Is anyone running a 100% quickness duration build?

[samuel.8495]

I was just wondering if anyone was running a build that managed to keep quickness up all the time or for most of the time. I understand if the dps isnt going to break any benchmarks, I was just looking for a tanky support type role for my guardian, possibly with solid healing and quickness to carry groups with.

edit: I was also wondering if anyone is running any power FB builds. I mostly see condi posted and I'm still working on getting condi gear for my guardian.

[phor.7952]

Hitting very close to 100% quickness up-time for your party is not too tough.

• Liberator's Vow
• Stalwart Speed
• Mantra of Solace (use every 12 seconds)
• Mantra of Potence (use all three charges together and wait for cooldown instead of a charge at a time.)
• Feel My Wrath (use on cooldown)With those two traits, and three skills you only need ~48% quickness duration to keep it up permanently.You can get to over 41% with only Runes of the Firebrand and 100 Concentration food.That leaves a lot of build open to do other things.

But there's 1 major downside.The range on Mantras is quite bad.So if you want to keep quickness up for your group and not just yourself, they need to be stacked.
And not just "stack for buffs" before engaging. (You cap out at around 18 seconds of quickness in the beginning)So that limits the type of content that it's really practical for.

...

I've not seen anyone make an effective FB power build yet.Maybe if they buff Stoic Demeanor then there will be a decent power hammer build in there.

[Brutaly.6257]

I run a 100% quickness build in both pve and wvw. Its a blast tbh. And even if you dont hit the team all the time i find the personal dps increase through permeathing wrath to be worth it.

Firebrand runes, shaman armor and seraph/shaman trinkets. Think i have 1400 healing when having quickness, its tanky and supportive and can deal some nice damage in wvw, in pve it is enough for open world and champions.

Honor/virtues/FB

[RabbitUp.8294]

@phor.7952 said:Hitting very close to 100% quickness up-time for your party is not too tough.

• Liberator's Vow
• Stalwart Speed
• Mantra of Solace (use every 12 seconds)
• Mantra of Potence (use all three charges together and wait for cooldown instead of a charge at a time.)
• Feel My Wrath (use on cooldown)With those two traits, and three skills you only need ~43% quickness duration to keep it up permanently.You can get to over 41% with only Runes of the Firebrand and 100 Concentration food.That leaves a lot of build open to do other things.

With that rotation, you get 76.4% uptime, so you only need 31% boon duration.

[Liviathan.5249]

Running virtues/honor/firebrand.Full minstrel -1magi accessory.67%boon duration with food.Staff, mace shield, both with consentration sigil. Doing t4 and its really fun!!????

[SirMoogie.9263]

@phor.7952 said:Hitting very close to 100% quickness up-time for your party is not too tough.

• Liberator's Vow
• Stalwart Speed
• Mantra of Solace (use every 12 seconds)
• Mantra of Potence (use all three charges together and wait for cooldown instead of a charge at a time.)
• Feel My Wrath (use on cooldown)

You don't need "Feel My Wrath". Just open Tome of Courage, cast an aegis to fill in the small gaps here or there, or if using shield/mace (which you would in a support build) just use Protector's Strike/Shield of Judgement. Feel My Wrath isn't a bad choice, but it isn't necessary either as ultimately you're just taking it for fury at that point with those talents and 100% boon duration (achievable with minstrel/harrier combination and sigil of concentration)

[phor.7952]

@RabbitUp.8294 said:With that rotation, you get 76.4% uptime, so you only need 31% boon duration.

Are you accounting for activation time in that math?Mantra of Potence has a 25 second cooldown, but it also has a 2.75sec activation time, then another 3 seconds to activate 3 charges.

[phor.7952]

@SirMoogie.9263 said:You don't need "Feel My Wrath". Just open Tome of Courage, cast an aegis to fill in the small gaps here or there, or if using shield/mace (which you would in a support build) just use Protector's Strike/Shield of Judgement. Feel My Wrath isn't a bad choice, but it isn't necessary either as ultimately you're just taking it for fury at that point with those talents and 100% boon duration (achievable with minstrel/harrier combination and sigil of concentration)There are many ways to reach it. I didn't mean to imply that was the only way. Just the "easiest" way that leaves your build most open. You could even build condi-dps and still maintain quickness.

You could use Mantra of Liberation or Retreat or Stand Your Ground or Shield4 or Tomb of Courage skills instead of Feel My Wrath, but the problem with all those options (and the reason I recommended Feel My Wrath) is that Stalwart Speed has a 5 second internal cooldown. And you need that internal cooldown to be up every ~13 seconds for Mantra of Solace usage. So you have to space everything out properly or the ICD interferes. Feel My Wrath doesn't suffer from that problem. You just use it on cooldown. So in my opinion it's just "easier".

And of course if you gear for 100% boon duration then there are more skills/trait options.

[RabbitUp.8294]

@phor.7952 said:

@RabbitUp.8294 said:With that rotation, you get 76.4% uptime, so you only need 31% boon duration.

Are you accounting for activation time in that math?Mantra of Potence has a 25 second cooldown, but it also has a 2.75sec activation time, then another 3 seconds to activate 3 charges.

Yeah, you are are right, though the activation is reduced to ~1.4 with quickness. That's roughly 40% boon duration needed then.

Still, this is with no alacrity, and it's pointless to play quickness firebrand in raids without it. Alacrity reduces it to 23%. In fractals, where it's more likely to have a firebrand without chrono, you get free 15% from the potion.

[phor.7952]

Does Alacrity work on the ICD's of Stalwart Speed and Liberator's Vow?It would definitely work on Mantra of Potence and Feel My Wrath cooldowns though.

[RabbitUp.8294]

@phor.7952 said:Does Alacrity work on the ICD's of Stalwart Speed and Liberator's Vow?It would definitely work on Mantra of Potence and Feel My Wrath cooldowns though.

No, it doesn't, alacrity only affects the icd of traits that actually activate named skills, like Smiter's Boon. Or rather, it affects those skills directly, as the parent traits don't have an icd themselves. Unfortunately, this means that firebrand's rotation becomes clunky, as Solace goes out of sync with Liberator's Vow, so we are forced to track an invisible cooldown.

Of course, alacrity doesn't affect the delays on Potence, either. So, what I calculated is 4/12 from Solace+Vow combo, 8/24 from Potence, and 5/34 from FmW. Total 81.3% uptime.

[Goblin Beet Farmer.3045]

@Brutaly.6257 said:I run a 100% quickness build in both pve and wvw. Its a blast tbh. And even if you dont hit the team all the time i find the personal dps increase through permeathing wrath to be worth it.

Firebrand runes, shaman armor and seraph/shaman trinkets. Think i have 1400 healing when having quickness, its tanky and supportive and can deal some nice damage in wvw, in pve it is enough for open world and champions.

Honor/virtues/FB

I am new to Guardian so lacking experience with it. Do you mind sharing more details of your build? Weapons? Sigils? Traits? Skills?Thanks.

[Brutaly.6257]

@Goblin Beet Farmer.3045 said:

@Brutaly.6257 said:I run a 100% quickness build in both pve and wvw. Its a blast tbh. And even if you dont hit the team all the time i find the personal dps increase through permeathing wrath to be worth it.

Firebrand runes, shaman armor and seraph/shaman trinkets. Think i have 1400 healing when having quickness, its tanky and supportive and can deal some nice damage in wvw, in pve it is enough for open world and champions.

Honor/virtues/FB

I am new to Guardian so lacking experience with it. Do you mind sharing more details of your build? Weapons? Sigils? Traits? Skills?Thanks.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAreSnsADNCjlCBGBDkCjlKCDbAEAaS7nz2Z9Mb8ceWPA-jFiAQBjUZQh0H0hTBgQV6Zz9H6k6PA4JAATlg3DCAmUArqUVVVSBwzKN-w

Focus on quickness and aegis. Perma quickness and 10 active aegis applications from utilities and weapons and 2 from traits when i res (honor) and when i get stunned (virtues). The combination of ressing someone in wvw and applying Mantra of Solace and Retreat is just mind blowing tbh. Imo the best resser in the game.

Final trait in honor can be altered, Pure of Voice for moving around in open world (perma swiftness), Writ of persistence for face tanking with the hammer and Force of Will for max support/healing.

I use Loremaster but swap it out it for quickfire when fighting single targets in a group.

Precision is need for having a steady flow of vigor from Vigorous precision. Which means that with weapon swap you have access to 4 dodge rolls with very little delay.

Skill one in ToR heals for approx 1700 per applicationAegis for about 1200Dodge roll heals for about 1300Perma regen which ticks for >200 per second.

Add in eternal oasis and force of will and we have a pretty nice healer

[Ojimaru.8970]

Nearly done with my Seraph build myself. 100% Burn Duration, 97% Boon Duration in Fractals, and clocking about 5,800 DPS with only food buffs. Group healing is fairly decent, although Absolute Resolution does not affect Tome of Resolve's passive heal, resulting in a loss of over 330 healing per tick. I'm considering swapping to Legendary Lore to allow for Protection stacking with Tome of Courage, plus more damage from Tome of Justice.

[samuel.8495]

Thanks for all the replies!

@Brutaly.6257 Would you take that build you linked into fractals?

@Ojimaru.8970 I like the build you linked. Do you feel tanky/survivable enough in fractals with seraph's gear alone? Just wondering if I should mix some shaman's gear in.

Have either of you tried an axe over the mace? Just wondering about your thoughts of the damage vs healing that each brings.

[Brutaly.6257]

@samuel.8495 said:Thanks for all the replies!

@Brutaly.6257 Would you take that build you linked into fractals?

@Ojimaru.8970 I like the build you linked. Do you feel tanky/survivable enough in fractals with seraph's gear alone? Just wondering if I should mix some shaman's gear in.

Have either of you tried an axe over the mace? Just wondering about your thoughts of the damage vs healing that each brings.

Been away from pve for a long time but FB has brought back the fun in pve tbh.

I have done a couple of dailys in fractals and got no complaints at all from other players and also enjoyed the ride. So i would say yes you can bring it to fractals but at high level i have no idea, it was ages ago when i played high level fractals.

[Knox.8962]

@Ojimaru.8970 said:Nearly done with my Seraph build myself. 100% Burn Duration, 97% Boon Duration in Fractals, and clocking about 5,800 DPS with only food buffs. Group healing is fairly decent, although Absolute Resolution does not affect Tome of Resolve's passive heal, resulting in a loss of over 330 healing per tick. I'm considering swapping to Legendary Lore to allow for Protection stacking with Tome of Courage, plus more damage from Tome of Justice.

Battle presence and VoR passive are hp/3s not hp/s. Also, the battle presence tooltip always shows the Absolute Resolution value. If you remove the trait, your heals will be lower, but the tooltip doesn't change. I haven't verified that with tomes, but I believe that it works the same way.

[Ojimaru.8970]

@samuel.8495 said:Thanks for all the replies!

@Brutaly.6257 Would you take that build you linked into fractals?

@Ojimaru.8970 I like the build you linked. Do you feel tanky/survivable enough in fractals with seraph's gear alone? Just wondering if I should mix some shaman's gear in.

Have either of you tried an axe over the mace? Just wondering about your thoughts of the damage vs healing that each brings.

Axe works if you want to go for more damage. I went with a mace solely because I wanted a) a PVE mace character, and b) a healing/tanking weapon. Went into T3 Fractals over the weekend as a DPS/Heal/Tank and survived well enough. Guardian healing is sustained, rather than bursts like a Revenant or Druid, so you need to rely on your party members to be a little competent about avoiding damage too. With Pure of Heart, you can an extra set of heals with Tome of Courage, plus a fair amount of Protection if traited for Legendary Lore.

[OJPhoenix.8703]

I've got 100% quickness duration on my build right now+50% Boon Duration makes Mantra of Potence, Liberator's Vow, & Stalwart Speed give 3s of Quickness and I use 2 of these every 6s

0s - Mantra of Potence + Stalwart Speed (Mantra of Liberation / Stand Your Ground! / Retreat! / Shield 4 / Mace 3 / Tome of Courage 1 & 5)6s - Liberator's Vow + Stalwart Speed (Mantra of Solace triggers both)REPEAT

Liberator's Vow (10s cd) - triggers when you HealStalwart Speed (5s cd) - triggers when you grant Aegis or StabilityMantra of Solace -> Restoring Reprieve (12s recharge) - Mantra Heal skill that heals you and grants Aegis to alliesMantra of Potence -> Potent Haste (12s recharge) - Mantra Utility that grants allies Quickness and 3x MightMantra of Liberation -> Potent of Freedom (15s recharge) - Mantra Elite that grants allies Stability and Retaliation

Potence and Solace are used every 6s but you need a source of Aegis or Stability with Potence to trigger Stalwart Speedsadly Mantra of Liberation has a 15s recharge so it can't do so on its own without running out of charges eventuallyStand Your Ground! with Pure of Voice (Honor) to bring its cd from 30s -> 24s and is my preferred second source to alternate with Liberation'There are plenty of options for Guardians to provide Aegis or Stability, I personally prefer these two

Additional Bonuses to this build:I end up with 89.6% uptime on Stability this way which is fantasticRegular hand outs of Aegis is good for everyoneMantras and Shouts have no cast time and don't interrupt other spells giving me the freedom to use any weapon I likeSuperior Rune of the Water are providing +20% Boon Duration and bring an area heal every time I cast solace due to its low ICD of 10s for a little more support

However while this is fantastic for me, its not guaranteed to work for the party

@phor.7952 said:But there's 1 major downside.The range on Mantras is quite bad.So if you want to keep quickness up for your group and not just yourself, they need to be stacked.
And not just "stack for buffs" before engaging. (You cap out at around 18 seconds of quickness in the beginning)So that limits the type of content that it's really practical for.