I’ve been collecting Celestial trinkets for awhile now, and seem to have a full set. Im closing on having the mats to craft myself some Ascended armor, and was looking to put together a build by which I can have some direction as to which stat set i’d be crafting…
I tested afew builds in the mists, and seems to find this one doing some fairly decent dps, while also giving the support dps boost to a party with average healing. Id like to get some feedback from my fellow druids, as to what your thoughts are, and does this seem like a viable pve build, mainly for fractals/raids.
Since you intend to play a hybrid, I’d say this beforehand.
That concept is not needed in dedicated content. Because you can’t really do anything. The only thing you’ll achieve is helping others.
You won’t be able to heal everyone by yourself – forcing yet another player into defensive stats – making team DPS lower. And so on.
If the build is for only casual runs, Fractals or Open World. Yes, I’d say this build makes sense and might just work well. It has no hard-counter by toughness, it can help party survive, it can adapt to every situation and brings all the support tools PvE expects you to….
Yes, this build is nice. My suggestions would be definitely changing Spike Trap for Glyph of the Tides (for CAF pull + #5 combo) and you might consider taking Axe instead of Sword. Just because it’s a hybrid weapon, helps you with might in that unorganized content (which is most probably your goal anyways) and might end up outDPSing sword in the end. Also: It can be used for tagging mobs with more ease.
You can’t beat celestial if you want to deal both decent damage as well as decent healing, while at the same time having good survivability. I find it the absolute best armor and trinket set for a balanced allround build.
I tend to favor Cultivated Synergy over Primal Echoes unless going for MoC. I realise though that you plan to swap weapons often sine you’re running Quick Draw, and therefore PE may suit your playstyle better.
Since you run traited WHaO, I’d drop Natural Stride for Verdant Etching, and put some glyphs in there. Glyphs are awesome imho. Swap in spirits for boss fights, and go with glyphs for trash. Same with the last druid trait, go with Ancient seeds for trash, and swap in Grace of the Land for bosses if you plan to use your CA skills.
Bristleback is a solid secondary pet, with one of the best bursts of all pets.
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The staff sigils should be switched for something different. Probably accuracy and earth.
Spike trap should be swapped out.
If can afford consider pack runes? But if you want the raw dmg for sword and a high precision rune set for sharpened edges then ya ranger runes probably the best choice.
It provides heavy condition damage with lot’s of heal and group support. So it might provide the roles you are looking for.
It’s great also because you stun and immobilize your targets frequently. That adds some nice synergy to the new available pets, because those have knockdowns!
It’s good in PVP and even better in WvW as a roaming build or for small groups. Healing Trap is the only trap that won’t trigger damage, so together with staff 3 it is a great escape otpion if things go awry. Add beastly warden (I love it) and you almost always get away. :-)
Statwise I use Apothecary, and in WvW Shaman for more Vitality because other than Healing Spring you don’t have much condi removal! I don’t think I would use celestial though, because power, precision and ferocity aren’t much needed in this build.
You won’t be able to heal everyone by yourself – forcing yet another player into defensive stats – making team DPS lower. And so on.
Tragic, on what do you base this? The chosen skills? The chosen traits? The amount of healing power? Or anything else?
Mostly the healing power amount and overall direction of your build.
For example – if you have people on the move, don’t expect to heal them up with druid without Glyph of Unity. That just can’t be done with your amount of healing power.
You went for a mix, which means that once your team needs a dedicated healer or dedicated DPS – you’re out. Of course, you can get 2 hybrids to fill each other but that’s just more unnecessary coordination you might get used to.
Most of what I’m saying is for raids from BWE. You can literally run fractals in full Zerk (even though everything is capped at toughness) instead of condi and still clear lvl 100 without any noticeable trouble (if your party members are experienced).
I’m just pointing this our because you might be forced to get another set of armor or respec later on when Raids hit. Hybrids never had a real place in any game or any content ever. They are just comfortable to be played.
Hybrids never had a real place in any game or any content ever.
That may be more or less accurate for other games when it comes to raiding, bosses that require a minimum of dps and healing done in order to beat the encounter. I wonder if that’s the road Anet will go down though?
Another thing to take into consideration, do you think druids will be required to pump out heals more or less nonstop? If not, one could argue that the huge amount of healing power and the very low damage potential from a pure, maxed out healing build could also be a ‘burden’ to the raid.
Looking forward to see what raids in this game will be like.
Win10 pro | Xeon 5650 @ 4 GHz | R9 280x toxic | 24 Gig Ram | Process Lasso user
DPS is a huge thing in Raids (at least was at 1st boss). You were constantly on the move, 4 people constantly stopped damaging to prevent wipe (Lightning blasts)…
And numerically you need 5100 damage per second throughout the whole fight including split phase, kiting and Lightning wipe prevention just to kill the boss before Enrage.
(that’s if you have 1 person dedicated to healing and none for Aggro management. If you have a tank in group – you need 5700 DPS per person).
And just for demonstration – standard MetaZerk Frost Spotter with ideal immobile rotation holds around 6100 DPS. Without any kiting or damage income (but without any party boosts such as banners, boons, food etc).
In my testing raid group I had – it was a huge difference when I kept increasing everyone’s DPS by 15%, allowing them to take more damage (so they didn’t have to retreat and stop DPSing) and prevented them from dying to unavoidable AoEs.
It provides heavy condition damage with lot’s of heal and group support. So it might provide the roles you are looking for.
It’s great also because you stun and immobilize your targets frequently. That adds some nice synergy to the new available pets, because those have knockdowns!
It’s good in PVP and even better in WvW as a roaming build or for small groups. Healing Trap is the only trap that won’t trigger damage, so together with staff 3 it is a great escape otpion if things go awry. Add beastly warden (I love it) and you almost always get away. :-)
Statwise I use Apothecary, and in WvW Shaman for more Vitality because other than Healing Spring you don’t have much condi removal! I don’t think I would use celestial though, because power, precision and ferocity aren’t much needed in this build.
