Diswan.8156

The best weapon guards could get that fits the guardian aesthetics and theme would be - 1 handed land spears- with a melee bruiser and mobility spec which we dont have yet.

Either that or a melee full dps glass power spec with mobility.

We already have:

Longrange full dps

Condi spec

Support spec

Hey fellow guardian, ive been maining guard since the first gw2 beta so here are my 2 cents.

When pof came out i was unsure about firebrand mainly because i loved my power valk gs Dh so much ñand because i dont rlly like condition specs, I also tought firebrands support was lackluster in some way. The same as you, i went to the pvp room and just bashed some skills and tried some unranked matches.

I ended by leaving the pvp lobby impressed by the visuals of the spec but very dissapointed in the performance i was "expecting".

I was about to do all of pof's content with my Dh but the idea of not giving something new and something that i payed real money for a real chanse was rlly bothering me, so i decided to do the first map with only fb and see from there. Havent touched DH again and ive never had this much fun on my guardian.

Here is why:

DH is a very straight forward spec, its virtues are very powerful so any weapon works because you can get carried out of any tough situation by using them. It brings fun gameplay but kind of shallow now that i think of it.

FB is not as staright forward as Dh, it has a lot more complexity in it because it has the potential to be everything, you just need to focus on what you want to excel at.

Here are some examples

PVE

Valkirye or cavaliers quickness fb (zeal, radiance, firebrand) - the damage mod is a little lower that DH on same build but you get acces to so much quickness that you en up doing more dmg and have a lot more retaliation uptime in the long run. Drwback is you wont have it as easy to disengage and will be a little squishier.

When you go back to dh after all that quickeness you rlly feel like playing in slow motion.

Grieving (hybrid full dps) (zeal, radiance, firebrand) or (virtues, radiance, fb) eggs in 2 baskets - the dmg is the highest you can get, optimal for raids and high lvl content but you need to be very good at it because of the low hp. Its a very fun build, you just melt everything.

On pve you can also go carrion, marauder or vipers depending on what you want but my personal favorite:

Celestial hybrid support (virtues, radiance, firebrand) eggs on all the baskets- the damage is very respectable but you are no longer squishy, you can support and heal your whole party easily which makes for an excelent wll rounded spec capable of almost everything.

PvP

On pvp i also tried many builds and many of them viable with varying lvls of succes until i discovered the little firebrand secret.

It dosent matter which build it is, you need healing power and honor traitline to be effective. Be it condi, power or obviously support. Those 2 aspects bring so much to the table for you and your party that they have become mandatory for me.

The support build you see on pvp currently brings amazing party support but your dmg sucks so forget about 1v1 and about killing anyone, you become very dependant on your party and them to you which is not always a good thing.

Thats why im using menders (fb, honor, radiance) w runes of water, the dmg si super decent and the support is almost as full support bunker, the self sustain is also way higher than dh.

Whith this build i win all my 1v1 except maybe vs a good scourge but i can stall indefinetly, vs spellbreakers it takes a while if they are decent but end up winning, vs dh its an easy match i just win.

Overall i think you rlly need to play it more to get the feeling of it, its adifferent kind of omelette but with a lot more ingredients and depth.

If you have any more questions send me a pm ingame the name is Diswan, ill be glad to help.

Cheers mate and good luck

Yeap, as the others have been saying i would recommend to go "pof" first, do the first story so you get your raptor and then go to "hot" so you can unlock druid. I would strongly recommend to buy living season 3, specially "a crack in the ice" which is fairly cheap.

With a crack in the ice unlocked you get acces to bitterfrost frontier map which is the best map for farming ascended trinkets including vipers. Farming berries with 4 characters gives you 1 ascended trinket a day, the most expensive ones like the backpack can be farmed in just 2 days.

There is no better way currently in the game to farm ascended stats that fast.

Good luck mate!

Just ignore them bro, there has been some salt in pvp at the moment thanks to the release of new relatively unbalanced specs in the middle of a pvp season (Mainly spellbreaker, scourge and deadeye)

You will find people like that in every game, even more so on the competitive side of games.

Usually the ones that complain like that are not even worth your attention so just block and ignore them.

There are also plenty of us who are friendly and willing to help

Actually i might be right to say that firebrand counters DH in pvp, and as someone said earlier spellbreaker counters fb but then again; sb counters everything at the moment.

Now that ive played it for a while, I think Firebrand is a great spec. The only thing you need to play it right is to have gear with some healing power and honor traitline, it brings soo much sustain. I used to be dh all the way and tried every build possible but a the moment and to my own amazement im liking firebrand more. Even more so on pvp.

Hey guys just wanted to know what you all think of mantra of solace and tome of resolve skills.

To be direct, i think their healing is way to low.

I know firebrand support can heal for a good ammount if wearing healing power thanks to all the healing sources, but all that healing comes mainly from older traits rather than by those 2 skills.

I also think mantra of solace is made that way by design to leave some "usefullness" to TOR skills.

In all honesty i think TOR has serious flaws, leaving you completely vulnerable, unable to attack or preassure your opponent while at the same time not giving you any dissables or ways to mitigate dmg, thats cool as long as the healing is worth it, which is not. It tends to get you killed most of the time because it takes 8 button presses and around 10 more seconds to do what a normal healing skill should do. One of the counterpoints some of you might say is that the healing is shared with your party which make it kind of arguable. Its ment to be a party set of skills, i get it, thats why i dont think this skill is the biggest offender.

Mantra of solace on the other hand has an overall heal 5.5k spamming all 3 charges with a 30 sec cd, making it one of the lowest healing skills in the game with one of the largest cd if all charges are expended, in a normal scenario you would never want to spend the third charge, leaving you with just 3k active healing and 2 aegis.

If we can all agree in something is that firebrand has some issues in the durability department and ive come to belive its mainly due to mantra of solace.

I think its base healing should be upped a bit to compensate when you are not around your party and when you are not running healing gear.

Maybe changing it to 2.5 k healing x charge might ease that aspect of its durability.

Im posting this because i have seen some posts about TOR being lackluster but never seen a mantra of solace thread, who knows, maybe its just me.

What do you guys think?

Cheers all!

If you want pwer:

gs with firebrand, radiance and zeal, along with valk stats works great thanks to perma retal. U have less dmg mods than DH which means a single skill or strike deals less dmg but everything you do is twice as fast thks to quckness. In my own exp i think you can output the same if not more power dmg.

Using valk stats with 0 condi dmg i ve managed to deal 3k dmg burns a tick.

If you want hybrid: (better set for fb)

firebrand, radiance and virtues with griever stats, gs and axe/torch should do the trick.

I find that gs coupled with permeathing wrath from virtues is one of the best ways to stack burns, it goes to crazy amounts depending on the number of mobs.

Thats what im running with valk stats works great for pve