YOU NERFED TOMES ALREADY, UNDO THE MANTRA NERF

[Wuffy.9732]

This is ridiculous. It's always 1 step forward and 2 steps back with anet devs sometimes...

Guardian was fine when you fixed mantras, why revert back to this nonsense? On top of that, the last balance patch you made tomes just as frustrating to use now. Undo this nerf to mantras, it's so unnecessary. Having mantras go on cd without having to redo them was more ideal.

[Lonewolf Kai.3682]

I like the change. 

[Kodama.6453]

I like that mantras are actually mantras once again.

The charge up mechanic was what made them unique among all the skill categories. When they just worked as instant cast skills on ammunition system.... they were not mantras anymore, they basically became shouts.

[ollbirtan.2915]

Mantra changes are great and are actually the way mantras used to work. The castrated reworked tomes on the other hand are a clunky mess.

[Hotride.2187]

"nerf"

There is nothing like the guard subsection of the forum.

[Passerbye.6291]

Oh boy, here we go again.
First things first, tome changes were in fact a huge buff for most FB builds, the only thing they affected adversely were dps/heal hybrid builds. After tome changes, HFB got access to all the tomes at all times, with really low cooldown on a lot of important skills.
Need condi cleanse? F2->2 for 7-8k heal on a healer build with 3 condis cleansed or F2->5 for 5 condis turned into boons.
Need extra regen uptime? using F2-3 off of cooldown will permanently sustain regen and vigor on a HFB even with full minstrel gear (which is far from capped boon duration)
Need projectile hate? F3->3 for a 5 second duration projectile REFLECT on 15-second base cooldown
Need more might? F1->4 for a fire field you can blast for now only 1 page cost with a cooldown of 15 seconds (This gives 3 stacks of might with a base duration of 20 seconds so kind of a big deal)
Need raw healing? any combination of F2->5-4-1 or if there are condis involves 2 for chunky emergency heals, you can practically have a 50% uptime on the healing boost from eternal oasis should you choose to do so now.
All these abilities were previously on much larger cooldowns, now you get to use them whenever a mechanic requires it, you will never run out of cleanses, something some other healers can struggle with.

Now that I have mentioned a bunch of things for HFB, let's delve into the DPS and qDPS side of things.
Before mantra changes, FB benched 40k and qFB benched 34k, these numbers being after tome changes. So yes, simply put tome changes were a straight up buff for damage side of things as well. There were some bugs and annoying things happening after the changes, but they've mostly been fixed now.

Now to mantras, I disliked the revert to the previous version of mantras from a strictly gameplay point of view, since I'm a lazy guy and don't like putting in extra effort, but anyone who knows anything about numbers will tell you that the mantra changes are a direct buff for both HFB and damage/quick FB in PvE.
First of all, quick FB and HFB had a big downside when it came to the way they applied quickness, it was that you relied on using mantra charges off of cooldown for maximum quickness uptime. This by itself was not a problem since the mantras were instant cast, however, whenever your group weren't perfectly stacked or people had to split in different directions and you had to hold on to your heal mantra for longer than 0.68 second, you'd lose out on the quickness from liberator's vow (Base mantra charge cooldown of 12 seconds being reduced to first 9.6 sec by weighty terms and than to 7.68 sec with alacrity and liberator's vow having an internal cooldown of 7 seconds). Simply put, when you wasted a cumulative 0.69 seconds before using heal mantra, you'd waste 1 internal cooldown of liberator's vow unless you kept healing mantra on 3 stacks and only carefully used one charge and reused it whenever it hits 3 to ensure proper uptime (which few people did).

Now however, using all charges of mantra of potence gives you quickness equal to using 4 mantra charges due to the 2x value from the final charge and you get all stacks back in 25 seconds, factoring in alacrity, the time it takes to spend all the charges and the channel to get said charges back, you get to have this 4x value every 23-24 seconds, compared to the previous 1x value per 7.68 seconds we used to have. What this means is that we currently get the same amount of quickness we got from mantra of potence in 30.72 seconds prepatch in 23-24 seconds after mantra changes, making it a net quickness uptime gain (oh and this without needing weighty terms anymore as it does not affect the full cooldown of mantras, just the per charge one)
Now this alone is enough to make it a significant buff, but here is the more interesting part, since you can provide a lot of quickness very fast, this makes FB quickness, especially for HFB super good for when you need to split as well, because after you use feel my wrath + all mantra of potence charges and 1x heal mantra you'll only need to use mantra of healing once when it gains a charge, or just keep it until you get your mantra of potence cooldown back if you've overcapped boon duration enough to not need it or you picked stalwart speed for even easier quickness uptime.

Similarly, for damage builds and quickDPS, both mantra of potence and mantra of flame will be used up and then recharged during scepter weapon swap to minimize damage loss as scepter auto attacks are just terrible overall. Due to the fact that you gain extra quickness duration from mantra of potence, 3x damage form the final charge of mantra of flame, and being able to pick legendary lore instead of weighty terms, condi FB is expected to reach about 42k dps if I'm not wrong and quickFB is expected to reach 36-37k dps (an insane number for a support dps that was already really good mind you).

So yeah, all in all, all the "nerfs" you mention have been straight up buffs with the exception of certain hybrid builds, and to be honest, even they might be back to their old glory with the mantra changes.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[otto.5684]

5 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

"nerf"

There is nothing like the guard subsection of the forum.

Most people are not happy with the change, but only the OP thinks it is a nerf.

[Hotride.2187]

5 hours ago, otto.5684 said:

Most people are not happy with the change, but only the OP thinks it is a nerf.

Not being happy because you cant do full brainless spam (only half brainless spam now) is not much better to me.

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Wuffy.9732]

On 2/23/2023 at 8:00 PM, Lonewolf Kai.3682 said:

I like the change. 

you are a masochist.

On 2/24/2023 at 11:08 AM, otto.5684 said:

Most people are not happy with the change, but only the OP thinks it is a nerf.

if people aren't happy with something that is a recent change, I'm pretty sure it's the definition of a nerf. Anet clearly made something worse in this case that people are not happy with 🤨

23 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Not being happy because you cant do full brainless spam (only half brainless spam now) is not much better to me.

 

Even before the "nerf" it was a brainless spam. But I digress. It's not like I'm arguing to make guardian easier. Mantras before would still be on a CD if you spammed them willy-nilly. I'm arguing against having to kittening recharge them after accidentally spamming them.

The folks defending the rollback changes are baffling.

Edited February 25, 2023 by Wuffy.9732

[Gaiawolf.8261]

2 hours ago, Wuffy.9732 said:

if people aren't happy with something that is a recent change, I'm pretty sure it's the definition of a nerf. Anet clearly made something worse in this case that people are not happy with 🤨

People tend to think of nerf in terms of numbers, but a nerd to fun trump's that every time. 😉 Which is generally a matter of opinion, further complicating the matter.