In your squad, Firebrands play a vital role as they embody the traditional guardian virtues using powerful tomes. They serve as the backbone of the party, bolstering allies to keep them moving via sources of damage mitigation skills and boons. Additionally, they support their comrades with mantras that offer healing, stun breaks, and powerful boons. While this build is forgiving to learn because of its survivability, mastering it can be quite challenging.
Build Fundamentals
The Firebrand build excels as a boon support with both defensive and offensive capabilities. While it offers moderate healing, its true strength lies in burst cleansing, stun breaking for allies, and providing a substantial number of boons. Notably, the Firebrand’s Virtues are transformed into Tomes, replacing your weapon abilities with potent offensive or defensive skills when activated. Not every skill within each book is worth using due to page costs, so knowing each tome skill is critical in managing pages and being effective.
Tip: In the Squad Options, deselect “View as a grid.” By doing this, you’ll be able to monitor your allies’ boons, conditions, and health more effectively, leading to improved decision-making and skill management.
Main Priorities
As a support class, your utmost priority should be ensuring your survival, as offering assistance becomes impossible if you’re incapacitated. Maintaining your health pool above zero hinges on timely dodges and strategic positioning. The significance of positioning cannot be understated, especially given that numerous skills are directional and have a set radius or range. By excelling in these aspects, you’ll be better equipped to fulfill your supportive role effectively. Your main responsibility is to stun break allies, keep your party moving and to mitigate damage. To achieve this, you can provide a range of valuable boons via skills, including stability, swiftness, resistance, protection, and aegis. You’ll want to stay as close to the commander tag as possible, this allows you to more reliably mitigate damage however you will want to pay close attention to your party and be ready to turn at a moments notice to support. Maintaining a proper rotation of skills and tomes is very important when playing Firebrand.
TIP: In the General Options (F11), navigate to User Interface and ensure to tick the boxes for “Always show squad health bars” and “Always show party health bars.” These adjustments will significantly improve your ability to monitor those requiring your support. Lastly, don’t forget to enable “Thick Party Health Bars” for even clearer visibility during intense moments.
Stability and Resistance
You are themain sourceof
Tip: note the stun break part of
"Stand Your Ground!" only applies to you, so make sure if you need to stun break your allies you use eitherPortent of Freedom or go intoTome of Courage which activates the traitIndomitable Courage if its off of cooldown. Dormant Courage is applied on usingTome of Courage and lasts for 75 seconds, you can check if this effect is active by looking for the red icons ofTome of Courage and another small red icon above your heal skill.
Epilogue: Unbroken Lines increases your allies’ toughness, reducing incoming damage, gives more stability, aegis and protection.Chapter 4: Stalwart Stand is a stationary field that pulses. This negates non-damaging debilitating conditions such as on your allies, allowing you to escape an enemy bomb and regroup. Note that this is not a condition cleanse – it simply allows you to temporarily ignore crowd-control conditions. Chapter 1: Unflinching Charge applies.
Tip: It is not advised to use the last charge of any mantra’s as it will put them on a long cooldown! Only do this in an emergency or at the end of a fight, this means it will allow enough time for it to be ready again.
Cleansing and Healing
You provide reasonable passive sustain on each
Tip: See above examples of typical rotations in this tome
Only If your party is overloaded with conditions and they need re-booning, enter
Crowd Control
Signet of Mercy
If a member of your party has gone down, indicate to your zerg that you’ll be using your revive utility to avoid stacking revives. Apply
If your downed ally is knocked out of position or fully dies before the cast ends you can cancel your signet to avoid its long cooldown by hitting yourescape keyor bystowing your weapons. Note that if you are in a tome only escape will work.
Tip: You can speed up the cast of your signet rezz via quickness, entering
Tome of Justice will provide this and is instant cast or you may use your heal or elite skill if you need thanks to the traitStalwart Speed
Weapon Skills
Mace:
- Your third auto-attack,
Faithful Strike , heals nearby allies. Symbol of Faith places a symbol that applies. Protector's Strike appliesand . This should be used on ranged spikes.
Shield:
Shield of Judgment appliesand to allies in front of you. This should be used on ranged spikes. Shield of Absorption casts a dome that blocks projectiles and detonates to a strong heal. Typically this skill is double-tapped, as the heal is often a higher priority to the block.
Staff:
Holy Strike is a good ranged heal, as well as a blast finisher.Symbol of Swiftness is a light field that also applies. When blasted by Holy Strike this will remove a condition from allies.Empower burst heals and applies. Line of Warding creates a line that stops enemies from crossing.
Alternatives
Skills & Traits
If you are struggling with sustain you can make some utility skill swaps:
Signet of Mercy can be swapped out if you feel its not valuable for either of the followingMantra of Lore for improved condition cleanse or"Advance!" if you want more damage mitigation/blocks and heals.Sanctuary may also be an interesting pick, and can provide some heals and hard CC.
If your party is needing more stability and you have sufficient heals and cleanses you may change the trait line and swap out honor in favour of valor (traits are: top bottom bottom) you lose heals but reduce you cooldown of