Guild Wars 2

This Support Druid Build covers majority of the buffs a team needs; 11 Might, Fury, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection with decent up time of Stability and Vigor. Bulk healing from Staff and CAF, 360hps passive regen, 680hps with SoN. 3 water fields, Soft CC, Dazes, 1 KD, 3 blasts and a 5 sec smoke field on 20s CD for skipping stealth. In combat Stealth and super speed for backliners and mobility, 144% res speed, +150 party precision, +10% party damage, adds 30 burn stacks to party every 8s (1000dps). 70% boon duration. Still reasonable damage with 35% crit chance and 2250 power unbuffed. If they release ascended Zealots trinkets, those would be better, imo to bring the crit chance up to 55% and power to 2500. Exotic may be just as good, but they cost money, ascended is free free-ish…

Just need to bring a DPS warrior with banners (wont need PS) and a Chrono for Quickness and everything is covered, the additional 14 might would come from DPS Auramancer Tempest and combos. Everyone except the Druid can run zerk gear because of the masses of mitigation available. Add in a DPS Guard for Aegis spam/blinds and its a very durable DPS team.

Overall, I think this is pretty much as good as a Support Druid can be. However, due to the immobile nature of spirits, it is not optimal and it just highlights how bad an idea removing Spirits Unbound was/is. We would be the best support in the game if we still had that. I think it was removed because of Herald, we would essentially be better than Herald at boons if it was still around.

Help us Irenio – wan – kenobi, you’re our only hope!

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Raid_Spirit_Support

Sounds good on paper but the lack of spirit mobility really cripples this imo. The perma stealth thing was more difficult to pull off than how much it benefitted and I can’t see how you can accomplish that whilst on the move (skipping trash mobs).

The dazes were good for mobs but bosses it doesn’t help as most of them aren’t affected. Same goes for CC.

but yeah, the spirits not being able to move is a major problem. (+1 to the wisps idea thats floating around the Ranger forums) We could really be a (healing) force to be reckoned with if our ghostly friends could move.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

This Support Druid Build covers majority of the buffs a team needs; 11 Might, Fury, Swiftness, Regeneration, Protection with decent up time of Stability and Vigor. Bulk healing from Staff and CAF, 360hps passive regen, 680hps with SoN. 3 water fields, Soft CC, Dazes, 1 KD, 3 blasts and a 5 sec smoke field on 20s CD for skipping stealth. In combat Stealth and super speed for backliners and mobility, 144% res speed, +150 party precision, +10% party damage, adds 30 burn stacks to party every 8s (1000dps). 70% boon duration. Still reasonable damage with 35% crit chance and 2250 power unbuffed. If they release ascended Zealots trinkets, those would be better, imo to bring the crit chance up to 55% and power to 2500. Exotic may be just as good, but they cost money, ascended is free free-ish…

Just need to bring a DPS warrior with banners (wont need PS) and a Chrono for Quickness and everything is covered, the additional 14 might would come from DPS Auramancer Tempest and combos. Everyone except the Druid can run zerk gear because of the masses of mitigation available. Add in a DPS Guard for Aegis spam/blinds and its a very durable DPS team.

Overall, I think this is pretty much as good as a Support Druid can be. However, due to the immobile nature of spirits, it is not optimal and it just highlights how bad an idea removing Spirits Unbound was/is. We would be the best support in the game if we still had that. I think it was removed because of Herald, we would essentially be better than Herald at boons if it was still around.

Help us Irenio – kittenenobi, you’re our only hope!

Not a bad build but as mentioned, spirit immobility is a big loss. Also, even if spirits could move, Heralds still have the edge in the boon department – they have perm protect (can stack in up to 60s), 12-15 might stacks (100% boon duration), again stack fury in excess of a minute, same with regen but if they take jails or malyx can also get stability/ resistance. This is on top of the f2 skill which has +50% boon duration. The lack of perm protect and spirits dying to aoe is a big thing, 60% uptime is ok but not the same.

Luckily, druid still outclasses everything on heals. Looking at your build though, outgoing heal% scales much better than healing power. Sacrificing rice balls and monk runes for boons likely already in a party doesn’t seem it will be worth it from my experience with raids. Looking at the Druid who was full cleric for the First Vale kill, he pretty much heal spams and gets in the orange circles = rest of the team can run sinister/zerker.

We’ll see, but the 20% outgoing healing % would have added an extra 1.2k to the spring trap heal not to mentions a lot to regen. Just my 2 cents.

AgitatedFox.5287:

Sounds good on paper but the lack of spirit mobility really cripples this imo. The perma stealth thing was more difficult to pull off than how much it benefitted and I can’t see how you can accomplish that whilst on the move (skipping trash mobs).

The dazes were good for mobs but bosses it doesn’t help as most of them aren’t affected. Same goes for CC.

but yeah, the spirits not being able to move is a major problem. (+1 to the wisps idea thats floating around the Ranger forums) We could really be a (healing) force to be reckoned with if our ghostly friends could move.

The only thing that is great about them not moving NOW is the fact if you place them properly, you can heal them with you Staff 1 so they can endure the fight a lot longer.

Do I wish they could move? Yes. But. At least there’s ways to add to their sustain now. ^.^

Terra.8571:

We’ll see, but the 20% outgoing healing % would have added an extra 1.2k to the spring trap heal not to mentions a lot to regen. Just my 2 cents.

Yeah, I had used Monk/Delicious Rice Balls/Benevolence (+32.5%) for it originally, but the healing was just over the top and decided to move that into Boon duration, I had Healing Spring healing for 25k health total. Boon duration doesn’t work on the editor properly, so the Protection is also perma with this. Due to the additional effects of the Spirits, I think this build is better than a Herald because it has no upkeep costs and can easily maintain the boons, heal as well as spam weapon skill on CD, something a fully buffed Herald will not be able to do. They do have the Legend Swap though, but can they maintain the effects while not in LDS? I don’t know as I can’t test it out.

First of all, great build. Unsurprisingly, this seems to have sank in the forums as many good builds due since it always seems the builds that need more criticism end up getting bumped more. =P

Second of all, I’m posting a suggested variant of the build:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYDbkRFaVxmVwXFIaxCjgB/UnqbVnRXpLGwUA+WBgTeS6mA-TFSBABW8EAcUJYYK/q4CAcquBs2fIV1kittenAQKATkaB-w

Here are the changes and why I changed them:

- Heal switched to Troll Unguent and elite switched to Glyph of Unity.

Unguent was taken for two reasons. First is that it’s great at refilling energy for Avatar. Second is that it synergizes really well with Glyph of Unity in Avatar form. You can pop this along with Unity to continually pulse heals for the 6 seconds it’s up. You lose a water field, but you have enough of those from skills anyways.

I’m also not sold on Spirit of Nature since it’s healing doesn’t scale with your gear. Since it also now dies on activation, even though it still has a 120 sec cooldown. It’s just not what it used to be. I could see taking this for encounters when stability is needed, however.

- Switched Celestial Shadow trait to Verdant Etching

Basically because I’m using some glyphs in this variant.

- Stone Spirit swapped for Glyph of Empowerment

This is pretty debatable depending on whether the prot is needed, but since I’m traiting for glyphs, this is a solid dps boost for the group.

- Swapped Sw/Wh for Longbow

I know this is a theoretical dps decrease and also loses the blast/boons of horn, but I don’t expect it will be very practical for a druid to sit in melee range that much, particularly if you end with toughness on your gear (unless you’re aiming to tank the boss for some reason).

Since you’ll be jumping in and out of melee when swapping with staff, I expect much of the sword dps will be lost due to periods when you’re chasing the boss instead of hitting it.

Longbow, on the other hand, will give more versatile dps and while it will be lower damage against a perfect target, you will almost never have a period of time when your attacks aren’t landing.

And of course, there’s also the danger of the 1h sword animation preventing dodges, which I know is a very controversial subject…but even if you’re pro-sword, I expect it’s worth considering when we’re encountering new bosses with heavier difficulty.

- Swapped Omnomberry Cookie for Delicious Rice Ball

A pretty minor change, but I don’t expect the boon duration matters as much on a druid, particularly since I don’t expect it will affect your spirit’s boons.

- Swapped pets

Another minor thing, but I find ranged pets to be a bit more flexible and keep up good strong dps on moving targets, whereas melee pets often lag behind and lose a lot of damage due to AI issues.

Overall, I think these are relatively minor changes to a really solid build.

Just a small correction, Spirit of Nature does scale with healing power now and fairly decently at that (0.15/s). That means that for a mobile fight where the spirit survives even just 30s that’s a 4.5 HP scaling. On top of that it has the 95% damage reduction, 28k hp with the trait and the heal ticks on itself so it is pretty much invulnerable unless it gets actively targeted by the boss. Of course there is still the problem of being immobile…

Hazka.6503:

Just a small correction, Spirit of Nature does scale with healing power now and fairly decently at that (0.15/s). That means that for a mobile fight where the spirit survives even just 30s that’s a 4.5 HP scaling. On top of that it has the 95% damage reduction, 28k hp with the trait and the heal ticks on itself so it is pretty much invulnerable unless it gets actively targeted by the boss. Of course there is still the problem of being immobile…

Well, I stand corrected on that. And yea, that spirits take 95% less damage is definitely a great change.

I guess that puts this back into consideration then…

So, it seems like it’s then more of a question on which is more valuable:
Spirit of Nature
Steady, low level healing that’s up 1/3rd of time in best case scenarios (1 min duration if not targetted or used for rez with 2 min cd)
Pulsing stability
Revive potential

Glyph of Unity
More bursty healing that’s up 1/4th of the time in best case scenarios (although probably less likely to maintain this up-time since Avatar transformation could limit casting)
Larger range of effect
More likely to be available when needed due to shorter cd

They’re really both sounding like really viable options at this point and this may be something that’s swapped out depending on the fight and the type of damage taken by players.

edit Made one other small change to the build and swapped Runes of Water for Runes of the Monk. I don’t see the condi cleanse on struck as that useful in PvE and believe that the 10% healing should be more useful.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYDbkRFaVxmVwXFIaxCjgB/UnqbVnRXpLGwUA+WBgTeS6mA-TFSBABW8EAcUJYW7PEmyvKuAAnqbIV1kittenAQKATkaB-w

I think you are not giving Spirit of Nature the credit it deserves. With Monk runes and 1200 healing power it is over 600 healing per second, on top of regen already being more than 400. That’s more hp/s than any other class can do with their healing skill. I just don’t feel like Glyph of Unity is very necessary since you only get the increased healing while in CA, and if you are running a healing build you already heal up everyone to max in no time with CA skills. Also, you say Unity has a larger radius, but it is only 600 tether range, 400 initial range compared to the 1000 range of spirit (only passive effect). The lower cooldown is incredibly nice though.
Overall I think spirit is a lot better because it gives you a lot higher sustain during the downtime of CA, wihch is where you actually need the additional healing.

Hey Heimskarl, yes man!!!

That’s more like it! :o)

Updated this build with different Sigils.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQNBmYD7keVomVsVFwZFgoFsYIYwb1waZ1Z1F76BMBg1VD4inSbC-TVSBABWcBAcUJYW7P8wBBYVlfnqbIV1f0/BAAwRAgUA+N1C-w
Once the Sigil of Concentration is out and being used, it will be an excellent choice for the Warhorn and will allow replacement of the bountiful sharpening stones with regular cheaper ones.

Hazka.6503:

I think you are not giving Spirit of Nature the credit it deserves. With Monk runes and 1200 healing power it is over 600 healing per second, on top of regen already being more than 400. That’s more hp/s than any other class can do with their healing skill. I just don’t feel like Glyph of Unity is very necessary since you only get the increased healing while in CA, and if you are running a healing build you already heal up everyone to max in no time with CA skills. Also, you say Unity has a larger radius, but it is only 600 tether range, 400 initial range compared to the 1000 range of spirit (only passive effect). The lower cooldown is incredibly nice though.
Overall I think spirit is a lot better because it gives you a lot higher sustain during the downtime of CA, wihch is where you actually need the additional healing.

I think that radius difference between Spirit and Glyph definitely makes or breaks the usefulness of Glyph. For things like FotM 91-100 and the first part of the raid that we encountered in beta, stacking for Glyph of Unity healing is pretty heavily punished. It might be good if there are heavy damage phases in raids that allow for stacking healing, so everyone can bunker down while a Druid uses CAF/Unity, but in general the use seems very restricted even with the low CD.

Hazka.6503:

I think you are not giving Spirit of Nature the credit it deserves. With Monk runes and 1200 healing power it is over 600 healing per second, on top of regen already being more than 400. That’s more hp/s than any other class can do with their healing skill. I just don’t feel like Glyph of Unity is very necessary since you only get the increased healing while in CA, and if you are running a healing build you already heal up everyone to max in no time with CA skills. Also, you say Unity has a larger radius, but it is only 600 tether range, 400 initial range compared to the 1000 range of spirit (only passive effect). The lower cooldown is incredibly nice though.
Overall I think spirit is a lot better because it gives you a lot higher sustain during the downtime of CA, wihch is where you actually need the additional healing.

Hmm, somewhere along the lines, I got the tooltip mixed up and thought there was a 1,200 range on Unity.

Ok, you have me sold on keeping Spirit of Nature (outside of a unique situation where more burst healing is needed, I guess).

@ Heimskarl: I think we’re mainly at the same build now with the only real exception being a difference in opinion of melee vs ranged: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNIQJAWTn0rC1sitqAOrAEtgFDBDerGWLrOrumVPgJAsuaApspzs0E-TVSBABWcBAcUJYW7P8wRAYVlfnqLIV1f0/BAAwhAgUA+N1C-w

questions about your builds:

does water spirit healing generate AF? if it does that might be a great way in a spirit build to generate AF and provide permanent regen in addition to the other boons.

with only 1 or 2 glyphs on your bar is it worth it to take Verdant Etching over Natural Stride?

since we don’t have ascended zealot’s trinkets yet are you looking at going in with exotics? edit: i’m actually looking at going clerics trinkets with zealots gear and weapons. it works out to be about 300 less power and 10% less crit chance but more healing power.

Honestly I prefer the ranged set over the melee as well. I also think we need to look at how many hard CC’s we have when making builds for anything in this new content. Breakbars are a real thing and once the mob is broken you get bonus damage. A bunker healing ranger could definitely see use as a breakbar killer in addition to healing and buffing the team.

Prophet.1584:

Honestly I prefer the ranged set over the melee as well. I also think we need to look at how many hard CC’s we have when making builds for anything in this new content. Breakbars are a real thing and once the mob is broken you get bonus damage. A bunker healing ranger could definitely see use as a breakbar killer in addition to healing and buffing the team.

Hmm…I didn’t think about the interaction with breakbars, but it would be interesting to see if the range point blank shot is used from has any effect on its effect on a breakbar.

However, I don’t expect this is something that will really be expected much from a druid.

This build seems to want to be the jack of all trades and master of non. It wants to buff the party with boons, it wants to heal, it wants to stealth, and it also wants to cc, coupled in with some Dps. My suggestion would be why don’t you just focus on a smaller function for example healing and convert the rest of the other sub par stuff you want to do with a Druid into more dps? Boons? Herald got it covered, stealth? Well you only really need stealth outside of combat so why sacrifice a pet in combat just for a smoke field which doesn’t blind? CC (apparently everybody loves cc), my question would be why sacrifice so much utility just do have a ton of cc? If you want to break a breakbar there are many other ways to do it without sacrificing utility. If I were to run with a Druid I would expect him to be a healer/dps buffer and not some weird combination of everything.

Problem with this build is that if I have a herald in the party, your boon support immediately becomes redundant if I have a engi in the party, your stealth and cc support also immediately become redundant. Heck even with a ps war in the party your might support becomes redundant. Also in all my pve runs no one really cares or notices some small ticks of protection provided by the ranger, it’s kinda like a meh if it’s there it’s there if it’s not I won’t die or anything. At the end of the day if you try to be the jack of all trades, when a master of it comes in you are screwed. My suggestion would be to just focus on healing and dps buffing your party, replace all the other utilities and traits of soft cc knock backs and stealth with actual dps utilities and traits like traps or signets depending on whether you run power or condi.

I can see this build being appreciated in an unorganised pug group where all the support roles have been dedicated to you, but in an Organised group where other classes simply beat you in terms or what you can bring to the table. You will end up being the jester of the party. The only thing and Organised group will notice about this build is your healing and lack of dps.

TLDR: just focus on healing and dps, leave the other stuff for other party members.

However this build is good if the party is built around you. I do wonder though how much dps does this build provide using a sword war horn and staff with zealots amulet. Would it be higher dps than axe torch condi with staff? Assuming both have 25 might might and 25 vuln. I also do realise that if you take out the horn you won’t be able to provide fury, which is easily solved by tigers 100% fury uptime. Hmmm this build is interesting as it acts as a might producing Druid which I have not thought off. Ahh but like I said too much dps sacrifice just to provide might for the party IMO, other classes can do it better without sacrificing dps. Good build nontheless might Druid I’d say, interesting.

That is my guess as to the ideal build as well (like down to every single detail, kinda creepy ). It’s what I’ll start with and go from there.

I actually don’t think immobile spirits is going to be a hindrance, because presumably most of the raid will be spent on boss timers.

Hmm…I don’t really see it this way. This build pretty much maximizes healing as much as you’d want to, so I don’t see that as being sacrificed for any other support.

And the support brought here is really the ranger-specific (Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, Spotter, Glyph of Empowerment, Grace of the Land), so you’ll want that in your group, whether the ranger is a healing druid or dps focused. There’s not a single utility you can drop that could be replaced by a non-ranger, so traps/signets don’t make sense. You could swap the elite, but that’s there directly to be a part of healing.

I’m also not seeing where there’s a loss of healing/damage in order to provide duplicate boons. Do you mean Nature’s Vengeance? There’s not really a better option than unless you’re swapping the entire trait line for what…Marks? There’s a bit of a damage increase there (more damage modifiers to you from traits, but less boons to your pet and no damage per boon modifier for either of you).

Warhorn is another source of boons, but it’s also a source of healing since it’s a blast finisher for water fields. For a DPS focus, you could go with axe…but that’s a pretty small increase for a non-zerk geared player.

The stealth thing is kind of w/e since you can swap a pet for that when you’re ooc without any penalty. The OP also already took that out of his build for the main pet.

Dahkeus.8243:

Hmm…I don’t really see it this way. This build pretty much maximizes healing as much as you’d want to, so I don’t see that as being sacrificed for any other support.

And the support brought here is really the ranger-specific (Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, Spotter, Glyph of Empowerment, Grace of the Land), so you’ll want that in your group, whether the ranger is a healing druid or dps focused. There’s not a single utility you can drop that could be replaced by a non-ranger, so traps/signets don’t make sense. You could swap the elite, but that’s there directly to be a part of healing.

I’m also not seeing where there’s a loss of healing/damage in order to provide duplicate boons. Do you mean Nature’s Vengeance? There’s not really a better option than unless you’re swapping the entire trait line for what…Marks? There’s a bit of a damage increase there (more damage modifiers to you from traits, but less boons to your pet and no damage per boon modifier for either of you).

Warhorn is another source of boons, but it’s also a source of healing since it’s a blast finisher for water fields. For a DPS focus, you could go with axe…but that’s a pretty small increase for a non-zerk geared player.

The stealth thing is kind of w/e since you can swap a pet for that when you’re ooc without any penalty. The OP also already took that out of his build for the main pet.

I’m more hinting towards the idea of what if he removed the nature magic trait line, and replaced it with wilderness survival and went a condition build with torch instead of providing boons through nature magic in a power build. My reasoning is that sure boons from spirits might sound good on paper but is the might or protection from frost and stone spirit worth sacrificing dps for? Thus I’m suggesting a condi build instead of a zealot power build using sword war horn. If he switches to condi he would lose nature magic trait line and war horn thus losing most of his might support capabilities which can be easily provided by another party member. The problem I have with this build is that I just can’t see zealot stats with sword war horn and a staff being any form of substantial dps for the party. So my question was that is the might/boon buffs from spirit with nature magic really worth sacrificing dps over? If someone has crunched the numbers of this build at 25 might and vuln using zealots amulet can you confirm? Would it be higher than a condi ranger build of the same build except replacing natures magic with skirmishing?

My question is, it it worth running a zealot sword war horn staff build over a condi axe torch staff build provided both have equal buffs. I understand that the zealot build would be providing might for the party while the condi build wouldn’t but instead rely on a better might provider without sacrificing dps. I don’t currently have the numbers but I will crunch them tmr and get back to you. Another jarring problem that I see with zealots is that it focuses on healing power and dps (power precision) because a power build has to rely on BOTH power and precision it sacrifices survivability. Now I have another question as to is running this build in zealots going to be enough to keep you alive Long enough to heal your party. For example if there was a spike in enemy dps, all your dps party members would take a lot of dmg and as you are in zealots you would also take a lot of dmg, I’m wondering would you be able to survive just by out healing your enemy with glass cannon stats? A dead healer is not really a good healer. This is just a question for dps spikes which I am sure we will face sometime in raids. Sure zealots sounds TOP notch in terms of power dps and healing power but what about survivability? Which brings me back to the question would running a condi build of let’s say condi toughness and healing power be more beneficial than zealots, because a condition build would rely on runes sigils and food for condition duration instead of sacrificing a main stat.

Without having checked the numbers, I suspect power is more efficient for a secondary function of a ranger over condi. The problem with condi is it loses massive damage boosts very easily. Not keeping the torch rotation up, not using condi duration food… just using healing food instead of condi food drops your damage about 20%.

I’m no math guy, so I’ll let others chime in with facts though.

Fluffball.8307:

Without having checked the numbers, I suspect power is more efficient for a secondary function of a ranger over condi. The problem with condi is it loses massive damage boosts very easily. Not keeping the torch rotation up, not using condi duration food… just using healing food instead of condi food drops your damage about 20%.

I’m no math guy, so I’ll let others chime in with facts though.

without having done the math myself either any druid build is going to sacrifice a ton of dps just by gearing into healing power. ferocity is needed to maximize power dps, and now expertise is needed to maximize condition dps. the loss of the bonfire/quickdraw combo is a big loss to condi dps as well.

And additionally, who’s to say you actually need healing food? It may be overhealing and condi food is fine. Power food might not be worth it.

Bonfire is a pita if the boss is moving though, and hopefully it is.

Fluffball.8307:

Without having checked the numbers, I suspect power is more efficient for a secondary function of a ranger over condi. The problem with condi is it loses massive damage boosts very easily. Not keeping the torch rotation up, not using condi duration food… just using healing food instead of condi food drops your damage about 20%.

I’m no math guy, so I’ll let others chime in with facts though.

Haha it’s cool, but I just wanted to point out that since the buff to condis condis have been taking the dps Spotlight instead of power builds, because of longer fights and tougher enemies (harder mechanics requiring dodging and movement which would be more detrimental to power builds than condi builds). And since this build was mentioned as a build for raids I’m sure fights will be drawn out longer. Take the DnT meta condi ranger build for example. If you say condi builds will lost out in terms of dps because of harder rotations than that would be a player skill problem instead of actually build problems now wouldn’t it?:D I won’t make any hasty comment that condis are definitely better than power but I will go crunch the numbers and be back here tmr with screenshots. Gonna take 1 for the team! kitten crunchy numbers. Also another thing to add about the Low survivability problem:/ I hate to say this but I don’t see much condi cleanse in this build which might be a HUGE problem seeing that healing is the only main form of survivability you have. Imagine a boss attacks you burst with massive dmg, and you are on the verge of dying because of zealots amulet which is basically glass cannon stats, AND you somehow get poisoned.. Wouldn’t that make you a somewhat dead Druid? Unless this build has the dodge to remove poison trait which I missed and would apologise, poison would be a major killer for it.

Prophet.1584:

Fluffball.8307:

Without having checked the numbers, I suspect power is more efficient for a secondary function of a ranger over condi. The problem with condi is it loses massive damage boosts very easily. Not keeping the torch rotation up, not using condi duration food… just using healing food instead of condi food drops your damage about 20%.

I’m no math guy, so I’ll let others chime in with facts though.

without having done the math myself either any druid build is going to sacrifice a ton of dps just by gearing into healing power. ferocity is needed to maximize power dps, and now expertise is needed to maximize condition dps. the loss of the bonfire/quickdraw combo is a big loss to condi dps as well.

Ahah but there is where you are mistaken^^ there is a rotation using axe torch and staff which is able to semi efficiently proc quickdraw using CAF, it is by no means the perfect QuickDraw proccing rotation but it goes something like this staff>QuickDraw bonfire>CA enter>CA exit> QuickDraw bonfire > staff > QuickDraw bonfire^^ it is not the perfect QuickDraw rotation as it has a downtime one you reach back to the staff you gotta wait for 5 to 7 secs in order to proc QuickDraw again by swapping to axe torch. However is it so far the most efficient way I find to proc QuickDraw using a condi axe torch staff setup. Now if you used this rotation but instead swapped bonfire for the war horn skill you would be able to get might which would be a dps lost. So technically abusing QuickDraw in a power build grants more might while abusing QuickDraw in a condi build grants more dps. Which again brings me back to the question, is the might really worth it? That’s why I said this build is a great might producer but is it really worth using if you need to sacrifice so much? Not to mention that many other classes can provide might without sacrificing as much dps as a might war horn Druid.

Condi vs Power is a valid point, but even if Condi pulls a bit ahead, I’m not sure that it would be worth dropping NM and I would be surprised if it could make a big difference.

Damage boosters of WS:
Expertise Training – for pet DPS
Ambidexterity – for torch DPS or Refined Toxins for self and pet poison (may be debatable since the pet will carry more DPS weight when you’re in healer gear)
Poison Master – The only DPS increasing trait, but without Refined Toxins and a weapon that deals poison, it may not do much.

Damage Boosters of NM:
Bountiful Hunter – Effectively a 9% flat boost for self and pet
Fortifying Bond – Pretty strong boost for your pet, who will carry more relative DPS weight when in healer gear. Even if your group can keep 25 stacks of might + fury up, they probably won’t apply much if any to your pet without this due to the 5 target limit.

So, is it worth losing pulsing stability, might, and vigor (plus vigor on pet swap), even if some of it will be redundant to go condi? It’s worth questioning, but I’m skeptical.

Dahkeus.8243:

Condi vs Power is a valid point, but even if Condi pulls a bit ahead, I’m not sure that it would be worth dropping NM and I would be surprised if it could make a big difference.

Damage boosters of WS:
Expertise Training – for pet DPS
Ambidexterity – for torch DPS or Refined Toxins for self and pet poison (may be debatable since the pet will carry more DPS weight when you’re in healer gear)
Poison Master – The only DPS increasing trait, but without Refined Toxins and a weapon that deals poison, it may not do much.

Damage Boosters of NM:
Bountiful Hunter – Effectively a 9% flat boost for self and pet
Fortifying Bond – Pretty strong boost for your pet, who will carry more relative DPS weight when in healer gear. Even if your group can keep 25 stacks of might + fury up, they probably won’t apply much if any to your pet without this due to the 5 target limit.

So, is it worth losing pulsing stability, might, and vigor (plus vigor on pet swap), even if some of it will be redundant to go condi? It’s worth questioning, but I’m skeptical.

Here to help you swing more towards the condition side hehehe I’m the devils advocate for making this a condi build.

You can forgo precision and take toughness which would be the apothecary stat in PVE. Together with either full Balthazar runes or 4 nightmare 2 trapper coupled with either smouldering or sigil of malice, plus koi cakes and toxic focusing crystals you can easily reach almost 100% duration on burns or a balance of both burns and bleeds depending which runes sigils you pick without actually investing in expertise. This would solve the problem of zealot having technically glass cannon stats. Now you are a more tanky Druid dishing out the same if not more dps than your zealot counter part. With the toughness you would be able to reliably heal your party members without fear of being burst down.

Hmm about the pulsing stability, might and vigor, I mean think about it, how often do you actually need stability other than some special scenarios. And for those special sceneries you could do an on the fly swap in the traits to have the pulsing stability. Now might, think about it, why would you want to be the might provider of the party when it is so much harder and cost you to sacrifice more to provide that might for you party? Why not just let it go be a free man build a snowman and let the heralds, ps wars, fireflies blasting engis, and pesky eles take on that burden. They were born for it anyways, providing might won’t be much of a problem for them. Be free don’t be bound by the shackles of providing might and embrace the awesome dps power of the mighty ranger class. Come on you guys are the number 2 if not number 1 condition dmg class right now, why don’t you embrace it?:O you are an NBA star! Why do you want to be a FIFA star? You were born to play Basketball! Don’t play Soccer, let those born to play Soccer do it. You get what I’m saying? Lol weird analogy I know. As for vigor, it’s like one of those iffy boons, it’s like hmm if I have it or not it doesn’t really matter. Do you want to sacrifice so much for an iffy boon?! Ahah

As devil advocate for condi I hope I have made some delicious sounding points that might sway your fence sitting.

Zach,

Definitely appreciate the devil’s advocate. It leads to a much better understanding of the game and ultimately a better build.

Good points, particularly with apothecary stats. but I’ll play the devil’s advocate back and give some counterpoints:

Runes and sigils come at the cost of healing power. If you decide you don’t need the extra healing power from them, then you can equally go for power DPS stats.

For the pulsing stability, I came to a realization after arguing against Spirit of Nature: Granting Stability is actually really helpful for a lot of builds since it stacks an additional boon on players that they may not otherwise have. This means extra damage for eles, wars, heralds, guards and rangers who have their trait that increases damage by 1-2% for each boon on them (these traits seem to be pretty commonly used traits in meta builds). Vigor uptime may also be a bit debatable and the pulse along with vigorous training will make a big impact to this.

As for might, there’s really not much might from this build unless you’re taking warhorn and I’m more of an advocate for a ranged druid, which brings me to the next argument:

If you run a ranged weapon like longbow, you have more freedom to be in position for tagging allies with staff once you switch back. If you’re running axe/torch, you’ll have to constantly be up in melee to maximize damage. Once you swap back to staff, you’ll probably need to run back out of melee to catch your full party with the staff piercing so that you can catch staff eles, engis on nades, etc.

And finally some side speculation: I have a feeling there may be some encouragement to have some ranged players in raids since a full melee raid means people don’t have much room to spread out to avoid raid mechanics. That’s just what my gut says from a history of WoW raiding. =P

Just a note on the use of Nature’s Vengeance; The boon range is 1000, so it is far better than other forms of buffing such as PS, although it will not stack near as much might. The additional Vigor is also a big help imo, as is the Stability.

Dropping NM for WS or other really changes the build to be much less focused on buffing allies to something else entirely. The reason I tried to make the Druid the main source of buffs, is so that other party members can gear and trait for DPS with the additional buffs coming from incidental applications. Also, Fortifying Bond with Bountiful Hunter is a significant DPS increase.

If you take a look at the meta page for this build (link at the top) you will see the rotation. You can see why I included the Warhorn then too, because it is essentially only there to be used on entry and exit from CAF, triggering quick draw. It is a lot of additional Might/fury/swiftness/regen if combined with the concentration sigil when available. I would not drop the sword from this build either, it is just too valuable when you need DPS and also mobility.

Also, on condi use. Stats are not optimised if you are taking condi and healing power because condi also needs precision on Ranger to use Sharpened Edges. If you are not using Sharpened Edges or A/-/T then you will be doing far less damage than a power based build, even if you are using quick draw with bonfire. You will have less CAF time too. That as well as the Staff has no damaging conditions on it, so all the time you are in Staff healing and charging your AF, you are doing pitiful damage.

I mentioned in another thread that with so much +% outgoing healing, you could drop the zealots trinkets for Magi accessories and the rest in Zerker and it would have better damage and still 50% crit chance, 17.5k health and 1000 healing power. Pretty decent all-round.

It’s a pity superior sigil of transference is going at about 100G right now though…

the only thing that concerns me, and we’ll see proof on the 17th, is that if raids are structured like high end fractals (80+) then we’ll see most mobs having very high toughness making power builds and buffs to power very weak. In that case frost spirit and GoE would be less useful but make GoL much stronger. if people where more condi focused it would also make sun spirit and storm spirit better since vuln effects conditions now.

Prophet.1584:

the only thing that concerns me, and we’ll see proof on the 17th, is that if raids are structured like high end fractals (80+) then we’ll see most mobs having very high toughness making power builds and buffs to power very weak. In that case frost spirit and GoE would be less useful but make GoL much stronger. if people where more condi focused it would also make sun spirit and storm spirit better since vuln effects conditions now.

I don’t think that anyone will need to explicitly try to bring anything for the sake of vuln in raids. It’s a very commonplace condition and will likely be easily stacked to 25 with a party of 10 people without anyone trying.

As for Frost Spirit, does anyone know for sure if the 10% bonus damage is only for power-based damage? The wording makes it sound a bit more open to any type of damage.

However, even if it is only power damage, a straight damage boost to 5 people is worth taking even if toughness negated its advantage in half.

Dahkeus.8243:

Prophet.1584:

the only thing that concerns me, and we’ll see proof on the 17th, is that if raids are structured like high end fractals (80+) then we’ll see most mobs having very high toughness making power builds and buffs to power very weak. In that case frost spirit and GoE would be less useful but make GoL much stronger. if people where more condi focused it would also make sun spirit and storm spirit better since vuln effects conditions now.

I don’t think that anyone will need to explicitly try to bring anything for the sake of vuln in raids. It’s a very commonplace condition and will likely be easily stacked to 25 with a party of 10 people without anyone trying.

As for Frost Spirit, does anyone know for sure if the 10% bonus damage is only for power-based damage? The wording makes it sound a bit more open to any type of damage.

However, even if it is only power damage, a straight damage boost to 5 people is worth taking even if toughness negated its advantage in half.

it’s definitely only for power damage, the same as GoE.

Tested this build yesterday on a solo FotM 50 (full Berzerker gear—I’m not a masochist) to get a general feel for the survivability and DPS. I swapped out Stone Spirit for Glyph of Empowerment since I had no group to support, Glyph of Rejuvenation to “We Heal as One!” for the same reason, and Cultivated Synergy for Primal Echoes (I frequently use Staff 5 and 3 in combination).

I was able to keep my pets alive ~20% longer than with my usual MM/Sk/BM build, keeping them in commission for ~50% of the fight. Because of this, it’s hard to judge personal DPS 100% accurately, but Mai Trin only took about 5-7 minutes longer than a normal run, and I had a much larger margin for error. I started by casting my spirits all at once, but later found I had better results by staggering Spirit of Nature after the first death of Stone Spirit on my rotation, to help buffer the increased damage my pet and I received after Stone Spirit’s death.

Within the arena, I was constantly in the effect range of Spirits, and my damage was noticeably improved by the pulsing boons from the Spirits + Bountiful Hunter. Spirits generally did not last their full duration, due to Mai’s attacks and Horrik’s cannons, but this would be less of an issue with a full group of players to help mitigate aggro in non-cannon phases.

Overall, I was pleased with the results. Loss in personal DPS was offset slightly by the Nature Magic line and better pet survivability (I expect the results to translate in a glassy DPS party on higher levels—improved party member survivability/less downed time = DPS increase to offset my decrease). I also expect other classes to benefit damage-wise from the pulsing stability on Spirit of Nature. My personal survivability was improved (I was never downed, even with a couple sloppy mistakes that would usually kill me). My only concern on FotM 91-100 is with Grace of the Land, due to Social Awkwardness instability combined with the small radius on CAF 1 and 2, and the PBAoE nature of 4. This leaves me with CAF 3 to proc GotL on allies. This is more an issue with the small radii on CAF skills and the nature of anti-stacking mechanisms, but I thought it was important to note.

I’ll be testing this in a group sometime soon, but wanted to get done with solo testing first. Cheers!

This thread needs more love, this build is incredible and im now enjoying my Druid. My only questrion is what trinkets are you using? im currently using this full zerker but im going to swap my ascended set to zealots for RAIDS.