Heal Firebrand Deserves Nerfs

[Passerbye.6291]

There, I said it. Let me preface this by saying, I play HFB quite a lot and consider it by far the best all around healer in the game, so much so that it baffles me when people randomly say it doesn't heal much or doesn't do X or Y. Before this patch, I considered there to only be 2 downsides to HFB. The first would be might uptime, which would be alleviated depending on your build or by simply going into fire tome to generate extra might, blast fire field etc.  The second would be the rather small radius on mantras, forcing you to have all your allies in a cone in front of you in most pugs as stacking would often be rather bad.

Over time, with various changes, the might uptime became easier and easier, before this patch, taking stoic demeanor, legendary lore or empowering might would all let you cap out on might generation, each having their separate upsides and downsides; Stoic Demeanor resulting in less sustained healing due to losing the F2 passive whenever you did need to use F2 tome but also making it possible to permanently sustain resistance if you so chose, Legendary Lore being on the same tier as stalwart speed and weighty terms, so losing out on either some extra pages or an even easier quick uptime (not that this was a problem anymore), but in turn giving you a chance to sustain more stacks of might and regeneration easily without having to use a utility of water tome 3 for it, while also giving you an even higher uptime on protection if you so chose, Empowering Might making might uptime a joke by passively generating might as you inevitably hit the target but competing against honorable staff, making you lose out on reduced staff cooldowns and some boon duration.

Currently, with the cooldown reduction traits getting incorporated as baseline, we're looking at a HFB that now has even less of a cooldown on incredible abilities like Stand Your Ground, Hallowed Ground, Sanctuary, Purging Flames, Wall of Reflection, as well as all mantras.  While, this might not seem earth shattering, though it really should, these changes further buff HFB, which was already the best and most versatile healer in the game bar none. For instance, by using wall of reflection and earth tome 3, you could already permanently keep up a reflect field, now, it is even easier because wall of reflection now has a 20-second cooldown baseline (16 with alac) and a 10-second duration with  Master of Consecrations trait. Mantra of Potence cooldown is now exactly low enough with alacrity that if you spam it whenever you get it with 100% boon duration, you have 8 stacks of might permanently up from it (as well as some partial uptime on extra stacks) and reach exactly 100% quickness uptime with it alone, making any additional source of quickness simply make up for errors in gameplay, stacking or split phases etc. which to me seems insane seeing how the same balance patch that changed druid forced them to enter CA as soon as they can and stay in it as long as they can to sustain alac, meanwhile we, as HFB, get to just spam one button willy nilly. Simply using empower and mantra of potence off of cooldown results in 17 stacks of might up at all times, and the remaining 8 is really easy to generate from any one of the 3 aforementioned trait and gameplay options.

If you aren't convinced yet, especially if you are one of the people who think HFB has low healing, keep in mind that Druid now has to go into CA for alac uptime, potentially not having its best healing options available at a time of need, tempest has to go through their attunements, potentially not having immediate access to water when it's needed. Meanwhile, us, as HFB, can have 50% uptime on eternal oasis, if we so chose, we have all the condi cleanse we need from water tome 2 and 5 (not that we can't get more but it's rarely needed), can full heal a group in a few seconds with multiple combinations of skills, water tome 2, which is our 4-second base cooldown cleanse that removes 3 conditions, also happens to heal a stupendous amounth if it removes conditions, but even without that, staff 2 into water tome 5 both heals a lot by itself, but it is also a water blast for aoe healing, tho simply spamming water tome 1 also heals an impressive amount considering you have it available to you whenever you need. Without dragging this even further, what I'm trying to say is that, HFB already has almost everything a healer could require available to it at all times, and they have utility slots available to push it further, like having 80-100% stab uptime instead of having to get by with just one or two they have like other healers.

Don't get me wrong, I find HFB to be an absolute joy as a healer, because I feel entirely in control of almost anything barring literal one shots. But, if there is to be balance, HFB, in comparison to any other healer, has way too much of almost everything. It either needs to get nerfed, or if we're comfortable with this level of utility, healing and boon support from a healer, other classes need to be buffed.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[BatelGeuce.3591]

I disagree, it needs to be buffed even further. It should be able to upkeep both 100% quickness and 100% alac while also providing a stable source of might, stability, regeneration, protection and fury. That should be the core supply that hFB has and it should be able to equip utility skills that'd allow for distribution of less frequent boons like resolution, aegis, resistance and vigor.

I want to see a hFB that's the sole answer to all the needs a group could have.

Edited June 28, 2023 by BatelGeuce.3591

[Dahkeus.8243]

Well, Druid is wrecked.  Heal Herald is maybe better in healing output and able to give some stab without Jalis, but still frequently locked out of utility because of the need to legend swap constantly for boon production and still has no aegis/barrier.  HAM also apparently got nerfed with the mace doing less alac and is much more heavily penalized by wandering AI mechs with a 50% cd increase. 

 

So, I don't think we can afford to nerf any more healers, even if they are guardians, lol.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

I'd rather they buff the other healers admittedly. 

[Cuks.8241]

Nope, hfb is great and should stay great and the goal for balancing other healing supports.

[Peter.3901]

Meanwhile druid can't even keep alac without sacrificing everything, i wish they just buff every other healer than nerf hfb, as a healer, i want to enjoy my game and not to become a worker.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Peter.3901

[Gaiawolf.8261]

Really? That's your go to? Nerf a fun healer down to the rough spots some other healers are in since the recent patch shook them up? Not fix the other specs and make them fun to play again, instead?

I also don't agree HFB is unequivly the best healer for all groups, encounters, or even game modes. I agree it is the most versatile, which is what makes it widely used and fun for me. More specs should be like this, not less  All specs should be the most fun they can be regardless of what any other spec is doing. 

[Vidit.7108]

I was looking to get into druid before this patch and it seemed fine before with spamming spirits. Early EoD Engineer had two very strong healers one got nerfed because the other was too good. If your group needs strong raw healing I don't know that I would take a firebrand to do it. When Harvest Temple was new a shout aura tempest carried out group and not me. That build has probably gotten better at healing and boon support it just doesn't appear in pugs because of no quickness/alacrity. Firebrand gets by on being the only game in town for heal quickness specs whereas heal alacrity was very competitive before this patch. You saw more HAMs in pugs because it was easier to play/learn not because it was best in slot.

Firebrand's versatility isn't really any different than before the patch. There were already a dozen ways to get to to full protection/might/regen upkeep as of three or four years ago. Maybe it's a little easier to do than last patch, sure.  If anything since the tome change it is capable of slightly less healing. Any nerfs to heal firebrand would have to come from trashing core guardian's healing traits and skills, which i really don't want to see.

HFB isn't the problem, their really bad ideas for shoehorning quickness and alac onto builds they didn't design to spread them is. Though it sounds like if Herald neded only 4 or 5 upkeep heal firebrand might be in serious trouble. But, It's not firebrand's fault they made THREE melee dps elite specs for warrior with 0 substantive support traits. It's not firebrand's fault they totally nuked chronomancer back in like 2019 unleashing the FB/Ren meta. A lot of classes, especially mesmer, have great versatility and no healing. The solution is to give each class an elite spec designed to do support and not totally whiff it like they did with Specter or nerf it till it dies for several years.

[Solstice.5790]

While I do agree that HFB is  a solid healer at the moment, I don't think the patch made it much better.
At least not in terms of

15 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

a HFB that now has even less of a cooldown on incredible abilities like Stand Your Ground, Hallowed Ground, Sanctuary, Purging Flames, Wall of Reflection, as well as all mantras

HFB was running Master of Consecrations before, so the cd or duration did not change. There still is no real reason to swap out of that trait imo.
Weighty Terms was used for the cooldown reduction, since HFB (due to similar functioning utilities) doesn't rely on tome usage as much as the dps variants did. So the mantra cooldowns also didn't change much, except for the niche cases when you would swap to Stalwart Speed for high stab encounters.
Feel my Wrath! did not get the reduced cooldown included at all (except in WvW where you don't use it).

So realistically HFB got a lower Advance! and Stand Your Ground! cooldown and some more freedom of choice when it comes to trait / util combinations.

But when supposed heal-druids can either do more healing while in CA or provide their core boon of alacrity,  I don't think HFB is what needs changing...

Edited June 29, 2023 by Solstice.5790

[Passerbye.6291]

7 hours ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Really? That's your go to? Nerf a fun healer down to the rough spots some other healers are in since the recent patch shook them up? Not fix the other specs and make them fun to play again, instead?

I also don't agree HFB is unequivly the best healer for all groups, encounters, or even game modes. I agree it is the most versatile, which is what makes it widely used and fun for me. More specs should be like this, not less  All specs should be the most fun they can be regardless of what any other spec is doing. 

Whether to nerf or buff depends entirely on how easy they want the game to be. They mentioned "skill economy" a while back, where skills would have a certain balance amongst themselves and classes would have things they are good and bad at, creating reasons for them to be picked over others. Currently, there is only one thing HFB is bad at, it is resurrection, and guess what they nerfed with this patch, exactly that. Scourge is no longer a pug carry with its resurrection, druid can no longer resurrect reliably with its glyph due to needing to CA off of cooldown, so it is a coin toss whether you'll have your glyph available when you need it. I don't know where scrapper healer is at atm after the quick changes, will have to wait and see.

I find it disingenuous to say HFB is not unequivocally the best healer when it has no weaknesses whatsoever. I can make my party skip entire mechanics without them even having to know what to do. HFB is the healer with highest access to aegis, stab, afaik, also the only healer to be able to permanently sustain resistance, not that it is needed, but it is an option for fights where you get hit a lot by weakness, blind etc. and no matter how early you cleanse them there is some loss of dps or survivability in the case of vulnerability. HFB has the highest amount of cleanses available to it, purging flames cleansing 10 conditions over 10 seconds with a 20-second cooldown without alac, your water tome 2 cleansing 3 conditions on a 4-second cooldown, costing only one page and also healing for each condi removed, I've seen it heal over 8k without eternal oasis multiple times. You have access to range heals, which is something heal alacrity mech struggles with. HFB has 1050 breakbar damage over 7 seconds from 1 skill alone, you can easily do 1.5k breakbar damage if you actually chuck in axe 3, shield 5, fire tome 3. They even reduced the cooldown of sanctuary so it has a base cooldown of 40 seconds now. HFB has a stun break on a 20-second cooldown in a very forgiving radius as well, as if that was needed on top of all the stab it has.

I really don't want to be mean here but, the only thing that makes people think HFB isn't OP is bad HFB players who do none of those things and only do the bare minimum of what they can, which still makes people think, oh HFB healing is a bit low but it is a fine healer. Cause currently, if you press 3 buttons, you easily sustain quickness and provide permanent 17 might with some healing. Kinda similar to heal alacrity mech in that it takes little to no effort to do decently.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Passerbye.6291]

7 hours ago, Solstice.5790 said:

HFB was running Master of Consecrations before, so the cd or duration did not change. There still is no real reason to swap out of that trait imo.
Weighty Terms was used for the cooldown reduction, since HFB (due to similar functioning utilities) doesn't rely on tome usage as much as the dps variants did. So the mantra cooldowns also didn't change much, except for the niche cases when you would swap to Stalwart Speed for high stab encounters.

You are indeed correct about master of consecrations, I phrased my sentence poorly, I meant to say that you now get to keep the reduced cooldown even if you choose not to get the extra duration, tho I agree that it is the best trait choice so I'll give you that.

About weighty terms, after mantra changes, weighty terms was used for the page gain and not the cooldown reduction, because the trait only reduced the cooldown per charge, but not the cooldown after spending all charges, and in the case of HFB, you only used 1 charge of heal mantra but you spammed out the mantra of potence, rendering weighty terms of little use in terms of cooldown reduction. Now however, they made it so that both the cd reduction per charge and the general cooldown on spending all charges are reduced regardless, rendering it a net buff, a significant one at that as it now allows you to permanently sustain the 8 might from the last charge of mantra of potence with 100% boon duration, this was something that had some downtime before. Similarly, this also resulted in even higher quick uptime, and HFB already massively overcapped quick uptime even before this patch. Now, with 100% boon duration, spamming mantra of potence alone gives you exactly 100% quick uptime, making anything else extra.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Hotride.2187]

20 hours ago, BatelGeuce.3591 said:

I disagree, it needs to be buffed even further. It should be able to upkeep both 100% quickness and 100% alac while also providing a stable source of might, stability, regeneration, protection and fury. That should be the core supply that hFB has and it should be able to equip utility skills that'd allow for distribution of less frequent boons like resolution, aegis, resistance and vigor.

I want to see a hFB that's the sole answer to all the needs a group could have.

Oh please let it do 50k dps too. No need to be shy here.

On topic, yeah, it needs nerfs. It needed nerfs for a while now, and every attempt to nerf it this last year has actually buffed it. Its kinda weird.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Psycoprophet.8107]

This thread shows Gw2 playerbase mentality in nutshell and is a part of the reason gw2 devs dont and shouldn't listen to most of its community feedback regarding balance. Yes let's nerf a class so my class doesn't seem so bad at same said role..   instead of pls buff other classes to be on par with this said viable class. Decreasing build and class diversity is not good for the game, nor is asking for classes to be nerfed to the un viable states others are to make the others feel more viable. I swear listening to this community is some of the reason gw2 devs got the the idea that nerfing that one good trait thats always used to make the other 2 useless traits seem more attractive instead of buffing the other 2 traits was the best idea.

Let's not continually ask to dumpster every good build or class down and instead bring them up, unless they are obviously overperforming like fb was in the past, or how catalyst is now etc.

[Solstice.5790]

4 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

About weighty terms, after mantra changes, weighty terms was used for the page gain and not the cooldown reduction, because the trait only reduced the cooldown per charge, but not the cooldown after spending all charges, and in the case of HFB, you only used 1 charge of heal mantra but you spammed out the mantra of potence, rendering weighty terms of little use in terms of cooldown reduction.

Let me rephrase since I believe we're talking about the same thing.
I personally did not burn Potence and used two charges on the heal mantra to also upkeep protection, and to keep all final charges for emergencies. Slotting in cleanse and stab mantra would, in combination with Weighty Terms, lead to high benefit from the trait's cd reduction - and in combination with weapon skills to a playstyle that allowed me to fine tune anywhere between standing around and regenerating group hp to "holy kitten" tome and mantra full burn.
This only got somewhat interrupted by encounters with high, semi-permanent stab demand (Chaos fractal boss) where I would slot Stand Your Ground!, stab mantra and potentially even Hallowed Ground - which would require me to swap into Stalwart Speed to keep Quickness up.
With the cooldown reduction baked into the mantras it is now easier to swap that trait or your elite depending on what's needed.
Which made it generally more flexible in supporting either via tome usage or via mantra usage - or, if needed, both.

So as you said, especially in the last paragraph of your post, you have a lot of ways to adjust to an encounter and support your group, always giving your core boon of Quickness 100% of the time.
My point was just that HFB didn't get better with the patch, your Quickness isn't more effective, you don't give 28 stacks of might, you don't heal for more.

[Passerbye.6291]

I have a few different loadouts with keybindings to switch between them on the go as needed so things vary a lot depending on what build I'm running at any given time, but the fact that HFB was already broken OP shouldn't justify further buffing it. 

About not healing more, not giving 25 stacks of might or not making quickness more effective. These changes do make quickness uptime even easier, making one of the tiniest downsides of HFB nonexistent, it is the way it applies quickness, it always struggled in pug groups due to poor stacking and not being able to have everyone in a cone in front of you due to the poor radius on it forcing you to use the frontal cone to give quickness when people didn't stack properly. With the past few patches of changes, now firebrand overcaps quickness by a ridiculous margin. While at the high end, you technically still upkeep 100% quickness, it does affect lower end gameplay, making HFB require even less effort. For instance, from your point of view, with the mantra changes, HFB shouldn't be considered to have been buffed in terms of quickness, but using up all charges of mantra of potence, combined with a single use of heal mantra and feel my wrath started resulting in you being able to stack quickness to 30 seconds in a matter of 2 seconds. With that patch, HFB no longer struggled with quick uptime during fights where the groups had to split. Similarly, reducing the cooldown of mantras' full use, they let you do this more frequently.

On top of all that, the buff does in fact result in a bonus in terms of high end gameplay as well, as unlike before, your mantra of potence is now able to sustain 8 stacks of might by itself, which it couldn't before, making it so that you need less of the additional sources of might, for instance, I like running Legendary Lore, with these changes, I can do empower, mantra of potence full spam, staff 2 into fire tome 4->5->1/2/3 to immediately cap everyone on 25 might, with the might from fire blast lasting a lot longer, I don't even need to use as many fire tome skills after the initial one, letting me cap might at 25 without spending anywhere near as many pages, and this is enabled by the cooldown reduction to mantra of potence. I don't find this buff to be in any way insignificant, especially considering the class was already by far the best healer in the game. As said, I play a lot of healfirebrand, but, relatively speaking, it is objectively better than all other healers. As, statistically speaking, it is more likely for 1 class to be overtuned than every other class to be undertuned, I think it deserves a nerf. Now, if the balance team thinks where HFB is exactly where every healer should be brought up to, I look forward to that with a worried optimism as in its current state, playing HFB feels like cheating in so many encounters.

To create a decent contrast, same people who buffed HFB yet again, introduced the current druid we have with the same patch, a build that has to camp CA for the full duration instead of using it as a burst heal/cleanse/CC mechanic to provide alac and might, while also losing a lot of resurrection utility from glyph of the stars due to being pigeonholed into spamming CA abilities as soon as the astral force bar fills. In the same patch, they also managed to nerf most spirit skills considerably with the exception of the one that gives aegis, mostly ignored the fact that they were also used to charge up astral force by healing the steady damage they took, and were not compensated enough, so now, druid actually performs worse the better the group is. 
Now, imagine if they fixed all that and made druid able to provide alac and all the staple boons without ever going into CA, then having permanent access to CA, limited only by how much astral force they use, and somehow receive the potential to provide permanent projectile hate and/or 100% stability if they so choose, and only then will you have brought druid in line with HFB.

For the longest time, we have this weird issue when it comes to healers where we all act like it is ok for heal firebrand to do everything better than everyone as if it is the chosen one, and the rest of the healers compete among themselves for someone to play when they are feeling adventurous.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[BatelGeuce.3591]

2 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

This thread shows Gw2 playerbase mentality in nutshell and is a part of the reason gw2 devs dont and shouldn't listen to most of its community feedback regarding balance. Yes let's nerf a class so my class doesn't seem so bad at same said role..   instead of pls buff other classes to be on par with this said viable class. Decreasing build and class diversity is not good for the game, nor is asking for classes to be nerfed to the un viable states others are to make the others feel more viable. I swear listening to this community is some of the reason gw2 devs got the the idea that nerfing that one good trait thats always used to make the other 2 useless traits seem more attractive instead of buffing the other 2 traits was the best idea.

Let's not continually ask to dumpster every good build or class down and instead bring them up, unless they are obviously overperforming like fb was in the past, or how catalyst is now etc.

Because nerfing the one class that stands out is less work and it wll not cause imbalance in the game's difficulty. If they buff all the healers to hFB levels it would render all the challenging conent not challenging and they'd have to address that.

But considering the fact that people always look for the easy way I guess your suggestion would work better for the casuals because actually learning stuff is frowned upon around here.

[Solstice.5790]

I don't know how to express it in a different way.
After the patch you do not heal more, stronger, higher numbers. You also do not provide twentyeight, that was not a typo, stacks of might. And your quickness doesn't speed up people more than the q from other healers.
If you were at 100% q uptime before with 25 stacks of might while having access to your other utility and support stuff, literally nothing has changed. You have more ways to do that now, but what you do isn't better.

The fact that druids, especially now, aren't in a good state, doesn't change that. I agree that they were made worse.

But if you played HFB a lot I assume you have experienced the raw heal output of druids (pre-patch) or the heal+cleansing capabilities of tempests, so on "HFB being the superior healer" we'll just have to disagree.

[Passerbye.6291]

10 minutes ago, Solstice.5790 said:

I don't know how to express it in a different way.
After the patch you do not heal more, stronger, higher numbers. You also do not provide twentyeight, that was not a typo, stacks of might. And your quickness doesn't speed up people more than the q from other healers.
If you were at 100% q uptime before with 25 stacks of might while having access to your other utility and support stuff, literally nothing has changed. You have more ways to do that now, but what you do isn't better.

The fact that druids, especially now, aren't in a good state, doesn't change that. I agree that they were made worse.

But if you played HFB a lot I assume you have experienced the raw heal output of druids (pre-patch) or the heal+cleansing capabilities of tempests, so on "HFB being the superior healer" we'll just have to disagree.

I know how to express it in a way, after the patch, by having 8 extra permanent stacks of might, you get to use fewer pages to sustain 25 might, I did get the joke with 28 stacks, just didn't deem it necessary to react to it, in turn you now have more pages to dedicate to, yep you guessed it, utility and heal, so yes, you do heal more, please don't make me go round in circles mate, the class was so broken OP already that further buffs don't even matter is not a good argument. 

In terms of raw druid healing, I can compare numbers with you if you want, HFB doesn't fall short, tempest is widely considered the best raw healer, but that did take a big hit due to having to choose their alac trait over healing throughput.

I can easily outheal any kind of damage that is meant to be healed in this game, including things like gorseval blacks etc., I just tell my group to face tank it because noone can die. At this point, HFB having low healing is just a meme for anyone who has ever played the class earnestly. As said before, in condi heavy fights, which is often when you need extra burst healing since almost every other healer that requires burst healing has a cooldown between bursts, you can easily 8k heal with water tome 2 alone while also cleansing 3 conditions, druid uses a longer cooldown to achieve something similar, they do about 10k iirc.

Edit: A buff doesn't need to be an increase in the number of what a skill does, decreasing the cooldown of SYG and HG for instance is a net buff, even if you might not need those abilities any more frequently than you did before in any given fight, that doesn't mean they aren't buffed, you now have the capability to provide stab with both of those skills more frequently, similarly, you might get to provide stab an additional time throughout a fight. I don't know why we need to argue on what a buff is when it is clear as day.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Psycoprophet.8107]

1 hour ago, BatelGeuce.3591 said:

Because nerfing the one class that stands out is less work and it wll not cause imbalance in the game's difficulty. If they buff all the healers to hFB levels it would render all the challenging conent not challenging and they'd have to address that.

But considering the fact that people always look for the easy way I guess your suggestion would work better for the casuals because actually learning stuff is frowned upon around here.

Yes but if a class eats nerfs and is at a acceptable power level for the game but other classes are not, destroying the class at a acceptable power lv down to classes that are below acceptable levels just leaves all classes being gbage at that said role. So can go both ways.

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, BatelGeuce.3591 said:

Because nerfing the one class that stands out is less work and it wll not cause imbalance in the game's difficulty. If they buff all the healers to hFB levels it would render all the challenging conent not challenging and they'd have to address that.

But considering the fact that people always look for the easy way I guess your suggestion would work better for the casuals because actually learning stuff is frowned upon around here.

I would agree in case of dps roles. But hfb does not generate godly numbers, its just versatile and doesnt need to jump through hoops to get the job done. 

I think all healing supports should have all the tools to get the job done with a relative equal complexity but each with its own class twist. Maybe each can have a specific niche strength and weaknesses but not to the point where some just cant do specific tasks. 

[Gaiawolf.8261]

11 hours ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

Whether to nerf or buff depends entirely on how easy they want the game to be. They mentioned "skill economy" a while back, where skills would have a certain balance amongst themselves and classes would have things they are good and bad at, creating reasons for them to be picked over others. Currently, there is only one thing HFB is bad at, it is resurrection, and guess what they nerfed with this patch, exactly that. Scourge is no longer a pug carry with its resurrection, druid can no longer resurrect reliably with its glyph due to needing to CA off of cooldown, so it is a coin toss whether you'll have your glyph available when you need it. I don't know where scrapper healer is at atm after the quick changes, will have to wait and see.

I find it disingenuous to say HFB is not unequivocally the best healer when it has no weaknesses whatsoever. I can make my party skip entire mechanics without them even having to know what to do. HFB is the healer with highest access to aegis, stab, afaik, also the only healer to be able to permanently sustain resistance, not that it is needed, but it is an option for fights where you get hit a lot by weakness, blind etc. and no matter how early you cleanse them there is some loss of dps or survivability in the case of vulnerability. HFB has the highest amount of cleanses available to it, purging flames cleansing 10 conditions over 10 seconds with a 20-second cooldown without alac, your water tome 2 cleansing 3 conditions on a 4-second cooldown, costing only one page and also healing for each condi removed, I've seen it heal over 8k without eternal oasis multiple times. You have access to range heals, which is something heal alacrity mech struggles with. HFB has 1050 breakbar damage over 7 seconds from 1 skill alone, you can easily do 1.5k breakbar damage if you actually chuck in axe 3, shield 5, fire tome 3. They even reduced the cooldown of sanctuary so it has a base cooldown of 40 seconds now. HFB has a stun break on a 20-second cooldown in a very forgiving radius as well, as if that was needed on top of all the stab it has.

I really don't want to be mean here but, the only thing that makes people think HFB isn't OP is bad HFB players who do none of those things and only do the bare minimum of what they can, which still makes people think, oh HFB healing is a bit low but it is a fine healer. Cause currently, if you press 3 buttons, you easily sustain quickness and provide permanent 17 might with some healing. Kinda similar to heal alacrity mech in that it takes little to no effort to do decently.

Well, I was going to draft a response, because I fundamentally disagree with the entire entire balance philosophy of nerfing away from fun into less fun, instead of finding the sweet spot and gravitating other builds toward that, but others already said it, and possibly better, so I'll just throw my hat into:

2 hours ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Yes but if a class eats nerfs and is at a acceptable power level for the game but other classes are not, destroying the class at a acceptable power lv down to classes that are below acceptable levels just leaves all classes being gbage at that said role. So can go both ways.

 

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I would agree in case of dps roles. But hfb does not generate godly numbers, its just versatile and doesnt need to jump through hoops to get the job done. 

I think all healing supports should have all the tools to get the job done with a relative equal complexity but each with its own class twist. Maybe each can have a specific niche strength and weaknesses but not to the point where some just cant do specific tasks. 

Also, I really don't want to be mean here, but if you couldn't outperform a HFB in certain support needs, game modes/content, roaming PVP/sPVP, etc. with HAT, HAM, HealHerald, or druid (I won't include scourge for obvious reasons), it's entirely possible you just weren't playing them right.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Passerbye.6291]

44 minutes ago, Gaiawolf.8261 said:

Also, I really don't want to be mean here, but if you couldn't outperform a HFB in certain support needs, game modes/content, roaming PVP/sPVP, etc. with HAT, HAM, HealHerald, or druid (I won't include scourge for obvious reasons), it's entirely possible you just weren't playing them right.

Low quality bait, try again.

[Passerbye.6291]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I would agree in case of dps roles. But hfb does not generate godly numbers, its just versatile and doesnt need to jump through hoops to get the job done. 

I think all healing supports should have all the tools to get the job done with a relative equal complexity but each with its own class twist. Maybe each can have a specific niche strength and weaknesses but not to the point where some just cant do specific tasks. 

This was what the balance team said they would do, but instead we have HFB. I can outsustain someone easily on dummy with maximum environmental damage while keeping up permanent stab/resistance/projectile hate depending on what is needed. HFB heals a deceptively high amount. 

Since I've given druid as an example multiple times and it seems to clearly be struggling atm, and that one guy before did mention heal herald, let's go with that, if a heal herald wants to provide perma stab while providing quickness, they are literally forced into dumping their main healing stance, meanwhile, HFB barely sacrifices anything for it. HFB has multiple sources of aegis readily available to them whenever they need it, shield 4, earth tome 5, advance, mace 3 if you choose to use it. I really don't know why numbers are still up for debate when HFB has more of so many things than any other class but oh well, I said what I had to with tangible examples instead of wishes and dreams. I'll wait for people to try to argue against it with actual proof, because I'd very much like to be wrong and be presented a better alternative than heal firebrand.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

17 minutes ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

Low quality bait, try again.

Almost a direct quote. 😉

[Dibit.6259]

I'm not much of a HFB player but one thing that I have seen constantly in game that has never/hardly ever changed is that HFB is the one of the most sought out healers in the game. A lot of LFG groups asks for HFB rather than just any quickheal. Why? Because it is OP. Regardless of whether you think it does good or bad healing (tbh any decent healing class would do better with someone who knows it well enough) it has so much more to offer than any other current healers and is therefore more desired. As people have stated before, the devs talked about there being a trade off concept, that one class/elite or role should only be able to do x, y or z not all 3 (or at least thats what I understood from the livestreams). However HFB has and continues to be the outlier. Whether people like it or not it does not fit what the dev's appeared to have set out for the future and seems to be what they implementing in other healer classes yet hfb remains untouched? Even buffed in some cases? I don't know whether nerfing HFB or buffing other healers is the way to go about it but tbh as things stand HFB is just overpowered.