Guild Wars 2

Hey people.

As a some people seem to find it hard to fight a druid and their pets do a kitten lad of dmg i want to give you some advice, you might find useful when crossing ways with a druid.

A lot of the druids damage is coming from the new pets, especially smokescale and bristleback. Although alone not quite dangerous, the combined dmg of druid AND pet can be devistating. Additionally the unexpected burst will mostlikely put you in a bad situation.

With staff and celestial avatar, a druid has loads of sustain, which makes it even harder to kill them, when their pet continously does damage.

If you face a druid, dont waste your CC´s on him, except you have some really nice and definitely safe burst. If you dont get it done right, the druid will go into the celestial avatar and heal away the damage you just did.
Than you dont have any CC´s left to counter the healing by interrupts and the druid will get on to you again.

The two main things you have to take care of are:

1. The healing a druid does in celestial avatar (or any healing you can foresee and interrupt)

2. The damage the druid does IN ADDITION to his pet. The pet-damage alone can be hard to tank, but its possible to outheal/tank, if you dont have to deal with the druids damage on top of that.

So, dont waste your CC´s on the druid, if he is NOT in celestial avatar. Wait for him to go into celestial avatar and CC him then. Many druids dont combo “Strengt of the Pack” with celestial avatar for stability, as they think of it as an offensive skill.
If you interrupt him while in celestial avatar, you will make it a lot harter for him to keep up HIS damage on you.
As long as you stay close to the ranger, as most of them use a longbow, you can avoid some of his damage and get him into defense.
If the druid is busy kiting you, its harder for him to put damage into you. Everyclass has some mechanics that will allow you to either get to your enemy or slow him down. Use them wisely and dont waste all of them at the start. Bait out the druids kiting abilities if you can, by canceling skills with your “Stow weapon”-button.

Ending that, i want to go over the most important druid mechanics.

“We Heal as One” – Copies boons from the pet to the druid. This can easily lead to riddiculous high boon uptimes, with riddiculous stacks (20+ stability, 20+ might for 10 seconds +)

“Strength of the Pack” – Besides fury and stability, the pet grants the druid might with his attacks and the other way. Bristleback and smokescale hit multiple times during their burst, making 25 stacks of might possible if combined with “Rapidfire” and then using “We Heal as One”.

Signet of Stone – Invulnerable to direct damage. Quite annoying, especially when its used while you want to burst the druid.
Best way is, like mentioned above, to bait it out by starting your burst and then canceling the skills with “Stow weapon”.

Trait “Ancient Seeds” – It will (mostlikely) immobilize you for quite a while, after the druid stuns you. Removing immobilize is often not working, because the still repeatedly applies this condition. Attacking the tangles will destroy them, so they wont reapply immoblize. Or moving out of them with a movement and immobilize ignoring skill.

In the end, i am not perfect and i clearly did not mention every aspect that you have to watch out for. I hope you could learn something and you can whisper me ingame, if you need help with fighting them.
And, sorry for my english, im sure i made some mistakes somewhere.

agree with all the tips here.

but the heal as one you’ve overstated quite a bit.
riddiculous stacks (20+ stability, 20+ might for 10 seconds ) the most you’ll see from sotpheal as one is 6 stacks as they drop off too fast (maybe 8stacks if you have added boon durations from nature magic and runes)
the might goes for the same 20 stacks is about the maintained average with duration runes+nature magic outside of nature magic it’ll be 12-14seconds of about 12-15stacks only through sotp+ timed heal as one.

when i did some messing around when druid came out i did a most dangerous game skirmish nature magic druid , the might was of basic duration 12seconds and that allowed me to stack 25might easly every heal as one " as long as i used it every 20seconds" and timed it with escaping bursts at 50% hp through Sword+dagger > LB huntershot for 2-3seconds , if needed use a smokescale field too on the sword.

ones medium to high stacks maintained depending on runes
the other is Quick high stacks with a short duration depending on traits.

so just by fighting a druid you can tell if his one or the other.

one has High might from the get go but has to maintain it through cooldowns.
the other Maintains might through active combat and healing when needed for a harsh Recover counter burst of damage.

so if you see a druid gain a jack ton of might when it drops below 50% and heals you’ll know its time to Interrupt at around 40%hp as some might draw out time to gain even higher stacks.

while the other maintains high duration stacks from pet swap + runes and heal as one , the main aim for this one is to make sure one pet is dead at all times this stops 6 might petswaps becoming 12might then scaling to 20-24might after the second heal , i simple see this type of might maintaince on a druid is easier to stop as it also stops a major source of damage too.

all it’ll take is for people to take pet Seriously when it comes to quickness and damage to counter the problem , unless its a drake/bear or a high hp bristleback enough damage can kill a pet in 1-3 bursts forcing the druid to heal as one to save the pet so he can keep his Might rotations.

against ancient seeds the best thing you can do is use a stealth ability and then a passive Non-damage condi clear skill without a target the roots can’t reapply hence why stealthed is the best way to get out of roots rather than risk cleaving+taking more aoe damage.

in the case of a class without teleports or stealth , like a warroir its good to use a instant condi clear directly before a evade move to avoid the second tick one after the other with in 1/4 of a second any longer than that the second skills evade frames won’t kick in quickly enough and you’ll be immoblised again , simply being quick to react gets you out of ancient seeds.

Thanks for adding that part, i agree in all points, except the part about kling the pet. As far as my experience goes, i never had problems keeping any of my pets alive, even a lot of Aoe dmg didnt do too much, as “We heal as one” also heals the pet and if you watch its lifebar, you can prevent it from dying by changing it before it dies
although, in outnumbered fights or any fight that has more than 3 enemies in it, it can be a bit more difficult.
Thanks for adding the part to what i already said

DerJoker.9081:

Thanks for adding that part, i agree in all points, except the part about kling the pet. As far as my experience goes, i never had problems keeping any of my pets alive, even a lot of Aoe dmg didnt do too much, as “We heal as one” also heals the pet and if you watch its lifebar, you can prevent it from dying by changing it before it dies
although, in outnumbered fights or any fight that has more than 3 enemies in it, it can be a bit more difficult.
Thanks for adding the part to what i already said

ya but thats the druids responsibility , it also forces cooldowns and a early swap meaning you miss out of secondary pet skills , but if a group of people can kill the pet in the time window its going to be a hard hit to the damage output and might stacking , cleave and Aoe damage won’t down a pet but a thief or Rev guard ect using a single target skills can easly burst it down while your heal as one going on cooldown so they have a 15second window to kill it after a heal as one or a petswap (15seconds to kill the pet before the second swap) , if i face a druid and i see a bird or a cat maybe a wolf i focus it after interruptions then kill it or force a heal gives me a good 15-20seconds of reduced incomming damage and if i use wilting strike the incomming damage is pretty much 0 after taunts.

its still easier to do with a ranged weapon in a team fight though , quite difficult to do in smaller team fights as its simply not fast enough.

i play DPS druid myself , and even though i use marauder i dont die all that easily because of constant condi clears and stunbreakers that i have available all the time , at least in a 1v1. to kill a druid, you basically have to burst them to death in very little time. its almost impossible for 1 player to kill a druid if they dont have a build that is able to deal lots of dmg in a short time. obviously they can use signet of stone, but they way you deal with that is basically to bait him to use it. since we cant take account for player skill, the only way you can win is if you can stop your burst when he pops the signet, and then use the rest of your dmg once those 6 seconds are over. also watch out for strength of the pack.

once you see that he no longer has Stab. from strength of the pack , go ahead and spam your CC all over him. make him use all his stunbreakers and signet of stone, and then hes basically a free kill as long as you didnt waste important interrupts on nothing as hes going to try to heal back up until his stunbreakers etc. are no longer on cooldown.

You will never kill me, you hear? NEVER!

In all seriousness I’ve never lost to anything in spvp/wvw but a very well played Thief, and I mean top tier player, which is rare, they can make no mistakes and have to time everything perfectly.

Between rotating pets, heals, glyphs, CA, Elite etc it’s impossible to keep up.

If you’re specced right you never have to go into CA in pvp…

The match that took me into t4 sapphire yesterday morning ended with my 6 min point hold where 4 of their players couldn’t kill me or decap the point…the match ended and all I could say was ‘that 4 v 1 was awesome!’ and ‘dang! my hand and wrist hurt’.