Guild Wars 2

I’m a bit confused with the Druid class. I have two of them that play in completely different builds, with one obvious being a staff healer. What I don’t understand is the decision to make the druid’s staff only have physical damage, when nearly all healing power based sets in the game are centered around condition damage. Also, non-dedicated sets like celestial seem to do more damage with conditions than with physical damage on weaker damage classes like the Ranger/Druid.

I know this class is supposed to be a dedicated healer, but I seem to do almost zero damage aside from my pet when wielding the staff. I know various forum threads have pointed out that the Druid can give massive damage boosts to party members, however these boosts only work with certain traits and with glyphs. Those running other support builds such as spirits do not get most of them.

Honestly at this point I’d be satisfied even for single stack on burning on Solar Beam so I don’t have to watch my pet kill everything with its 1-2k crits which seems something around five times the damage I do with the staff.

I agree, it could use some condis, on skill 2 as well. 3 could be an aoe blind where you land, 4 could have some bleeds.

They initially had problem with condition damage giving astral force. Don’t remember if they fixed it or not.

while condi damage does make sense since it would allow you to still do decent damage. I’m glad its aoe range physical damage that’s not a projectile.

I have a sigil in my staff that triggers a flame blast and on top of that I run sun spirit which has a chance to apply burning. Seems to get the job done in terms of condition damage.

Koomaster.9176:

I have a sigil in my staff that triggers a flame blast and on top of that I run sun spirit which has a chance to apply burning. Seems to get the job done in terms of condition damage.

Flame blasts (and other DPS sigils) require the set to include Precision stat. And by equipping them you’re trading off valueable sigils like LIfe/Benevolence, so I wouldn’t say that you’re really running a druid-staff-healer build anymore…

There’s absolutely no point to equip the staff if you aren’t running a healing build, all the other weapons are much better for other builds.

Because the last thing we need is another immortal passive condi bunker

Hannelore.8153:

What I don’t understand is the decision to make the druid’s staff only have physical damage, when nearly all healing power based sets in the game are centered around condition damage.

There are 12 sets with Healing Power as a stat. There are 4 that also offer the Condition Damage stat, and 5 that offer one or more direct damages stats. Remove Celestial, and the numbers become 11, 3 and 4. This is hardly “nearly all HP based sets.” Cleric and Zealot prefixes are particularly well known, and Cleric’s is one of the most available sets with HP.

Perhaps your issue is that direct damage requires three stats for maximum stat benefits, whereas Condi needs 2 — one of which appears on no HP based sets. Thus, a set which sacrifices a direct damage stat for HP is weaker than one that does not, whereas Condi only sacrifices max stat benefit because there are no sets with Condi, HP and Expertise (in before someone demands such a set).

As to why the decision to go for direct damage on staff? Perhaps it’s because of an ANet desire for variety, with several existing options for heal-other with ready access to conditions. Perhaps it was a balance decision, since on reveal the Druid heals were quite powerful and, as noted, direct damage sacrifices more to stat HP than Condi does.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Hannelore.8153:

What I don’t understand is the decision to make the druid’s staff only have physical damage, when nearly all healing power based sets in the game are centered around condition damage.

There are 12 sets with Healing Power as a stat. There are 4 that also offer the Condition Damage stat, and 5 that offer one or more direct damages stats. Remove Celestial, and the numbers become 11, 3 and 4. This is hardly “nearly all HP based sets.” Cleric and Zealot prefixes are particularly well known, and Cleric’s is one of the most available sets with HP.

Perhaps your issue is that direct damage requires three stats for maximum stat benefits, whereas Condi needs 2 — one of which appears on no HP based sets. Thus, a set which sacrifices a direct damage stat for HP is weaker than one that does not, whereas Condi only sacrifices max stat benefit because there are no sets with Condi, HP and Expertise (in before someone demands such a set).

As to why the decision to go for direct damage on staff? Perhaps it’s because of an ANet desire for variety, with several existing options for heal-other with ready access to conditions. Perhaps it was a balance decision, since on reveal the Druid heals were quite powerful and, as noted, direct damage sacrifices more to stat HP than Condi does.

I don’t count sets that are almost exclusively used in PvE because they are glassy. No one would ever use such a build in PvP or WvW because a healer that dies in five seconds is not of any use to the team whatsoever. It likely won’t fly in raids either. Although you have a very detailed breakdown of the situation, its pointless if your observations fail to take into account practical applications outside of dungeons, fractals and general open-world farming and meta events.

Clerics is not a physical damage set. It has medium power and nothing else. No matter how much of it you equip you will do no almost damage to anything because the Ranger/Druid already have low damage modifiers on their weapons. This is actually something that my original post addressed.

For something to count as a physical damage set it really needs to have either maximum power or combine power with precision and ferocity (e.g zealots), which is something that is rare to find outside of glass combos and mixes.

I understand your point here, and I’m not trying to be antagonistic. But it seems like you just came into this thread trying to tell me how wrong I am without really thinking about the meaning behind what I was trying to say. When I talk about playing a Druid with a healing set on staff, I’m talking about playing it in practical situations, in more than one game mode, and not being a useless healbeam emitter. Again, as my original post points out, that capacity currently comes from the pet, but this varies wildly by pet choice and trait build (presence of pet line).

I don’t think its unrealistic to expect a healer to be able to hold their own and not just be meat when their allies start going down. This is a mistake that almost all games make with dedicated healers, and until now GW2 avoided it by not having them. Sure, you still have your utility skills and weapon swap, but once you do that you’re not working with a dedicated healer anymore, you’re just a Ranger with a few fancy healing spells accessible for a short amount of time by pressing F5.

And if you’re focusing on offensive abilities, that refills very slowly too.

This is just my personal opinion, and no one is required to share it. But I feel like the staff Druid is not in the best place right now. Maybe it was at reveal, or during beta, but from what I’ve heard its been ground into dust since then.

Hannelore.8153:

I understand your point here, and I’m not trying to be antagonistic. But it seems like you just came into this thread trying to tell me how wrong I am without really thinking about the meaning behind what I was trying to say. When I talk about playing a Druid with a healing set on staff, I’m talking about playing it in practical situations, in more than one game mode, and not being a useless healbeam emitter. Again, as my original post points out, that capacity currently comes from the pet, but this varies wildly by pet choice and trait build (presence of pet line).

I don’t think its unrealistic to expect a healer to be able to hold their own and not just be meat when their allies start going down. This is a mistake that almost all games make with dedicated healers, and until now GW2 avoided it by not having them. Sure, you still have your utility skills and weapon swap, but once you do that you’re not working with a dedicated healer anymore, you’re just a Ranger with a few fancy healing spells accessible for a short amount of time by pressing F5.

I did quote one part of your post to address what I found to be an inaccuracy, but I also speculated on why Druid was direct damage rather than Condi. Thus, my comment about the 3 stats v. one for the two damage types.

To address your issue with Druid without changing the staff to a condi weapon, they’d have to introduce a 4-stat set with Power, Precision, Toughness and HP. There’s one of the new sets, Crusader, with just those stats. However, its HoT only, craft-only and I doubt there’s a PvP amulet.

I think Kayberz has a good point. There are already several options for condi bunkers in the game. Perhaps if Druid is meant to fill an offensive as well as defensive role, then it might be better to have a small buff to its staff damage coefficients or making Crusader available via amulet or badges. It’s also possible that its not intended to be good in all modes, just as an, “I want to be the dedicated healer” option for raids/dungeons. There are certainly plenty of build options that are sub-par and undesirable.