Guild Wars 2

I’ve been planning on trying out a Druid build that makes use of the Water, Frost, and Nature spirits as well as a couple of Glyphs. If you look closely, all spirits have synergy with the Druid line, ESPECIALLY Water and Nature. After the Nature’s vengeance buff, the regen and might applied by Water and Frost is actually decent, so I thought I’d give them a chance in making a thematic Druid build. After toying with it a bit, I’m thinking Live Vicariously and healing in general is going to make this build pretty fun.

Spirits are squishy, even with the trait, but Water will be healing the other two (and me) with regeneration and Nature will just pulse aoe heals which will also keep my spirit buddies and I ok for longer. Even though I’ll only get heals from LV with the pulsing Nature Spirit heal and the on hit Water spirit heal, it should add up to a fair bit since it’ll be on top of Regen and Nature spirit. Of course, I have to be in a group for the Water Spirit procs to count for anything but my pet. Additionally, I will be able to sustain my spirits and my pet through the use of Staff and Celestial Transform mode, proccing LV like mad hopefully.

So obviously I’ve taken Nature Magic and Druid, but what’s the other line? I’m thinking Beastmastery, all top line. With a Hawk or an Eagle my pet can be putting out decent DPS while having a 4-ish second cooldown aoe blind and single target weakness spike. Mitigation is cool! Fact. All of the bonus stats (especially crit damage and toughness) will really help my pet be a strong ally, which I will be healing constantly due to its value in this concept. The aoe taunt will also be pretty nice for getting any trash away from my spirits or me. One final thing. Fortifying Bond, Nature’s Vengeance, and Frost Spirit can equate to 15 stacks of might for my pet so long as we both stay in range of the spirit. It’ll get three, I’ll get three, and it’ll get a bonus three because of Fortifying Bond. Tested this a while ago and it leads to a pretty strong pet, even though it’s tough as hell to keep you both in range. While I mostly tend to my spirits and my pet, he should hopefully be hitting like a truck to make up for me at least a little. Don’t think this little trick really needs to be nerfed due to how hard it is to make happen, and how counterable it is (run away from spirit or kill it).

Anyways, just a concept I found fun. Definitely not too viable, but I suppose it could be alright as a bunker build. No? Ok.

It’s really early and my communication skills may not be on par, but here’s my best explanation for how this build works.

Water spirit pulses aoe regen to sustain you, your pet, your Frost Spirit, and your Nature Spirit and will occasionally proc a heal for your pet and any other allies you have. Your Nature Spirit does the same, but with actual pulse healing which stacks with the regen and procs Live Vicariously. With one other ally around to cap the targets this’ll lead to a fair amount of passive healing.

Actively you will be healing your pet, spirits, and any other a allies you have around to help keep them healthy and give yourself back even more health with the heals themselves and Live Vicariously Procs.

The top line of Beastmastery plus a Hawk or an Eagle makes a for a hard hitting ally that provides a lot of mitigation with spammable blind and weakness and an occasional taunt. Due to how Frost Spirit’s might application applies twice to your pet if you also get the might thanks to Fortifying Bond, your pet can have up to 15 stacks of might on at all times with just this spirit. If it crits – which is very likely – with all that might and maybe a frost spirit proc it’ll mean a fair amount of hurt. You yourself won’t be doing too much DPS with the staff, but with your pet on roids and you with a passive 3 might and an occasional Frost Spirit proc you should do alright.

Anyways, there you go.

Edit: I think I’ll be taking Glyph of Tides and the Glyph of Equality in my other two slots. Mostly if I’m playing it as a bunker build or a lockdown-ish one. With Ancient seeds you can chain Equality into Tides to Daze, knock people out of a capture point, and thanks to Tides hitting a Dazed target, force those hit to sit on the sidelines for up to 5 seconds with Ancient Seeds.

All that healing will also increase your astral force so you can enter the avatar state more frequently.

I am interested to see how effective spirit druids are, especially with the recent buff. Sadly I don’t think I’ll be able to play this weekend as my computer is still quite dead, so others will have to test it.