Firebrand

February 2023

Firebrands are the backbone of WvW, providing boons, healing, cleansing, and breaking allies out of stuns. This build is relatively forgiving to learn due to its survivability but is difficult to master.

Build Fundamentals

Your main responsibility is to keep your party moving. This means maintaining Stability, applying Resistance, and breaking allies out of stuns. You should always be stacked on the Commander so your party is within range of your boons.

Tome Overview

Firebrand’s Virtues are replaced by Tomes: activating the F1 – F3 skills replace your weapon skills with powerful offensive or defensive skills. Each skill has relatively short cooldowns, making your tome skill casts primarily constrained by the number of pages available to you. Thanks to Archivist of Whispers you have eight pages within each tome, meaning you can cast eight tome skills.

Tome of Justice is your offensive tome. As a support Firebrand, this tome is primarily used for the pull from Chapter 3: Heated Rebuke.

Tome of Resolve is your healing tome.

Tome of Courage is your defensive tome, giving you access to skills that apply Stability and Resistance.

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!" is one of your strongest skill and should be rotated in when necessary with your scrapper.  Your scrapper in party should be running Defense Field they typically will use this first on range spikes or baits if you get too close to the enemy.  "Stand Your Ground!" will be called for explicitly by the commander when about to bomb, otherwise use when needed and note the stun break part is for you only.

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 at the start of an engagement. Within your tome, you flip through four of the available skills on rotation, with the last skill used more situationally.

• Epilogue: Unbroken Lines increases your allies’ toughness, reducing incoming damage.
• 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 Stability and Swiftness.
• Chapter 2: Daring Challenge is a crowd control (applying Taunt) and applies Resolution on your party.

Chapter 3: Valiant Bulwark places a reflective bubble. While useful situationally this skill is often skipped in your Tome of Courage rotation.

Hallowed Ground is an AoE Stability field. This should be used in between other Stability cooldowns or if your zerg is stationary.

Mantra of Liberation is a stun break that also apples Stability. This casts in front of you – if your allies are stunned turn your character model towards them before casting this.

Healing and Cleansing

Healing is the next highest priority after maintaining Stability. To better keep an eye on your party, uncheck “View as Grid” in your Squad UI. This will show you only your party, which allows you to react if they are slammed by conditions or are taking spike damage.

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.

When entering Tome of Resolve start with Epilogue: Eternal Oasis to convert another two conditions into boons and increase your subsequent healing effectiveness by 20% (also includes healing from other party members!). Next, use Chapter 4: Shining River. This is a stationary water field so aim to drop it when your squad is stationary or regrouping.

A typical follow up to this is Chapter 3: Azure Sun to boost your party’s Vigor, Regeneration, and Swiftness uptime. However, if your party is still in desperate need of cleansing you can instead use Chapter 2: Radiant Recovery to cleanse a single condition from five allies.

Aim to use Epilogue: Eternal Oasis again just before exiting your tome to reapply its buff to healing effectiveness.

Empower is the next burst heal on this build, 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.

Chapter 2: Daring Challenge (the second skill in Tome of Courage) taunts enemies, keeping them from leaving your melee bomb.

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.

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 Judgment applies Protection and Aegis 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 Swiftness. When blasted by Holy Strike this will remove a condition from allies. While this can be spammed during fights avoid using it when stacked up in preparation for a push: Commanders will often call for stealthing smoke fields, and placing a light field will disrupt stealth application.
• 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 and trait swaps:

• Signet of Mercy can be swapped for Mantra of Lore for improved condition cleanse. If your party is missing a mediscrapper this is a required swap.
• Honorable Staff can be swapped for Pure of Heart to apply a small amount of healing for every attack blocked by Aegis.

Weapons

• Mace can be swapped for Axe for more CC with Blazing Edge, at the cost of some Aegis and Protection.