Role: Boons, heals, CC
Difficulty: Medium
Role
Firebrand is known to be a backbone to a party. It recently got transformed into insane boonbot with small amount of healing. In this guide we will be covering effective skill usage as well as the complete basics of the class.
Weapons and utility skills
As our weapons, we use staff and mace/shield for openfield fights. Staff provides both offensive and defensive boons as well as minor healing and huge CC. Mace and shield provide us with block and aegis generation most importantly as well as some projectile hate.
For utility skills we use the for cover boons, as our biggest stab, as our ground coverage stab, as our res tool and for stunbreaks.
This is currently by far the most viable toolkit a firebrand can bring.
Gear variants
- Axe over mace as a situational pick for small scale.
- Slightly higher boon uptime at the cost of a less effective (not as likely to revive a poisoned ally).
Staff: →
Shield: →
Skill usage and call followup
If your commander calls for stab, stab 1 or “big stab”, he’s reffering to and wants you to use it. It is beneficial to synchronize the usage with your commander’s call. It simply makes it easier for the commander to know when he will be able to safely and quickly push.
The same rule applies for , however as HG is position based, its much less volatile in these terms.
When activating , its important to also use on your party right after to provide coverage boons so stab is less likely to get randomly stripped.
On rangespikes, you have multiple options. One is safe, it requires you to use your (mace 3) and (shield 4) to provide blocks and mitigation on tag, one is more offensive and usually requires your squad to be positioned closer to the enemy, where you go into your (F1 tome) and pull with skill #3. Prioritise the safer variant.
Whenever there is a well bomb call, you should try to CC on it with your (staff 5 also known as “line”) and if you have the time, F1 pull.
F3 call. is the best tome that firebrands have, therefore its necessary to use it wisely and not rush through it in 5 seconds. With our build we use trait, which provides us with extra 3 stacks of stability on top of baseline 1 on opening, this however comes with a downside as when you get interrupted while casting the tome, it goes on cooldown. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes it does, just be careful here.
Your general perfect rotation in F3 would be pressing only Skill #4, which is possible to achieve in certain situations. However every fight is different.
We could give priority value to skills in F3, with Skill #4 having the highest priority followed by Skill #5. Rest of the skills are generally bad and should be avoided, unless its really necessary to use them. The reflect from #3 is generally negligible as engineers cover most of the reflects, taunt from #2 is melee range and is a basically a complete waste of a page and #1 is a short stab filler which you should use only if you really need a bit of stab.
Therefore avoid pressing anything beside #4 and #5 and fill the stab gaps with your SYG ( ) and HG ( ).
F2 tome, or is a nice burst cleansing kit. Skill priorities are mostly the same as in F3: Skill #5 having the highest value, followed by #4 then #2 then #1. Here however, using #1 as a burst heal is a viable option as the tome itself is not really that useful.
In a perfect world, try rotate weapon skills between activating every tome to get the highest value out of the class.
Elite mantra, or . The most broken stunbreak skill, however mostly used wrong. Avoid rushing trough the mantra at all cost. Here its really important to chill and really use it only as a stunbreak.
– our res tool. Try to cast the signet early and with quickness, just so the process is faster. It often comes down to your personal reaction time if a res goes trough or not. MAKE SURE YOU CALL THAT YOURE SIGNETTING ON VOICE TO AVOID OVERLAPS. Signet is ground-based and doesn’t follow banished targets (if a downed player is knocked away during the cast, the signet will miss).
General gameplay
Your goal is to make your party be able to move and survive trough your active mitigation and utility boons while also paying attention to the whole fight as you are able to provide significant CC on bombs.
With refference to our general guide, here are some straightforward skill usages:
- Prep phase
Before getting in combat you can temporarily swap for , activate it once to grant your party aegis and swiftness, then immediately switch back to HG.
Prestack on your party. - Engage, first spike
Use mace+shield mitigation tools on tag to provide aegis and protection.
Use symbol of swiftness on the enemy to proc their aegis. - Spike
Same as first spike, provide mitigation trough mace+shield, if they are not ready, use heal mantra for protection uptime. Basically make sure your party survives.
If you are in f3, feel free to just sit and fill with mantras.
Use symbol of swiftness on the enemy to proc their aegis. - Wells
“Wells” call is for Scourges to use their most impactful skills, but there’s a list of things you should do as a Firebrand to greatly improve the results of a well bomb so pay attention to it.
Make sure your group is able to move and are able to drop wells on the enemy in time and in a good position.
Use (Staff 5, “line”) on the wells.
Use (F1) pull on the wells.
If you are in (F3), make sure you use the resistance field as well as any quickness source. - Selfspike/selfbomb
The most crucial moment when your party needs the most support. Make sure the resistance field from F3 is down here and your allies have enough stab with and active mitigation. - Kite phase
Almost like selfspike, only more chill. Support people that are getting CC’d in the back trough your resistance field or f2 cleanses and stunbreaks. - General forward motion phase
Ability to press F1 and stay in it for a longer period of time.
Make sure your allies always have stability and protection.
Tips
- A very safe way to play FB nowadays is to pop , wait until it runs out while using weapon skills and F1 and afterwards going into F3 tome. However sometimes you do not need to do this and you can sit on your F3 a little bit longer. Therefore popping into into another into F3 is a viable option enabling you to use F1/F2 tome in the meantime.
- Good gameplay however doesn’t always come from a rotation, especially in a PvP scenario. You should always think ahead of what is going to happen and preact/react accordingly with your defenses.
- Always keep your (Staff 2) on cd.
- You can move out of your or F3’s resistance field to provide 1 extra person out of your party with respective boons. Just make sure you don’t fall behind while doing so.
- Aim into a position where you will be moving, however not too far away as you don’t want to run out of stability before reaching it. With the build, each stack of stab from lasts almost for 4 seconds, therefore its fairly easy to get good value out of it.
- Resistance field (F3 Skill #4) should be generally used whenever there is a necessity to move while under pressure, however using it while cleaving downstates is not a bad idea either as it negates effecs such as weakness.
- Always cover your stab with other boons from different non stab granting skills such as .
Build and Quickguide provided by The Flöck [tF].
June 2022.