Guild Wars 2

Just want some ideas of what others are thinking. Which stat combo, rune/sigil set, traits, and alternate weapon do you think would work well with druid?

I ask because there are only 3 sets that have healing power as the main attribute and I can’t seem to think which one would work well or if having healing power major stat would be that important.

None of the rune sets seem like they’d be all that great for druid either, they don’t really provide boons which is what a lot of healing power rune sets seem to give as secondary effects.

Also what weapon do you think would work along staff? I heard a lot of talk about longbow during beta but I was wondering if trying for condition damage would work so you could apply conditions between heals and it would require less stats than direct damage, but ranger doesn’t have that great of condition weapons from the looks of it. Staff being a healing weapon did pretty terrible direct damage, and all druids access to conditions are non-damaging.

All in all I can’t figure out where I’d want to go with building a druid so I figured I’d ask. It’d be nice to have some damage addition since pure healing won’t give you credit for anything.

They are twisting the numbers for generating astral force for healing and damage and they are also changing the way how your heal skills scale with healing power so it is hard to talk about what gear you should use.

If actually healing power gear is needed for the heals we have seen in bwe, you can forget about dealing damage. The damge you deal with full cleric/magi (+ monk rune) equip is laughable so you can go sword/warhorn for some nice buffs and evades (almost perma swiftness + fury with the warhorn trait).

If you want to deal damage – there are some nice druid traits for dps builds if they tweak the numbers right – this is a totally different story.

I’m expecting cleric/magi to be a regular thing. The first clear of the raid boss used full Druid, and healing power is supposed to be buffed and become more important, especially with Druid base heals going down.

I’m preparing staff, of course, but I’m also preparing Sword/Warhorn to provide some more damage for the team during points in encounters where you can fit it in (burn phases, breaking the wall on the tongue monster boss, etc.).

No clue for raids but WvW is going to be nomad’s. I think GS could be a good secondary set. Sword/horn might be good too which is cool since finally we’ll have a use for warhorn? hehehe

Celestial all the way!

It’s still unclear how they will nerf or buff druids, for now. But celestial gear with cleric’s or nomad’s trinkets might be the stuff.

I’ve had such an easy time picking what gear I enjoy on any other class but with Druid. . . I don’t know yet.

I wanna see what direction Irenio takes us first. We’ve had many suggestions pile up here. Some about condi, some to stay power and up damage. All we know for sure is the healing power scaling is getting looked at. But the numbers and %s still a mystery atm.

I thought Zealot’s gear would be fun. But now I’m more looking at Cleric, Nomad, and Apothecary as well. Going to be hard to be prepared for HoT when I don’t know what stats I’ll need!

vespers.1759:

No clue for raids but WvW is going to be nomad’s. I think GS could be a good secondary set. Sword/horn might be good too which is cool since finally we’ll have a use for warhorn? hehehe

Yeah sword/warhorn works like a charm in WvW zergs but nomad sounds like the total overkill! What are you planning to do? Survive your zerg and then blame them on TS for wiping?! :’D

So sword/warhorn for extra survival and support I guess warhorn boons would make the monks boon duration more worth while. What about sigils? If going full healing would you use benevolence or life to increase healing further? Water for on hit heal, or energy for extra dodges?

The damage on full heal would be terrible as expected but how are you planning on getting any kill credits with staff auto being like 100 damage unless it’s buffed.

It’d be nice if they added new stats/runes/sigils with HoT that helps with these kinds of builds. Like monk runes but have outgoing healing instead of boon duration %’s, on heal sigils or something like that.

Celestial everything and traveler runes. Food and stuff to supplement whatever the situation needs. Great sword/staff and axe-torch/staff.

CandyHearts.6025:

I’ve had such an easy time picking what gear I enjoy on any other class but with Druid. . . I don’t know yet.

I wanna see what direction Irenio takes us first. We’ve had many suggestions pile up here. Some about condi, some to stay power and up damage. All we know for sure is the healing power scaling is getting looked at. But the numbers and %s still a mystery atm.

I thought Zealot’s gear would be fun. But now I’m more looking at Cleric, Nomad, and Apothecary as well. Going to be hard to be prepared for HoT when I don’t know what stats I’ll need!

The problem with Zealot’s is the fact that most people missed it out, and the fact that you need 500 watchwork sprocket for a zealot’s insignia. That’s 3000 watchwork sprocket for a whole set. It’s a lot of Aether path or a lot of mining with the watchwork pick for the ones not willing to pay the 14-15g needed for 500 watchwork sprocket.

I’m waiting for the nerfs to base healing before making a decision.

Full Nomads, Druid/Nature Magic/Beastmastery, axe/wh, birds, cats, drakes, or wyvern. Gather up the boons and let the pet go to town.

Either Zealot’s (Power/Precision/Healing Power) or Celestial (Minor to all Stats) with

Rune of Altruism (+175 Healing Power / +10% Boon Duration / 3 might and Fury to 5 Allies on Heal)

If maximizing healing power is a requirement to play druid to be effective, I wont be playing druid.

Lévis.5489:

CandyHearts.6025:

I’ve had such an easy time picking what gear I enjoy on any other class but with Druid. . . I don’t know yet.

I wanna see what direction Irenio takes us first. We’ve had many suggestions pile up here. Some about condi, some to stay power and up damage. All we know for sure is the healing power scaling is getting looked at. But the numbers and %s still a mystery atm.

I thought Zealot’s gear would be fun. But now I’m more looking at Cleric, Nomad, and Apothecary as well. Going to be hard to be prepared for HoT when I don’t know what stats I’ll need!

The problem with Zealot’s is the fact that most people missed it out, and the fact that you need 500 watchwork sprocket for a zealot’s insignia. That’s 3000 watchwork sprocket for a whole set. It’s a lot of Aether path or a lot of mining with the watchwork pick for the ones not willing to pay the 14-15g needed for 500 watchwork sprocket.

Thank you for this info! I didn’t even look into what it took to create Zealot’s. I am going to invest in that pickaxe for sure now. I wasn’t sure how worth it it could be but I have been kicking myself for not picking it up when it was 500 gems.

I was looking at a sneaky, supporty apothecary trapper Druid with short bow for WvW. Trapper runes for little stealth jaunts when you lay traps down to help survival everywhere you are, plus a lot of annoyances that would keep people locked down for concentrated fire from friends. Healing for friends and bleeds for enemies. Probably not ideal damage, but fun as heck for roaming and helping your side out.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWVjMqQ7KWuCerAVLW2DM45ae9vuc7CAjOmTQub3dy0ywC-TRSAABCcBAWf/BpPCAOqEERdBAcIAMT5Xpq/0xDAIAACwulZ6WmBOuxNuxNuxZ36W36W36mUAQssC-e

Full apothecary.

Mercurias.1826:

I was looking at a sneaky, supporty apothecary trapper Druid with short bow for WvW. Trapper runes for little stealth jaunts when you lay traps down to help survival everywhere you are, plus a lot of annoyances that would keep people locked down for concentrated fire from friends. Healing for friends and bleeds for enemies. Probably not ideal damage, but fun as heck for roaming and helping your side out.

This is kind of what I was thinking when I’d considered going condition damage. Celestial shadow gives the same effect as trappers runes for leaving celestial form. The traps would help you with survival from stealth and help your party with a bit of extra degen. I’d still go with moment of clarity for double daze duration though especially if I was taking trait to daze when switching to staff. At the very least healing spring would give you another water field, AoE heal and condition removal.

ProtoMarcus.7649:

Either Zealot’s (Power/Precision/Healing Power)

Magi is near enough to useless. Cleric and Apothecary have toughness, which you will not want as it will pull aggro. And being a backline healer, will not need.

For WvW, if you want to purely heal, Nomads, if they add conditions to Staff and or CAF, Apothecary. Cleric would be good here too.

I’m still waiting on the changes to how +healing and CA will work before I decide—but tentatively (in theory crafting and some BWE tests)—full Nomads/Monk runes—still no idea on weapon swap.

XDeathShadowX.2619:

This is kind of what I was thinking when I’d considered going condition damage. Celestial shadow gives the same effect as trappers runes for leaving celestial form. The traps would help you with survival from stealth and help your party with a bit of extra degen. I’d still go with moment of clarity for double daze duration though especially if I was taking trait to daze when switching to staff. At the very least healing spring would give you another water field, AoE heal and condition removal.

Clarion isn’t a bad idea, actually. I was thinking of steady focus initially because I was going to rely on stealth and the speed in the build to avoid some dodging and figured that the steady 10% would do more over time than the attack of opportunity.

I also considered going in as a skirmishing cleric healer with staff and sword/horn for off-damage, more blast, permanent fury, and a lot of stun breaks: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYD7kRFokFsfFwWQgrFs8HYwr14ad1p397ObLvuMQA4kpFmFA-TBCBABPqEs8DCgW7PImyvB1NAwTAAU1fC4CAEA4A43fz3+Gc8xHf8xH3v/+7v/+bpA8bZE-e

• 4 Zerk/Valk +2 Magi Trinkets
• Full Magi Armor
• Valk Weapon
• Wurm Rune
• GS/Staff Water/Life Sig
  ———————————-
• ~25k HP
• ~1700 Power
• ~40% Crit Chance
• ~200% Crit Damage
• ~900 Healing Power with full Life Sigil
  ———————————-

a classic hybrid.

I find that I just don’t feel good about going full condition damage without any amount of power backing it up, so I’ll probably just be going full celestial for the handiness of it.

XDeathShadowX.2619:

The damage on full heal would be terrible as expected but how are you planning on getting any kill credits with staff auto being like 100 damage unless it’s buffed.

There are already some discussions going on about tagging/rewards and healing. Some RvR/WvW mmos out there were able to reward you for healing and if Anet is going to support healing, they should be able to do it too.

I don’t care about tagging enemies…otherwise I would run staff on guardian 24/7. The only rewards I need, are dead enemy zergs who got rekt by awesome healing and nasty ccs for my backline. :P

illenos.5134:

XDeathShadowX.2619:

The damage on full heal would be terrible as expected but how are you planning on getting any kill credits with staff auto being like 100 damage unless it’s buffed.

There are already some discussions going on about tagging/rewards and healing. Some RvR/WvW mmos out there were able to reward you for healing and if Anet is going to support healing, they should be able to do it too.

I don’t care about tagging enemies…otherwise I would run staff on guardian 24/7. The only rewards I need, are dead enemy zergs who got rekt by awesome healing and nasty ccs for my backline. :P

It would be nice to get the hundred bags a night too at the same time though, yeah?

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

illenos.5134:

XDeathShadowX.2619:

The damage on full heal would be terrible as expected but how are you planning on getting any kill credits with staff auto being like 100 damage unless it’s buffed.

There are already some discussions going on about tagging/rewards and healing. Some RvR/WvW mmos out there were able to reward you for healing and if Anet is going to support healing, they should be able to do it too.

I don’t care about tagging enemies…otherwise I would run staff on guardian 24/7. The only rewards I need, are dead enemy zergs who got rekt by awesome healing and nasty ccs for my backline. :P

It would be nice to get the hundred bags a night too at the same time though, yeah?

We are talking about WvW! The loot is crap! :P I hope they are looking into this issue. You can’t introduce healing without changing your reward system. Period.

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/a6927Raven-Staff-Out-2.jpg

/15chars

Terra.8571:

https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/a6927Raven-Staff-Out-2.jpg

/15chars

I have to get it!…like every other specialization item! :P

How much does that Sigil of Water heal for?

Knighthonor.4061:

How much does that Sigil of Water heal for?

About 74 hps (@ 0 healing power, not sure how it scales).

Ah, nvw. It’s only 30% chance, so… 22,2 hps? Anyone better @ math around here?

:-)

Knighthonor.4061:

How much does that Sigil of Water heal for?

Healing: 370 (0.15)* Healing Power

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Water

That’s 640 aoe healing every 5s with max healing power for a druid (1800 – excludes life sigil and external sources). If you have 50% outgoing healing % from various sources, that’s almost 1k every 5s. Really helps with healing.

Terra.8571:

Knighthonor.4061:

How much does that Sigil of Water heal for?

Healing: 370 (0.15)* Healing Power

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Water

That’s 640 aoe healing every 5s with max healing power for a druid (1800 – excludes life sigil and external sources). If you have 50% outgoing healing % from various sources, that’s almost 1k every 5s. Really helps with healing.

Except… chance is 30% on hit…

OGDeadHead.8326:

Terra.8571:

Knighthonor.4061:

How much does that Sigil of Water heal for?

Healing: 370 (0.15)* Healing Power

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Water

That’s 640 aoe healing every 5s with max healing power for a druid (1800 – excludes life sigil and external sources). If you have 50% outgoing healing % from various sources, that’s almost 1k every 5s. Really helps with healing.

Except… chance is 30% on hit…

A single solar beam hits 3 times, which is (1-(7/10 * 7/10 * 7/10) )*100 = 66% trigger chance of triggering off the chain. Keep pulsing that auto and you have a 90% trigger on it’s second chain. You trigger it so often on the staff, the sigil is on cd for most of it’s duration. It’s definitely a nice healing boost for cleric druids.

If the Ranger is your main you probably need to have a power and a condition set. Now with the Druid I suppose zealots will be the norm. Possibly with Monk runes.

Clerics so you can have that buffer for mistakes. Yes, you can get good and learn the encounter but it is a lot harder for 10 players to play optimally for 10 minutes than it is for half as many players to not die in a 10 second fight for 3 year old content.

If you can meet the enrage timer with a few players running non-dps gear, then why not? This only applies to raids. If for whatever reason I’m playing Druid in old content or open world than i’d probably use Berserker or Zealots.

Celestial with water runes, probably. The healing coefficient is never going to be good enough, because then pvpqq. :\
That’s why we can’t have nice things.

I’ve already made a full set of clerics armor. Might keep my berserker trinkets though. We’ll see what launch has in store.

Do you honestly believe that even 1000+ healing power will be needed for raids, to be of any use as a druid?
If that’s the case, I would say Anet screwed up big time.

With healing power of 1000+ I would think you would overheal A LOT, and overhealing = healing wasted. If you want to heal someone for 3000 health to get them up to full, and you heal for 9000, that’s just wasted effort. Unlike dps, which you never can get too much of, when it comes to healing, you sure can go way over the top of what’s actually needed. Not only do you kitten yourself by going for insane amount of healing power, the fact is you will contribute far less to the overall performance of your raid/team because you will kitten your dps by far too much by going so single handedly after the maximum healing potential that you can get.

NapTooN.6283:

• 4 Zerk/Valk +2 Magi Trinkets
• Full Magi Armor
• Valk Weapon
• Wurm Rune
• GS/Staff Water/Life Sig
  ———————————-
• ~25k HP
• ~1700 Power
• ~40% Crit Chance
• ~200% Crit Damage
• ~900 Healing Power with full Life Sigil
  ———————————-

a classic hybrid.

Where’s the condition damage?

OGDeadHead.8326:

Do you honestly believe that even 1000+ healing power will be needed for raids, to be of any use as a druid?
If that’s the case, I would say Anet screwed up big time.

With healing power of 1000+ I would think you would overheal A LOT, and overhealing = healing wasted. If you want to heal someone for 3000 health to get them up to full, and you heal for 9000, that’s just wasted effort. Unlike dps, which you never can get too much of, when it comes to healing, you sure can go way over the top of what’s actually needed. Not only do you kitten yourself by going for insane amount of healing power, the fact is you will contribute far less to the overall performance of your raid/team because you will kitten your dps by far too much by going so single handedly after the maximum healing potential that you can get.

9 people at 100% effectiveness of better than 10 people having to run around and avoid damage because their incoming healing isn’t enough. Overhealing isn’t nearly as large an issue in gw2 as it might be in a different mmo. Other games like WoW have both cooldowns and mana to manage, while in gw2 you can do whatever you feel like as long as your cooldowns are up.

Let’s be real for a sec. In the old days dungeons were hard and people ran defensive gear. Then they learned the dungeons and everyone switched to zerk. Same thing happened with fractals, and the same thing WILL happen with raids.

People will discover the exploits and stack spots, and raids will turn into mindless button mashes.

I for one am very skeptical about this so called “challenging content”.

I’m thinking of the Cleric.
If you are not going to deal damage because… Astral Bar minigame + DDR minigame of hitting heals … You might as well want to tank a little.

If the coefficients are bad and not going to be changed much – I might end up going Celestial. I already have FullZerk equip for Ranger and Full Sinister for Engineer.
My druid is going to be useful via utility and defensive support only. That’s my goal.

for raiding celestial will probably be the best compromise, rather than changing armor regularly to face different foes. It will also perform adequately in PvE and WvW, giving a little more survivability than zerker.

Unfortunately the healing stat isn’t strong enough to demand a set of Cleric armor.

For dungeons the meta is basic, stack with melee weapons, pull mobs and DPS while blasting water fields to heal if needed, I doubt if there is much room there for Druids.

Serious.7083:

Unfortunately the healing stat isn’t strong enough to demand a set of Cleric armor.

They mentioned that Healing coefficients are most probably getting changed to promote using healing stats.

We’ll have to wait and see till we can really say for sure.

vespers.1759:

Let’s be real for a sec. In the old days dungeons were hard and people ran defensive gear. Then they learned the dungeons and everyone switched to zerk. Same thing happened with fractals, and the same thing WILL happen with raids.

People will discover the exploits and stack spots, and raids will turn into mindless button mashes.

I for one am very skeptical about this so called “challenging content”.

Fractals, maybe, not so sure about raids. Why? Because they have changed the layout considerably. In the first fight and a few in the trailers, battles seem to take place in open areas with a barrier around them. There appear to be no structures with in these playing areas. This already removes the chance of LoS boss.

Next, if the Vale fight is anything to go by, as the fight progresses, they make the area smaller (each third slowly becomes lit up and you take heavy damage standing on one). Reduced area mean you and boss are continuously moving.

Finally, enrage timers. This is the biggest. Bosses will be tuned to have only a couple of minutes left on the timer. Obviously more dps will make these fights quicker, but even in record runs, 4 min to clear the vale vs 7 mins for everyone else isn’t a huge difference. Current dungeons, the difference between fastest clear and some groups can be 20-30 minutes+.

Combine all these facts, even the best players may run slightly less dps groups if it minimizes chances of wipe. What good is clearing a raid in 4 mins (vs 7mins) if there’s a 20% chance of a wipe?

I think raids will still be heavily zerk/sinister based but from my experiences with them so far, I’m skeptical of whole wings being doable in 1 year’s time with full dps gear on all players. We’ll see.

What’s to gear? Meet my new mule.

I’d rather over heal then under heal.

I have a full DPS set and a full healing set.

If the tinfoil hat association of GW2 is right, then no big deal… I have a dps set nothing lost. If anet is right and it is very challenging, then I have a healing set that will put everyone’s to shame in PvE.

Like any game, it’s better to heal for too much then not enough. I’d rather spike heal for 9k-12k and keep my team mates alive if they over aggro or mess up on timing. This also prevents heated kittening matches with DPS fighting among each other. You end up being a larger asset to the team if you’re able to pick them up and and keep them alive through the over aggro then being the one to blame for failing to keep the party alive.

I doubt they’re going to make 1200 healing power equal to the base heals of BWE3 like some people are freaking out about. I actually think maybe 600 healing power will bring us back to previous base heals. 1200 will get us past base heals. Or something like that.

I’d have to agree that over healing isn’t as much a concern here as it would be in other games. Other games tend to make higher health heals take more of a resource like mp or mana and they have longer cooldowns so you don’t want to be caught with them down. We just have the cooldowns and they aren’t terribly long. Also it’d have a certain appeal to hit someone in your party with a heal that boosts them up from the brink of death into a safe range. If people running dps are still going to be using scholars runes and other health dependent modifiers making sure you can keep them in the bonus range is a plus.

I didn’t think about how water rune would heal with outgoing healing modifiers, that actually may help healing ranged players since right now druid staff heals feel more focused on melee.

As far as healing power rebalance, they’d have to make it so it’d only take a minor healing power boost to get to decent healing because if it’s all healing power or basically no heals it destroys any chance of making a hybrid damage build.