Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,
I have a question like a new druid: How do you do in raid to keep in life your team?
It’s just very hard to do your rotation AND to have a look every second on each one.

I’m not a very exp druid since I play it more or less from 2 months but I use it a lot in raids.
I use condi and magi druid, before patch even zerk druid.
So here my 2cent:

-if you are magi druid you should not focus on any DPS rotation but Just focus on 2 things, keep group Alive and provide buffs GotL.
So Camp staff and try to cleave the whole squad with staff 1 since it Will provide you a lot of Astral Force.
You have to know well boss mechanics and Save burst heals for when you know people will take damage, like going in greens (or miss a Green) at VG, CC phase in gorseval, condi bomb in slothasor (shake/coconut cant remeber the name).
But tbh if tour group doesnt totally sucks with a full magi set is so Easy to keep everyone Alive.
So once you got confortable on it you can start to use berserker trinckets and sword axe for add some dps and help with pulls.

-in stationary boss like gorseval, sabetha, slothasor if mid strat and Matthias if your group doesnt move him too much, if you have problems to keep full Life your group I suggest you to try to run water+stone(not in gorseval)+elite spirit… You Will provide perma protection + more susistained heals, and the regen from water Spirit is amazing to fill your Astral Force.

-while with condi druid is very Easy push out a good dps and still provide good heals to your party, here you can start to have problems if your group make mistake, because your recharge Astral Force ways slower so you can lack heals and GotL if you dont manage the rotation well. So its better if you use condi druid only once you got a very good experience with all bosses mechanics playing druid.

I’m going to second protection and regen being super important. Stone spirit is great for protection. However, the water spirit is terrible. Chronos apply regen that lasts at least 6 seconds. In order to bypass chrono regen, you need to have regeneration that lasts longer than 6 seconds to override. Water spirit is 3 seconds of regen and won’t cut it. A few options:
1) Traited warhorn (this rotation is harder and so I’ll skip it for now)
2) Fern hound (only pet that draws on ranger stats for healing/boon duration and will charge your CA)
3) Traited healing springs (Requires a trait to hit a 6 second base duration)

Next thing that I notice most new druids miss: they don’t use staff 2. Staff 2 can heal 10 people+pets etc 3 times per cast as it circles the boss. Staff 1 heals 3 people per pulse. Staff 2 is what lets you easily solo heal 10 people. So cast that staff 2 all the time on CD. Trait the staff because of this. The bonus heal trait on 6 is great when you are zerker/viper healing but with a magi healer, the staff trait is better. This also means you sometimes need to yell at new ppl to always be on the boss’s butt. Not only do they miss buffs but they also miss heals. If they don’t, let them die, tell them to stack on the boss’s butt for heals and try again.

Between random glyph spam (don’t even consider them heals just dps buffs), staff 1/2, regen and protection, people should not die unless they mess up mechanics. That’s where Staff 3 (and maybe 5) as well as CA 3/4 come into play. Each boss has it’s own momentum.

Example: VG: Heal the melee group with staff 1/2 etc… CA should be only used for green circles. Use CA3 to burst heal as people go to green, CA4 to sustain and buff then immediately leave CA and go back to staff1/2. If you need to use CA for an emergency and can’t use it for green circles, use staff 5/3 to heal the green circle group. If people keep getting ported, as mentioned above, let them die. If it’s only occasional, use staff 3.