lagrimabendita.8763 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 Hello guys A quick question how useful is Fireband support/healer in Fractals and Raids? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UnbentMars.9126 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 It's very useful and way better than people give it credit for, if more reaction-based than it really could be. The real issue is that its major heals CD is fairly high and it doesn't have the same interrim tools Druid has to keep up healing in between those CDs. It also suffers from a lack of GotL which (IMO) is not as critical a failing as people make it out to be, but people are loathe to try out a guardian because of that even though it can crop dust everyone with huge amounts of quickness Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cuon Alpinus.7645 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > It's very useful and way better than people give it credit for, if more reaction-based than it really could be. The real issue is that its major heals CD is fairly high and it doesn't have the same interrim tools Druid has to keep up healing in between those CDs. > > It also suffers from a lack of GotL which (IMO) is not as critical a failing as people make it out to be, but people are loathe to try out a guardian because of that even though it can crop dust everyone with huge amounts of quickness But mesmers are already going to bring perma quickness as well as alacrity. For daily fractals, you can pretty much do whatever since support builds to help prop up pugs is actually useful, but for raids, you're dropping tens of thousands of damage to make your healing work when you have other classes (ie: druid) that a can do a lot more at the cost of a lot less. Literally every support option FB can bring is done far better by other classes with significantly less DPS drop to boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ojimaru.8970 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 > @lagrimabendita.8763 said: > Hello guys > > A quick question how useful is Fireband support/healer in Fractals and Raids? > > Thanks I've taken a Seraph Firebrand into T4 Fractals a few times and I'm still trying to figure out its niche. The main features of a support/healer Firebrand are Aegis, Quickness, and, of course, healing. Due to how ANet decided to design Firebrand mantras, and specifically how constrained their areas of effects are (300-range cone of unknown angle, and 120 radius around the Firebrand; note that a normal single-handed melee weapon's basic attack has 130 range), achieving high Aegis and Quickness applications in Fractals is nigh impossible. This has less to do with people running around to avoid mechanics, but more to do with the nonsense that is Social Awkwardness. As for Healing, Firebrands still rely on heals-over-time from Regeneration (30-40%) and Battle Presence (~15%). Faithful Strike can heal a lot, especially with Quickness, but that requires you to constantly be slapping away with your mace. They gained a large burst heal from Tome of Resolve, although that will mostly over-heal due to its scaling with Healing Power. The fact of the matter is, a Firebrand with full DPS gear can perform burst healing just as adequately; they may not get the Reaper's full 23k HP topped up, but still be enough to avoid certain death. I'm still tweaking the build, but as I've said, the main obstacle with the build is the AOE of Mantras right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UnbentMars.9126 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 > @"Cuon Alpinus.7645" said: > > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > > It's very useful and way better than people give it credit for, if more reaction-based than it really could be. The real issue is that its major heals CD is fairly high and it doesn't have the same interrim tools Druid has to keep up healing in between those CDs. > > > > It also suffers from a lack of GotL which (IMO) is not as critical a failing as people make it out to be, but people are loathe to try out a guardian because of that even though it can crop dust everyone with huge amounts of quickness > > But mesmers are already going to bring perma quickness as well as alacrity. For daily fractals, you can pretty much do whatever since support builds to help prop up pugs is actually useful, but for raids, you're dropping tens of thousands of damage to make your healing work when you have other classes (ie: druid) that a can do a lot more at the cost of a lot less. Literally every support option FB can bring is done far better by other classes with significantly less DPS drop to boot. I'm aware of that, but mesmers also having quickness is not relevant to my point. Just because other classes can do something 'better' doesn't mean it can't be done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cuon Alpinus.7645 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > > @"Cuon Alpinus.7645" said: > > > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > > > It's very useful and way better than people give it credit for, if more reaction-based than it really could be. The real issue is that its major heals CD is fairly high and it doesn't have the same interrim tools Druid has to keep up healing in between those CDs. > > > > > > It also suffers from a lack of GotL which (IMO) is not as critical a failing as people make it out to be, but people are loathe to try out a guardian because of that even though it can crop dust everyone with huge amounts of quickness > > > > But mesmers are already going to bring perma quickness as well as alacrity. For daily fractals, you can pretty much do whatever since support builds to help prop up pugs is actually useful, but for raids, you're dropping tens of thousands of damage to make your healing work when you have other classes (ie: druid) that a can do a lot more at the cost of a lot less. Literally every support option FB can bring is done far better by other classes with significantly less DPS drop to boot. > > I'm aware of that, but mesmers also having quickness is not relevant to my point. Just because other classes can do something 'better' doesn't mean it can't be done Other classes being able to do things better is ENTIRELY relevant. The point of me explaining that mesmers give quickness is to show that not only do they fill the same roll the FB would, but that they'd also be doing it far better while sacrificing far less. Why do you think the meta exists in the first place? It's not like the OP is asking if it's possible or "viable," he's asking if that would be USEFUL, which in properly structured raids, no it is not. Your benchmark to compare things to isn't supposed to be nothing, it's supposed to be based on the current leaders to see if it stacks up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UnbentMars.9126 Posted November 2, 2017 Share Posted November 2, 2017 > @"Cuon Alpinus.7645" said: > > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > > > @"Cuon Alpinus.7645" said: > > > > @UnbentMars.9126 said: > > > > It's very useful and way better than people give it credit for, if more reaction-based than it really could be. The real issue is that its major heals CD is fairly high and it doesn't have the same interrim tools Druid has to keep up healing in between those CDs. > > > > > > > > It also suffers from a lack of GotL which (IMO) is not as critical a failing as people make it out to be, but people are loathe to try out a guardian because of that even though it can crop dust everyone with huge amounts of quickness > > > > > > But mesmers are already going to bring perma quickness as well as alacrity. For daily fractals, you can pretty much do whatever since support builds to help prop up pugs is actually useful, but for raids, you're dropping tens of thousands of damage to make your healing work when you have other classes (ie: druid) that a can do a lot more at the cost of a lot less. Literally every support option FB can bring is done far better by other classes with significantly less DPS drop to boot. > > > > I'm aware of that, but mesmers also having quickness is not relevant to my point. Just because other classes can do something 'better' doesn't mean it can't be done > > Other classes being able to do things better is ENTIRELY relevant. The point of me explaining that mesmers give quickness is to show that not only do they fill the same roll the FB would, but that they'd also be doing it far better while sacrificing far less. Why do you think the meta exists in the first place? It's not like the OP is asking if it's possible or "viable," he's asking if that would be USEFUL, which in properly structured raids, no it is not. Your benchmark to compare things to isn't supposed to be nothing, it's supposed to be based on the current leaders to see if it stacks up. It's not relevant because OP wasn't asking about what other classes they could/should play, they were asking about what FIREBRAND specifically can do. Also, again, the existence of 'better' options does not negate the options that still get the job done. I have been in raids where we used a tempest auramancer for heals instead of a druid and we did just fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennie.6750 Posted November 3, 2017 Share Posted November 3, 2017 Simply put? No. Support F2 and F3 spells are behind a 40 and 50s CD, which makes them irrelevant in any PvE environment, where you need to be reactive and cast often the same buffs every x seconds due tu encounter design. It would be viable if hybrid builds were but they're not, for a variety of reasons, the main one being the limited stats budget to work with. And while it might work for emergency healing or buffs, the cooldowns do not allow such a support to be readily available when they are needed in a pve environment. You need reflects because the encounter demands it? well too bad, here is a 50s CD for you. Your team is dying? Oh, nevermind, the game will slam a mighty 40s CD on your face. In simpler and more straightforward terms, firebrand's design is not compatible with the current set of PvE encounters design, when other professions have either access to permanent strong buffs and heals, or very short cooldown ones, or both, and that kind of design is very easy to work with in PvE. I'm well aware that you're not supposed to be in tome mode all the time and use your weapons, the problem is, the only support weapon guardians really have is the staff (mace does not count as regen doesn't stack intensity and is often erased by pretty much anyone else), and the staff is bad for so many reasons it would take an entire thread to develop them, but it boils down to having one good spell (the wall) and the rest being a mess of slow, unresponsive and inadequate crap. So, staff support? No, forget that. I'd rather be hanged naked in public before using this weapon. It's too much of a pain to use properly (it doesn't even takes skill, the weapon design doesnt allow that) and 4 of the spells are really terrible. I mean i kind of understand why they did firebrand that way, they wanted spells to be impactful so they had to add that kind of cooldown so that it does not break WvW (that's what I play the most, and there, firebrand support is OK. Not stellar, just OK), but in PvE the end result is the worst possible one: it's used for skips (spamming aegis and stacking swiftness) and to trivialise puzzle areas. That's it. That's all firebrand can bring in a fractal. And that sucks because it means firebrand is a failure that won't be addressed like dragonhunter supposedly having a viable range component was never addressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenith.7301 Posted November 3, 2017 Share Posted November 3, 2017 The burst healing is strong, but unfortunately as mentioned because this stupid game is balanced around spvp and not PvE, the tome skills for healing and support have humongous cooldowns. The healing tome should be at most a 15-20 sec cd. The virtue of courage one should be 30 sec. The other problem is that firebrand support is severely limited in range. Guess what's making people boot druids from 100cm in favor of auramancers? Range. Druid is just as dependent as firebrand on range, but the difference is the druid can somewhat mitigate having to chase people down for heals by a 10 sec cd on CA for landing a meaty lunar impact and use staff 3 and regen from warhorn in the meantime. If druid loses their buffs like GotL, it will be flat out replaced by tempest healers because Tempest healing ranges are huge and their healing is not gated behind large cooldowns. Staff healing autos heal for as much as 700 hp+ and Geyser+overload on top of the shout aura healing is substantial on top of the massive range of water attunement's passive regen aura for the party. Firebrand is just an even worse version of druid because they already took druid's crappy cooldown gated healing and then tripled that already bad cooldown and gave them even less range than druid has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennie.6750 Posted November 3, 2017 Share Posted November 3, 2017 > @Zenith.7301 said: > The burst healing is strong, but unfortunately as mentioned because this stupid game is balanced around spvp and not PvE, the tome skills for healing and support have humongous cooldowns. > > The healing tome should be at most a 15-20 sec cd. The virtue of courage one should be 30 sec. > > The other problem is that firebrand support is severely limited in range. > > Guess what's making people boot druids from 100cm in favor of auramancers? Range. > > Druid is just as dependent as firebrand on range, but the difference is the druid can somewhat mitigate having to chase people down for heals by a 10 sec cd on CA for landing a meaty lunar impact and use staff 3 and regen from warhorn in the meantime. > > If druid loses their buffs like GotL, it will be flat out replaced by tempest healers because Tempest healing ranges are huge and their healing is not gated behind large cooldowns. Staff healing autos heal for as much as 700 hp+ and Geyser+overload on top of the shout aura healing is substantial on top of the massive range of water attunement's passive regen aura for the party. > > Firebrand is just an even worse version of druid because they already took druid's crappy cooldown gated healing and then tripled that already bad cooldown and gave them even less range than druid has. Well the problem with a 15s CD is that even in pve it would be too good, and if it was spammable, a lot of spells would be really underwhelming. My point was that that kind of tradeoff simply doesn't work or isn't viable for support in a pve environment. The entire tome thing was a bad idea TBH. I mean I love it for WvW but that's an entirely different beast. But as a general rule having spells depending on meta cooldowns is just not good at all because it forces spamming at the wrong time and then you're out of support options, ans since hybrid stats like seraph's provide both terrible healing and terrible dps, well people are going to stick to dedicated roles. PvE are very scripted encounters with short cooldowns that require the use of 1 specific support spell at a time, so obviously that doesn't work well with long meta ones and being forced to spam or do nothing for 10-15s to wait for the next boss cooldown cycle which is absolutely not fun. It's in fact so bad for pve that firebrand has to have completely OP burst because of the long-ish F1 meta cooldown. So I do hope that the devs find time to rebalance all of this properly but I believe that this is a fundamental design flaw that can't really be corrected. It'll remain a fun WvW spec and a broken ultra burst oriented pve one. I'd go as far as saying that adding more spells to GW2's combat simply does not work and the devs should stick to 1-9 and F1-F3 with no meta spells, because a lot of content has been designed around a very limited number of strong, impactful spells doing multiple things and on short-ish separate cooldowns. You're also right about the range thing. 300 is way too small. Anything under 600 cannot be realistically used in anything but low tier fractals due to mechanics, boss sizes (seriously, they're now huge) and social awkwardness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atticus.7194 Posted November 7, 2017 Share Posted November 7, 2017 > @lagrimabendita.8763 said: > Hello guys > > A quick question how useful is Fireband support/healer in Fractals and Raids? > > Thanks It's nice circumstantial support but is by no means in a place where it can be considered true sustained support. I highly recommend not even trying, it won't work as things are right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lagrimabendita.8763 Posted November 7, 2017 Author Share Posted November 7, 2017 hI. After the new patch do you find the fireband more support (viable) than before? (PVE) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selendile.9106 Posted November 8, 2017 Share Posted November 8, 2017 I farm T4 fractals exclusively on a full Minstrel FB with leadership runes, staff and mace/shield. I do this with pugs... I never have ANY problems. And it’s a lot of fun. Don’t listen to people, support FB is definitely viable in fractals. Raids, probably not... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altion.9576 Posted November 8, 2017 Share Posted November 8, 2017 I like to change in combat between support and burn Fb and its fun as hell, I usually bump the party speed, then go for protection and last for damage, my build is full viper and I can heal for 1500 easily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lagrimabendita.8763 Posted November 8, 2017 Author Share Posted November 8, 2017 > @Altion.9576 said: > I like to change in combat between support and burn Fb and its fun as hell, I usually bump the party speed, then go for protection and last for damage, my build is full viper and I can heal for 1500 easily. 1500 it's almost nothing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pregnantman.8259 Posted November 8, 2017 Share Posted November 8, 2017 Its more than what Druid can put out. With a proper setup you can probably outheal a Druid just by using Mace auto and 2 on cooldown. Edit: I am assuming 1500 the comment mentioned is per second per ally. Problem with FB healing was never numbers, but the range and clunkiness of mantras. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rennie.6750 Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 > @lagrimabendita.8763 said: > hI. > > After the new patch do you find the fireband more support (viable) than before? (PVE) No. Mantras are still covering a cone, which means that you'll likely miss some of your allies because of mechanics and huge bosses. Not a big deal in some cases, but firebrand is not a serious and dedicated support. A pure dps with emergency heals and the accidental cleansing an ally with your mantra works just fine. The problem of mantras is that you need your allies to stack and not move too much (non instant cast-times do matter), and that's the exact opposite of the fractals design. Be aware that the dps spec lost a not so insignificant amount of dps with the loss of a stack of ashes of the just from the patch though, especially during tome downtime, so it's more inconsistent than ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ojimaru.8970 Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 > @Rennie.6750 said: > You're also right about the range thing. 300 is way too small. Anything under 600 cannot be realistically used in anything but low tier fractals due to mechanics, boss sizes (seriously, they're now huge) and social awkwardness. There's another important distinction you missed: > @Selendile.9106 said: > I farm T4 fractals exclusively on a full Minstrel FB with leadership runes, staff and mace/shield. > > I do this with pugs... > > I never have ANY problems. And it’s a lot of fun. Don’t listen to people, support FB is definitely viable in fractals. Raids, probably not... This is such a terrible statement. While I, too, run off-meta support builds (Seraph Firebrand, Support Scourge, etc.), I'm always cognisant of my contribution to the Fractal group, PUG or not. I may be the last person standing, but that means nothing if I don't offer the group any additional survivability or damage to make up for my lack of DPS. You said you've never had any problems, but by what metric? A Sentinel Warrior can live through any Fractal without any problems while running around the very edge of the arena and still get their T4 Fractal dailies done. A Chronomancer camping Greatsword at 1,200 range can likewise say they are supporting their team mates, even when their outgoing Quickness and Alacrity uptime for the entire fight is less than 0.2s. While you have every right to cover your ears and yell, "I play how I want!" through 2+ hours of Daily Fractals, please remember that you aren't only subjecting yourself to your terrible build and/or playstyle, you are forcing four other strangers to bear with your nonsense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selendile.9106 Posted November 9, 2017 Share Posted November 9, 2017 > @Ojimaru.8970 said: > > @Rennie.6750 said: > > You're also right about the range thing. 300 is way too small. Anything under 600 cannot be realistically used in anything but low tier fractals due to mechanics, boss sizes (seriously, they're now huge) and social awkwardness. > > There's another important distinction you missed: > @Selendile.9106 said: > > I farm T4 fractals exclusively on a full Minstrel FB with leadership runes, staff and mace/shield. > > > > I do this with pugs... > > > > I never have ANY problems. And it’s a lot of fun. Don’t listen to people, support FB is definitely viable in fractals. Raids, probably not... > > This is such a terrible statement. While I, too, run off-meta support builds (Seraph Firebrand, Support Scourge, etc.), I'm always cognisant of my contribution to the Fractal group, PUG or not. I may be the last person standing, but that means nothing if I don't offer the group any additional survivability or damage to make up for my lack of DPS. You said you've never had any problems, but by what metric? A Sentinel Warrior can live through any Fractal without any problems while running around the very edge of the arena and still get their T4 Fractal dailies done. A Chronomancer camping Greatsword at 1,200 range can likewise say they are supporting their team mates, even when their outgoing Quickness and Alacrity uptime for the entire fight is less than 0.2s. > > While you have every right to cover your ears and yell, "I play how I want!" through 2+ hours of Daily Fractals, please remember that you aren't only subjecting yourself to your terrible build and/or playstyle, you are forcing four other strangers to bear with your nonsense. > > Where, in my statement, did I give the impression that I'm ever the last person standing? lol I'm sorry that was your take-away. Let me be clearer.... MY PARTY never has any problems. As in, as a support FB, I contribute in the form of spot heals, party survivability, and quickness. Don't be an idiot thinking "wahhh but your damage sucks", who cares? Dead DPS deal no damage, and I not only make a noticeable difference in keeping my group alive, I am a quickness battery as well. I reiterate my original point to the OP: Support FB is PERFECTLY valid in T4 fractals, and if played right, absolutely WILL NOT be a detriment to the group. Don't listen to people who say otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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