Guild Wars 2

I’ve never played a healer and have no experience of trying to do it. However, I’m not sure how best to go about learning. I don’t have friends that play the game and don’t PVP. During BWE3 I was playing a Druid in open World / HoT story but found little opportunity to heal. I can’t imagine going into a dungeon group saying ‘I’ve no idea what I’m doing’. Any suggestions?

In a game that doesn’t need healers in PvE unless you enter raids where you have to be actually really good at healing otherwise you won’t get a spot, this is a reasonable worry.

You can ask if it is ok to heal some pug dungeon groups, but most of the time, people will rather want to finish the dungeon as fast as possible, so a dedicated healer is more a burden than anything else.

Get used to the skills, play some bigger events like Tequatl in random groups, where people take a lot of damage to get a feeling for your healing capabilities.

Other than that, maybe join a guild and convince them that a skilled healer has value somewhere in GW2 and they better let you train.

You should try some World versus World with your druid. Healing is much needed here.

Open your “B” panel, join a map (Eternal Battleground as an exemple). Then, join the commander tag, follow him and try keep your targets/group/squad healed. That’s a good way to learn.

If you want to get a preview of healing as a druid in WvW, you can check my beta video in signature. Keep in mind that it will be easier at release because you will be able to see the nameplates (health bars over the heads) of your squad (big group of up to 50 players). This feature was bugged during the beta weekend :/

Earix.5684:

You should try some World versus World with your druid. Healing is much needed here.

Open your “B” panel, join a map (Eternal Battleground as an exemple). Then, join the commander tag, follow him and try keep your targets/group/squad healed. That’s a good way to learn.

If you want to get a preview of healing as a druid in WvW, you can check my beta video in signature. Keep in mind that it will be easier at release because you will be able to see the nameplates (health bars over the heads) of your squad (big group of up to 50 players). This feature was bugged during the beta weekend :/

No offense but you didn’t play healing druid properly. The cele state tether elite heals allies when you heal yourself. You kept using the tether outside of cele state. Just one example of the various mistakes you made. I wouldn’t use that video as an example of optimal druid play but it does demonstrate skills, I suppose (druid skills).

Lettuce.2945:

No offense but you didn’t play healing druid properly. The cele state tether elite heals allies when you heal yourself. You kept using the tether outside of cele state. Just one example of the various mistakes you made. I wouldn’t use that video as an example of optimal druid play but it does demonstrate skills, I suppose (druid skills).

No offense at all At first, I recorded to spot my own mistakes (there are a lot of them, I mention it in the video description) but I thought it would be nice to share it anyway.

Back to point, WvW is a good way to learn healing

thanks for all that

TonyCraig.7290:

thanks for all that

The druid (Rick) who healed for the first world Vale kill was pretty good. He didn’t rotate his weapons or pets (he had some weapon traits that trigger on swap) but his healing was first class.

Here’s the vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thS431kCOcg

Basic advice, now is a GOOD time to learn druid as everyone is learning the class so making mistakes is expected. That being said, here are some of my favourite simple combos (assumes you have weapon swap trait from skirmishing):

• Healing Spring -> Warhorn 5 (blasts water field) -> Weapon Swap -> Staff 3 (another blast – That can be 10-14k aoe heal)

• Aim staff to go through as many allies as possible (this includes pets and spirits)

• Staff 2 -> Staff 5 (place on enemy) -> Staff 3 (blast water field) -> Weapon Swap -> warhorn 5 (to reduce it’s cd) -> Now can auto attack with sword

Continuing from above, if you need to move, e.g. against vale and fill an orange circle do the following (assuming you are still in melee range with sword):

• Sword 2 (make sure your back is in the direction you want to go) -> Weapon Swap -> Staff 3 (aim it where you want to go)

These are some really simple combos and being honest, druid healing isn;t that difficult and most of the rotations are pretty straight forward. It’s just different, but if you like support nothing is better than saving an ally from near death.