Heal Firebrand Deserves Nerfs

[Hotride.2187]

17 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.

Ah yes, lets buff everything to the clown fiesta level of hfb, what can possibly go wrong?

The hfb builds are not just good, they are too strong. Healmech got buffed to that level and the 2 of them strangle every other heal build you could play. This is the opposite of variety.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

5 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Ah yes, lets buff everything to the clown fiesta level of hfb, what can possibly go wrong?

The hfb builds are not just good, they are too strong. Healmech got buffed to that level and the 2 of them strangle every other heal build you could play. This is the opposite of variety.

Yeah let's pretend I said let's buff everything regardless of its power level, ur arguing like a child would. I said nerfing a class that's at a acceptable power level to match underperforming classes is not good for the game, also said unless they are actually overperforming like fb has in the past before it got nerfed multiple tines or like catalyst is currently, than shaves to bring them down are in order. The mentality of my class sucks at this urs doesn't so u should be nerfed is harmful to the game, there's more to it than that. If anet listened to players like u there'd be 0 good nor fun builds in the game and u same people would complain about all the nerfs and sad stare ur class is in, strange.

[Strider.7849]

On 6/28/2023 at 6:35 AM, Dahkeus.8243 said:

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.

Have to agree. After they dumpstered druid and toned down other healers, we must protect guardian at all costs.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 6/28/2023 at 9:27 PM, Peter.3901 said:

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.

When Herald ventari is a better druid than the druid :]  i actually on HoT release i was about to start playing Druid but once i tryed Herald ventari since them ive been using it in PVE and WVW felt way more fantasy druidesk than druid itself.

IF Anet wants to change Druid in the future they should ask players their opinions so they come at a resolve.

 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Aeolus.3615

[Cuks.8241]

On 6/29/2023 at 8:04 PM, 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.

I used to play healing tempest, before the 10 man healing nerf and all this quich/alac pushing. That build could solo heal whole squad through anything even if people stood in fire half of the time. I hear its still super strong but without alac and only 5 man healing. 

[Hotride.2187]

On 6/30/2023 at 2:20 PM, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

I said nerfing a class that's at a acceptable power level to match underperforming classes is not good for the game, also said unless they are actually overperforming like fb has in the past before it got nerfed multiple tines

So lets go over what fractal daily groups I've been too, listing the healers:

quick heal herald - bad stab

quick heal tempest - bad stab

quick heal scrapper - bad stab

alac heal mech - bad stab, but good dps, pairs well with qcfb that can give stab on fights that really need it, but still bad stab overall when compared to having a hfb

alac heal tempest - bad stab

alac heal druid - bad stab

Otherwise, all of those heal builds perform pretty good (well until the patch from 27.06). Heal is fine, quick/alac uptime is fine. But they don't drop stab and so sometimes you have to dodge. Heal mech can perform on par because overall dps is higher and the qcfb can drop some stab, as mentioned above.

But no, hfb is not overperforming? When it does everything a quick heal build does, for next to 0 effort AND it has good stab uptime on top? There have been no hfb nerfs recently, the last were mantra nerfs years ago. Right now its only getting more and more buffed, with each recent change. You are maybe not playing it?

Not even mentioning you MUST bring 10 hfbs in a wvw zerg or you are just trolling your squad.

Quote

If anet listened to players like u there'd be 0 good nor fun builds in the game and u same people would complain about all the nerfs and sad stare ur class is in, strange.

Spamming abilities to outperform any  other qheal/qdps build - really fun. How have I not noticed this? Oh right, its not fun. I'd hop on my druid any time, if it performed on par. But it doesn't.

Edited July 1, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Psycoprophet.8107]

5 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

So lets go over what fractal daily groups I've been too, listing the healers:

quick heal herald - bad stab

quick heal tempest - bad stab

quick heal scrapper - bad stab

alac heal mech - bad stab, but good dps, pairs well with qcfb that can give stab on fights that really need it, but still bad stab overall when compared to having a hfb

alac heal tempest - bad stab

alac heal druid - bad stab

Otherwise, all of those heal builds perform pretty good (well until the patch from 27.06). Heal is fine, quick/alac uptime is fine. But they don't drop stab and so sometimes you have to dodge. Heal mech can perform on par because overall dps is higher and the qcfb can drop some stab, as mentioned above.

But no, hfb is not overperforming? When it does everything a quick heal build does, for next to 0 effort AND it has good stab uptime on top? There have been no hfb nerfs recently, the last were mantra nerfs years ago. Right now its only getting more and more buffed, with each recent change. You are maybe not playing it?

Not even mentioning you MUST bring 10 hfbs in a wvw zerg or you are just trolling your squad.

Spamming abilities to outperform any  other qheal/qdps build - really fun. How have I not noticed this? Oh right, its not fun. I'd hop on my druid any time, if it performed on par. But it doesn't.

Yeah ur point seems weird, so cuz hlbr provides good stab and other healers don't it overperforms, so let's make healbrand bad at stab and have all classes bad at stab.... smart.....or maybe make couple of those others provide decent stab, just a idea. But srybit hurts ur feels the heal build u prefer doesn't perform as good as another 🙂

[Hotride.2187]

2 minutes ago, Psycoprophet.8107 said:

Yeah ur point seems weird, so cuz hlbr provides good stab and other healers don't it overperforms, so let's make healbrand bad at stab and have all classes bad at stab.... smart.....or maybe make couple of those others provide decent stab, just a idea. But srybit hurts ur feels the heal build u prefer doesn't perform as good as another 🙂

I want to play another build because I've played hfb for 2k hours in wvw/fractals and I'm bored out of my mind spamming skills. Stop trying to put feelings where there arent. The spec is overperofrming and that is what the topic is about. Adding stab to other heal builds is exactly the clown fiesta change I mentioned. Hfb should not do as much as it does, its very simple. If you make every other build into hfb, the game turns into crap. As I've commented here also, might as well give dps to hfb too and just have 5x or 10x or 50x in every group. That'd do wonders for build variety.

[Atomnium.1532]

I mean Firebrand is indeed very much overperforming in Fractals especially, the value of stab and all.
Advocating for the firebrand stab application to be democratized or removed both have their trade-offs.

Do people really want a world where you are CC-punished a lot and feeling like you are a pinball in some circumstancess ?
Do people really want a world where regardmess of comp, CC is non existent because healers provide stab to the degree of FB ?

I'd like the game to not feel like you lose control of your character for 4 seconds everytime a maggot farts, but some people may say that the player should be punished for not avoiding kitten properly.

But anyone who thinks FB is 'balanced' is made of copium.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Atomnium.1532

[Gaiawolf.8261]

6 hours ago, Atomnium.1532 said:

But anyone who thinks FB is 'balanced' is made of copium.

There's a point of distinction here that you get into earlier in your post quite well. FB is decently balanced against the various game modes of GW2. It's a well designed and balanced class that can handle most content with some challenge, and in a fun way. (There was rough patch from March through June with the way mantras were optimally used, but the latest patch gives some QoL there.)

It is not equally balanced against some other support classes, particularly for stab, as you point out. This is mostly true of all guardians, though. They have the most aegis and stab by design. 

Where the balance should fall depends on how difficult the overall game should be. Considering the casual friendly nature of this game, FB is in a good spot for most content, and other support builds should be buffed to this level. Instead of nerfing FB. Now for harder content, this means the devs might have to develop mechanics that can't be solved with stab and aegis. CC is not the only balancing mechanic at their disposal, and the sooner they learn that, the less guardians in general will feel dominant in those cases.

I suppose they just aren't willing to revisit fractals on those levels, like they did for raids. I'm interested to see how the new fractals will be designed.

EDIT: Note that my assessment of where balance should fall is an evaluation of the fun factor in playing these builds and not just the power level of the builds. Perhaps even more so, since I value fun over performance level in my recreation time.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Gaiawolf.8261

[Atomnium.1532]

I agree, i'd much rather have abundant stab than having it removed from firebrand and feel like you lose the control of your character frequently, i've never been a fan of repeated loss of control and gw2 can be a pain in the behind when it decides to chain CC you.

But as I said, I'm sure some purist will argue that punishing standing in aoe and not dodging should be part of the experience and it is not a crazy stance either.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Atomnium.1532

[Passerbye.6291]

First of all, let me preface this by saying that what I'll discuss is from a strictly PvE standpoint, I know WvW is an entirely different can of worms when it comes to stab.
For me, the problem with HFB isn't that it has so much stab, though arguments can be made for that as well. Or not just that anyway. There is basically no trade off to having access to permanent stability. HFB healing is really good, especially after the tome reworks, making it so that you have massive healing whenever you need it, not bound by restrictive cooldowns. You can have perfect uptime on any boon you provide, including resistance if you wish to do so. While some other healers need to juggle multiple abilities off of cooldown to sustain certain boons, as a HFB you usually need at most 2. You have a lot of utility baked into your kit via tomes, so you don't sacrifice any utility slot to get projectile hate, stab/aegis, extra healing, cleanse, extra might stacks, resistance, stun break, grouping/cc. Simply put, HFB, while being the absolute king of stab and aegis tbh, it doesn't really lose to anyone else in other aspects anyway (Edit: To make a comparison, while herald can technically provide perma stab to even more than 5 people if the group splits across the different sections of Inspiring Reinforcement, a Herald healer needs to sacrifice either boons or healing throughput to do so, this is not a thing for HFB). Before people make the comment of "I play X class, it does so much more healing hurrdurr", let me point out that as a HFB I can easily sustain someone with no defensive/recovery gear/skills/passives in light armor through extreme damage in the training area while also providing my boons. Now, this by itself is not too relevant, but the extreme damage there is higher sustained damage than any content in the game will throw your way, making any more healing practically redundant. Since the healing you do does not go into a dummy with infinite health, so long as you are able to keep everyone alive through the most damaging, non-one shot thing in the game, you practically have infinite healing. While an argument can be made for instances of burst damage such as greens on vale guardian, blacks on gorseval etc., I'm pretty sure it is obvious to anyone that HFB does not lack burst heal either. Also please keep in mind that I'm not the best HFB out there either, so someone better than me could probably do even more absurd healing with it.

Regarding not wanting to do away with stab in general as taking away agency from players feels bad, I agree to a certain level. While, as a healer, having access to abilities that let you deal with CCs thrown your group's way feels great as a healer, I feel as though that should require some finesse or skill. As it stands, HFB loses little in the way of healing while being able to sustain 100% stab uptime with multiple stacks up at a time. What this means is that, going into a fight, I don't even need to know the mechanics, I can simply sustain multiple stacks of stab up at all times, rendering any and all crowd control utterly irrelevant. To give an example to this, I could have someone who has never done Samarog before equip stand your ground + hallowed ground, and combined with earth tome 5, they would be able to have their entire subgroup ignore every single knockback, be it from being in front of the boss or taking the wave to the face. I really don't think this should be in the game in this way. I don't mind HFB, or any other healer being great at denying CC or dealing with it in a way, be it through stun break, aegis or stab, but I'd like it to require some skill, I should need to use stab at the right time, not just chain 2-3 skills back to back as one runs out and deny any kind of mechanic that involves CC in any given content that way. I'd also like said ability to come with some trade offs. As it stands, HFB is not only the king of stab and aegis, it also has perfect boon application, amazing tanking capability, really good healing with on demand burst as well as unmatched versatility thanks to tomes and free utility slots.

TLDR: Stab in its current state requires 0 skill to deny/bypass certain mechanics. By being able to provide 100% stab uptime with multiple stacks, you are able to ignore all form of CC without even having to know which medium, under which conditions applies a CC to your group. You can be an absolute newbie just having read that a fight has bunch of CCs in it and just by chaining 2-3 skills back to back, you'll perform just as well as someone who knows said fight in great detail when it comes to providing stab. I think things like stab and aegis, which entirely deny hits/CC need to be things that require skill to use, currently, aegis for the most part feels this way, a healer who knows when to use aegis can feel the difference he/she makes, whereas by giving stab in such abundance both in number and uptime to HFB, we deny the same in the case of stab. In turn, just because stab exists in this state, developers see nothing wrong with introducing bosses that practically apply a CC every hit, like the end boss of Chaos fractal for instance, which to be fair was probably intended to be kited around, but perma stab is a thing so you just bumrush him.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Dibit.6259]

I agree on the aspect that hfb has too much stab for little to no trade off. From my perspective, both from game design and own enjoyment, playing a healer should be based around reactive play rather than rotation/spam play (maybe excluding the rotation needed to provide alac or quick). The way hfb is unbalanced atm is that is can provide so much utility with little trade off while other healers are stuck to certain skills and utilities just to provide the basics. A lot of the other healers needs buffs but not to the level that hfb is currently at.

[Hotride.2187]

Just axe the quickness, it shouldve been done years ago. You want the stab? Sacrifice a slot in your party to get it. Just like in wvw. Or get some stab, from a dps slot that is actually sacrficing dmg to bring the stab.

You know, as opposed to, get the stab for free.

You'd be in a whole new world of "do we drop some dps to get stab and aegis spam and maybe wipe less but take longer per kill, or do we dps through it and actually do the mechanics".

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by Hotride.2187