Guild Wars 2

Finally got Deimos after many many hours of wiping on it. Fun raid.

Since I really wanted to waste a lot of gold and map currency, I made a near full ascended Seraph’s set.

This is the build i came up with after thinking about it for a while.

http://imgur.com/a/8KAb8

I wasn’t sure if A/T + SB would be good without Expertise, so I opted for a pure SB build with bleed duration runes, or a A/T build with Balthazar Runes. I haven’t played around with A/T builds yet. I ended up going with SB + Staff build so that I could make use of the concentration to provide perma protection.

Was busy with raids last night, but i’d love to try it out in Fractals/Open World/Raids when i get the chance to craft a set.

I wish it had expertise instead of concentration :/

There are no Magi or Zealot Trinkets from the laurel vendor unfortunately, so you are limited to just Clerics from that merchant. Magi and Zealot Trinkets are available from raids, and some collection rewards (TA, HotW). There is no one gear set fits all scenarios that is “BiS” like other games. Druid is one of the few classes that needs multiple gear sets and to be able to adapt to the needs of their team and the current raid encounter. Though, to answer your question specifically a set of Magi’s Armor, Weapons and Cleric trinkets would be ideal for what you are looking for. You may need to lower your toughness if you have a Tank that prefers to run the absolute minimum necessary, though the issue can be avoided altogether if you use Exotic Magi Trinkets, buy Zealot/Magi Trinkets from the raid vendor or just use something that doesn’t have toughness on it.

Keep at it, my alt account finally got it on the 4th week.

Yes if you’re wearing berserker/zealot gear. You’ll have enough healing from 2 druids spamming 4 glyphs (or your other druid being a magi/zealot), your tempest and DH’s heals. There’s no real point in camping staff if you have full astral force with 3-6s left on CD + everyone is above 90%. Might as well fit in some damage while waiting for your CA to be back up.

Also, you won’t always have 9 other scholar buffs. Druids use monk or scholar, Chrono’s use chronomancer runes (or leadership), Reapers use Berserker or Thorns and some Warriors still haven’t swapped off their Strength Runes.

Bast Bow.2958:

I have to say I do not have a zealots armor set (yet). I’m in doubt for months now and still following discussions when I see them whether that personal dps increase is actually better then keeping your party topped off, which I’m not sure you can do when in zealot’s because you tend to be more focussed on personal dps?

I can answer that. It does vary a little bit based on what exact mix of gear you are using and what your playstyle is. If you are staff camping then the extra DPS of Zealot over Magi/Cleric is entirely negligible, it’s within the range of 400-500 DPS. If you are mixing in Sword/Axe auto attacks with 100% Zealot gear, then your DPS is still going to be fairly garbage and not worth it. Maybe you’ll squeeze out an extra 1-3k DPS? If you are doing Zealot Armor + Staff + everything else zerker then you start to see a little bit more respectable damage, but it’s obviously not as good as a DPS Druid.

Now regardless of what mix you pick, you still want to be able to generate astral force “quickly” on your non-staff weapon set. This is most commonly achieved by bringing a water sigil and 3-4 glyphs, though there are other ways if you don’t want to bring a glyph heavy build. The bottom line is, if you prioritize personal DPS with a zealot/magi/cleric mix then you are doing it wrong, at least go berserker/viper if you’re going to do that.

The core concept is that as long as you are generating sufficient astral force within these 10s windows of you leaving CA, then any DPS you do during it is “free” and since you are healing anyways you are still maintaining people’s scholar buffs. Though you won’t do that as well as a staff auramancer or dedicated healer druid.

Even as a DPS druid in Zerker/Viper gear, you’re still there to spread GotL and occasionally burst heal. Personal DPS is just a bonus and Zerker/Viper druids do a decent amount. No where near Tempest or DD level though.

A lot of guilds tend to skip out on Zealots since they’re bringing 2 druids anyways and 2 DPS druids is usually enough healing when combined with other offheals from the group. If they need more healing they just make one druid put on more healing gear (Magi or Zealots) until they have enough. I prefer to run 1 magi druid and 1 zerker druid myself in raid comps as it’s just “safer” but not everyone wants to run the safe route and that’s fine if you want to min/max your raid DPS.

This is coming from someone who has a set of Magi, Zerker, Zealot and a Viper gear. I mainly use the first 2 nowdays, though I did find a niche use for Zealots in progressing through the new raid wing as more DPS just makes KC and Xera easier, but even then I don’t think it was particularly needed or helped out that much.

439 power doesn’t do much if you are just staff and CA camping. If you plan on throwing in some auto attacks with Sword/Longbow or whatever then you can make some use of mixing Zealot/Berserker gear. Though IMO, if you’re going to use Zealot gear you might as well just use Berserker gear. I tend to favor playing at one end of the extreme or the other.

Any combination of Magi/Cleric’s gear that has less toughness than your tank if you just want to be a dedicated staff camping healer.

The most I’ve seen at once was 4.

well, that works for now. Thanks!

So I got a mail to talk with the Leatherworking NPC to unlock the Envoy Armor II collection. Clicking on the third option currently doesn’t do anything for me and I’m unable to progress

Condi is terrible in Stronghold of the Faithful, and it’s fairly Meh in Salvation Pass.

It’s quite good in Spirit Vale tho, i’ll give it that.

Fox.

15 chars.

StickerHappy.8052:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Pick one of the axes and put a water sigil on it. You can use it for both Power/Condi builds in PvE.

What water if your building around power or condi? Smh..

It gives a non negligible amount of astral force for both builds which is good for group scenarios or bad if he is playing base ranger without druid for whatever reason. If functionality is one of the OP’s goals, then water is a flexible sigil for general PvE.

Pick one of the axes and put a water sigil on it. You can use it for both Power/Condi builds in PvE.

Fluffball.8307:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Assuming our highest DPS set uses hybrid weapons – it’s not that bad of an option.

Axe/torch + shortbow? Is SB back to being a thing in dungeon running since the buffs?

No because you still want power builds in dungeons since the average boss fight is like 5 seconds long due to elite spec power creep + break bars dmg debuff.

Ansau.7326:

Play at fullscreen resolution, fullscreen windowed has a hit of 10-15fps. Put fps limiter to “unlimited”.

Disable reflections, shadows, best texture filtering and put character model limit to “low”.

Go to Nvidia Panel and create a gw2 profile with:
- Anisotropic filter to x4
- Textures to “high performance”
- Energy mod to “maximum”

That helped a lot. Thanks.

MrFayth.3546:

Id first start by lowering Reflections, I keep them on none.

Reflections are HIGHLY inefficient in their implementation: Under every map(save a few like HoTM and Mistlock) is a giant body of water. It’s there so when they want to make a lake or large body of water, they dip the terrain level into the water level.

The problem is that the water is constantly reflecting everything, even when you cant see any water.

Next up: What’s your CPU?

Gw2 is much more reliant on your CPUs single core/threaded strength than it is on GPU rendering ability.

If you have an AMD CPU..you’re probably out of luck unless you can Overclock it a hefty amount.

Edit: Also, you have lots of stuff running. Skype, TS3 and Chrome? Definitely eating away your CPU cylces.

Alright thanks, I will try lowering the reflections.

My CPU is an i7-4790K

http://imgur.com/JhK67yQ

Hello, I was wondering if there’s anything I could do to improve my frame rate in general. I’ve recently started to have frame rate issues around last month (especially in raids) and I would like to try and fix it or get advice on what parts I’d have to upgrade in my PC.

My issues are that sometimes the beginning of raid encounters like Vale Guardian will lag for the first 10 seconds, or that my frame rate is 10-20 in places like Lions Arch.

I built this PC in January 2015 and have a basic understanding of computers.

MaJoBooOM.4851:

• which build to use?
• which runes are best for raid?
• which weapons should I choose (Thought staff/LB/Sword, but on meta staff isnt even mentioned?)
• which stats are preferred?
• how to heal? I dont really understand how the glyph works. How the F5 is charged? Which skill should I use when I am in F5 mode?
• what is difference playing druid in raid and fractals?

The staff healer is the best all around general purpose raid healer. It works in all scenarios

Monk runes are generally the best.

Magi’s or Cleric’s stats are preferred. Zealots can work too if you have it. Toughness is actually quite good for survival, and doesn’t cause aggro issues in most of the current raid fight. It’s honestly only an issue on Vale Guardian, every other boss it’s fine to have toughness on your gear.

Your main heals are your Staff 3, CA3 and CA4 skills. Prioritize those. Can’t really teach people how to heal as there are both predictive and reactive components to that. It best helps if you understand basic druid mechanics such as https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Verdant_Etching and try to prioritize skills accordingly.

I just use my same raid healer build of magi or zealots gear for my daily swamp of the mists and it works just fine. Sometimes I swap to Zerker/Viper if I feel like it. The dps you don’t do is made up for by your group buffs, assuming a proper group composition.

You can just put on Magi’s gear and be a staff camping healing bot. You’ll easily contribute enough to make up for your lack of DPS if you do your proper buffing rotations for spreading GotL stacks and glyph of empowerment. The extra vitality/toughness from running magi/cleric’s gear will give you a bit more survivability when learning mechanics for the first time, though some attacks will still one shot you.

As the main healer, you do have a lot of responsibility to keep people topped off, especially in the new raid wing.

It’s normal to have boss fights like Prison Camp in other raiding MMOs. They’re there to mix things up and give variety in encounter design. I don’t particularly like these types of fights, but they are there.

Sarrs.4831:

Okay so I’m not 100% familiar with how GW2 raids work, but

In theory, could you buy the Matthias kill and then start doing Vale Guardian/Slothasor weekly, and get all of the White Mantle weapons through Magnemite Shards?

Yes, but you’ll have to wait minimum 6 weeks to accumulate enough magnetite shards. You could also learn the fight or PUG it in that time as well

anduriell.6280:

anduriell.6280:

TurtleDragon.3108:

@OP. I am assuming this is for PvE/Raids, if not then disregard this:

Druid:
+ Unique Group Buffs
+ High sustained healing output in Celestial Avatar
+ Ranged heals
- Low Damage output
- Resource dependent and isn’t in “Healer” mode half the fight
- Cast times on Heals
- Loses resource when going into down state, delaying your group heals for a significant amount of time
-CD dependant

Tempest:
+ Instant cast heals (can heal through slow or before interrupts happen)
+ Wide variety of boons
+ High damage output if geared that way
- Limited ranged healing
- CD dependant
- Lower base HP (survivability) than druids

Between the 2 I’d rather have a druid, but I can see Tempest being a viable, sometimes even better replacement for Salvation Pass. I personally prefer running 1 druid healer and 1 auramancer for the final boss, since it’s a 2 healer fight.

Actually the tempest survivability is higher than the druid because the massive and constant access to heals (not only regen)+access to other defensive boons and offensive defensive effects (cc). Also our heal skills have Cd even in avatar state.

in practice tempest is better suited to do support with strong heals than the druid. the druid brings the offensive boons that are more or less very unreliable (grace of the land or boons from spirits that still have some rng in the appliances)
however i find druid more fun, although i avoid doing raiding.

I don’t actually play auramancer tempest, most of that is just guessing based off what little I know about elementalists.

@OP. I am assuming this is for PvE/Raids, if not then disregard this:

Druid:
+ Unique Group Buffs
+ High sustained healing output in Celestial Avatar
+ Ranged heals
- Low Damage output
- Resource dependent and isn’t in “Healer” mode half the fight
- Cast times on Heals
- Loses resource when going into down state, delaying your group heals for a significant amount of time

Tempest:
+ Instant cast heals (can heal through slow or before interrupts happen)
+ Wide variety of boons
+ High damage output if geared that way
- Limited ranged healing
- CD dependant
- Lower base HP (survivability) than druids

Between the 2 I’d rather have a druid, but I can see Tempest being a viable, sometimes even better replacement for Salvation Pass. I personally prefer running 1 druid healer and 1 auramancer for the final boss, since it’s a 2 healer fight.

I’ve gotten too used to Natural Stride in open world that I can’t play without it lol.

You’ll generally want to avoid stacking toughness (Cleric’s) as it will impact your groups tank (Unless you want to tank). Use magi’s instead if you want to be a dedicated healer. Magi’s armor and weapons are easy to get, but the trinkets can be difficult which means you’ll have to take clerics in these slots for maximum healing power setups.

Zealots vs. Magi/Clerics is basically down to preference as their healing and damage output is identical.

Water and Transference are good sigils.

I prefer passive healer playstyles so I tend to lean towards staff camping with Magi’s or Zealots. Mainly zealots because I already had it, and not because it’s “better” as it is an extremely gold inefficient stat set. Regardless of what gear or build you choose, the optimal druid rotation is the one that can generate enough astral force in exactly 10s and stack gotl as much as possible, even if that means lower personal DPS. For this reason alone is why I prefer not running berserker and base my rotations, skill and pet choices around this one thought process. Every non staff camping build I run has some form of Regen, usually 2 in the form of Windborne notes, Healing Spring, Water Spirit and/or Fern Hound. I try not to bring every possible regen skill as that would be overkill. I pair S/A with healing spring and I use glyph of rejuvenation with S/WH for example.

Being versatile with your gear/skill/pet/weapon choices is the biggest thing you can do to help your raid succeed. I don’t just throw on my berserker gear and tell people to get good and not get hit by kitten, but I base my build around the group I am currently running with. I do play with a variety of groups ranging from ones that can no glide gorsreval and 8 man sell raids to ones that do not notice they have bombs on Sabetha.

But to answer your question specifically, I would recommend Magis, Nature Magic, S/WH, Lynx + Fern Hound and heal glyph because it has Regen and it allows me stack druid DPS buffs the easiest. I personally think Sun Spirit is a bit overrated and usually swap that out. As far as Spirit Vale is concerned, I don’t feel there’s one set up fits all scenarios meta build and run a different set up on every fight/group.

Tragic Positive.9356:

If I’m in an organized group, I take berserkers everything and trait up Healing Spring for AoE regen. And that alone keeps my Astral Bar full on cooldown.

+1 for this. Tried it out tonight and it worked out much better than I thought it would.

Yep, I definitely agree that Druid is better inside the stack group, especially if you have a condi necro with a ton of minions out. I do run with a variety of groups and often help out friends outside of my normal static so I don’t always do that job. But yeah, I was just bored of running the standard “meta” set up and brought 5 traited spirits to see if I could regen enough AF without staff.

So I tried traited water spirit + longbow camping on Sabetha since I was doing the fire kiting anyways. Didn’t work as well as I thought it would, but I assume that’s because there was nothing for regen to heal lol. I ended up having to use staff to top off Astral Force multiple times.

Well when in doubt, I just use the staff as Tragic said, glyphs + staff is usually fine.

Honestly, I kind of just wing it and hope for the best when it comes to regen and astral force. Windborne notes is a little bit awkward to fit into the rotation when you are on a role that forces you to staff camp (green circles, fire kiting). I have Fern Hound as back up but I try not to use the wolf unless for emergencies because it does really low DPS if I have to pet swap into it instead of casting the F2 and swapping. Sometimes i have to purposefully take damage so that I have something to heal. Maybe I’m just bad or spend too much time in CA, but there are plenty of times where I don’t regen enough Astral Force in 10s which is where the balancing act comes in.

The theory is that if you can keep the entire raid above 90% health, and generate enough astral force in that 10s CD after exitting to immediately reenter then DPS-ing with S/WH doesn’t hurt your GotL uptime. I don’t attempt this with a max healing power magi’s build, but I do with zealot/berserker builds. I kinda feel like it just doesn’t happen if people aren’t taking damage or I cast my regen spells at a bad time, but I usually hover around 1200-1400 healing power and seem to be fine with it. I usually rely on glyphs to give me the last push to fill my astral force and dropping a Seed of Life right before exiting CA can help sometimes. The times I swap in Fern Hound are usually after I exit CA to give me a little boost if I dont have Warhorn available or can’t put myself in a position to Sword DPS.

As far as PvE is concerned, I don’t consider any builds without Skirmishing to be viable as Spotter/Quick Draw are pretty big bonuses. This does limit build potential when it comes to the regen experimenting. but I think Skirmishing/BM/Druid could work. I personally really like Cultivated Synergy + Glyph of Rejuvenation, it’s a nice heal combo that I probably couldn’t play without for now.

I would agree that the actual healing itself from Regen is overrated, but like I said, I take it for the astral force gain which makes it possible to generate astral force very quickly without using staff.

Nature’s vengeance is good for your heralds and a few other builds that get % damage per boon on them and it one of the few sources of Vigor/Stab. But yeah, Windborne notes is basically the only good trait in Nature Magic.

You guys are missing regen in your builds which is less astral force (and less GotL uptime, which is less raid DPS and slower boss kills). Windborne notes and/or Fern Hound are very important parts of a raid druid build when you don’t plan on staff camping.

Anyways, my personal build until I stop getting bad RNG and get the zealot trinkets from raids: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBmYD7keVoVFsZFwmVgoFsYIYOruYXPgJAsuaAwd1waZ9iPMlC-TByGAB4pE0SzPkfFAmU9nh2fISdDUq8DgHCQAgDgf/Nf7bwxHf8xHfcBjLFgf7tA-e

As for which armor you should use: Zealots is around 100-400 more DPS than Magis. Interpret that however you want to and make your own decision.

The average player isn’t going to try these speed run strats, so druids will always have a spot for consistency. Those speed run strats require you to be willing to wipe multiple times in order to get that clear when the goal of the average player is to just full clear for rewards/shards.

Also on topic, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a max healing power build…. just do it with Magi’s instead of clerics unless you’re also tanking. Druid has a lot of flexibility when it comes to builds and roles in raids and you’re not really doing it wrong if you choose to not focus on damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBmYD7keVomVsZFwVFgoFsYIYwb1waZ1p1F76BMBg1VDokn9A-TRyGABAcRAwTJoiq/M0+DLp8oWlYRqZoNdAk/EAIFgf7tA-e

Basic max healing power raid healer build since you said you don’t care about DPS. Wouldn’t recommend for general solo open world PvE, but same build can work with Zealots/Zerker pieces mixed in.

anduriell.6280:

TurtleDragon.3108:

You can’t run that much toughness in a raid without being willing to tank

Dude you don’t know what you talk about. This is a power build that is tankier than mine. Power build that you could go for even tankier.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQFABA-TRRWwABV/Bw+DFU+NRJYJdAAA-e

You should not have any problem with the tank unless the tank is a jerk.

Don’t get why you’re asking for help if you’re just going to insult anyone who tries and insist on trying to use the same gear for both raids and WvWvW. You have to get seperate gear or be suboptimal/mediocre in one game mode but not the other. But maybe you’re right, I don’t know what I’m talking about.

You can’t run that much toughness in a raid without being willing to tank

I have no idea how to improve it tbh without just saying use the Viper build. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAnfWn0rCtqgNrA2sCEtiFDBDerGWLrNdggVVjJAsuKdnMlzsA-ThSAQBa4QAYw9HikSwA8AAOl6PBUPAi0EAgTAQaU+5vjAApAgZZF-e
You’re trying to be tanky, heal and damage at the same time so my gut instinct said celestial. You’re still missing out on a lot of condi duration.

Raid build is pretty terrible tbh. It’ll cause the most problems on Vale Guardian since tanking is the hardest part of the fight, and you’re trying to do both tanking and healing. If you don’t mind tanking Gorseval, it can work there and it won’t cause any issues on Sabetha.

Yes, but the OP asked for raid builds not WvWvW.

Because it’s hard to fit staff into a condi build.

Cleric/Magi mix for Progression, PUGing and general use.

Zealots for farming and organized groups

Hmm, didn’t know you meant specifically Zealots, but I was referring in general not just speciffic to healer Druids

bloodpyrope.8630:

You really don’t need to break the bank for raids

Going to have to strongly disagree with this one. Raiding is hard, and it’s not for everyone. It is difficult enough to warrant having separate full ascended gear and builds for that you wouldn’t normally use. Food for dps builds can also add up as the best foods in the game are expensive, especially when you are still progressing on the raid. Raids do require extreme flexibility in what each player can play, and players with more gold and multiple ascended geared characters have a big advantage over other players. Raiding is the one place in PvE to not be cheap and every little bit helps. If you are serious about raiding, you need to be willing to spend the gold, otherwise you will be struggling to kill bosses after Vale Guardian.

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re adding nothing to the discussion other than anecdotes and hyperbole. I’m not basing my thoughts on other players or compositions I’m talking about my preference and citing my experiences with both.

The Druid’s heals are gated this is a fact. If you’re only interested in derailing I suggest you try an easier target. I’ve been raid healing longer than you’ve likely been playing video games.

No one has provided proof of any kind, I’m a man of science I’d listen to proof.

You’re doing nothing but anecdotes and personal experience as well, since most of your reasoning is “I don’t like it” or I can’t adjust my playstyle to fit the Druid Mechanics.

Also, we already explained why Druid is infinitely better https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Dumping-Druid-for-Tempest/first#post5806687 , especially now that spirits are fixed again. (They were also better while spirits were bugged).

There won’t be one set that’s optimal for both fractals and raids, you’ll need to get a separate set or just play healer in fractals, or zerker druid in raids.

For progression I used a zero DPS Magi/Cleric mix with monk runes. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBmYD7keVomVsZFwVFgoVsYIYwb1waZ1p1F76BMBg1VDokn9A-TxxGABAcBAwTJoiq/M0+DLp8j8nAAb6AIFgfjBA-e

For farming, i’ve been experimenting with a zealot build more, but I prefer the cleric/magi build more: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBmYD7keVomVsZFwVFgoFsYIYwb1waZ1p1F76BMBg1VDokn9A-TBSBABZt/gZKBPV3Qqq/wq5HVV+p/FBAgnAApA8bMA-e

The first set is obviously useless outside of raids and I don’t use it there. The 2nd set is fine for open world but I can’t use it in high level fractals