Very nice video, and it is very similar to the way I built my firebrand. Though I use Sword of justice instead of purging flame, and use zeal (2/2/1) so i get 7% more dmg to burning foes, more condi based on toughness and sword of justice can have more casts and burns things. I like sword of justice for the same reason as the mantra, you can just spam it untill there is one charge left, while doing other skills to. but I guess thats a preference. It is a bit sad to not have more virtue of justice procs...
Wow this is amazing..are you planning to do more of these ? I'd love to see one for mirage as I struggle to understand mirrors and clones and how they all work together.
My plan is to do them as I make them myself. Basically I run through this process for myself to learn a class, the idea was to share that concisely and clearly to you guys. Next is condition renegade, after that who knows!
You didn't miss it. I goofed in editing and left that part of the recording out. Simply put, it's full vipers but pay more attention to the idea of getting the infusions you need on this build, as spiteful (+5 expertise) make way more difference than most other types. Hope that makes sense, sorry for leaving it out!
While I'm not entirely ruling out a weaver video, weaver is somewhat of my nemesis in this game. I'm really bad at picking up conjure weapons on the fly and I'm not really sure how the people who play it work so efficiently around cooldowns they cannot see (some kind of internal clock? I dunno). I would need to sit down and figure everything all out which is something I have been avoiding so far! We shall see though!
I’ve swapped to this as my main. The aesthetics and the effects are just super badass for firebrand. Do you think you could do a build for open world solo play? Doing good damage with some decent survivability?
I'm kinda out of build ideas right now but if you in general take the meta and replace a little damage with a little survivability that can make a decent enough open world build. Not what you're looking for I know, but if I do come up with any more build ideas, they'll be up on my channel before too long! I'm always eager to share them.
So you just sent me into full investigation mode! The 2-4 was a typo, HOWEVER as far as I can see it does not make a difference. I just double and triple checked all the traits for hidden combos etc. The only thing I can see that MIGHT be important is if your alacrity is lacking, there is a chance that your cooldowns will be out of sync. This will only occur if you do it differently each time though (i.e. 2-4 one time and 2-5 next time), if you are consistently doing 2-4 every time, I cannot see how that would make a difference. Good spot though.
So I had some frustrations with the game, if you saw my video on chronomancer you might be aware of that. Then that video (which was me airing my frustration) was removed for copyright reasons which just was the icing on the cake for my other frustrations which were with UA-cam systems. Then I injured myself playing squash and had to have an operation on my arm. 6 months after that, when I could actually game again, I was seriously behind the meta and indeed the other raiders in my group. Basically, I decided not to go back to the game like before. I've been hammering out the story modes but that's it. So I'm really no longer in a position to be advising anyone on builds etc. I had a plan to perhaps do some other content for other games but due to some other small UA-camrs' experience, when you diversify you basically kill your channel. All of this plus a number of other health issues have been tough to move past motivationally. But it's not off the cards that I redirect the channel to general gaming. It will be alot of work to do though. Not sure if I'm up to it. Also not sure if you wanted a wall of text but there it is! Sorry!
Mike The Fish so sorry to hear all that take! I hope you are mending and living well now. Shame we can’t play casually in game together, maybe I will come across you some time. I really appreciated your methodical and thorough ways! Take care!
hello, i'm new to this game and i have a question if you don't mind me asking. I just leveled to 80 my guardian and since i will need to start with some gear what gear do you advise to run this build with because viper is not exactly the easiest gear to get for a character
Hey Mike, between Dragon Hunter and Firebrand for open world PvE, Fractals, and maybe some raids at some point, which spec do you like better? Thank you
For fractals dragonHunter is better. For raids, personally I prefer firebrand however DH is useful there too so if you're picking an all rounder go DH. Firebrand is insanely strong in open world though if that matters to you. Every time you kill a mob your F1 recharges and that's where the huge damage comes from in the build, so it basically super-charges it.
do they both need to be in melee range for max damage, or is one more mid ranged with scepter? Is one easier to play so to speak? Thank you for the replies and information.
Dragonhunter can achieve ok damage numbers from range, simply spamming sceptre skills but they both benefit from being in melee considerably. As for ease of use it's no contest, Firebrand is hard. Rewarding but hard.
Haven't tried it but I'm not the one who comes up with the meta builds. There's guys with spreadsheets and spend days testing all the different gear to work out the rotations and the specific meta gear (the best numbers possible). It used to be grieving, it's now Vipers. Worth mentioning that vipers requires 3x Spiteful infusions to be absolutely perfect. I managed to mess up and miss the gear section out of editing but those are kind of important. Link to snow crows website is in description.
This is incorrect, the reason Grieving isn't meta compared to Viper's boils down to accessibility (being that only Firebrand makes Grieving meta, whereas Viper's is good on just about every other condi build) For more information you can check the Quantify guild website. Overall they are very, very close in dps, with Grieving being a bit burstier with slightly higher ramp-up dps. So overall in terms of min-maxing Grieving is the better set, it's just not meta for the aforementioned reasons. Quick edit: This is from the Quantify benchmark: "The Griever variant gives consistently higher DPS than the other variants, but is currently very hard to acquire. Both the Sinister and Viper variants are very close in terms of DPS, Sinister is less RNG, but the Viper variant has the advantage of not having to use the heal mantra every 10 seconds." For further reading you can go here: qtfy.eu/guildwars/guardian/condi-fb-build-guide/
It's a skill that has a cast and a follow up cast, so that's two. Then there is a trait that automatically gives you the follow up cast whenever you crit. So you end up having to. Press it three times total.
All the boons and profession specific buffs from the machine. 25 might, banner of strength etc.That tends to be how the meta is tested. May have had consumables on as well.
There are a few condition builds which are better in terms of pure numbers but I personally think this is underated as the F1 reset happens randomly in raids sometimes, upping your damage considerably (some raid trash mobs are coded as proper enemies and some aren't, seems random to me.) It is, as far as I know, still very much the meta for firebrand and is very fun to perfect.
Meta builds all taken from snow crows website. Metabattle has a bit of a reputation for accepting less than perfect builds. Or at least it did when it was open before. Not sure about it these days.
Depends what you're doing. In some circumstances a power build is a better fit (DH) and others a condition build works better (FB). Personally I think firebrand is more fun but dragonHunter has more uses strictly speaking.
Thanks Mike - as always - thoughtful, easy to follow and slowed the rotations right down !!! excellent work
I can always appreciate a starship troopers reference.
Very nice video, and it is very similar to the way I built my firebrand. Though I use Sword of justice instead of purging flame, and use zeal (2/2/1) so i get 7% more dmg to burning foes, more condi based on toughness and sword of justice can have more casts and burns things.
I like sword of justice for the same reason as the mantra, you can just spam it untill there is one charge left, while doing other skills to.
but I guess thats a preference. It is a bit sad to not have more virtue of justice procs...
late reply but do you use greatsword with zeal on firebrand?
And another enjoyable video, ty!
Nice build I'm going to try this
Wish I could take credit! Haha
Viper STATS :D
Nice video!
Very instructive
Wow this is amazing..are you planning to do more of these ? I'd love to see one for mirage as I struggle to understand mirrors and clones and how they all work together.
My plan is to do them as I make them myself. Basically I run through this process for myself to learn a class, the idea was to share that concisely and clearly to you guys. Next is condition renegade, after that who knows!
Mike The Fish oh looking forward to Renegade also, glad I stumbled into these videos I'm a fairly confused casual player and this helps a lot
Glad I can help :)
Thx I enjoyed
Then my day was worth it!
the healing mantra procs aegis on every use, which synergizes with unscathed contender
What armor and weapon stats? Did I miss that part?
You didn't miss it. I goofed in editing and left that part of the recording out. Simply put, it's full vipers but pay more attention to the idea of getting the infusions you need on this build, as spiteful (+5 expertise) make way more difference than most other types. Hope that makes sense, sorry for leaving it out!
@@MintyMike26 pin or highlight this reply
Hey, I love your videos you have them make so much sense. If your thinking about doing another video maybe you could do Elementalist Weaver.
While I'm not entirely ruling out a weaver video, weaver is somewhat of my nemesis in this game. I'm really bad at picking up conjure weapons on the fly and I'm not really sure how the people who play it work so efficiently around cooldowns they cannot see (some kind of internal clock? I dunno). I would need to sit down and figure everything all out which is something I have been avoiding so far! We shall see though!
Your fashion is on point, can't seem to identify your skins due to the shaded area you are in, mind sharing them?
Helmet: Firebrand's War Miter, Shoulders: Heavy Plate shoulders, Chest: Electroplated Coat, Gloves: Glorious Gauntlets, Pants: Vigil's Honor Tassets, Boots: Glorious War Greaves. Colours: Vintage Silver, Enameled Generation, Midnight Blue, Celestial. Happy fashion Wars!
I don't know why I cannot get mine to more than 8,300 even with every single boon on me.
I’ve swapped to this as my main. The aesthetics and the effects are just super badass for firebrand. Do you think you could do a build for open world solo play? Doing good damage with some decent survivability?
I'm kinda out of build ideas right now but if you in general take the meta and replace a little damage with a little survivability that can make a decent enough open world build. Not what you're looking for I know, but if I do come up with any more build ideas, they'll be up on my channel before too long! I'm always eager to share them.
hey so at 14:41 the tome combo was 2-4-5-1-2 but later, the combo was 2-5-4-1-2; does it matter which order?
So you just sent me into full investigation mode! The 2-4 was a typo, HOWEVER as far as I can see it does not make a difference. I just double and triple checked all the traits for hidden combos etc. The only thing I can see that MIGHT be important is if your alacrity is lacking, there is a chance that your cooldowns will be out of sync. This will only occur if you do it differently each time though (i.e. 2-4 one time and 2-5 next time), if you are consistently doing 2-4 every time, I cannot see how that would make a difference. Good spot though.
Where are you Mike. Come back to us!
So I had some frustrations with the game, if you saw my video on chronomancer you might be aware of that. Then that video (which was me airing my frustration) was removed for copyright reasons which just was the icing on the cake for my other frustrations which were with UA-cam systems. Then I injured myself playing squash and had to have an operation on my arm. 6 months after that, when I could actually game again, I was seriously behind the meta and indeed the other raiders in my group. Basically, I decided not to go back to the game like before. I've been hammering out the story modes but that's it. So I'm really no longer in a position to be advising anyone on builds etc. I had a plan to perhaps do some other content for other games but due to some other small UA-camrs' experience, when you diversify you basically kill your channel. All of this plus a number of other health issues have been tough to move past motivationally. But it's not off the cards that I redirect the channel to general gaming. It will be alot of work to do though. Not sure if I'm up to it. Also not sure if you wanted a wall of text but there it is! Sorry!
Mike The Fish so sorry to hear all that take! I hope you are mending and living well now. Shame we can’t play casually in game together, maybe I will come across you some time. I really appreciated your methodical and thorough ways! Take care!
hello, i'm new to this game and i have a question if you don't mind me asking. I just leveled to 80 my guardian and since i will need to start with some gear what gear do you advise to run this build with because viper is not exactly the easiest gear to get for a character
If you're new to the game, dragonHunter power build is also in the meta. It's easier to equip and to play. Aim for that :)
Hey Mike, between Dragon Hunter and Firebrand for open world PvE, Fractals, and maybe some raids at some point, which spec do you like better? Thank you
For fractals dragonHunter is better. For raids, personally I prefer firebrand however DH is useful there too so if you're picking an all rounder go DH. Firebrand is insanely strong in open world though if that matters to you. Every time you kill a mob your F1 recharges and that's where the huge damage comes from in the build, so it basically super-charges it.
do they both need to be in melee range for max damage, or is one more mid ranged with scepter? Is one easier to play so to speak? Thank you for the replies and information.
Dragonhunter can achieve ok damage numbers from range, simply spamming sceptre skills but they both benefit from being in melee considerably. As for ease of use it's no contest, Firebrand is hard. Rewarding but hard.
Mike The Fish thank you Mike. I am doing hero points now in HoT and started with DH. We will see how it goes.
Have you tried Grieving Firebrand vs Viper? Been wanting to make a Condi Firebrand for awhile now.
Haven't tried it but I'm not the one who comes up with the meta builds. There's guys with spreadsheets and spend days testing all the different gear to work out the rotations and the specific meta gear (the best numbers possible). It used to be grieving, it's now Vipers. Worth mentioning that vipers requires 3x Spiteful infusions to be absolutely perfect. I managed to mess up and miss the gear section out of editing but those are kind of important. Link to snow crows website is in description.
+Mike The FIsh thank you for your response, I'll do some research on my end too :D
Grieving and viper are nearly the same In dps, vipers will do slightly more. I don’t know the exact percent, if i had to guess I’d say it’s 5% or less
+Garett L thank you for the added information :D
This is incorrect, the reason Grieving isn't meta compared to Viper's boils down to accessibility (being that only Firebrand makes Grieving meta, whereas Viper's is good on just about every other condi build) For more information you can check the Quantify guild website. Overall they are very, very close in dps, with Grieving being a bit burstier with slightly higher ramp-up dps. So overall in terms of min-maxing Grieving is the better set, it's just not meta for the aforementioned reasons.
Quick edit: This is from the Quantify benchmark: "The Griever variant gives consistently higher DPS than the other variants, but is currently very hard to acquire. Both the Sinister and Viper variants are very close in terms of DPS, Sinister is less RNG, but the Viper variant has the advantage of not having to use the heal mantra every 10 seconds."
For further reading you can go here: qtfy.eu/guildwars/guardian/condi-fb-build-guide/
what runes is he using for his armor
You're wielding an Axe only in 1 slot but whats in the other? How come 4 & 5 have something in there when you're only holding an axe?
Torch is in offhand.
@@MintyMike26 yep it worked when I equipped the torch. So basically it's the torch always for both
Yes. You only need one torch though, equip nothing in the off hand for the sceptre.
can it be used for fractal ?
Nice vid!
Did you mention the gear used with this build? I may have missed it. Is it full vipers?
Yeah it is. I realise now I actually left out that part I recorded when editing. That sucks. Sorry.
ty for the answer!
and if it's full vipers, there's no need to talk much about it, you can simply add a note in the video description ^^
Better than Dragón Hunter?
im new to GW2 trying out firebrand, how do u use zealot's flame 3x in a row????? watt????
It's a skill that has a cast and a follow up cast, so that's two. Then there is a trait that automatically gives you the follow up cast whenever you crit. So you end up having to. Press it three times total.
Mike The Fish o.o super slomo guide pls xD
It's already at 35% speed, not gonna go slower than that lol, sorry! Watch it a few times and rewatch the explanation, should make things clear.
AAAAHHHH RIP ME DUDE i cant get it XD
Worst comes to the worst, you can always read the written rotation on the snow crows site and just repeat it exactly.
30k dot thick. I though i was big dick with my 10k Bear Maul on my soul beast. Also 69 % crit with 3k conditioning those are some sexy stats.
Do you know what sigils or runes??? I'm currently buying firebrand runes..
Yeah sorry, I accidentally left out the gear section. Malice and smouldering sigils, along with renegade runes.
i have only 21k burning dmg max... how did you do? using consumable? ( 1400 condi dmg, and i see 3100 in your stats ) wtf
All the boons and profession specific buffs from the machine. 25 might, banner of strength etc.That tends to be how the meta is tested. May have had consumables on as well.
What items did you use .. stats and such ...
Vipers gear completely. Man, leaving that section out in editing was a real mistake lol. So many requests about it 😂
how is the build doing currently
The most recent patch didn't change anything except the overall nerf to all damage builds. (Unique buffs like pinpoint being lowered)
can you use greatsword with scepter and torch?
i mean you can but you're mixing power with condi. It's better to pick one or the other.
is this build work currently ?
As far as I can see, it's still relevant. Yes.
this build still good ?
There are a few condition builds which are better in terms of pure numbers but I personally think this is underated as the F1 reset happens randomly in raids sometimes, upping your damage considerably (some raid trash mobs are coded as proper enemies and some aren't, seems random to me.) It is, as far as I know, still very much the meta for firebrand and is very fun to perfect.
ok ty
Do you have this on metabattle or something?
Meta builds all taken from snow crows website. Metabattle has a bit of a reputation for accepting less than perfect builds. Or at least it did when it was open before. Not sure about it these days.
which one is better dragonhunter or firebrand?
Depends what you're doing. In some circumstances a power build is a better fit (DH) and others a condition build works better (FB). Personally I think firebrand is more fun but dragonHunter has more uses strictly speaking.
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