Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen discussion bandied about of a regeneration build for raids that is particularly effective at Matthias, Xera and maybe some other bosses. As I understand it, it is designed for the purpose of increasing the druid’s boon duration to the point where its regeneration will control over the regen the chrono makes. As far as the build goes, it appears there’s some confusion.

Legion of Doom guild advertises its regen druid build as magi’s with monk runes, magi’s trinkets, minstrel backpiece, and axe/warhorn + staff with sigils of transference and concentration and using the fern hound pet. qT doesn’t specifically mention it, as far as I can tell. There are some reddit posts that also mention a variant that uses exotic trinkets and platinum doubloons without the concentration sigil on the weapons.

Can some more experienced druid raiders help me sort out which is optimal here? I also have two additional questions. First, with the new magnanimous tuning crystals now available that increases boon duration, could or should that be incorporated as the standard utility consumable instead of furious tuning crystals? Second, to the extent that there is an optimal regen druid build, should that build only be used for bosses like Matthias and Xera where one would run healing spring for the heal, and if so, what bosses, and should a different build be used for others?

Thanks for the help!

I believe there are three main “regen” druid builds, all with their pros and cons. As you say, they all aim to have >10s regen sources to outprioritise the chrono (Traited healing spring is >10s at 66.67% boon duration). I’ll try to detail them below:

Build 1) Zero-toughness with concentration sigil

Build link.

• Full Magi’s with concentration sigils on either one or both weapons. The idea is that you simply drop your healing spring after proccing the sigil of concentration (Easily visible as an hourglass icon on your buff bar). I’m not sure why you’d need a Minstrel’s backpiece, as your base boon duration is already 35% (+33% from the sigil) = 68%.
• You can run the new magnanimous tuning crystals for an extra ~12% boon duration but it’s not required.
• Optimal when tanking is an issue / you want to avoid toughness, basically only really Xera/Deimos where this could be an issue. High vitality isn’t fantastic when faced with % based mechanics though (VG greens, Matthias Hadouken etc).
• You only really need a sigil of concentration on one set (i.e staff), just be mindful which set you’re on when swapping.

Build 2) Zero-toughness with no weapon swapping

Build link.

• Similar to build #1, just doesn’t require micromanagement of sigil of concentration. You gain water sigils however you give up quite a lot of healing power.
• You could take platinum doubloons instead of water sigils, allowing you to take an ascended Magi’s amulet. Effectively trading a water sigil for some healing power.
• Overall I don’t really recommend this one, it’s not too hard to keep an eye on the sigil procs.
• Note: You MUST use magnanimous tuning crystals for this to work properly.

Build 3) Maximum healing with no regard for toughness

Build link.

• For maximum healing output where there’s no toughness tank and/or the druid will be tanking.
• Don’t need to worry about weapon swapping.
• In my opinion this unarguably the optimal healing build for Matthias, Cairn, Samarog, Sloth etc where toughness is a non-issue..
• It works fine for tanking VG/Xera/Deimos since you’re basically unkillable, but PUGs probably aren’t too open to the idea of a druid tanking.
• Note: You MUST use magnanimous tuning crystals for this to work properly. Also it assumes full healing power infusions.

With all three of these builds you shouldn’t need the fern hound pet unless you’re kiting far away from the boss (i.e Cairn/Deimos). In which case it can be useful as a regen source (It’s regen scales with both your own and the pet’s boon duration).

Hope that helps!

Going to talk about fury, pets and weapons before I talk about regen. Trust me, it matters. Tiger is the “traditional” meta raid pet for fury although it isn’t necessarily needed anymore. FGJ and SoI are enough to cover that. Have a power PS without FGJ instead of condi PS? You need some kind of fury. Ranger warhorn 5 fury is good enough if you quickdraw it a few times and let the Chrono SoI it. Need to bring a longbow for extra knockbacks? Can’t bring a warhorn. Need extra CC cause your team is slow? Double CC pets. Need pulls and reflects? Gotta bring an off-hand axe. Furthermore, some regen druids don’t bring a staff. This is for experienced groups where staff is enough. I bring regen+staff most of the time. Even as a staff druid, regen can be important as minstrel Chronos can prevent your CA build up if their healing is too high and pressure is too low which can greatly reduce gotl uptime. The two durations of regen to beat are 6 seconds (minimum to get past phantasms regen) or ideally 10 seconds (SoI).

All of this matters because there are 3 sources of regen and depending on what weapons/pets you need to bring, you need to swap stuff up.

1: Traited healing springs. The trait is MANDATORY as without the trait, the base regen is 3 seconds. With the trait it’s 6 seconds. Requires 67% boon duration to beat the chrono’s 10 seconds. 35% from trait/rune. Sigil of concentration “required” here. It’s possible without but so much stats are wasted. Mag tuning crystals are a nice boost. Last resort as this means less gotl uptime compared to the other sources BUT it also clears conditions well.

2: Traited warhorn is 10 seconds base. Any extra boon duration is about keeping as much uptime on regen as possible for when you can’t swap to warhorn. Or go try hard with the rotation and get double quickdraws while timing CA. However, try to focus too much on quickdraw here means gotl uptime also suffers.

3: Fern hound is the only pet I know of that uses your boon duration/healing power for the regen effect/boons in general. It’s base is 10 seconds. Already meets SoI at base and beats it with the nature magic/monk rune 35% bonus duration. Can only bring if fury/cc are covered. No extra boon duration is required as you basically spam F2. I find this gives the potential for best gotl uptime as the rotation is stupidly easy and you don’t need to worry about quickdraw.

So, for Sloth, I go Sword/Axe (don’t want that main-hand axe to kill my slubs)+Staff. Pulls/reflects ftw. Trait healing springs for the condi clear and regen. Tiger for fury because of axe instead of wh and wyvern for CC.

Matthias. Double CC pets because getting sacced is really bad. Warhorn and healing springs are both brought. Condi clear is nice. People also move around so much that I find both are needed to keep regen up and both might/fury suffer in this fight without warhorn.

Xera. Healing springs for condi clear and it covers your regen too. For inexperienced groups, you’re going to want to camp staff the majority of the time which makes warhorn tricky. I still bring it because the splits and moving around phases are made easier with warhorn as not everyone will stand on the healing springs and you should save it for condi clears.

Everything else, bring fern hound if fury is covered for easy mode gotl. Bring warhorn if the group might is low. Also if you just get bored and want to sword auto/try-hard. Both fury and regen happen with wh so bring a dps/cc pet. Bring healing springs for condi clear and make sure to trait it. I have sigil of concentration on my staff/warhorn regardless of which builds I’m running. Helps with might, fury, protection and regen uptime and 1 sigil slot for 33% boon duration is just way better than any other combo of seriously wasted stats.