Guild Wars 2

So, I’m pretty sure the topic I’ll talk about is quite common, that is the gear you take as a druid to a raid, I see most of the commanders demanding a druid to be equipped with Zealot, which I think is a great loss in dps (yes – a loss).
Why would I say that? well there is the Apothecary set, which on paper people look at it and say : oh here you have toughness! wasted stat on a raid and loss of dps! you shouldn’t be using it atall.

Well, so the Zealot is supposedly the set with most usefull stat’s those being power,precision and healing. But when do people actually get to use the first two of those? The main reason a druid is wanted in raids is the damage buff from CA form giving another 15% dmg, or atleast the healing from the CA form or staff 3+5 combo’s.
So if said Zealot druid focuses on buffing up his team, being in CA form for idk 33%-40% of the time? while also doing spells like 3+5 on staff which have cast times, he is left with about 50% of time to actually use Power and Precision. making both of those stats half as effective. and more to that, while using a power build you would atleast want some of your utility skills to be buffs to your own damage/att speed/ or might.. all of which will be wasted when going CA form. You got 25 might stacks that you completely waste while you heal people or buff them up, those 25 stacks could count as 10% dps damage that you TAKE AWAY from a teammate.

Now why would I want to use condition damage on gear? well, the most obvious reason is the fact that the damage ticks. Your damage will keep ticking during your CA phases, during the times you heal, even if you are ported away or go dawned you keep on ticking damage which gets insanely amplified by your condi damage. Also you actually have use for might for 100% of the time.
Why not run a trap druid than with an axe+torch and staff on swap, providing more than 70% fire field uptime with quickdraw, and completely broken regen with the Trapper’s Expertise and Healing Spring while also giving the druid’s dmg buffs.

You will barely see any dps drop while going CA and provide same amount of healing as the Zealot, furthermore you will be able to take the Tank role quite easily as you have the toughness and most of your damage comes from close range anyway (axe 2, torch 5, traps..).

So in theory you can fill a condi-healer-tank role all in one while players who need major healing will come close to you right after green circle in VG to get healed up.
besides the druid being close range and putting water and fire fields helps with more projectile/whirl/blast finishers as the fields would be directly on the boss making everyone hit it regardless of their positioning.
Ofcourse you can still take a tank if that is too much to handle for a single player, but than he will need toughness as main stat ~ or alternatively the druid will mix some Magi gear into his Apothecary letting the tank take less toughness and deal more DPS.

Anyway, I think apothecary is a huge DPS swing for a druid, far superior than the DPS a Zealot could provide taken that both go CA in same frequency as the trap cast times are short and the damage ticking is long after activation, they also provide some breakbar efficiency.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Seeing how there is some wiggle room in terms of differentiating team compositions, this could work. It’s really up to you and other people. Most people just play it safe, so you’ll see people wanting Zealot or just max healing power Druids. I personally wouldn’t touch either now. Just go Zerk with Monk runes, Delicious Rice Balls, a Sigil of Transference on each set, and call it a day.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Seeing how there is some wiggle room in terms of differentiating team compositions, this could work. It’s really up to you and other people. Most people just play it safe, so you’ll see people wanting Zealot or just max healing power Druids. I personally wouldn’t touch either now. Just go Zerk with Monk runes, Delicious Rice Balls, a Sigil of Transference on each set, and call it a day.

agreed. now that the mechanics are so well known running max healing power isn’t as necessary as it was in the beginning. It might be nice to have a max healing ascended set for when the next wing is released as well as a zerk set for max dps.

I always thought people asking Druid to run Zealot are the same people who waited 20 minutes to find that 1 warrior for a ZerkMeta Ultra Brutal Speed Run of the universe rather than taking in a Thief who’d help them skip 40% of the dungeon.

If they ask Druid into healing power – they are naturally bad at mechanics and ask you to babysit them. And if you are forced to pay attention to other people’s mistakes you’ll naturally have less time to watch your step. Which means that toughness you are talking about will consequently result in higher raid DPS since you are not forced to evade as much attacks – preventing people from downed mode – also proccing GotL for more.

For some reason, the people you are talking about are too inexperienced or blind to realize that the less damage the Ranger deals (CAF), the more damage the raid will deal (GotL).
If they really wanted the efficiency, they’d ask you to run Berserker. A raid can be healed without any healing power at all if they can read the mechanics.

About the Condition build you mentioned – yes, that one is really amazing and peaks the standards of efficiency. However, the skill-cap rises a lot by keeping the track of both CAF and Weapon swap to constantly proc Bonfire on it. It is possible but I’ve seen people fail a lot because of it (me included). If you fail to execute the rotation properly – your DPS will be worse than a Cleric.

I’d just like to point out that just because it’s a condition build doesn’t mean you will continue to deal damage when you are not attacking. What you’ll see is the damage that you applied with a previous attack dealing its delayed damage, which a power build would have dealt instantly. Doesn’t effect the viability of condi specs, just with the recent popularity of condi for pve I’ve seen a lot of people who think that a condi build deals more damage than power if they both stop attacking

the bonfire condi build suffers from something that the engi condi build also suffers from, complexity/timing. if you miss time your weapon swap and don’t proc quickdraw your dps fall off rapidly. A real condi build for rangers shouldn’t rely so hard on that one trait proc. if flame trap did more burn stacks or sun spirit procs applied more stacks maybe we wouldn’t be so dependent on quickdraw.

or, god forbid, burning gets nerfed. then most of these condi builds go back in the box.

Ultimately, it depends on your team and the encounter.

For something like VG where there is unavoidable damage (green dots, pulsing “pie” damage, etc) you’re going to need to semi lock yourself in a more dedicated healing role. So regardless of whether you go Power or Condi you’re not going to have much of an opportunity to go Attack Mode. As Cameron pointed out switching to condi just means that your damage is spread out over time vs all your damage being front loaded in a Power build. Since we’ll be in Staff for the most part in this fight it just make sense to go with Power since the Weapon doesn’t natively benefit from Condi builds.

Now against someone like Gorsy his attacks…her attacks…their…..its attacks can be avoidable. Sabetha has a tiny amount of unavoidable damage (cannon snipers), and the last moments of the fight are crazy enough where you will end up eating a bomb or two. Though, in these two fights there are large windows of opportunity where the Druid can afford to go Attack Mode. I guess at that point you could go with either Condi or Power, but Apothecary just looks horrible. On top of that Quick Draw is a high value item in both CAF and A/T builds so you’d have skills competing for the CD reduction.

The reason I keep thinking condi will deal more damage against your main argument – ‘same damage but its delayed unlike power’, is that condi doesnt relay on this holy trio of power+precision+ferocity.. you don’t let anything go to chance in terms of how many crits you’ll hit.
But really the most powerfull thing to mention about condi, is that the sigils and foods have such a massive increase for your damage, outshining the foods/sigils for power builds by so much.
That 20% condi duration on food is essentially 20% damage increase overall.
if you combine it with a rune set or sigils.. focusing mainly bleeding and burning you might even get to 35~40% damage increase just from those tiny things.
In contrast if you go with a power build there is absolutely nothing that will provide you such a sharp increase in damage. (again im not mentioning rice ball as it was already stated that self survivability relies on the players skill.. the druid is not there to attune for the lack of skill of individuals. Therefore -10% healing shouldn’t be that dramatic when people know what they are doing).
So in case of power – maybe you deal damage upfront but you will deal far less as the condi build equip/food buffs are simply superior and relay on a single stat (or 2 with duration).
In that type of build I believe the sigils on staff should be Sigil of Transference together with a specific condi duration increase (bleed/burn).
While on the axe+torch it would be both bleed and burn duration.

ShadowHunter.5173:

The reason I keep thinking condi will deal more damage against your main argument – ‘same damage but its delayed unlike power’, is that condi doesnt relay on this holy trio of power+precision+ferocity.. you don’t let anything go to chance in terms of how many crits you’ll hit.

Your argument is too generalized though. Power, Precision, and Ferocity have a driect correlation, but Condition damage isn’t the only thing that makes a Condition build. In the case of a Ranger, Precision plays a role in Bleed uptime, and you are also heavily reliant on a single trait for your bonfire Burn uptime that competes with your [off]healing role. Sun Spirit and Flame Trap are also two skills that are equipped in that traditional A/T build so that leaves you either slotting in only a single “healer” skill or giving up one or two of the “Condi” skills in favor of more healer skills (Glyph of Tides, Empowerment, etc).

As far as the runes and sigils go, that could be disastrous. The reason Druids can get by with so little to no Healing Power is because it’s offset by the Outgoing healing multiplier (30-50% depending on your nourishments, runes, and sigils). Unless you’re working with a close to perfect team you’ll either need to keep the stuff that increases your Outgoing healing, or you’ll need to tack on more Healing Power back into your gear (less efficient).

Lastly, the bulk of your damage is behind your A/T weapon set. So, anytime you have to switch to staff your damage drops dramatically since you will have only Flame Trap and Sun Spirit procs to work with (add any additional effects from runes sigils). If you miss your Quick Draw or are stuck on Staff you will be contributing less than what a traditional Power build would offer.

Ultimately, a Druid’s primary role isn’t damage. I’d much rather take a Power build that offers the flexibility of slotting Glyphs (traited) and Spirits to buff my team. My potential x% increase in personal damage pales in comparison to the additional damage my team is getting from me buffing them. Again, on VG there’s just too much constant damage to catch a break, Gorsy has its DPS burst moments, and Sabetha escalates rather quickly in pressure. That being said, I’m gonna be stuck on staff for the most part so I’m going to focus on what makes me more efficient 99% of the time vs the 1% of the time when I get a breather.

Is Condition Damage the way to go for Druids in raids? Maybe, but right now there are waaay too many things that need to line up to make it worthwhile.