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?
(edited by ShadowHunter.5173)