Guild Wars 2

So I’ve hit a wall. I am about to start crafting a second set for my Druid (already got Magi’s down), and now I can’t quite make up my mind for what I want for a DPS/Support setup.

The choice is between a Zerker+Assassin power build with Longbow – S/A, or a complete Viper set for condition damage with A/T – Shortbow.

I can’t decide what I want to do… So I turn to you guys to settle the matter for me!
That was a joke… I am just looking for some more opinions on this before I make up my own.

What are the pros and cons between these two? Which would you prefer?

Hi Twicedead. Which is interesting btw.

Raids, pugging or not very experienced groups: A/T-Shortbow Viper’s is more popular than Longbow-S/A Zerker, for now, Zerker is catching up on Viper’s. With the exception of Keep Construct, condi dmg doesn’t work (as well) as raw dmg there.

Raids, (very) experienced groups: Either. Both Viper’s and Zerker. These groups don’t need so much healing, so they go with a zerker and a condi druid, rather than a healer and a condi druid. (Sometimes switching up a few zerker trinkets for healing trinkets, if they are short of healing just a little, but want to keep on min-maxing their dmg output)

Fractals: they recently rescaled toughness in fractals, which makes power more viable again. I can’t tell which one is favorite at this point, maybe someone else can fill in on this. Either way, I don’t think it makes much difference.

Dungeoning: Zerker

Wow, that’s a massive help… Thank you for a very informative post! Definitely the kind of answer I was looking for. I think I’ll roll with Longbow S/A for now, because of the hipster inside me, I have a tendency to go for the less popular variant when I have two or more viable choices…

Hi,

Personally, I would reccomend a Berzerker set for a very simple reason: you can easily mix the berzerker and magi sets without that much detrimental to CAF generation. The power and magi builds use very similar traits making it easy to mix the sets and tune how much healing power you need. It’s also very easy to use either LB+S/x or Staff+S/x or pure sw in a hybrid build without that much detriment to any of them.

The condi build however relies more on sharpened edges and on the WS traitline (also possible with NM but a larger sacrifice than a power build), and the fact that it has slower CAF generation means it is not so optimal to play a hybrid condi/healer build. I would reccomend a condi druid to focus on dmg more and offensive support rather than sacrifice stats for not such a big profit. That also means it fits a different role and a different style if that’s what you are after.