Firebrand

August 2023

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.

Tome of Justice is your offensive tome. As a support Firebrand, this tome is primarily used for the pull from Chapter 3: Heated Rebuke however you may wish to skip this tome completely in favour of other more valuable tomes.

Tome of Resolve is your burst cleansing and moderate heal tome.  Usually you will only go into this tome to assist your secondary support player in your party.  Knowing when to do this is possible via the party UI (see tip below on how to show party UI)

Tome of Courage is your defensive/support tome, giving you access to skills that apply Stability and Resistance.  This can be used in a variety of ways, more will be explained later in the guide.

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 the main source of Stability and Resistance. Aim for 100% uptime of Stability when in enemy range, and apply Resistance when in enemy bombs to allow your party to escape the impacts of Immobilize.

"Stand Your Ground!"stands as one of your most potent abilities and should be activated just before engaging an enemy within 1200 range.  The skill may be called for explicitly by the commander when they are about to push.

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 either Portent of Freedom or go into Tome of Courage which activates the trait Indomitable Courage if its off of cooldown.  Dormant Courage is applied on using Tome of Courage and lasts for 75 seconds, you can check if this effect is active by looking for the red icons of Tome of Courage and another small red icon above your heal skill.

Tome of Courage, your defensive tome, keeps your party moving through incoming damage and crowd control. Thanks to Indomitable Courage, opening this tome stun breaks and applies Stability on allies within 600 range. Typically you will open this tome when the enemy bombs or you need to maintain stability before it runs out.

• 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 Resistance. This negates non-damaging debilitating conditions such as Immobilize 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 Protection.

Hallowed Ground is an AoE Stability field. This should be used in between other Stability cooldowns or if your zerg is stationary, for example when cleaving downs.

Mantra of Liberation is a stun break for you and your allies that also apples Stability.  If your allies are stunned turn your character towards them before casting as this Blasts in a cone shape in the direction you’re currently facing.

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 Dodge as Selfless Daring makes each Dodge heal nearby allies. This trait synergizes with Superior Sigil of Energy on your weapons: don’t be afraid to spam your Dodge! Save enough endurance for an escape but avoid having a full endurance bar for too long. Additionally, use any spare endurance prior to weapon swapping or opening or closing a tome, as Superior Sigil of Energy will refill your endurance bar.

Tome of Resolve is your strongest healing utility, and should be saved for high-pressure moments; don’t use it to heal chip damage. Upon activation, this tome will remove three conditions from nearby allies thanks to Absolute Resolve.

Tip: See above examples of typical rotations in this tome

Only If your party is overloaded with conditions and they need re-booning, enter Tome of Resolve and use Epilogue: Eternal Oasis you may then leave the book and heal taking advantage of the increased healing effectiveness by 20% (also includes healing from other party members!) with Empower  pulsing healing and Might. Wait to use this in a safe, stationary position, as it will lock you in place while it channels.

Mantra of Solace grants Aegis to you and your surrounding allies. This is directional – aim your character model before casting. This is not only an excellent damage mitigation tool but it will also heal allies because of Pure of Heart.

Crowd Control

Line of Warding is your best crowd control skill. This creates a line perpendicular to the direction your character is facing that prevents enemies from walking over it without Stability. This can be used to wall enemies into your group’s damage bomb or in the middle of an enemy zerg to string out players.

Chapter 3: Heated Rebuke (the third skill in Tome of Justice) is a ranged pull. Dropping this skill in the center of your group’s area attacks will pull enemies into your zerg’s bomb. Alternatively, this can also be chained with other pulls, such as following up a Mesmer’s focus pull.

Signet of Mercy

Signet of Mercy is a high-value revive utility that can be tricky to pull off. Unlike Mesmer Illusion of Life, this utility is slower to cast and only revives a single player. This makes Signet of Mercy more of a party support utility than a zerg-wide utility.

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 Stability to ensure your cast will not be interrupted, then cast your Signet of Mercy and move away from enemies.

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 your escape key or by stowing 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 trait Stalwart Speed

Weapon Skills

Mace:

• Your third auto-attack, Faithful Strike, heals nearby allies.
• Symbol of Faith places a symbol that applies Regeneration.
• Protector's Strike applies Aegis and Protection. This should be used on ranged spikes.

Shield:

• Shield of Judgmentapplies Protection and Aegis to allies in front of you. This should be used on ranged spikes.
• Shield of Absorptioncasts 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 Swiftness. When blasted by Holy Strike this will remove a condition from allies.
• Empower burst heals and applies Might.
• 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 following Mantra 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 Tome of Courage meaning more stun breaks via these traits Tenacious Defense and Indomitable Courage