[Raids] Zealot alternative
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I mean, anything works in open world. It performs well enough and kills things faster than other healer gear sets. The only place I wouldn’t use it in is Chak Gerent since it’s a pretty hard DPS check.
I use a mix of ascended zealot armor + ascended cleric trinkets (ascended zerker’s trinkets when doing general pve)
In open world, i just slot on full zerk… CAF 4 still heals me to full. Don’t even use staff in open world, unless i go staff/GS for getting around faster.
No surprise that there is no general consensus, it really depends on the raid comp too. That said, if you aren’t a healer & tank in one thing Magi’s armor is totally viable. You will have more healing power than zealots & that does translate to more group dps as some ppl mentioned earlier in the thread. Right now I’m planning to run magi’s armor & staff with cleric trinkets & swap gear as needed to not exceed the toughness of the tank. (probably with zerker pieces) Our druid started out as a condi ranger on the first 2 bosses & then on Sabetha he went zealots + clerics. Still I feel that maximizing healing & buff uptimes is the most important. When you are not in avatar form you should make sure you will have enough energy by the time it comes off CD to reenter it right away & swapping weapons is not great since quick draw works with celestial avatar skills and you don’t want to trigger it prematurely with a weapon swap. It’s all about maximizing grace of the land(and the other buffs in our utility bar) the rest is almost negligible. I guess a longbow or shortbow on swap for breaking & cc-ing is a great idea.
TLDR: Zealots & magi’s are both nearly equally good if you are a dedicated healer, clerics & nomads are also good if you are tanking & healing in one.
I finally tried the raid for 2 hours last night with a terrible PuG and we got the first boss down to 10%. Finished him with a new PuG after ~1 hour today (43 secs left). The mesmer in our group recorded the fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPQ3ERjXHU
I was using exotic magi armor and weapons (the ones you get from AC) + my old zerker trinkets. I only spend 3g on sigils and ~1g on food/utilities (you can use cheaper ones though). This means you can finish the first boss without really spending any gold.
We tried the 2nd boss for another ~2 hours later and got him down to about 25% before people made mistakes. Should be possible to finish him with the gear/build I was using. I would use zerker weapons for this fight though since you don’t need that much healing and more damage.
If anyone is interested I can post the exact gear, build, pets and so on.
It actually hurts when people say hurdur druid is not needed for raids. It’s my only toon (well, I gots level 80 necro but it’s not even geared up) so am I supposed to just.. Not do raids at all then?
And mah baby doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon according to the doctors so I’m tentatively planning on completing this for myself…
Ah, you are running minion master build irl? Gratsu! Soon the forums will be flooded and taken over by Fluffarmy!
Almost every group that has completed the entire wing has used a druid, or you can still run the regular damage rangers. I am just musing on whether after people get good at the encounters whether healing is QoL or would people rather just have more DPS. And I really hope I don’t wind up with that many minions!
the thing about druids is that GoTL is essentially a raid-wide buff. if used properly, a druid should be able to put out enough buffs to essentially be another dps class (e.g. a single class that puts out +15% damage to 8 dps classes is better than having another DPS class, IMO) while also putting out heals that’ll keep dps more reliant.
with that in mind, I’d think a druid will always be worth taking.
Druid main, 80 on all, Legendary ranked, Eternal and all that jazz (I go by Feyris in game)
Keeping the team alive is more important than how much DPS the Druid can put out by itself.
Would you rather the team DPS effectively or worry about their health bar getting low and popping their own heals?Also the buffs to increase damage that the Druid can put out the team, surpasses the Druids possible DPS – BY FAR.
Please correct me if I think about this the wrong way:
- 5 players deals 1000 dps each (including the druid), a total of 5000 dps
- A druid can boost damage by 25% if they bring GoL, glyph and Frost Spirit (although not 100% of the time). Not counting spotter since that depend on the personal crit rate of the other players
- So if druid goes into “healing mode”, and thereby boosts the others to deal 25% more damage each, while dealing 0 dps himself (not counting pet), you have:
- 4 players dealing 1250 dps, 1 player dealing 0 dps, a total of 5000 dps
As I said, please correct me if I think about this the wrong way.
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
Please correct me if I think about this the wrong way:
- 5 players deals 1000 dps each (including the druid), a total of 5000 dps
- A druid can boost damage by 25% if they bring GoL, glyph and Frost Spirit (although not 100% of the time). Not counting spotter since that depend on the personal crit rate of the other players
- So if druid goes into “healing mode”, and thereby boosts the others to deal 25% more damage each, while dealing 0 dps himself (not counting pet), you have:
- 4 players dealing 1250 dps, 1 player dealing 0 dps, a total of 5000 dps
As I said, please correct me if I think about this the wrong way.
A little bit.
If you were playing a DPS zerker druid – you’d deal the same damage as everybody else (which means Spotter, Frost Spirit and Glyph), resulting in the same benefits as Healing Druid. No one forces you into Healing just because you took Druid only for the Empowerment glyph. The only difference is CAF GoL distribution.
The thing is you can keep throwing this buff to 9 people. You cannot say the exact number but if the players are stacked at ranged and melee equally, you can easily buff all of you (while only 9 are dealing damage because you are in CAF).
So if 9 players deal 1000 damage = 9000 altogether
You boost all of them by 15% = 10350 altogether
The difference you created makes up for your personal DPS loss. Which means you want to camp CAF as much as you can.
The only difference is that you can keep people healed while buffing the DPS up. The damage difference in having a healing and DPS druid is almost none.
Also, damage increase calculation
Frost Spirit = 7,5% Zerk
Glyph of Empowerment = 3,75 % Zerk (5% if you count Verdant Etching and GoL synergy)
Grace of the Land = 15% Raw
Spotter = ~8 % Zerk (if not capped on Crit; Less for Conditioners)
“Observe, learn and counter.”
The druid itself also doesn’t deal 0 DPS no matter how kittenty cleric/magi staff DPS is. You also have your pet too which is unaffected by your gear DPS. Now, in scenario where it barely breaks even: what do you lose from it? You’d do the same DPS anyways but you get the QoL from having a druid constantly healing people. People would maintain higher uptime on their scholar and have to worry about their health less allowing to play more aggressively and put out more dps safely.
The druid itself also doesn’t deal 0 DPS no matter how kittenty cleric/magi staff DPS is. You also have your pet too which is unaffected by your gear DPS. Now, in scenario where it barely breaks even: what do you lose from it? You’d do the same DPS anyways but you get the QoL from having a druid constantly healing people. People would maintain higher uptime on their scholar and have to worry about their health less allowing to play more aggressively and put out more dps safely.
It was more in response to Renn (see above) that said that “the buffs to increase damage that the Druid can put out the team, surpasses the Druids possible DPS – BY FAR.” – I’m not sure I agree with that?
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
The druid itself also doesn’t deal 0 DPS no matter how kittenty cleric/magi staff DPS is. You also have your pet too which is unaffected by your gear DPS. Now, in scenario where it barely breaks even: what do you lose from it? You’d do the same DPS anyways but you get the QoL from having a druid constantly healing people. People would maintain higher uptime on their scholar and have to worry about their health less allowing to play more aggressively and put out more dps safely.
It was more in response to Renn (see above) that said that “the buffs to increase damage that the Druid can put out the team, surpasses the Druids possible DPS – BY FAR.” – I’m not sure I agree with that?
It depends on your build. But for the average healer build with healing power it would be more raid DPS to stay in astral form.
(edited by TurtleDragon.3108)
Some feedback again:
Added a few Berserker pieces instead of Magi ones. Anything above 1k healing power feels like an overkill. The extra DPS should help a little. The glyph build feels much better for the Gorseval fight.
Some general stuff:
The difficulty is great. The Vale Guardian can be done by PuGs without any big problems imo. 2nd one is a little more difficult. Didn’t have the time to try the 3rd boss yet but I heard it’s easier than Gorseval.
There’s just one thing I really don’t like:
It takes forever to find a group for anything after the 1st boss. This is no problem for raid guilds but for solo raiders like me it is. I didn’t find a single group in over 4 hours so I just created my own. Sadly the average skill level in the group was… unexpectedly low. A lot of players had problems with basic mechanics like dodging, pulling and gliding. Disappointing but I hope it will get better once more people get past the 1st boss.
The druid itself also doesn’t deal 0 DPS no matter how kittenty cleric/magi staff DPS is. You also have your pet too which is unaffected by your gear DPS. Now, in scenario where it barely breaks even: what do you lose from it? You’d do the same DPS anyways but you get the QoL from having a druid constantly healing people. People would maintain higher uptime on their scholar and have to worry about their health less allowing to play more aggressively and put out more dps safely.
It was more in response to Renn (see above) that said that “the buffs to increase damage that the Druid can put out the team, surpasses the Druids possible DPS – BY FAR.” – I’m not sure I agree with that?
You would need to calculate out the maximum amount a viable heal build could do vs the optimal zerk/condition builds do to really figure it out.
I have no doubt that the dps builds will be putting out much more damage than the druid ever could and buffing that much higher dps at the cost of the druid’s personal damage (pet will still be attacking) is probably a large net gain.
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I hope i never get some of you in a raid. There is literally no reason for a druid to run nomad’s or clerics. Their DPS DOES help and if every other kitten class can run a glass build including condi ranger there’s no excuses for a druid to not do the same.
Running zealot’s in no way affects your ability to heal or give party buffs. You also contribute far far more by doing some dps while you heal.
As for alternatives, there aren’t any that are good. Everything else is just subpar. run cleric’s until you can get zealots and never touch nomad’s.
No offense, but so they could say of you, by sticking to dead-old ideas that personal DPS is what matters for every person in the Raid. ANet never intended the game to be so DPS-centric, therefore the multiple stat combos. If anything, DPS remains as important as ever-and grace of the land helps on this regard-but at least other options are given a place, however small; why is this so wrong, so as to warrant the belittling attitude, especially since some of these players have completed the Raid with a “bad” healing power gear Druid?
Not that Zealot’s must be bad, but it’s none of your business if they prefer Cleric’s, especially since players are doing well with this supposed “sub-optimal” gear (in your eyes.) I wish that people stopped proclaiming that maximum, PERSONAL DPS is what matters in GW2 for EVERY player if they are “any good” (or else they are being “carried”.) Was never true-only practical for speed-runners. And while I like the idea behind Zealot’s, can’t argue with it being too expensive for the ultimate group benefit provided.
@Star Ace
In this regard you might be quite right and maybe not that right at the same time.
It’s true ANet didn’t intend their game to be all about personal DPS but people are usually talking about efficiency.
While it’s true that you simply do not need benefit from Zealot, you cannot deny that it offers a tiny bit of extra DPS for the raid (Which is like 2 seconds advantage from a whole fight).
It’s good to know that fact but as I keep repeating – it’s simply not worth the gold. Forums are supposed to offer you all kinds of intel. Efficiency, optimal choices and casual comfort suggestions as well.
One way or another – if your raid needs a dedicated healer – the raid is already doing bad. So with that in mind – you might as well try to babysit them with the stat that allows it in the best manner – cleric.
At the end of the day it’s all about what do you need. Not what others think you need. And that is individual for every single group you encounter.
“Observe, learn and counter.”
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