, that leaves me to believe anet is somewhat giving up on wvw/pvp. Giving up might be the wrong word but I hope you get what I'm saying.

I'm afraid there might not be enough player activity in wvw/pvp for them to give it a wide area balancing, when it's compared to pve/ow content.

[Nero.7369]

The intention is good and I like it.

But the flow feels bad.

Pages

Before the patch If we only look at the F1 time:

30 sec cd. 5 pages. Standard dps rotation 25412, so all 5 pages used.

Now to generate 5 pages, it takes 8sec untraited. And I mostly go only with 254 now and leave the tome, simply because pressing 3 skills reward 1 extra page so 4 pages are only used. Now due to the higher cost. So we can already use less spells there and even then it still takes 32sec to gain these pages back which is higher then the F1 cooldown before.

Also F3 5 and 4 in eve already consume all pages. That's like nothing compared to how it was before. This plus we can't use the other times afterwards then is a bit to much imo. If we burn everything and ate locked out then is fine and good. But the amount of pages we manage could be a bit higher.

I feel like we need (maybe 7) pages base line and a 6sec page generation baseline. at least those 6sec generation would match the F1 cd of 30sec. And then we are still locked out of the other times when we burn those pages.

Tracking Cooldowns

I love my engineer, but now also the guard inherited their kits problems. It's way harder to keep track what is on cd now. But I guess there is nothing to do about it and the pros are worth it.

Disabled passives

Well this is kinda harsh. You kinda want to go frequently in tomes for 1 or 3 spells and leave them so they will be kinda always disabled. Seems like we can only pick 1 passive now.

I feel like disabling the passive effect for like 5-10 sec after leaving a tome would be enough.  But I guess that's also an issue for core and dragon hunter.  I could even imagine that it wdisable the passive for each page used in a book, so it stacks in duration. Would be much more convenient imo. But rn on hfb or celefb, I often wouldn't use the f2 time for a single skill like a condo cleanse because losing the passive for such a huge time is a huge value loss.... But once you did it's hard to stay out of it so the passive actually will come up aagain.

Traits and skills around it

Seems like Renewed Justice effect seems not to work rn. Bug imo.

And renewed focus recharges 5 pages, and removing the debuff but does not reset the cd of skills within the tomes. Not sure if this intended. But imo this should also reset the cd

I guess there is much more not working now or without use... Didn't checked it all yet

________

This is my first impression tho after playing with it for about an hour today. Will run fractals CMs on on different builds like hfb, celefb,qfb and cfb play some wvw in the next few days.

Edited February 4, 2023 by Nero.7369

[Kulvar.1239]

3 hours ago, Ferus.3165 said:

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.

If the skills have no cooldown, people will just spam the same few skills. Long cooldown on powerful skills are meant to give room for the use of less powerful skills. The pages are a global limit on your average "output" by preventing you to use every skill off cooldown so you need to think about what is best to use and when.

[Kulvar.1239]

1 hour ago, Nero.7369 said:

Seems like Renewed Justice effect seems not to work rn. Bug imo.

Renewed Justice remove the Dormant Justice debuff.

[otto.5684]

9 hours ago, Ragnarox.9601 said:

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...

Just like they did with mantras. After they nerfed the charges in pvp so you would use the last charge for strong effect. Ohh wait. They removed the last charge and mantras now are utter garbage so is FB in spvp. They likelihood of Anet making adjustments in pvp before 2030 is not very high.

Edited November 30, 2022 by otto.5684

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

There's been no attempt to balance FB in PvP since March 2020. Not quite 3 years, but only a few months short.

It's not really fair to judge the current balance team based on the crimes of the previous balance team (which was replaced for a reason).

[Saiyan.1704]

(sPvP)
Every Page that is 3/4 cast time... remove it.

Just remove it.

[Zedd.8239]

Conceptually, I don't think what they're going for is automatically bad. Although I still question the need for such a large overhaul when more minor tweaking could probably achieve what they're after.

But the current implementation is awful and doesn't feel very well-thought out. All it does is nerf the firebrand into the ground without giving us anything in return for what we've lost. The inability to use more than a few tome skills in a single battle is ridiculous. Cooldowns are way too long. Why even bother to have tome skills at all at this point?

I completely get wanting to make it a little harder to have flexibility as a firebrand. As a concept I think that's fair. I'm also fully in favor of forcing players to be smarter about whether they take offensive or defensive traits/skills. But the new changes don't achieve either of those things. They used a sledgehammer to fix something that needed a chisel.

Surely there must be a way to keep the firebrand useful and fun to play while still keeping it in check and not nerfing it into the ground? Or is that asking for too much at this point?

Edited November 30, 2022 by Zedd.8239

[Zedd.8239]

3 hours ago, Nero.7369 said:

Tracking Cooldowns

I love my engineer, but now also the guard inherited their kits problems. It's way harder to keep track what is on cd now. But I guess there is nothing to do about it and the pros are worth it.

 Yeah, tracking cooldowns is rough. I'm sure some might be able to keep a mental note of how long it takes for each skill to be back and track that throughout whatever they're doing. But that's something the game should be showing us. No idea what would work best for that.

As you said, the engineer has had the same problem for as long as it's been around. But what it's doing now definitely isn't working and expanding it to other classes isn't the right direction to be heading in.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

48 minutes ago, Zedd.8239 said:

Surely there must be a way to keep the firebrand useful and fun to play while still keeping it in check and not nerfing it into the ground?

The solution seems pretty straightforward to me. Increase the base page recovery rate (start at 1 page per 6s base, that's 5 pages every 30s like we had with ToJ) and adjust the skill page costs so we have enough to use at least ToJ effectively. Increased utility of Tomes 2 and 3 can still be regulated with the higher page costs for more powerful skills to represent their higher Tome CDs. 

That would allow us to go all in on one role without being able to unload all of them like we used to. 

For reference, just using Tome 1 used to allow casting the 5 skills every 30s. Now firing off our 5 skills requires 56s of page recovery. 30s to 56s! For just one tome! Which also leaves 0 pages left for any other tomes. That's formerly 10 utility tome skills in reserve down to 0 for any one that doesn't follow math.

Note, I think that last part is fair. I have no problem with going all in one one tome leaving nothing for other tomes. Or we can choose to use only a few skills and leave a few in reserve for utility. That's tradeoff, as mentioned in the design notes.

But Tome 1 usage going from a full suite of skill usage every 30s to 56s? No. That just feels really really bad to play. Not fun at all. And that wasn't even close to OP before. Still having full Tome 2 and 3 skills in reserve was the overtuned part. 

Edited November 30, 2022 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Gaiawolf.8261]

4 hours ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

I can get behind the thinking here, however you forget a crucial thing, before the patch pages were tied into the virtues mechanic.

This is absolutely untrue. Pages were never tied to the virtue mechanic. They were tied to individual tomes. And I have thought of that and already worked the numbers. I have spreadsheets for it. It's entirely possible to make pages shared with a trial recovery rate without changing anything else. If you use pages in Tome 1, then you have less for Tome 2 until they recharge. Tomes still on long CDs. Nothing else has to change. 

Then! After you see how that plays, if it's still not right, you can progress with some others steps from the proposed rework a few mechanics at a time. 

Adding shared pages, altered page recoveries, instant cast times, doubled skill CDs, increased page costs, a brand new dormant virtues mechanic, and completely reworked traits all in one patch? Of course it's gonna be bug-riddled chaos.

That being said, I actually like the idea of shared pages and no CD tomes, regulating skill usage by skill CDs instead. But they had to get the trait bugs and a proper page recovery/cost worked out before ever attempting that.

Otherwise it's gonna feel really op or like kitten to play. Looks like we got the latter, because they were greedy or cocky and thought they could handle it all at once. Just look at the bug report forums! Some FBs have 0 pages on map loads or coming off  mounts! Literally unplayable. No test server for something like this? 

[doc.9162]

this is a mega nerf, also not sure if its been implemented properly..

 

"ash's of the just" used to come up as an icon on my party members..

 

i cant tell at all if they're getting it when i give them quickness.

 

[Gaiawolf.8261]

8 minutes ago, doc.9162 said:

this is a mega nerf, also not sure if its been implemented properly..

 

"ash's of the just" used to come up as an icon on my party members..

 

i cant tell at all if they're getting it when i give them quickness.

 

I never understood why Ashes couldn't get a nice graphic effect to let you know it's working. Elementalists grant a really cool fire aura, and even our own Unbroken Lines adds a neat swirling light around affected allies. Why doesn't Ashes have a swirling fiery aura? 

[Demalii.9435]

Face + Palm.

[eXruina.4956]

9 hours ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

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.

well they've made no attempts to fix warrior after feb 2020 utterly decimated the class in competitive and it'll be feb 2023 in a few months. 🤔

 

there are also many other problems here and there that have gone unaddressed for way longer than 2-3 years. so.. yeah.. 🤣

 

historically they've had a very bad track record in regards to balance. 😓

 

and in comparison to other games, gw2 historically has one of, if not the worst history in terms of game balance among big name mmo franchises. this is a known fact for anyone who's had experience with other titles and try to play gw2 on a competitive level.

[Zizou.2358]

12 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.

Arenanet enjoys nuking specs to the ground without proper testing. They don't even play their own game (and WvW for sure, because why would they LOL). So I don't understand why making such big change to support Fb, instead of starting from small changes and adjusting it properly with time.

[Solstice.5790]

7 hours ago, doc.9162 said:

"ash's of the just" used to come up as an icon on my party members..

 

i cant tell at all if they're getting it when i give them quickness.

 

 

Patch notes:

"Quickfire: This trait now also retains the Tome of Justice passive effect while it is on cooldown. This trait can no longer affect multiple targets simultaneously."

 

They don't.

[Jura.2170]

14 hours ago, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

rather than THE support build class

 

mhm nope , heal fb wasnt THE support class for wvw
even with full heal, we're really weak in wvw healing

other classes are much better
and.. we never got more than ~ 5 bags in a zerg fight
now.. less?
none?
why should we play at all now?

[Seventh Ranger.3968]

Honestly, I like what they were going for, they just massively undertuned it. I really like the idea of making Firebrand tomes more like Engi kits, where you can dip in, use stuff, and then dip out, but in order for that to work, they need to seriously improve the page regeneration, or at least improve the refunding for using multiple skills in the same book, because right now it just feels MASSIVELY weaker in every way than it used to after the last round of nerfs. And I'm not even a guardian main, I just like playing some Firebrand every now and then, and it hurts so bad to see every single build I used to have for the spec crushed into dust. Btw, I'm not even talking about pvp, I'm talking pve. I'm struggling in PVE with Firebrand now, which should be the easiest mode to play any given build in.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

7 hours ago, eXruina.4956 said:

well they've made no attempts to fix warrior after feb 2020 utterly decimated the class in competitive and it'll be feb 2023 in a few months. 🤔

 

there are also many other problems here and there that have gone unaddressed for way longer than 2-3 years. so.. yeah.. 🤣

 

historically they've had a very bad track record in regards to balance. 😓

 

and in comparison to other games, gw2 historically has one of, if not the worst history in terms of game balance among big name mmo franchises. this is a known fact for anyone who's had experience with other titles and try to play gw2 on a competitive level.

Historically I can't really use that for anything substantial seeing as the balance patches as of late has been coming at a steady pace. If we had to consider everything based on past tense, you might as well shutdown the entire world since we wouldn't have a ton of the things we have today (Not to mention PC's) if it weren't for things like war and other atrocities.

Look forwards, not backwards. If you keep basing your opinion on things that have/haven't happened and judge the future based on that, well, idk, then you have a really glum look on life.

 

The fact that anet is in fact, pushing out balancing updates on a far more regulair level should not be a downside and using the past against them is pointless, it does nothing to improve the future.

[VillyWatchesYou.3810]

2 hours ago, Jura.2170 said:

 

mhm nope , heal fb wasnt THE support class for wvw
even with full heal, we're really weak in wvw healing

other classes are much better
and.. we never got more than ~ 5 bags in a zerg fight
now.. less?
none?
why should we play at all now?

If you don't have fun, I'd say don't play it? I don't think many people were expecting this change to go well right off the bat and here comes the but, do you honestly think this is a step in the wrong direction? Giving guardian a canvas that can be easily changed without having to change 15 other things at the same time? I understand the negativity surrounding this, it was certainly a "slap in the face" change but instead of focusing on now, how about focusing on the possibilities that are now open for the class in the future? Guardian is not the only class that's been hit into the dirt and it won't be the last but more often than not, those classes are tweaked and buffed/nerfed until they reach a point where they are acceptable to the overall scope the devs has for the game. I wouldn't say that's a bad thing.

 

And having fun is a relative term, personally I don't find it fun that guardian has been so high in the fractal meta for so long that people would almost never even consider anything but a hfb for a support. I know this is in the PvE aspect, but it translates into PvP/WvW as well. The game should not be about 1 class outperforming other classes in either of its aspects and sometimes drastic changes needs to happen in order to bring things down to a common level.

[angryangel.8541]

I would have been fine with making individual tome skills more costly to use OR adjusting the page regeneration as they have. In combination it's ridiculous, and it was unnecessary to nerf that hard. Glad they at least managed to make druid fun again, 'cause I'm not interested in HB anymore like this.

[Zacchary.6183]

23 hours ago, Bear on the job.6273 said:

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. 

😑

Welcome to Thief resource management!

[quaniesan.8497]

On 11/29/2022 at 4:03 PM, VillyWatchesYou.3810 said:

Are you expecting them to do a rework and nail it 100% on the first go?

 

While I don't expect 100% on the first go  i.e. some error margins are acceptable, BUT  given their experience with balancing the game, it shouldn't be this bad.   And, also  it's not "the first go",  they have been tampering with the FB ever since release, how many years now?  Suggestions have been given steadily over years,yet  they went with their gun instead and always caused unnecessary issues, example being just like the infamous fiasco with warrior that triggered unfortunate and extreme responses like death threats and calls to fire devs.  There are Anet apologists who constantly spout "it's never easy to balance a game" as some sort of end-all-be-all excuse every single time a bad patch happened,  but you know ,  "it's never easy" is not an excuse you can use forever, especially given their extensive experience with balancing the game over the decade.  If you want more obvious example, look at Willbender elite "balance".  The main problem of the skill is how clunky the skill is executed in real combat while exposing the WB for the 1.25 second he's in the air for a marginal reward for the effort/risk.  Yet their solution is ,you guessed it,  adjusting CD and up power, and for PVE only.  The skill is nothing more than a gimmicky defiant bar drainer.  As for FB, I knew it'd be bad the moment I read all virtues share pages from the preview, left alone the traits "fixes"

Edited November 30, 2022 by quaniesan.8497