Guild Wars 2

I’m a little curious, what do you all run for Raids as a Druid? The common themes I’m seeing are:

• Weapons: Staff (duh)
• Stats: Zealots with Magi, Cleric, or Berserker (based on on encounter and heal needs)
• Pets: Bristleback
• Specs: Skirmishing (x/1/1) and Druid (x/2/3
• Noms: Rice Balls with Furious Crystals or Sharpening Stones
• Utility Skills: Glyphs of Empowerment and Tides with Frost and Sun Spirits
• Elite Skill: Glyph of Unity

I guess that things where I’ve seen conflicting conversation around are:

Heal Skill:

• Healing Spring: Water field, burst heal, long lasting Regen when traited
• Glyph: Burst heal and another Glyph for Verdant Etching
• Water Spirit: Distributes Regen when traited, periodic ally heal (scales with Druid’s Healing Power), and good personal heal with a delayed party heal.

Specializations:

• Marksmanship: Increased Damage, Blast finisher (to be used on water fields) on weapon swap.
• Nature Magic: Spirits pulse boons, Boon share with Pets, increase damage per boon or improved revive abilities.

Pets:

• Felines: Raw damage in case your Bristleback needs a rest
• Fern Hound or Blue Moa: Additional healing and boon distribution
• CC orientated pets: For breakbars and dealing with Boss Adds.

Second Weapons:

• Sword/Axe: Raw damage and whirl finisher on water for large quantities of Regen
• Sword/Warhorn: Moderate damage with an additional Blast Finisher

Overall, I’m looking for discussion to see why folks choose one over the other or what Raid bosses would it be better to use Build A vs Build B

I think it’s fair to consider how your group intends to distribute responsibilities.
This might end up biting us in the kitten in future wings, but for the most part the healing is considered a foregone conclusion. If you go full tilt on it, it’s probably too much and you’ll have some time on your hands. It’s sandwiching in secondary duties and tertiary duties without dropping the Healing ball that seems to be the big question. How much your group needs Group DPS, Personal DPS, CC, or Tanking, is going to do alot to inform your build desicions.

Things may seem wildly varied listed in a whole like this, but once you’ve organized with intention in mind much of these build choices are self evident. There are some open-ended things, but it might be better to approach them as more focused questions. Like, “whats good to slot in for Gorseval ghost duty?”.

Aside from the common themes, personally, I’ve been running Marksmanship, Healing Spring (traited), and Sword/Axe on the switch. Though, I find myself having very small windows where I can hop off of staff to actually attack which is why I’m doubting the usefulness of the damage modifiers in that Spec.

Now with Nature Magic, I’m interested in Boon sharing with my Pet since boon prioritization puts my pets on that bottom of the list when compared to Players. The Water Spirit was also interesting to me as it helps keep up regen as well as trickle healing from the Spirit procs. That, and it looks like I’d still have an emergency heal for me and my pet.

I understand builds should be based on both the encounter and your team skill/comfort, but I’m curious to see what others are using for what situations/comps.

I run full berserker and have a spare set of Clerics for the Rune of the Monk when we need to progress.

I almost always run SK/NM/DR.
It’s the best support DPS trait setup you can get.

1 pet is always bristleback since highest DPS.
The other is either Jungle Stalker or Fern Hound or Electro Wyvern or Lynx. Depends on what our raid needs.
Weapons Staff/Longbow/Sword+Warhorn or Sword+Axe.

Again, depends on what do we need.

And I use Glyphs / Spirits as utilities … Which ones, depends on what we need…
…
I don’t know – there are so many builds out there, all of them are fine … It always depends on what your group lacks.

in my experience just run zerker and swap those runes for monk and get a superior sigil of transference thats pretty much the healing you need
pop CaF use glyth of empower and you will be able to do insane healing
also those glyphs are good for both dmg and healing thanks to grace of the land

bottom line imo dont bother spending money on healing gear since the healing scales so bad thanks to all those nerfs and with monk combined with superior sigil of transference you will be able to do the healing that is reqiured
well mostly

cleric/magi if your pugging raids or your team is inexperienced and required carrying a bit. That gear is more for a max healing setup. zealots or zerker if your team is more experienced and you can just pop into CAF, throw some heals out and go back to dps. Gear choice will also depend on your tank as chronotanks have very low toughness but others may run with more.

SK/NM/DR is probably the best setup to run, if you have a second ranger or don’t need spotter you could drop SK for BM i guess.

I prefer passive healer playstyles so I tend to lean towards staff camping with Magi’s or Zealots. Mainly zealots because I already had it, and not because it’s “better” as it is an extremely gold inefficient stat set. Regardless of what gear or build you choose, the optimal druid rotation is the one that can generate enough astral force in exactly 10s and stack gotl as much as possible, even if that means lower personal DPS. For this reason alone is why I prefer not running berserker and base my rotations, skill and pet choices around this one thought process. Every non staff camping build I run has some form of Regen, usually 2 in the form of Windborne notes, Healing Spring, Water Spirit and/or Fern Hound. I try not to bring every possible regen skill as that would be overkill. I pair S/A with healing spring and I use glyph of rejuvenation with S/WH for example.

Being versatile with your gear/skill/pet/weapon choices is the biggest thing you can do to help your raid succeed. I don’t just throw on my berserker gear and tell people to get good and not get hit by kitten, but I base my build around the group I am currently running with. I do play with a variety of groups ranging from ones that can no glide gorsreval and 8 man sell raids to ones that do not notice they have bombs on Sabetha.

But to answer your question specifically, I would recommend Magis, Nature Magic, S/WH, Lynx + Fern Hound and heal glyph because it has Regen and it allows me stack druid DPS buffs the easiest. I personally think Sun Spirit is a bit overrated and usually swap that out. As far as Spirit Vale is concerned, I don’t feel there’s one set up fits all scenarios meta build and run a different set up on every fight/group.

I think ideally you want to make sure you’ve got enough Healing capacity that you’re not stuck rolling the dice.

You shouldn’t beat yourself up over being unable to heal through sudden major catastrophes where somebody sheepishly admits in voicechat: “Sorry guys, my Bad”. But a low background noise of human error is just the natural consequence of playing with 9 other human beings. If you’re succumbing to a small series of accidents that slowly spins out of control chasing that pyrrhic victory where you have whole minutes left on the clock – you haven’t empowered yourself enough to overcome your squad’s reasonable margin of error.

So some people get stuck rolling the dice hoping for that “smooth run”, when you can build in a safety margin and help be the thing that makes it smooth.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I think ideally you want to make sure you’ve got enough Healing capacity that you’re not stuck rolling the dice.

You shouldn’t beat yourself up over being unable to heal through sudden major catastrophes where somebody sheepishly admits in voicechat: “Sorry guys, my Bad”. But a low background noise of human error is just the natural consequence of playing with 9 other human beings. If you’re succumbing to a small series of accidents that slowly spins out of control chasing that pyrrhic victory where you have whole minutes left on the clock – you haven’t empowered yourself enough to overcome your squad’s reasonable margin of error.

So some people get stuck rolling the dice hoping for that “smooth run”, when you can build in a safety margin and help be the thing that makes it smooth.

thats one of the beauties with glyph of empowerment in CAF it gives 5 ppl +25% outgoing healing so things look like they will be going south just pop CAF and use glyph of empowerment and let the others help out with the healing everyone complain on tempests healing why not help him heal even more