Guild Wars 2

This is what I envision for a raid Druid build. full investment into healing power which, after patching, should increase the heals. A significant investments into boon duration to provide party wide boons. this build should be able to maintain 10-11 perma stacks of might party wide, permanent fury, 1 stack of stability through most of the fight, 2 10% party wide dps buffs and a whole lot of healing.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQFAWn0rClsi1sCuqAEtglEBDuquVDrOnuj1N4JAE7mZn8kwJB-TxRDABGqEET1fia/hsU+BwDAQgLAge6ACAcA44jP+4jPujP+4jP+4SB43UL-e

First off you cant use sigil of benevolence and sigil of life together. You can only use one on kill sigil. I would suggest adding sigil of water.

With all the heal you will make your life easier if you added protection (Stone spirit).

I don’t see any advantage going with magi especially at the cost of what little dps you have. Having protection will also help more than the extra vitality.

The Druid is suppose to be support I find it odd that spirits are more useful in this role yet spirits as a whole are really undesired.

I also feel that running a build like this will find Druid out in the cold once people learn the encounters. They will learn to take less damage, so their for need less heals.

I can see druids only really being needed once new raids come out and people need the safety net while they figure out the new wings.

I’d tune it a bit to THIS instead. Magi and the sigils are not going to be worth it and you might as well bring more control based on the first raid encounter (including the Pink Moa) so you contribute more to breaking bars.

Skirmishing over Beastmastery because you would be able to setup more burst heals frequently. Swap for blasting twice with double Ancestral Grace in either Sublime Conversion or Healing Spring due to Quickdraw, or even having Sublime Conversion up once every 10s so your water field uptime is 50% because dual staff (weird concept, I know).

It’s overkill. Far too much overkill on heals, but if you’re going all in for max heals, might as well be crazy at it. Boon duration stuff is a bonus and, I guess to a niche, healing Druids will be fine in your own pre-made group/running with your friends.

The full healer/support druid is only sensible to carry bads and/or pugs. Yes there will be a place for it. Just don’t expect to ever be acknowledged for it by your bads and pugs. Certainly not when one healer/support druid can’t keep the bads/pugs from getting themselves wiped repeatedly.

No. The bads and PUGs of Raids won’t be saved by any amount of healing. Once raid encounters are figured out and posted for everyone to see, healing Druid is going to be extremely niche. Like, almost exclusive to premade groups that like to form trinity parties with dedicated healers and a tank.

Wondrouswall.7169:

No. The bads and PUGs of Raids won’t be saved by any amount of healing. Once raid encounters are figured out and posted for everyone to see, healing Druid is going to be extremely niche. Like, almost exclusive to premade groups that like to form trinity parties with dedicated healers and a tank.

Raids are not the only content.

And yet, title is for a Raid Druid.

Wondrouswall.7169:

And yet, title is for a Raid Druid.

The point being? Druid can be used outside of HoT.

No, what’s your point being? It’s on healing Druid in raids.

Wondrouswall.7169:

No, what’s your point being? It’s on healing Druid in raids.

oh lols, thought it said rabid kitten .

I still think full support druid will have place in raids aswell as other content. With raids using more then 5man format a single support focused druid could cover more then merely their own 5. Also if it requires split a Healer Druid could roam/float between groups depending on who needs more at the moment.

Not everyone gets their full enjoyment from doing MOAR deeps or simply tagging as many foes as they can. Someone with heals/support watching more then just what the enemies are doing can and will contribute.

Probably too much healing, you can fit in more support than that.

Run apothecary. Max healing and you can do real damage.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Probably too much healing, you can fit in more support than that.

Thanks, I took your suggestion but edited it a bit. I didn’t go condi because Druid doesn’t have access to much condi application so you’d have to go with a/t or traps to apply heavy conditions. I swapped stone spirit for the 10% glyph, and kept sun spirit and frost. with enough of an investment into healing power the glyph seems pretty good, did you choose HS over glyph because of the water field?

if we went BM > Skirm that would lower our personal dps but boost pet dps quite a bit. which would be the better investment? The pet stays alive a lot longer, even cats and birds, with a lot of healing power and all the healing on druid.

This build doesn’t have Spotter which has far more value than boons that generally get tacked on by other classes in the raid.

I would try making a build around Skirmishing/BM/Druid instead.

I also wouldn’t have a 100% investment into healing power. I think Druids will be healing most of the time, but I can see a sword on weapon swap for DPSing whenever possible as their meta.

not to derail the thread, but I find it humorous that everyone and their mother complains about spirits and still do, including the GM trait, but now all the Raid Druid builds are using full or close to full Spirit bars in addition to the GM trait.

Spirits viable apparently no need to fix

Zatoichi.1049:

not to derail the thread, but I find it humorous that everyone and their mother complains about spirits and still do, including the GM trait, but now all the Raid Druid builds are using full or close to full Spirit bars in addition to the GM trait.

Spirits viable apparently no need to fix

Just because they are viable, doesn’t make them efficient or intuitive play. They work, because you drag them kicking and screaming and force them to, they should be helping you to do your job, fluidly.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zatoichi.1049:

not to derail the thread, but I find it humorous that everyone and their mother complains about spirits and still do, including the GM trait, but now all the Raid Druid builds are using full or close to full Spirit bars in addition to the GM trait.

Spirits viable apparently no need to fix

Just because they are viable, doesn’t make them efficient or intuitive play. They work, because you drag them kicking and screaming and force them to, they should be helping you to do your job, fluidly.

I get what you are saying, but not speaking strickly as myself, but in general, if they are used in an important and desired build (if this build does become meta for raids) the way they are, than they don’t need to be efficient (although I would argue they are if they are being used) or intuitive, cuz they are optimal for a strong, widely used build. If they make a strong build optimal, why should we expect buffs? Why complain about something that appears to be highly effective

sure, you can say they are the best of a bad situation, but it seems to me like they are pretty kitten useful in a raid build, and if this build becomes meta, I would not expect to see any buff to spirits, even when they do need them in both PvP and WvW

Zatoichi.1049:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zatoichi.1049:

not to derail the thread, but I find it humorous that everyone and their mother complains about spirits and still do, including the GM trait, but now all the Raid Druid builds are using full or close to full Spirit bars in addition to the GM trait.

Spirits viable apparently no need to fix

Just because they are viable, doesn’t make them efficient or intuitive play. They work, because you drag them kicking and screaming and force them to, they should be helping you to do your job, fluidly.

I get what you are saying, but not speaking strickly as myself, but in general, if they are used in an important and desired build (if this build does become meta for raids) the way they are, than they don’t need to be efficient (although I would argue they are if they are being used) or intuitive, cuz they are optimal for a strong, widely used build. If they make a strong build optimal, why should we expect buffs? Why complain about something that appears to be highly effective

sure, you can say they are the best of a bad situation, but it seems to me like they are pretty kitten useful in a raid build, and if this build becomes meta, I would not expect to see any buff to spirits, even when they do need them in both PvP and WvW

I know they are decent, I was going on and on and on about how Druid can cover most of the buffing for a team, apart from 14 might, quickness and 50% uptime on stability, it can cover everything else, including stealth for skipping. But, there were people coming from everywhere claiming Ranger has nothing to offer. Well, it does because of the spirits and WH, a druid can be crazy good support. But a 1000 range is not a lot if you look at the size of those rooms in the raid, also remember that minions/spirit weapons/spirits/gyros were bugged and not taking any damage there. I think after the smoke has cleared and its released, Spirits will still be good, but be much more difficult to play. And not have a great uptime due to environmental damage.

A Herald only has to click the buttons for similar functionality. If the spirits had a larger range or could move again, they would be superior support.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zatoichi.1049:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Zatoichi.1049:

not to derail the thread, but I find it humorous that everyone and their mother complains about spirits and still do, including the GM trait, but now all the Raid Druid builds are using full or close to full Spirit bars in addition to the GM trait.

Spirits viable apparently no need to fix

Just because they are viable, doesn’t make them efficient or intuitive play. They work, because you drag them kicking and screaming and force them to, they should be helping you to do your job, fluidly.

I get what you are saying, but not speaking strickly as myself, but in general, if they are used in an important and desired build (if this build does become meta for raids) the way they are, than they don’t need to be efficient (although I would argue they are if they are being used) or intuitive, cuz they are optimal for a strong, widely used build. If they make a strong build optimal, why should we expect buffs? Why complain about something that appears to be highly effective

sure, you can say they are the best of a bad situation, but it seems to me like they are pretty kitten useful in a raid build, and if this build becomes meta, I would not expect to see any buff to spirits, even when they do need them in both PvP and WvW

I know they are decent, I was going on and on and on about how Druid can cover most of the buffing for a team, apart from 14 might, quickness and 50% uptime on stability, it can cover everything else, including stealth for skipping. But, there were people coming from everywhere claiming Ranger has nothing to offer. Well, it does because of the spirits and WH, a druid can be crazy good support. But a 1000 range is not a lot if you look at the size of those rooms in the raid, also remember that minions/spirit weapons/spirits/gyros were bugged and not taking any damage there. I think after the smoke has cleared and its released, Spirits will still be good, but be much more difficult to play. And not have a great uptime due to environmental damage.

A Herald only has to click the buttons for similar functionality. If the spirits had a larger range or could move again, they would be superior support.

@Zatoichi: In large part any Ranger/Druid that runs spirits is likely doing so because they are the only party buffing abilities we have at all. That doesn’t mean they aren’t broken or bad, really bad, but it’s the only option we have so we have to make use of it.

@Lome: I know spotter was one of our best buffs in the previous meta game but I have a feeling it won’t be anywhere nearly as useful in the upcoming content. almost every class has a method of keeping up fury almost 100% of the time, if not party wide at least on themselves. Of course more crits are better but I think we’ll be able to go without it. I could drop NM but then we lose our only useful party boons although again, most classes can keep up at least 10 might on themselves. except rangers.