Guild Wars 2

hi, first want to make clear that the trait build and secondary weapon choice are optional, this topic is mean to focus on the armor stats, i chosed GS just to fill a wep there but it could be any weapon to fill the main damaging weapon

anyway according to dulfy then the best recomended setup for raid druid would be zealot armor/weapon with cleric trinkets and monk runes wich then would give stats similar to these http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWBWYEM4o6VNr+06KBpOmw13KAA-TlCBABVcIAeUJoW7PImyPU1BA9kittenjAgqq/knmg9fAAAA-w

now the 2 main issues i see with this build is first, ascended armor is too way lenghty to craft to use on only a single aspect of the game, second is that being zealot makes it atleast 130g more expensive to craft that any other ascended armor because of the watchwork mechanism required for the insignia

thats why messing around with the builder i came with this alternative http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWBWYEM4o6VNr+06KBpOmw13KAA-TlCBABVcIAeUJoW7PImyvKV/BVdAQfBAA4IAknmg9fAAAA-w

as you can see, it posses the exact numbers in power, armor, vit and crit %, the most noticable difference is that it sacrifices 300 healing power.

however it still remains above the 1k healing power (with staff), and if you compare the healing numbers the difference is altmost nule

the main benefit is that it adds 21% ferocity to contribute even more with the dps race check of vale guardian and the next boss after it and makes it more atractive for daily pve use, and most important it saves you that extra 100g gold in crafting the zealot insignias

i would love to hear opinions on this stats alternative

I personally think it’s pointless to mix in Clerics and Zerker gear together. I’d recommend a Magi/Cleric’s mix if you are concerned about cost. Zealot’s isn’t economically efficient and staff’s power scaling is so bad that it’s not worth gearing for damage as a healer druid. It’s awful for general open world PvE gameplay, but I just use my zealots, zerker or viper set there.

My personal mix:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBmYD7keVomVsZFwVFgoVsYIYwb1waZ1p1pHwEAWXNgSe2DA-ThSBABWcQAcUJIoq/k1+Dhp8YZlYCqD4UND6fFAA4BAQKA/GDA-e

its mean to use a secondary weapon for the dps weapon, leaving staff only for heal, if you check the builds i posted above i used zealot for the staff, but berserker for the secondary weapon, never intended to do dmg with staff, just heal and switch to secondary weapon for the dmg

the idea was to replace dulfy.net recommended zealot gear with a more money friendly, pve and dmg check alternative that works for both pve and raid, not just raid, needing only to change the traits/food buffs instead of the whole armor if you want an overall ascended armor for both game aspects

Hate to tell you this, but raids aren’t any place to be cheap and they are difficult enough to warrant getting an entirely separate gear set(s) just for it. If you want to use your healing set outside of raid, just pay the extra gold for the zealot set. Or just heal with Zerker gear.

I think you still dont understand the purpose of my topic, Im not (partially) trying to be cheap, gonna try to be more clear

-Dulfy created a raiding guide for people where they recomended to use zealot weapon/armor with cleric trinkets http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/

-Why zealot? Because guardian vale and gorseval are both dps race battles where every bit of dmg worths toward success so the druid need healing power, but also some offensive to do its far amount of dmg as he heal, thats the.main problem with your personal mix, thats a full healer build with an over the top healing power and altmost no power

Now the reason of my post are:

- Posible alternative for those that want to follow Dulfy build, but dont want to expend absurb amounts of g on zealot armor

Why i think it could work as “an alternative to dulfy.net stats choice”?

1: has the same amount of hp, armor, power and crit %

Cons

- Sacrifice 300 healing power, but still remains above the 1k healing power wich is the community recomended for raid healing

Pros

-Gains 21% ferocity that can make druid dmg contribute more to the dps check bosses.
-The dmg and crit is lower but still close to the usual vanilla zerker builds, making it posible to be usable as an hybrid build outside hot content, all you need is to swap your healing power staff for another more dps oriented weapon like lb or sword with berserker stats and youre good to go for outside hot content, then just swap back to healing power staff when you return to maguuma

And since ascended trinkets are way easier to get than armor you could have an alternative set of dps trinkets to swap the cleric ones when not healing. Keeping the armor as zerker and just swaping trinkets and weapon so you dont have to craft an additional armor set just for raiding

Just saying, Dulfy’s druid build isn’t very good and you should look at the builds from guilds that actually cleared the raid within the first few days. I’ll even link some of them for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3u3x6o/scs_offensive_druid_for_raids/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZYmcnbw_sc

You wonder why everyone has a different opinion on what’s best for druid? It’s cause any gear with damage or healing power works. I don’t see the point in trying to follow a guide and not be willing to spend all the gold required for it, at the point you might as well go with what you think works best. I’d personally never use your mix but there’s no reason why you can’t be successful with it.

Also, you get more raid DPS out of optimizing your composition and strategy instead of trying to squeeze out damage from your healer druid. It’s why Gorseval kills with more than 1 minute to spare on the enrage timer are possible with a cleric/magi druid. The enrage timer is hard, but it’s not so unforgiving that you have to force your druid to DPS.

I think maximizing grace of the land uptime is way more important than gear and I also think that the extra healing on magi/clerics can potentially translate to more party dps than what little you gain with zealots. (dpsers need to heal themselves just a bit less) Swapping staff off is not worth it, because you wan’t quick draw to trigger with avatar4 for more grace of the land stacks. I personally don’t think that the SC zerker druid is worth it, SC could clear the raid with anything though. (I own a mini Karde)

I wear full zealot on all bosses, but mix in clerics for tank role on second. But truth is the different is really not that big, because most of the time we will be doing staff AA which is doing quite low damage anyway. If ur worried and see that the raid needs your damage difference with zealot compared to a less damage orientated healing gear, it simply means that someone among your other 9 raid members arnt doing their job at dealing damage. And that’s okay cuz raids are still new for so many players, it can be stressful to dish out optimal rotation when having to pay attention to everything else.
As damage dealers gets more competent, the “damage pressure” some druids feel will lighten up. We provide great burst heals and raid damage, the rest is up to the other raid members. But of course, if you have the coin, it doesnt hurt using zealot gear, and sadly many pug groups out there want druids with zealot, pugs are picky as theyre risky.

zealot’s isn’t worth the cost at all, dps from a druid is secondary. your primary function is healing, Magi/Clerics is all you need.

I mixed Zealot’s with Clerics. But not the same way as Dulfy did.

I feel your build might be losing too much healing power. This is already a problem with Zealot’s gear – its even more of a problem with using so much Berserker’s gear.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNEQJAWRn0rCFsi1sCmsCEtiFPBDelGTrpO9tOVK7JxFASYV8RN-TRDBABX8AA0a/BxUeswFAYQdABpSAAHCAYVCOlSsUV3pFNBPYiLgjAQAgDg3XPAY4hHOkCwplRA-e

My own thinking is that I want to be able to swap to my other weapon and go solo PvE without having to keep up a second gear set. But I also want solid enough healing. AND… I’m a bit partial to being tank-ready. I’ve never played to meta, and have thus far been able to run through fractals and dungeons on a prior build that was very high on toughness:
https://40.media.tumblr.com/2783221c064efe0bc1799123bc4b13ff/tumblr_ny0x90evE91uy6q2bo2_1280.png
- So I’m transitioning out of that and into the build above.

IF you’r starting with Zealot’s as your guide, but wanting to get rid of it… I’d get rid of it in favor of clerics or magi. I personally don’t like Magi gear so that’s not the route I took.

I would not go Berserkers unless I knew my group was strong in self heals and that my healing was only there to pad them out a little…

The last time I checked the Dulfy guide it was suboptimal imo. It said Zealot gear is optimal which is not true. Full Zealot gear works for all 3 bosses but a mix and match of magi, clerics, zealot and berserker gear is better.

I usually aim for 1k healing power with buff food and the rest should be mainly damage (for the DPS phase with the 2nd weapon set). Vale guardian is pretty easy so you shouldn’t have any problems there. Gorseval on the other hand needs very high DPS and less healing. Just start with the 1k healing power and customize the build depending on your group.

Since I only do PuG runs it usually stays at 1k HP but with better groups you can go all the way down to a few hundred HP. For runs with a dedicated raid guild I would try full zerker with monk runes and healing food.

Also check this thread for more info:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Raids-Zealot-alternative/first

I am no expert on raids yet, but am currently building a set of armor based on boon stacking and healing. Mixing Minstril’s armor with Apothocary. With boon duration foods, Warhorn, and Jungle stalker this will be really sweet, I think.

I don’t think it is worth it to try to do much damage as a Druid healer. By focusing on healing and boon stacking, you will be able to make up some of the DPS loss you incur. Your DPS allies will do more damage than you will get out of mixing and matching, if you can keep them might stacked and maxed with lingering light. At least, this is what I think.