Build:Firebrand - Support Valorbrand

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Support and Sustain

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Hard

This build was last updated on September 12, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A PvP support Firebrand build focusing on healing, cleansing and boon sharing. Generally considered to be one of the hardest support builds to play due to the sheer amount of available options it has for supporting allies that players have to juggle, but this makes the build great at adapting to any situation when played right. One downside to this however is that your healing is more spread out - sometimes you need to work harder to do burst healing than you would on other builds. Survival can also be more difficult than on the Core version due to the lack of Renewed Focus.

Skill Bar

Staff

Sword/Shield

Utility

Skill Variants

Weapons

• Mace over Sword - more forgiving and beginner-friendly option with increased sustain/support but lower mobility. Take Invigorated Bulwark on Honor. Mace is also the preferred weapon of most Guardians in 2v2 and 3v3 seasons.

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Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Sword

Shield

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Runes

• Rune of Guardian - slightly higher healing for a bit less tankiness.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Each Virtue skill is now a tome with 5 unique skills inside.

• These tomes have no cooldown, you can swap in and out of them anytime you want.

• Tome skills cost pages, and you generate 1 page every 5 seconds. Pages are a shared resource, if you blow all of them on 1 tome then you won't have any pages left for other tomes. Because of this you should always try to use the tome skills that benefit the situation the most, and shouldn't waste pages if you feel like you'll need them later.

Settings

• Under General Options / User Interface enable "Thick party health bars" and "Always show health bars". These will make it much easier to keep track of who needs your support. For more tips check out our settings guide.

Condition Cleansing

• Tome of Resolve is the go-to skill for fighting conditions.

• Epilogue Eternal Oasis is the best mass cleanse in the build, converting several conditions on allies into boons.
  • Opening with this skill in general is a good idea because it also increases healing done to allies for a few seconds.

• Chapter 2 Radiant Recovery is also quite good and on a rather low CD. If your team is under heavy condition pressure it's worth swapping back to this tome every 6 seconds just to use this.

• The 4th skill of Tome of Courage called Chapter 4 Stalwart Stand could also help here because of the Resistance, but that doesn't work against damaging conditions. However it's also a Light field, which means allies could use this to combo AoE cleansing with blast finishers.

• Mantra of Solace's charges can proc Smiter's Boon for instant self-healing and cleansing once every 16 seconds.

• Contemplation of Purity is only for yourself, it's a last resort option for when you're being overwhelmed by conditions and either you don't have pages or time to cast tome skills. An instant mass cleanse, heal and stunbreak makes this quite a powerful panic button.

• Symbol of Blades and Symbol of Swiftness are both Light fields, try to combo them with Staff's Holy Strike whenever you can for AoE cleansing.

Healing, Damage Mitigation

• When you dodge, try dodging towards allies. The end of your dodge roll heals you and nearby allies for a decent amount.

• Aegis heals when it blocks an attack.

• Mantra of Solace might seem weak on its own, but the Aegis application, Relic of the Flock proc and Smiter's Boon + Monk's Focus synergy turns this into a formidable instant healing skill.

• Empower is a powerful group healing skill with a long cast time, you may want to protect them with Stability or Aegis to negate interrupts.
  • While it's good for healing allies, it's not the best skill when you're the one being targeted by the enemy team. The fact that it roots you in place could easily make this backfire on you.

• Tome of Resolve is great at recovering health for allies while Tome of Courage focuses on preventing and mitigating damage.

• Epilogue Eternal Oasis followed by Chapter 4 Shining River and the Chapter 1 Desert Bloom spam is great at keeping your allies at a stable health but this is more about sustained healing rathern than burst healing. These skills all have relatively long cast times for a medium amount of healing.

• Tome of Courage (ToC) skills are strong but quite expensive, they tend to cost more pages than skills from other tomes. Skills #2 and #4 are great reactive defensive skills:
  • Chapter 2 Daring Challenge is an instant AoE Taunt. It doesn't last long but sometimes this is all you need to disrupt enemy burst attempts and allow your allies to run away. Being a CC skill however this doesn't do anything against targets with Stability.
  • Chapter 4 Stalwart Stand is the only stunbreak found on tomes and also grants Protection and Resistance to nearby allies. This could let them ignore conditions like Fear and Immobilize while mitigating incoming damage.

• ToC's 5th skill Epilogue Unbroken Lines is one of the strongest skills in the build, offering multiple layers of damage mitigation while even defending against CC with the AoE Stability.

• ToC's Chapter 3 Valiant Bulwark is very situational, only worth using against projectile focused specs like Deadeyes. Otherwise you shouldn't waste pages on this. Chapter 1 Unflinching Charge isn't really worth using most of the time - you shouldn't waste pages on a few boons that half a dozen skills can also provide as a bonus.

Tome of Courage

• While Tome of Courage is mainly a damage focused tome, it's not completely useless.

• Chapter 2 Igniting Burst offers strike damage mitigation through Weakness while Chapter 3 Heated Rebuke is a cheap ranged CC skill. While these two often can't compete with the strnger support tome skills, usually they are still better than spamming the basic tome skill 1s if you're out of CDs but still have pages left.

• Tome support skills tend to have melee range, Chapter 3 Heated Rebuke being a 900 range CC is actually quite useful for saving distant allies who are being targeted while you're trying to catch up to them. It could be considered your best ranged support skill in a way.

• Chapter 4 Scorched Aftermath is usually worth using on CD. It only costs 1 page, covers an entire capture point and does decent damage. It could help your team get kills or force enemies off the node. Might want to open with this at the start of a teamfight.

• Consider using Epilogue Ashes of the Just near allies a few seconds before entering a fight. It's a minor DPS boost with a 10 second duration, your pages should be back at max by the time you need them.

General

• Your role is to rotate wherever the teamfight is and keep your team alive. Avoid getting locked into 1v1s.

• Line of Warding is a powerful tool when used at the right moment. Against Thieves and Revenants for example you can put the ward beneath you and they get CC'd the moment they teleport to you. The ward may also interrupt evade frames such as regular dodging or Dagger Storm if they bump into it.

• Symbol of Blades helps with rotating around the map, assuming you have a target you can lock on to. In combat the Blind can be used to mitigate incoming damage and the teleport is still valuable especially for vertical mobility. SoB is great at navigating hard terrain, reaching allies at upper levels and leaving pursuing enemies behind (assuming you can target an enemy elsewhere).

• Zealot's Defense is one of the lowest CD anti-projectile skills in the game and even does decent damage in melee range.

• Shield of Absorption is a very versatile skill:
  • The first part of the skill knocks back enemies which could be used to peel for allies or interrupt important skills/action like a Battle Standard.
  • While channeled, the skill also acts as a Light Field. You could precast Holy Strike on Staff before swapping weapons and combo it with Shield of Absorption for AoE cleansing.
  • The channeled portion also absorbs projectiles and could even shut down a Lich Form.
  • Finally you may choose to detonate the dome for AoE healing. This could be done right away by double tapping SoA if you don't want to channel the skill at all.

• Mantra of Liberation is the main stunbreak in the build, and one that also affects allies!

Mobility

• Merciful Intervention allows you to stick to your allies better. The instant teleport coupled with massive healing makes this a great emergency support tool, and you immediately get to follow up with other instants like mantra charges to quickly stabilize allies.
  • It's not just for allies. MI acts as your second healing skill and one that could get you out of trouble if there are any nearby allies you can port to.

• Get creative with Symbol of Blades, for example:
  • Teleport to an enemy at the highground and knock them off with Shield of Absorption, setting up a kill for your allies below.
  • Let's say you're at the Clocktower on Battle of Kyhlo, getting focused by multiple enemies. Target the one that's farthest away from you, jump off the building, wait for them to jump after you. Right before the farthest enemy jumps use them to teleport back up, leaving the rest of them below. Chances are even they will jump if you can time it just right.
  • Use destructible objects to your advantage, like the Trebuchet on Kyhlo or doors on Legacy of the Foefire. Even if they are out of range, teleporting in their direction while being focused by the enemy team could put distance between you and those who are chasing you.

Reviving Allies

• Couple of things worth mentioning about Signet of Mercy:
  • This is easily the most gamechanging skill on your bar, so do not waste it. Just because you have an option to revive people from range doesn't mean you have to do it whenever this skill is available. Keep it for emergency situations where manual rez would be impossible or too risky!
  • Try to use it with Stability to increase your odds of success. If possible, break line of sight while channeling the skill (for example run behind a pillar) to make it harder for enemies to interrupt you.
  • If you're absolutely certain that your ally is going to hit the ground, you can start channeling Signet of Mercy in advance on your ally's location. With proper timing the skill should finish its animation a split second after your teammate went down, bringing them back up immediately.
  • The signet basically restores a large chunk of downed health all at once. This counts as healing, and is therefore affected by healing reduction effects such as Poison. If your downed ally barely has any HP left and has Poison it's possible that the signet alone won't be enough to get the rez.

• Even without the signet, Merciful Intervention followed by a Protective Reviver proc is usually enough to secure a rez.

Pre-game Buffing

• Stack Swiftness for your team before leaving the base! Use Symbol of Swiftness on the spawn point's exit gate ~4 seconds before the match starts. Each pulse of the symbol stacks Swiftness.