[sPVP] Support Firebrand Suggestions

[Vinny.7260]

As much as people are a downer about Firebrand in PvP. I think it's becoming closer to a good support than most people realize. It's just arguably an issue with the key pressing amount. (It's pretty dang obnoxious in high intensity matches, such as P1-P2 stuff). Might just be a matter of keybinds on my part, I'm a bit of a masochist and still use F1-F3.

There are a couple traits that stand out to me for needing QoL. One of them is a trait in Honor. But you'll understand why it's under Firebrand.

 

Honor:

There's only really one trait I want looked at, aside from maybe Purity of Body granting a measly 15% Endurance regeneration increase.

• Force of Will
  • This trait is currently halved in sPvP (and WvW).
  • You get a maximum of 9% outgoing healing increase at 1800 Vitality.
  • Here are some comparisons:
    • Natural Mender (Druid)
      • Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also improves a mechanic. This is also a MINOR trait.
    • Aquamancer's Training (Elementalist)
      • Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also reduces Water Skill Recharges. This is also a MINOR trait.
    • Illusionary Inspiration (Mesmer)
      • Grants 15% Outgoing Healing regardless of attributes and also heals allies whenever summoning an illusion (phantasm or clone). This is also a MINOR trait.
  • You're having this trait compete with Pure of Voice. While making the Shout recharge reduction baseline, there's still real benefit to using Force of Will. Core Guardian is locked into using it due to having less cleanse, but Firebrand has a significant amount of it compared to its Core form.
  • Rewarding Firebrand into taking Force of Will would increase both its self-sustain via the vitality boost and, hopefully, increasing it to 1% per 100 Vitality would bump it from 9% to 18% Outgoing Healing, a worthy amount for a Grandmaster trait.
    • You could even tweak it from 0.5% to 0.75% to have us at 13.5%- if reverting is off the table.

 

Firebrand:

I mainly just want to look at the Support Aspect of Firebrand.

• Imbued Haste
  • This trait has reduced stats in sPvP (and WvW).
  • You get an, impressive, amount of attributes.
    • 150 Condition Damage, 150 Healing Power, 150 Vitality.
  • I personally want these stats redistributed to focus more on healing with the same amount of allocated points.
    • 100 Condition Damage, 250 Healing Power, 100 Vitality.
  • If they're truly focusing on Support Firebrand, this seems like a reasonable choice for a redistribution. I really doubt they want Firebrand to be a team fighter given the brief history it had with Sagebrand and Symbolbrand.

Edited January 11 by Vinny.7260

[KingJake.6529]

Your ideas are good changes to implement but right now firebrand at least to me feels pretty scuffed to play atm, it is better than it was but some fundational problems are still there. Imbued Haste in general is a trait that shouldn't even exist tbh. You will barely ever get the benefit of it in PvP anyway since quickness duration is low. I wish they would change this trait to proc off swiftness instead of quickness in PvP could make it better or just completely change the trait into something else.

I feel like firebrand since the rework has been incredibly clunky to play in pvp since we lost the old loremaster that help you keep all your virtue passives, also with swift scholar losing stacks every time you swap from tome to tome, so if you swap from tome of resolve to tome of courage you get punished for it even if you are going to still be using tome skills so it forces you into this playstyle of having to use 3 pages otherwise you lose value. Being forced to use archivist of whispers just so you can have a decent amount of pages even on hybrid builds feels pretty meh.

[Saiyan.1704]

On 1/16/2024 at 5:06 PM, KingJake.6529 said:

Your ideas are good changes to implement but right now firebrand at least to me feels pretty scuffed to play atm, it is better than it was but some fundational problems are still there. Imbued Haste in general is a trait that shouldn't even exist tbh. You will barely ever get the benefit of it in PvP anyway since quickness duration is low. I wish they would change this trait to proc off swiftness instead of quickness in PvP could make it better or just completely change the trait into something else.

I feel like firebrand since the rework has been incredibly clunky to play in pvp since we lost the old loremaster that help you keep all your virtue passives, also with swift scholar losing stacks every time you swap from tome to tome, so if you swap from tome of resolve to tome of courage you get punished for it even if you are going to still be using tome skills so it forces you into this playstyle of having to use 3 pages otherwise you lose value. Being forced to use archivist of whispers just so you can have a decent amount of pages even on hybrid builds feels pretty meh.

I agree with you. Being a Firebrand main the moment the spec launched, it was NOT clunky... not until they nerfed the quickness uptime + some individual page channel time, which we're slowly getting back. When the spec released, it was darn near smooth like butter when going from skill to skill to page to skill. You entered F1 for that one page then exited it. That process was such a smooth transition.

I feel like nerfing Swift Scholar was a huge mistake. The ICD is fine but 1.5s of Quickness needs to be AT LEAST 2.5 seconds for sPvP only imo...

Edited January 19 by Saiyan.1704

[Vinny.7260]

13 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

I agree with you. Being a Firebrand main the moment the spec launched, it was NOT clunky... not until they nerfed the quickness uptime + some individual page channel time, which we're slowly getting back. When the spec released, it was darn near smooth like butter when going from skill to skill to page to skill. You entered F1 for that one page then exited it. That process was such a smooth transition.

I feel like nerfing Swift Scholar was a huge mistake. The ICD is fine but 1.5s of Quickness needs to be AT LEAST 2.5 seconds for sPvP only imo...

It's fascinating because the only reason Swift Scholar got nerfed was because of stuff like Harrier FB going around and being practically invincible. (Having 60% boon duration on top of the 2.5s was a bit much cuz of also things like perma Retaliation, blah blah).

 

2.5s on Tome wouldn't be bad now, especially if they did the redistribution I was recommending. Just turns the boon into a convenient little nudge of Healing Power.

Even if you went Herald Relic + Leadership + Mercy Sig you'd only hit like 37% boon duration. That turns the, current, Swift Scholar duration into 2.75s. Which is insanely meh considering the importance of Quickness for FB's identity.

Can we also talk about the weird aftercasts on things like Ashes of the Just? Quickness probably masked it, but dang it locks my skills out sometimes even after stowing. (Like Axe2 used to do).

 

2.5s would absolutely be reasonable.

 

On 1/16/2024 at 6:06 PM, KingJake.6529 said:

swift scholar losing stacks every time you swap from tome to tome

This is so true, I kinda wish if you swapped between Tomes you could keep your stacks, just a minor QoL. Means you could do something like F2 5/4 and then swap to F3 to have a reduced cost on F3 5. Just opens up more avenues for continuity and just fluidity in skill pressing.

 

On 1/16/2024 at 6:06 PM, KingJake.6529 said:

Being forced to use archivist of whispers just so you can have a decent amount of pages even on hybrid builds feels pretty meh.

At least they finally fixed the weird page count overflow bug that would happen with it. Only took them a year.

 

On 1/16/2024 at 6:06 PM, KingJake.6529 said:

Imbued Haste in general is a trait that shouldn't even exist tbh.

I mean, I think a lot of traits that give raw stats shouldn't exist. But in this case, I think FB having Quickness being their little pick-me-up feels kinda right... At least if they make Quickness more reliable. ... Can we talk about Potent Haste (Quickness Mantra) being literally 1s of Quickness for a utility slot? I kinda wish they'd visit the other mantras more instead of just giving Solace meaningless nudges. It won't become a reliable heal skill when "Receive the Light!" is everything and more (don't kill it anet). 199 healing and 2s of Aegis is meaningless on a 12s recharge...

 

Honestly, I have a lot of grievances with FB's current circumstances, but at least a raw 'heal and cleanse' support is close to being playable... Assuming you're okay with carpal tunnel within the next week of at least 2 hours of playing it. This is more my hope and cope post.

[arazoth.7290]

Tome of Courage chapter 1,2:

•Chapter 1:  Make it also apply 2 seconds weakness on enemies.

•Chapter 2: 2 seconds taunt instead of 1. As long taunt is active on enemies, they deal 33% reduced damage.

Tome chapters cast time duration:

Chapters cast time shouldn't have 3/4 second cast time, 1/2 sec cast time should be the max. 

This way they don't need to temper/tune the quickness in this spec even more.