Guild Wars 2

Hello,

With the druid changes, is the power druid still viable and useful? I read a lot of guides, including those of Metabattle, but they don’t seem updated. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the current viable builds are Condi ranger/druid and full healing, right?

I wanted to play the power build with longbow and sword, but I don’t know if it’s still useful, with average DPS and healing.

Thanks for your help and have a nice evening.

take a look at quantifies dps charts. Power druid can still be used but condi ranger dps is far higher than both power and condi druid. I don’t think you’ll be kicked from groups or anything but there’s like a 10 or 12k difference in dps between power and condi.

For general open world pvp feel free to run pretty much anything you like lol. There’s no harm in it. Power Druid is still fun to play but is not optimal for things like tier four fractals or raids. Condi ranger/ Druid is the optimal dps build, only being outshined by two professions, ele and Thief.

We’d need to know what content you are concerned about but honestly as long as you know your mechanics and class dynamics you can run everything but raids pretty successfully. I’ve tier four’d fractals on a power Druid countless times and I’m currently running a condi druid (way more dps) but the decision comes down to what you want.

Hello,

Well, I wanted to do fractals and raids with it, but it seems far outclassed by condi builds. I hope they will buff power druids/rangers in a next patch :/

I don’t like Ele and thieves power builds. It seems that condi thieves were buffed, maybe it will be finally good for raids!

Otherwise, I’ll play healer druid, even if I really wanted a build with the longbow. But as you said, condi ranger is just better.

Thanks for your quick answers!

Haku.1648:

Hello,

Well, I wanted to do fractals and raids with it, but it seems far outclassed by condi builds. I hope they will buff power druids/rangers in a next patch :/

I don’t like Ele and thieves power builds. It seems that condi thieves were buffed, maybe it will be finally good for raids!

Otherwise, I’ll play healer druid, even if I really wanted a build with the longbow. But as you said, condi ranger is just better.

Thanks for your quick answers!

I’m right there with ya. Running condi right now because it’s just undeniably better damage. But I’m patiently waiting for my power ranger/Druid buffs.

Power druid is fine. It’s less dps than condi but has more utility in the form of pulls, reflects, better healing, better CA uptime, better fury output (especially if you need to petswap), and can take staff with less dps drop off than condi. Power Druid also loses less dps on moving bosses than condi druid does.

qT actually recommends power druid for all of wing 2 and 3, where you have multiple bosses who move a lot, where reflects and pulls can be valuable, and where condi damage is inferior to power damage.

Hello Shadowlord, thanks for your answer.

With the healing nerfs in Berserker builds, isn’t this build less useful than before? Power druid seems to have low dps and average healing, so their only purpose would be “Grace of the land” after the nerf. I’m a little confused, as you can see.

I thought that those builds were meta before the patch because they run both “Grace of the land” and good healing skills with the druid tree.

Have a nice day.

The healing output is still good enough. Zerker druid could never carry a bad group through healing the way a magi druid could, but if the group knows the encounter and avoids most avoidable damage and uses their own healing well it could and still can provide necessary healing to maintain scholar buffs and give out grace of the land. For higher pressure portions of the fights there are a few strategies it can use to amp its healing output up temporarily (camping celestial avatar longer, using the elite glyph in avatar etc).

For Fractals zerk druid can still bring enough healing to overheal certain fight mechanics like Old Tom and otherwise brings enough healing to keep a decent group topped off (though many pugs will make it challenging by either running too far away or getting too close and triggering agony). While being able to bring lots of useful utility without gimping it’s dps as much as Condi Druid would.

All that said Zerk druid still brings what it always did, solid utility, buff output, and access to enough healing for good groups. It also should be noted that you shouldn’t zero in on the dps charts but so much, dps on a golem is not always indicative of real world damage output and there are many fights where condi druid’s damage output suffers due to bosses moving out of bonfires, being unable to maintain flanking, or cleansing conditions.

qT talks about a number of these things in their ranger guide so i’ll link it here: http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger

Hey op. So I’ll go into better detail with a response

For general pve content I would strongly urge a condi ranger.

few reasons
1. Dps- condi isn’t just slightly higher then power, it’s significantly higher. In benchmarks done from multiple sources and testing done by myself, condi ranger is among the top five dps builds while power Druid is among the bottom five.

2.the argument on utility. Condi ranger lacks utility this is true. But you still have decent access to cc through your pet and shortbow 3. But power druids only real extra add to utility is CA form and gotl. So if you really feel the need to have those, I. E. Raid party, go condi druid for a slight loss in dps but that added utility to the group that mirrors the utility of power Druid while keeping the dps.

3. Open world pve.. I was a power Druid for quite some time ( I crafted kudzu 3 years ago and had a hard time letting to) and recently switched to condi ranger and I honestly regret not doing it sooner. Open world pve is much more than being able to dish out the damage in a much more engaging rotation. And once again your lack of sustain can be made up for running condi druid at 0 loss to power druids utility

This is just my insight I’m sure people will disagree. But the undeniable fact here is condi has significantly more dps then power at very little loss of utility. Especially if you go condi druid over condi ranger.

Edit

Wanted to address two things. First. I see a lot of people saying that moving mechanics on bosses makes power Druid more viable in certain situations, Ive found from personal experience that the loss of dps from missing aoes isn’t enough to out condi ranger under power Druid, not by a long shot. You can. Still maintain a crazy amount of bleeding stacks from your shortbow and Axe weaponsets unlink with the commonly ran traits, lynx, sharpening stones, flanking. Your dps is still higher then power rangers from what I experienced

The other thing. It is harder to get into condi builds since vipers is gated behind a crafting / currency wall. So you could always power Druid to see how it feels then move on to condi St another time.