Guild Wars 2

Would be great if people could share their experiences in the raid as healing druids. Please share gear and utility skills, and impressions.

Personally i had success with nesrly full zealot. It doest look like we need the extra vitality in the first boss as if someone misses the circle ur raid takes a hit % based on max hp and not a set damage number? Also, did u notice any difference with healing vs zerker druid, i hear some claim that healing can be done in zerk gear, to me that says the entire raid group didnt take to much dmg, how true is it?

I found sitting in staff being a thing also thanks to great AF regen from traited healing spring and signet of the wild (tho maybe filling a utility slot wit it is lazy play). Im unsure whst was better vs elite spirit and glyph, perhaps the elite glyph is better for burst healing if someone messes up, your thoughts on traited elite spirit?

I was pretty much ok with just using CA form skill 4 and 3, while at times i was using 1 when sitting at range in circle, your experiences here?

i’ll just say the More Squishy you are , the more time you spend with Staff out and the more CAF you need to use , so effectively that is a dps loss for the druid unless its a Condi/viper druid with a Stone spirit , (this is where Natures vengence comes in handy as it can pulse boons onto more than 5 players alternating between applications)
the traited elite nature spirit mm not so much its a pip heal it will scale with Minor druid traits but it generaly will only counter bleed stacks or some poison untill its cleansed , you could take this nature spirit traited and then the comp can go more offensive but not more Squishy so you can still effectively maintain hp through the staff without loosing too much damage.

it could be done with zerker gear but i feel that it takes too much away from the dps up time on the druids second weapon set meaning that spending 90% of the raid on staff makes the second set worthless and that in turn makes the Zerker gear not worth it, as staff does not damage fast enough or have high enough co-eds.

so in my conclusion i’d prefer a druid with condi set up and support with Daze /Kd pets , like a Pink MoA this lets you take some time out of staff and use a Sword+dagger to apply stacks then swap back to staff which maintains the condis through traits , this way there is no Dps loss and also brings more CC.

though i get you , its a massive Balancing act .

i didn’t get the chance last night to join my guilds raid attempt but they got to the third phase it was down to 10% with ample time left but they wiped as too many deaths they started to res and go into insta-death , as they didnt have enough damage reduction/health sustain which could be gained from using said Traited Nature spirit with a decent amount of healing power , ontop of that using a Stone spirit will reduce damage over all , improving the healing so you won’t need to go All out healing power but could manage to effectively use 500-700healing power.

the glyphs are defo Burst healing and quick condi removal when traited with Cultivated Synergy and Verdant Etching , though they offer no sustained healing in between cooldowns , if the condi gear stat has medium to low crits instead of Sharpen edges use the trappers expertise for healing spring so you’d get perma regen and open up lots of healing sustain between that and Nature spirit , you shouldn’t need to use So many glyphs , so often and would improve your chances of being able to use the Damage weapon set then swap back to staff.

nacario.9417:

Would be great if people could share their experiences in the raid as healing druids. Please share gear and utility skills, and impressions.

Personally i had success with nesrly full zealot. It doest look like we need the extra vitality in the first boss as if someone misses the circle ur raid takes a hit % based on max hp and not a set damage number? Also, did u notice any difference with healing vs zerker druid, i hear some claim that healing can be done in zerk gear, to me that says the entire raid group didnt take to much dmg, how true is it?

I found sitting in staff being a thing also thanks to great AF regen from traited healing spring and signet of the wild (tho maybe filling a utility slot wit it is lazy play). Im unsure whst was better vs elite spirit and glyph, perhaps the elite glyph is better for burst healing if someone messes up, your thoughts on traited elite spirit?

I was pretty much ok with just using CA form skill 4 and 3, while at times i was using 1 when sitting at range in circle, your experiences here?

I ran a mix of clerics and zerk gear. with food I had about 1k healing power plus modifiers and the heals where good but not as high as they could have been. I think I may add on more healing power and keep the modifiers. we got the boss down to about 20% but kept hitting the enrage timer.

I think the heals are good enough at around 1k healing power but there’s no harm in overhealing and the group may be able to go more offensive if you’re able to keep them topped off.

Prophet.1584:

nacario.9417:

Would be great if people could share their experiences in the raid as healing druids. Please share gear and utility skills, and impressions.

Personally i had success with nesrly full zealot. It doest look like we need the extra vitality in the first boss as if someone misses the circle ur raid takes a hit % based on max hp and not a set damage number? Also, did u notice any difference with healing vs zerker druid, i hear some claim that healing can be done in zerk gear, to me that says the entire raid group didnt take to much dmg, how true is it?

I found sitting in staff being a thing also thanks to great AF regen from traited healing spring and signet of the wild (tho maybe filling a utility slot wit it is lazy play). Im unsure whst was better vs elite spirit and glyph, perhaps the elite glyph is better for burst healing if someone messes up, your thoughts on traited elite spirit?

I was pretty much ok with just using CA form skill 4 and 3, while at times i was using 1 when sitting at range in circle, your experiences here?

I ran a mix of clerics and zerk gear. with food I had about 1k healing power plus modifiers and the heals where good but not as high as they could have been. I think I may add on more healing power and keep the modifiers. we got the boss down to about 20% but kept hitting the enrage timer.

I think the heals are good enough at around 1k healing power but there’s no harm in overhealing and the group may be able to go more offensive if you’re able to keep them topped off.

Then id rather keep them alive/relaxed than me doing a lil more dps. Staff zealot set is decent dmg aswell.

We had a squad consisting of 2 condi eng, 2 heralds, 1 warri for aggro keep, 1 chrono, 1 thief, 1 reaper and 2 druids. The other druid ran clerics and I kinda experimented with the builds.
We didnt had any problems with the dps, entered his last phase with 2min+ on the timer pretty consistent but never cleared it.
First I ran the standart Spotter ranger build with zerker Marksmanship/Skirmishing/Beastmastery and bow+sword/axe but was told to switch to druid after 2 runs. 2 Clerics kinda overhealed it, so I went with Zerker Druid with bow/staff at the end.
For utility I used the glyph heal,frost spirit, pushback glyph for the red thingies, dps glyph and the elite glyph for mostly grace of the land stacking.
What did you guys used for runes? I put druids into my clerics but have a hard time telling if they’re optimal or not.

Melancholy.9321:

We had a squad consisting of 2 condi eng, 2 heralds, 1 warri for aggro keep, 1 chrono, 1 thief, 1 reaper and 2 druids. The other druid ran clerics and I kinda experimented with the builds.
We didnt had any problems with the dps, entered his last phase with 2min+ on the timer pretty consistent but never cleared it.
First I ran the standart Spotter ranger build with zerker Marksmanship/Skirmishing/Beastmastery and bow+sword/axe but was told to switch to druid after 2 runs. 2 Clerics kinda overhealed it, so I went with Zerker Druid with bow/staff at the end.
For utility I used the glyph heal,frost spirit, pushback glyph for the red thingies, dps glyph and the elite glyph for mostly grace of the land stacking.
What did you guys used for runes? I put druids into my clerics but have a hard time telling if they’re optimal or not.

I ran Monk runes, i’d rather have the flat 10% buff to heals than an occasional spike to HP. I ran all spirits except for my heal, I ran the glyph heal, and that actually worked pretty well.

Done, without Druid. https://youtu.be/QDqsoMFUFU0

Sicarius.4639:

Done, without Druid. https://youtu.be/QDqsoMFUFU0

yerp well done to them , proving that Dedicated healers are not required just Enough support/heal skills no matter the Class used , though druids will still be Useful as Viper+sinister condi/supporters with the sun spirit+glyph of enpowerment.

Our guild made did a scouting attempt to learn the mechanics, and we did alright even if we didn’t actually beat the vale guard. Most people were super casual so the majority was still in exotics with some ascended trinkets. We started off with 2 druids. One in full clerics and me in zerk/zealots with clerics accessories. Made it through the first phases on our first attempt. On the last vale guard, our cleric’s druid had to swap to magi’s because his toughness was aggroing the boss.

At that point we hit the DPS check and couldn’t get past the 2nd half of Vale Guardian without either wiping to the AOEs or hitting the enrage timer. At that point, our healbot druid switched to PS warrior, but that still wasn’t enough DPS.

Initial conclusions:

You only need 1 druid. 2 is nice so that people can learn the mechanics in the beginning without dying, but once people have it down, you only need 1 druid max.

Clerics/magi’s druid is the simplest one to play. Just focus on heals, buffs, and not dying. However it’s dependent on your team having enough DPS in the end. If you don’t have enough DPS, you can’t afford to have 1 guy sit around and spam heals.

Zealot druid is a lot more difficult but more fun to play. More engaging since you have multiple things go focus on. Healing, swapping to dps set when you see your team is at good health, etc. Definitely more versatile since you can still output some decent damage when not healing.

I don’t think you really need 1k healing power. I had more zerker gear than zealots gear so my healing power was only around 850~ and it was fine up to the end where it was more of a lack of DPS and coordination than anything else that caused us to wipe.

Again, our teamcomp wasn’t ideal and it was a casual run. We had 4 rangers, some were running bears. More exotics than ascended gear. At most 2 condi dealers, sometimes not even then. Making it to the last phase of the vale guardian was easy enough, just getting enough DPS wasn’t.

Got the first boss down today,

I was running full exotic clerics (ooh I’m a sinner), Staff and longbow. Had water runes on and some water sigil and another crappy one.

I used healing spring although now I regret not using the glyph, frost spirit, Glyph of empowerment and glyph of the tides for the knock back. Use the nature spirit too.

A few traits I found really super dope were Quick draw (Had to get spotter up for the group), quickdraw can really nuke out some healing when kitten hits the fan because you blow avatar, use one 4 or 3 or w/e then its cooldown is super small.
search and rescue was pretty handy in nature magic and invigorating bond had a nice dump heal too.
Celestial shadow was really strong, I had enough heals so this was good to provide some quickness uptime and we didnt have a chrono. Grace of the land is almost a must have, blow you avatar 4 and bam, 15% more damage for everyone around you.

Hope that helps a little, I’ll try and update after the next boss tomorrow.

Had like 40 seconds left on the enrage timer too

nacario.9417:

your thoughts on traited elite spirit?

You don’t need to trait for the elite spirit at all imho, unless you find that the raid lacks stability and that pulsing stability is crucial (shouldn’t be). I’d say that if you want to use the trait, you should be using it because of the other spirits.

The elite glyph is for burst heals. It all depends on the encounter, you can’t really say one is better than the other.