Guild Wars 2

Ohoi ohoi! I gots 2 WvW havocing videos to share with you lads and ladies! We have had a staff tempest running with us lately, but sadly he is going to take a break from the game soon which means I need to step up my healing game. We don’t run any heavies, so this is not your usual GWEN setup, but a rather uhh.. Kity squishy group.

To take over our tempest’s healing duties, I crafted some new ascended gear and I’d like to hear some feedback about my build: I chose a mixture of clerics and serkers, I need to be able to finish people on my own too (Preferably by actually dealing damage to them and not by boring them to death via bunkering down too hard). I’m aware there is massive amount of projectile hate going on in WvW at the moment, but I picked LB anyways for the sake of being able to keep on eye on the HP bars, enemies/our movement and calling targets. Any tweaks, tips, suggestions?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqA1CitCCOsActgl9Ab52FAObPxhy1TD+tWX/rlMtzA-TVSBABZt/gHPCgrUGAwRAIMleOqEEPdBfq+jFXAgNDCA3YDYbbrZtpSBE4yI-w

Your only source of fury is Clarion Bond, 20 sec every 30 sec, the entire Marksmanship line (with remorsless) is pretty much wasted in my opinion. You probably took the line to increase your Critical Chance, but you could find other ways to go. Sigil of Rage is not very good and what would be the second sigil on LB ?

You have no cleans outside CA but you probably deal with it. If you’re opened to change one line and may be one or two utilities we could suggest you some new builds i guess, keeping the idea (damage, toughness, healing and boon duration),
It’s doable with HOT stats.

Nice vids

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqA1CitCCOsActgFGB75JMsaZwN1paXlJc9tCAl480A-T1SBQBrSphZUCCgjAA+0BUuHAACVX5P7PMxLBQYUmhHNBHUliAAIA7cnBgf+zf+zf+zu5O/5Pv5PLFQgLjA-w

Oh snap! That was actually my mistake, I was fooling around with the editor and copypasted the wrong link, sorry for the confusion and thank you for pointing that out! Instead of Remorseless it should have been Lead the Wind :x

Outside of Clarion Bond I’m relying on my party to provide fury, I picked the Rage sigils for some faster pew pew and CA healing really. Due me being quite far away from the rest of my party I suppose it’s not the best choise, even though occasionally my pet picks fury from them and I get it via Heal as One. Any suggestions to replace those sigils? Condis haven’t been a big problem unless I get focused really hard, but I guess that might change once our tempest is gone.

Remorseless wouldn’t be terrible if you swap to a tiger for smaller fights.
It’s f2 attack packs a pretty decent punch with that +25% opening strike damage. Even better when sic em is off cooldown.

Tiger tends to melt in group fights though, even if its just small groups. I wouldn’t recommend it outside of 1vs1.

With the build i posted above, the idea (it’s an exemple) is to slighty reduce your healing power (but keeping a good amount to really heal you mates) to increase your damage (critical chance and ferocity) and boon duration, keeping the same toughness (more healing with sraff, more damage with LB). You can mix some stats in a better way.

With Skirmishing line and altruism runes (and the concentration sigils, it’s an expensive option) you’ll be perma fury, and you’ll have double pew pew with Quick Draw, and a bit more might stacking.

New one : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWTnUqA1CitCCOsActgl9Ab52FAObPxhy1TD+tWX/rlMtzA-T1CBQBJUliAcEA+wDAAQ7PAK1VEjSs8oLAAXCAsoM4RKBZlSjAAIA7cnpzdG4n/8n/8n/sb+zf+zb+zSBE4yI-w

Didn’t change anything but few stats, runes and sigils :
- Crusader coat and leggins + 2 zealots rings to increase your damage ( 33% critical chance without fury and 176 critical damage)
- Sigils of accuracy to replace sigils of rage
- Runes of altruism, second source of fury and might stacking (wich benefit to your party)

I tried the tiger for one evening but I have to agree with Umbra here, it’s just too squishy for bigger fights.

Thank you for the build suggestions Borya, will give those a go as well and see how it goes.

It’s just personal preference, but I wouldn’t take sic ‘em any more. I used to always take it, but there are so many awesome options these days I think it’s a little lackluster. I couldn’t list a replacement suggestion without basically naming every skill we have… even untraited stuff like spike trap, GoE, GoT, QZ, LR… All kinds of good stuff, since you already have tons of swiftness and regen.

And another personal preference, I nearly always take quickdraw. I would go so far as to say LB/staff isn’t worth running without it. I’d drop MM and LtW and rely on QD to buff your LB skills. (And that could lead to a traited spike trap or even HS if your group needs it.)

The reason I refuse to run without QD is because it’s both offensive and defensive depending on what you need. Offense, you can double up on RF, barrage, lunar impact, Natural Converg. if you’re cleaving rezzes… I’ll even use vine surge twice sometimes especially if someone is already disabled. For defense, you can double up on AG, SC, HS, or Rejuv. tides.

Edit: One final thought on your sic ‘em, I’m currently using untraited LR and SoR because druids are surprisingly weak against immob. Right now your only way out is CA or VS which can be a death sentence if someone is paying attention to you.

I love these roaming builds. I have a typical ‘kill fast and avoid being killed’ mindset when playing WvW. That said, what other classes would benefit from such a high mobility setup? I would assume that certain classes would fare weaker when running together. For example, reapers or dragonhunters.

Fluff, every now and then I switch it to something else but I always end up going back to Sic ‘Em purely because there’s just way too much stealthing going on in our tier and in EU roaming scene in general. I mean, looking at our team: druid, thieves, mesmers, scrappers..! The downside is we struggle with stomps as it is with our group combo due to lack of stability and having downed enemies getting stealthed is just making it worse, thus Sic ’Em is more or less stuck in my utility bar for now.

I switched to QD for the rest of the week and it is nice indeed. I’m a bit torn about this because with that change I lost Clarion Bond and I also miss the piercing bit from Lead the Wind. I don’t miss getting stuff reflected back at me when someone places a reflection wall behind my target tho!

Gannicus, I just think everyone should play whatever they feel like playing, so we usually end up with odd outside of meta combos, which is tricky to pull when you face meta groups but it can be tons of fun. Reaper is a total beast when paired with a druid, but sadly it takes a certain kind of mentality to run reaper in small scale.. Which is that you don’t mind getting left behind and get sacrificed for the greater good. DHs have a bit more mobility but usually after few weeks we find our DHs taking a break from the game or switching classes. I started calling it a judge curse because it happens every single time :<

FrouFrou.4958:

Fluff, every now and then I switch it to something else but I always end up going back to Sic ‘Em purely because there’s just way too much stealthing going on in our tier and in EU roaming scene in general. ;

Yeh i agree in the EU scene the amount of ghost thieves or their kind is astounding. Most of them they are not even good players but because of the lack of any effective counterplay against stealth they can do whatever they please with no counter.

So although i agree with Fluff, Sic’em is a no-surprisingly very bad design that most of the times fail to do it’s function, is better than have nothing against all those long stealth classes. Same as Ancient Seeds.

Now going back to the OP, i just jumped the video forward but i didn’t see anything interesting or out of the ordinary. Mostly you running with a group and the enemy players ignoring you. And finishing downed.

Yeh mostly what the druid is capable of. Nothing havocing there.
If you want to spread havoc just go with a condi reaper and plant yourself in the middle of a zerg while spinning around the sickle or use a hamrev with hammer 5 and 2 to instakill all the mesmers or eles in a group.. Druid has some gimmicks but they aren’t really that effective.

I’m not quite sure why you are so fixated on the word havoc there. It isn’t supposed to be the kind of omg look how amazeballs I am 1 shotting people, but sort of look how much stupid stuff we do and how much fun we have while doing utterly stupid stuff as a group. I don’t do duels nor GvGs anymore so I picked the havoc word there because well uh, that’s what we do and havoc is what smaller groups do? Flip stuff and kill stuff, occasionally we also run off cliffs but that’s another story for some other day. Nothing to do with me insta killing anyone, because that’s not what I am even aiming to do, I’m just leading my guild to adventures and to be able to do that better, I am asking for feedback on how to change my build for the better so I can get the best out of this gimmicky class.

Fluffball.8307:

It’s just personal preference, but I wouldn’t take sic ‘em any more. I used to always take it, but there are so many awesome options these days I think it’s a little lackluster. I couldn’t list a replacement suggestion without basically naming every skill we have… even untraited stuff like spike trap, GoE, GoT, QZ, LR… All kinds of good stuff, since you already have tons of swiftness and regen.

And another personal preference, I nearly always take quickdraw. I would go so far as to say LB/staff isn’t worth running without it. I’d drop MM and LtW and rely on QD to buff your LB skills. (And that could lead to a traited spike trap or even HS if your group needs it.)

The reason I refuse to run without QD is because it’s both offensive and defensive depending on what you need. Offense, you can double up on RF, barrage, lunar impact, Natural Converg. if you’re cleaving rezzes… I’ll even use vine surge twice sometimes especially if someone is already disabled. For defense, you can double up on AG, SC, HS, or Rejuv. tides.

Edit: One final thought on your sic ‘em, I’m currently using untraited LR and SoR because druids are surprisingly weak against immob. Right now your only way out is CA or VS which can be a death sentence if someone is paying attention to you.

I can vouch for the Quick Draw awesomeness. I’ve grown so attached to it that I feel at a disadvantage when I’m using anything else. Though, to be fair, I also use vanilla Ranger so the extra kiting potential from Swoop x2 makes an insanely huge difference. Same can be said for Hunter’s Shot x2, Point Blank shot x2 or Counterattack x2.

I may be overselling it but I truly feel like QD has got to be in the top 3 best traits that we have. If you can work Skirmishing in to your build, do it just for that trait.

Also, Lightning Reflexes is one of my personal favorite skills in the game across any profession. Not only is it a stunbreak, it’s an evade + Vigor. Being able to stunbreak away from the source of the CC, on top of evading follow up attacks, gaining increased endurance regeneration and ignoring immobilize is amazingly powerful.

Agreed. For me QD is the best trait in the entire game across all professions. It takes your most powerful skill and gives it to you twice. And you get to pick a new “most powerful skill” based on whatever situation you’re in. It’s so good.