Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

I’m leveling up my ranger and I want to grab the Druid Elite when I hit 80. I saw the nerf to the base healing amounts of some of their spells, as well as the increases in scaling.

Is there a recommended minimum amount of healing power that I should attain if I want to go Druid? I won’t be playing in raids, mostly open world PVE, maybe some dungeons.

This is an example of the gear setup that i’m planning on getting

I’m looking at a jack of all trades setup, leaning slightly more towards support/healing. I have legendary weapons and back-piece, so i can switch out stats for more DPS if I need to.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

If you’re not looking to do Raids or High Level (80+) Fractals, then I would recommend not to take healing gear at all. The base healing on Celestial Avatar is more than enough to get you alive in all PvE situations. If it’s not to heal, people pick Druid spec for Shorter Staff CD or Condi Clear, Stealth+Superspeed or Perma Swiftness or Lower Glyphs CD, and Ancestral Grace or Rooting.
For group content it’s always useful to take Druid with Glyph of Empowerment (+10% dps for whole group for a while), Grace of the Land for another +15% damage every so often, and Frost Spirit and Spotter. That can really boost up the damage of your whole group

I run 400~ because I like slightly quicker heals, but in pve you’re probably fine with 0.

~ Kovu

I get you; you do what I like to do when not leveling story/solo. So – HoT runs, group stuff, WBs and dungeons. Yeah.

If you lean support/heals I would then get some HP. 500 is good, maybe even too much. Yeah, “it’s only open world PvE” but many scenarios where heals help a ton for a group – you can still get heal accessories to swap to if needed like, a smaller DS group, etc.

I have 2 staves – one w/ HP and one zerk. And accessories zerk and HP ones I swap between solo and support play. I sometimes go my old WvW armor set in HoT which is PVT/trooper as I still love shouts in PvE. BUT – anyways…

Point being as said – it’s easier to transition w/ zerk armor to solo and more group play where you want to support more. It’s cheap to get a magi/cleric staff if u didn’t take minstrel from Druid. And can get magi/cleric accessories via karma or TP. Easily will get u more than adequate HP to heal Open World PvE stuff. Put a transference sigil on staff… good to support. AND – slowly set yourself up to potentially heal in Raids. Depending what HP gear you get.

if you are looking to run full celestial with longbow and then maybe staff on swap(?) then consider running the longbow as berserker/assassin and the staff as magi. I wouldn’t run magi anywhere else on your gear though for open world pve and dungeons.

Healing is pointless outside raids. In dungeons/frac you can’t heal enough to prevent ppl from getting 1-2 shot and you do 0 dps to contribute. So you’re looking at dps druid choices which are berserker set, or condi druid viper set.

For open world, if you are not interested in raids and only maybe some dungeons, I wouldn’t even go Celestial, but full Berserker gear. Bolster your HP/toughness with adequate trinkets like Knights or Valkyries. If you must absolutely have some Healing Power and don’t fancy swapping out trinkets all the time, I’d suggest Zealot trinkets ( obtainable from Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay ).

The thing is, you get a ton of HP and a nice-looking number in Healing Power with Celestial, but the sad reality is that you’re better off killing things fast in Tyria and even in HoT, rather than trying to outlast them. A dead mob can’t do crap to you and others. Also, ask yourself how often you will actually be supporting said others. If you’re an event hunter or run constant events/metas in the HoT maps, fine. But if you spend a lot of time solo, I don’t think that a lot of Healing Power is actually going to be of massive use to you if you’ll end up picking rather than bursting mobs to death.

You already have a pet to “hide behind” ( not being sarcastic: I do this a lot when I know I’m facing hard mobs/HPs/etc. ), so slotting a tank pet like a bear as a backup while keeping something like a Lynx, Panther or Tiger as your main can already take a lot of pressure off of you while you are soloing. Also, as a LB Ranger, you’re probably looking to kill from a distance, so stuff should ideally die before it even reaches you.

/two cents

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I think i’m going to stay full Celestial, and put zerker’s on my weapon and back-piece, and maybe my amulet/other trinckets. That way I will lean more towards damage, but still have enough stats elsewhere to easily switch into support.

Thanks!

After the nerfs, you either run 1000+ healing power or 0. Otherwise you’re wasting stats. You could do fine with 500-600 before, not anymore.

Celestial is utter garbage with all the other 4 stat combos you have available nowadays, delete or change stats on that crap.