Guild Wars 2

gin.7158:

Blue Moa has better heal than fern hound. It has random 3.3k heal and protection on f2. The regen from fern hound is pretty much useless imo.

Fern hound regen is really good though. It uses the Druid’s healing power, and combines both the pet and Druid’s boon duration leading to 25s regen on a 25s cooldown when you’re at 100% boon duration with Nature magic.

Taeljam.6754:

Sounds like a Guild I’d like to join, but a small question: I’m busy every Monday – Wednesday from 20:00 to 22:00 (before and after I’m available as well), and friday evening I have to study. Every other time I’m fully available. If that’s no problem, I’ll apply via your homepage.

Hey Taeljam, thanks for the interest! The times you mention that you’re unavailable might make it rather difficult for you to get your wing 1/2 clears every week. We’re currently running those wings on Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 7PM server time, and while the clears are usually <1 hour, it might be a rush for you if you need to head off quickly.

Feel free to poke me in game if you’d like to chat it over in some more detail ^^

It’s difficult to say who’s further away for the 00:04 hands, I think you were selected as the target before you started walking in.

For the 00:12 hands, did your range kiter jump or jump dodge? If you’re off the ground when the hands are allocated, they will instead choose the next closest player which usually ends up being on the melee stack.

expandas.7051:

Thanks for the reply Anarri!

I have to admit when I first saw those numbers my eyes almost fell out of their sockets. The best Elementalist and Mesmer healing builds I could come up with only reached 450-550k healing over a minute. As a primarily WvW player, I completely forgot about quickness/alacrity/inspiring presence!

Do you think you could advise me on a staff or CA rotation if you didn’t have permanent quickness or Alacrity uptime? Then I can crunch the numbers for a WvW context!

For WvW you’ve also got the problem of CA being a 15-second cooldown instead of 10. Without quickness and alacrity I’d estimate that the numbers would be somewhere like:

Staff (15 seconds)
2x Ancestral Grace = 9,970 HP
10x Staff auto = 5,500 HP
3x Water sigil = 2,928 HP

CA (15 seconds)
2x Rejuvenating tides = 23,798 HP
2x Lunar Impact = 14,974 HP
~10x Cosmic ray = 23,770 HP

Other
30 seconds of regen = 16,380 HP
30 seconds of nature renewal = 14,190 HP
_
Total (Per player) = 111,510 HP/ 30 seconds
= 223,020 HP/minute

Total for a party of 5 = 1,040,760 HP/minute.

The beauty of it in a zerg would be that your regen will affect a ton of people, since it pulses 6x rapidly for 10.25 seconds per pulse from healing spring. So if people are moving enough, you can potentially share out regen to 30 people.

Kovu.7560:

^ Good detailed post, I like. I’m curious about it myself, actually. I enjoy rolling around with the front line of my zerg and watching the green numbers fly.
Does any of that include things outside of the profession itself that buff healing to allies, such as Delicious Rice Balls, Runes of the Monk or Sigils of Transference?

Also, 1,873 seems a little higher than I can get with straight Minstrels. I’m usually in the 1,600~ range. May I see your various sources of healing power?

~ Kovu

I included 50% outgoing healing in all of the above numbers. The only exception is for the 5-player numbers, which include 4 players at 150% outgoing healing and 1 player at 100% outgoing healing (Self).

As for 1873 healing power, my Druid in full Minstrels with a Magi’s staff (Enough for 10.25s regen on healing spring) has a base of 1473 healing power. I then add 100 from rice balls, 100 from furious tuning crystals and an extra 200 from the warrior might. Hope that sounds reasonable!

If we account for regen priority, the maximum healing output over time (Most likely in the entire game) is with a Minstrels Druid.

It’s challenging to quantify sustained healing over time since much of a druid’s play is reactionary. In that you only press big heals when people are in danger. That said, a regular minstrels druid rotation will take 8 (Staff time) + 15 (CA time) = 23 seconds and be roughly:

(1873 healing power assumed)

Staff
1x Ancestral Grace = 4,985 HP
8x Staff auto = 4,620 HP
1x Water sigil = 976 HP

CA
2x Rejuvenating tides = 23,798 HP
2x Lunar Impact = 14,974 HP
~18x Cosmic ray = 42,786 HP

Other
23 seconds of regen = 12,558 HP
23 seconds of nature renewal = 10,879 HP
_
Total (Per player) = 115,576 HP/ 23 seconds
= 301,502 HP/minute

Total for a party of 5 = 1,407,009 HP/minute.

This doesn’t even account for dropping glyphs, cultivated synergy, live vicariously or advanced rotations such as blasting staff #5 or alternating #1 and #2 in CA.

Interestingly enough, a single Minstrel’s druid can very easily keep 5 players who are standing in Slothasors poison alive, even without being able to use staff #1/2. To my knowledge, no other healer can do that.

Agreed, being able to stow pets in combat would be a really nice option to have.

One workaround is to simply use a tonic when you don’t want the pet to be there, for example when the Vampire HP in Verdant Brink starts leeching from the pet or at those turrets in Arah that will fire on the pet while everyone else is stealthed. It’s buggy though and revives the pet you have on swap so they might even patch out this option soon enough.

Still looking for a few new members!

Due to the volume of applications we’ve decided to close recruitment for the time being.

Immortal Kingdom [KING] – European fractal and raiding guild.

ABOUT US:
As a guild, our main aim is to achieve efficient clears within Fractals, Dungeons and Raids. We strive towards a mentality of pushing our boundaries while still having lots of fun in the process. Generally we’re not strict on speed-running, however we do expect every one of our members to aspire towards critical self-improvement. Overall we want to maintain a close-knit community of friendly, dependable players whom you can always count on when needed.

WHAT WE OFFER:

• Regular full raid clears – We now have a signup system alongside regular raids!
• Low-man / challenge runs – For both raids and fractals.
• Daily T4 fractal runs – We also love the level 100 challenge mote.
• Weekly guild missions – Fun times for all!
• A continuously expanding guild hall.

REQUIREMENTS:

• The ability to play either Druid or Chronomancer as a support role in raids.
• At least two fully geared, raid ready professions. (Including the Druid/Chrono)
• Proper consumables and the ability to switch between appropriate builds.
• Advanced knowledge of all current raid wings (1, 2, 3 and 4).
• Availability at our prime raiding times. (Raids generally start at 7PM server time)
• Detailed knowledge of all current fractals (150 AR is required).
• Ability to chat and communicate on Discord.
  (Don’t worry if English isn’t your main language!)

THE TRIAL PROCESS:
Before you’re formally invited to the guild there will be a brief (20-30 minute) pre-trial with some of our council members. The aim of this is to give us a chance to check your ability as a player, while evaluating how you respond to general feedback and critique.

Following the pre-trial, if we feel that you’re a good fit for the guild then you’ll be invited as a trial member. While at this rank we’ll observe how you perform in live raids/fractals, and generally aim to offer as much feedback as we can. If we’re all still happy after a couple of weeks in the guild then you’ll be promoted to a full member of KING!

FAQ:

Q: Do you have any rep rules?
A: We ask that our members rep us 100% while doing PvE content.

Q: Do you have a mastery point requirement?
A: No, but aim to have the main raid related masteries unlocked! (inc. Ley line gliding)

Q: Are there any fixed raiding teams within KING?
A: Nope! Feel free to mingle within the guild and join whatever takes your fancy.

HOW TO APPLY:
If you’ve read this far, then hopefully you’re interested in applying to the guild.

Simply fill out our application form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can:
RECRUITMENT CLOSED FOR NOW

Current applicants waiting for a pre-trial: 5

If you have any questions feel free to whisper or mail any of the KING council:

• Bovan.9481 (Bovan)
• AnariiUK.7409 (Anarii)
• Snow.9862 (Authority)
• RuneMF.9342 (Rune)
• Punkcat.4031 (Punkcat)

Buffs/Boons don’t overflow in the same way that heals do. You’ll always give the buff or boon to the players in your subgroup which are closest to you before any others. If they already have full stacks and nothing can be overwritten then a boon is simply wasted.

Short duration buffs & boons can be “overwritten” by longer duration effects of the same type. An example of this is with buffs like spotter, you’ll see it tick down to ~6 seconds before being refreshed back to 9 seconds. The same apparently now goes for boons, although that’s a recent change.

I normally would switch to a power druid for aquatic fractal, but condi druid can be very effective. The main issue is getting access to your avatar, since your AoE healing skills don’t work underwater.

I usually run Nature Magic (1,2,1), Skirmishing (1,1,1) and druid (2,2,1). You can then take water spirit (AoE regen gets you back into avatar on cooldown). Since you’re unable to use glyphs I generally just take a full spirit build (Stone, Sun, Frost, Nature) as it makes the last boss an absolute cakewalk. Quickening Zephyr or Sharpening stone are also strong choices depending on your party comp.

Water spirit is a little buggy underwater too, so you can keep spamming the active which is nice!

In terms of weapons I use a viper’s harpoon gun and mostly autoattack, weaving in skill #2 if you can get some slight distance from the boss. Skill #3 is decent if you need avatar very quickly, it also synergises with SoTP and We heal as one! for a very quick might burst if your party is lacking there.

Nice build, I guess overall it boils down to merging the PS + Healer roles into one combined role. Freeing up an extra slot for another DPS. I could see this working for small hitbox, immobile bosses (i.e Sabetha) where condi builds edge ahead of their power counterparts.

For some feedback, I like the concept but I don’t think that the proposed squad would work very well. Having a squad of 5-1-1-1-1-1 would mean that any of the buffs produced by the guys in the “1” subgroups would be shared purely by proximity. That means that your might, grace of the land, quickness, alacrity, spirits, spotter and glyphs are being spread out in an almost random fashion (Assuming people are moving around during the raid).

For the sake of even buff distribution I’d suggest something like:

Group 1 (Power): Power-PS | Power-Druid | Chrono | DPS | DPS |

Group 2 (Condi): Might-Druid | Chrono | Condi-DPS | Condi-DPS | Condi-DPS |

The problem is; you’re merging two ~15k DPS classes (Condi-Druid + Condi-PS) and getting back a 5k DPS might-druid and a 25k DPS condi DPS. Overall it’s close so I could see it being useful if the group lacks warriors, although finding 3 good condi DPS players might be tough!

EterNaLChaOs.7894:

Thanks for your explanation!

I have one question regarding the armor rune for condition build. Is it a must to choose Superior Rune of the Nightmare or there are some alternatives rune that can replace it since Superior Rune of the Nightmare requires time to obtain it from Mystic Forge or farm it from TA dungeon.

There were a few posts suggesting that rune of thorns is a decent alternative for raids, I haven’t tested it myself though. Berserker runes could also be good, though you’d lose out on some condition duration.

Overall nightmare runes are probably your best bet, you can salvage them from the exotic TA headpieces which are 120 tokens each. So you don’t need too much time for a full set (You only need 4 nightmare runes). You can also do the PvP/WvW reward tracks for tokens.

A good (or bad) thing about druid is that there’s not a “one size fits all” option for everything. I would recommend having your first ascended set be condition based (Viper’s) as that’s arguably the best for fractals, and you’ll need it ascended in order to slot agony resistance for that game mode. As a general guideline I recommend the following:

Dungeons

• Full power damage is nearly always best here (Berserker’s). You can easily make do with the exotic set that you already have for now.

Fractals

• I’d recommend condition damage builds here as they bring superior damage for large HP pool bosses, which you find often in fractals.
• Remember that your gear needs to be ascended quality in order to reach the high fractal levels due to the required agony resistance.

Raids

• A simple and effective set to get would just be exotic Magi’s for the raid healing role. You can pretty much use this at every boss however experienced groups may want you to switch to something with more damage.
• Condi, power and healing builds all find their use within raids. Ideally you’ll want all three sets eventually, but condi would be a good one to start with since power/healing can easily be exotic quality.

Hope that helps!

Swagger.1459:

Had to delete my last reply because it was inaccurate.

The second video shows you doing around 11k less damage in the same time frame… Wish I had my own videos to compare, but yeah, that’s not good.

I wouldn’t look too much into the damage numbers themselves, I had some spill over boons in the pre-patch video that I don’t have on the golem one.

After doing some golem testing the damage seems to be the same as before, with staff autoattack being about 10k DPS realistic (12.5k all buffs). So thankfully it’s only the timing that changed.

Fluffball.8307:

I always had the gut feeling the damage numbers were off from the attack. It didn’t match the sound. Is the combat log any help?

It’s difficult to say since I have no pre-patch golem footage to compare it to. It definitely feels slower at KC though. Not sure if the overall damage went up, down or stayed the same.

It seems like Druid’s staff autoattack timings have changed in the last patch. It’s now a long pause followed by 3 rapid ticks of damage, rather than the regularly spaced ticks of damage we had before.

This is particularly annoying at KC, as it feels a lot harder to push the orb reliably. There’s a small gap after the third channel which allows the projections to catch up.

Guessing it’s in response to the “15k lazor beam” complaints from pvp, as it should be easier to evade now.

Video comparison of before and after the patch.

Might be good to have a look at power rangers also, since they will need to focus their heals at important moments rather than pressing heals on cooldown.

Couple of tips for VG:

• If you’re running to green circles, try not to waste your staff #3 to get there. Use staff 3 just after the green circle “pops” as everyone inside will take a small chunk of damage. If somebody is low HP while the green is up, then prioritise healing them asap, since the green will likely explode if they are down when it “pops”.

• Glyph of tides is your best friend, use it to knock seekers away from the tank or green circles.

• Lunar impact (Avatar #3) is a great panic heal and can be used to quickly burst people to full HP.

• Rejuvenating tides (Avatar #4) is your main buffing tool and ideally should be used on the melee stack. Use it as a heal in emergencies though.

• If you are in the subgroup with the tank, try to keep an eye on his/her HP. If things are fine on greens then throw an odd lunar impact their way to keep them topped up. Rejuvenating tides in melee should also heal the tank.

• The only part of VG that should require heavy healing is the split phase, if your team is bringing the blue and green guardians together. It’s not unusual to just camp your avatar while both guardians are up.

Lastly, just keep trying! People love to point fingers at the Druid for “bad healing” when they are playing badly themselves and taking far too much damage. Don’t be afraid to call people out if they are standing inside the seeker AOE’s or getting ported a lot, no amount of healing can help them there! :P

The nerf to Pink Moa was understandable since 3×2s daze was extremely strong for a pet.

I don’t like how the Black Moa is currently the best pet for CC on small hitboxes though. Feels like I’m at a disadvantage if I don’t have the hall of monument points, those pets should be clones as intended.

This bug is caused by interrupting a celestial avatar skill as you exit the transform. Quickdraw is consumed on the skill that was interrupted.

In both examples, you interrupt the cast of Seed of Life (The #2 skill) causing quickdraw to be wasted. As a temporary work around until it’s properly fixed, I’d suggest exiting the transform manually between skills. Alternatively you can avoid using any of the 2-5 skills in CA when your energy is running low.

Hopefully that helps in the meantime!

Bump! Always looking to welcome some new faces to the guild.

MrTJpwnz.4710:

AnariiUK.7409:

I’d still take a tiger though, due to revenants being less common.

Why would you take tiger? I mean the druid in your subgroup can take the tiger, when druid is playing without Nature Magic perma fury was doable if you took marksmanship for the warhorn #5 on pet swap, and the chrono gives some fury now aswell (10 sec per SoI on 100% boon dur). Do you think the subgroup still is on low fury? If you have a condi druid it might be a problem but for power / magi it shouldn’t really be a problem i think.

That’s true, I completely overlooked that you’d still have another druid in each subgroup.

Regardless, tiger is still useful depending on the boss. At VG for example, you’d likely need a tiger to upkeep fury at the red guardian during the split. The damage difference between the tiger and lynx is so small that it’s hardly worth considering.

MrTJpwnz.4710:

Jerus.4350:

AnariiUK.7409:

Did a couple of tests earlier now that crossfire is fixed.

It seems to peak at about 40k DPS (with some shenanigans) against the small golem, my rotations could be improved slightly. Video here.

Interestingly, that means ranger is actually the highest DPS in the game against small targets.

Curious why Bristleback? Thought Lynx/Tiger were the top damage choices. Is his position inside the enemy making a difference?

I think cause of the trait that gives bleeding when your pet crits, as bristleback does alot of hits it is probably better then the lynx. Wondering if that 39k dps is with or without infusions though

It’s with full condi infusions. Apparantly the difference is about 2% less without, though I haven’t tested that.

Jerus.4350:

AnariiUK.7409:

Did a couple of tests earlier now that crossfire is fixed.

It seems to peak at about 40k DPS (with some shenanigans) against the small golem, my rotations could be improved slightly. Video here.

Interestingly, that means ranger is actually the highest DPS in the game against small targets.

Curious why Bristleback? Thought Lynx/Tiger were the top damage choices. Is his position inside the enemy making a difference?

Since the lynx is unaffected by quickness, the bristleback becomes slightly stronger under unrealistic conditions. Positioning the bristleback close to the boss ensures it can hit all of its “rain of spikes” projectiles so boosts it a tiny bit more.

Overall the difference is roughly: Lynx (~3,600 DPS) → Ranged Bristleback (3,800) → Melee Bristleback (4,000)

Pretty unrealistic on a small golem, but can be done on bigger raid bosses like gorse or sloth. The pet might even get some quickness now that double-chrono is a thing, and tides of time has no target cap. I’d still take a tiger though, due to revenants being less common.

Did a couple of tests earlier now that crossfire is fixed.

It seems to peak at about 40k DPS (with some shenanigans) against the small golem, my rotations could be improved slightly. Video here.

Interestingly, that means ranger is actually the highest DPS in the game against small targets.

I would like to see some baseline buffs to our power DPS to bring it in line with other classes. I would do this by adding offensive utilities that we can take, similar to how condi-builds gain quite a lot of damage through traps and sharpening stone. This forces a choice between damage and more buffs (Spirits, GoE etc).

“Sic ’Em!” is nice, but makes very little difference since the pet hits like a wet noodle in PvE gametypes. Similarly quickening zephyr is amazing for solo play, but is useless if you’re getting quickness from elsewhere. It might be nice to make spike trap a power based DPS trap, similar to Procession of Blades from DH. Similarly making Signet of the wild instant cast would go a long way since you can activate it before a burst, without wasting too much time.

foste.3098:

it seams maul did not get a damage buff. I am comparing the new in game maul at 2050 power and no modifiers to the maul on the gw2skills.net editor which is still under the old patch.

EDIT: it seams the gs trait is bugged and lowers the damage of maul if you slot it, or maybe the tool tip is bugged and shows lower damage numbers when you have the gs trait on. Something is definitely bugged here

I think it’s the tooltip that’s bugged with the trait. After some small tests I seem to hit higher mauls with the GS trait equipped than without.

Lunar impact cooldown seems to have increased from 7 → 8 seconds. Lot’s of hidden nerfs/changes it seems!

Durzlla.6295:

AnariiUK.7409:

Pink-Moa nerfed as well, down to a single 2-second daze.

It’s always done this, the tooltip has just been wrong since launch…

It was a 3 × 2 second daze before this patch.

Pink-Moa nerfed as well, down to a single 2-second daze.

Is it just me or is the shortbow “crossfire” buff bugged out at the moment?

Seems like it’s applying the short 1.5s bleed regardless of if you’re flanking or not.

Substance E.4852:

Anet clearly wants people to use full healing gear in raids, any ratio that puts us even higher than now means people will be able to get away with going zealots instead (rip druid player wallets and quartz prices). Allowing for that kind of defeats the purpose of what they are explicitly trying to accomplish though.

Just a heads up, because I see the “Zealot’s is expensive” perspective a lot and I know a few Druids that actually bought the ascended recipes.

You can stat switch to Zealot’s in the mystic forge for about 9 gold per piece. Comparatively Berserker’s costs about 14 gold to stat switch to. Do not try to craft Zealot’s outright though, the Keeper’s ascended recipes are silly at the moment.

I have a feeling it will be much easier for them to simply copy the functionalty of “We Heal As One!” since that functions much more closely to SoI than sand squall.

If that’s the case then boon duration will likely still have an effect.

Hopefully there’s an opportunity to provide feedback after the changes go live.

Personally I’m terrified that all druids will be forced into running either Zealot’s or Magi’s in raids, camping CA for maximum GoTL uptime. The balance between pushing personal DPS and focusing entirely on camping CA for raid-wide buffs is already extremely delicate. It’s already hard enough to justify bringing an offensive set in the hope that I can squeeze out a tiny bit of extra damage.

This won’t make raiding any harder for teams that currently use offensive druids, it will only make the game easier, more boring and restrictive for the druids.

Base values for the Celestial Avatar heals will be reduced, while the healing power contribution will be enhanced significantly.

Wonder what the justification for this was? Druid’s in PvP generally run healing power so will likely be unaffected or even buffed. This will only really hurt the two interesting raid druid builds (Berserker and Viper) forcing players towards boring, uninvolved healing power sets. The healing on the two offensive sets was already extremely low, requiring much more awareness on the part of the player / group in order to be usable.

For the Revenant, we’ll be looking at reducing Naturalistic Resonance’s base boon duration.

I could understand this for PvP gametypes (WvW in particular) but I feel this will really hurt the revenants already weak position within a raid group. I really hope they will be getting some buffs to go alongside this.

For Mesmer, we’re looking at making Signet of Inspiration’s boon sharing functionality a bit more controlled, giving each shared boon a fixed duration.

This is going to have very large implications on the entire raid squad set-up. The nerfs to SoI and facet of nature are looking really bad for revenant mainly, boon duration isn’t going to look so great with capped SoI shares.

Overall I get the feeling these nerfs are PvP/WvW targeted, for PvE you’re basically killing off the 2 fun druid builds and potentially removing an entire class from raid squads, can’t say I’m too optimistic.

I would just get some stealth consumables. Use a harpy feather → order of whispers spykit → harpy feather → ash legion spy kit → harpy feather for a very easy 20+ seconds of stealth. You have to remain still while using the ash legion spy kit, so it’s ideal for looting chests or hero points (Works perfectly for the Balthazar HP in AB for example).

The alternative as mentioned is blasting stealth with the smokescale, but that can be cumbersome and will not last long enough for hero point channels unless you’re very quick.

Durzlla.6295:

OGDeadHead.8326:

Razor.9872:

Durzlla.6295:

If we get some more pet tweaks like last balance pass I’d be ecstatic. And I’m going to be amazed if Druid isn’t needed again, but please anet, make the astral wisp more interesting, maybe have it remove a specific condi or something on its travel path, or make it spin faster, or apply like a stack of poison idk.

I wish it would either:

Transfer conditions from touched allies to the circled enemy

or

Transfer boons from the circled enemy to touched allies.

Or deal damage to the enemy each time the wisp heals an ally (in addition to the first damage dealt).

Oh, and Glyph of Unity (non-celestial) desperately needs attention. At the very least, double the duration and go from there.

Glyph of unity really needs work outside of the avatar state, what would be cool is if condi damage also triggered it, or if you transfered condis from us to our afflicted victims like every 2-3 seconds or something.

Even the celestial version of Glyph of Unity is pitiful. It has a cheeky 1 second ICD, so you can’t even use it to burst heal allies up in times of need. The seed it drops from the verdant etching trait literally does more healing.

Aim for exactly 89% critical chance on your hero panel (With spotter+ fury + banner). We get 10% critical chance from flanking monsters, and the hero panel is currently bugged to show 1% less than your true crit chance.

If you’re using food with precision on it (i.e Truffle steak) then you can just use 3 precision infusions to reach exactly the right amount. For other foods (Rice balls or seaweed salad) you’ll likely want some assassins pieces to make up the lost 70 precision.

Agreed that flame trap could use some buffs as it’s currently weaker than sharpening stone, which requires much less setup and has other benefits. I feel spike trap is ok with it’s main focus being on the launch for PvP gametypes.

Regarding the changes to spirits, I could see sun/storm spirit getting slight buffs to their pulsing boons when traited, as super short vigor/swiftness feels very underwhelming. The stone and nature spirits however are already extremely strong when traited (Stone is perma protection due to it’s passive proc effect), and perma pulsing stability might be a little too good considering the elite spirit already has an extremely potent heal over time.

I agree with the pet changes, the condition damage from those pets could really use some help.

I would aim to maximise your personal damage while still doing enough healing to comfortably keep your squad alive. Experiment with different gear sets and eventually you’ll settle on the best one for a particular boss / group.

Staff DPS isn’t as bad as people make it out to be, with realistic buffs it’s about 10k DPS with full Berserker (0 healing power), 7k DPS with full Zealot’s/Monk Runes (~1000 healing power) and ~4-5k DPS with full Magi’s/Monk Runes (~1200 healing power). You’ll be going into CA for 1-2 seconds on each rotation so you can reduce those by about 20%.

Basically even in the worst case scenario of camping staff all day long (Which you shouldn’t be doing on any raid boss) you’ll still get a pretty large gain by dropping the Magi’s and moving to more offensive gear sets. Eventually aiming for berserker/viper’s once you’re comfortable on Druid.

As others have already mentioned, Magi’s is chosen simply to maximise outgoing healing potential. It’s extremely wasteful in terms of stat point allocation, but that’s not relevant if you’re only concerned with healing.

Zealot’s gear is better for damage if you’re looking to run power. Condition healing builds are fantastic and indeed make better use of the offensive stats, currently Shaman’s gear makes for a pretty decent healer with moderate condition damage. Unfortunately the build isn’t utilized too much due to staff being a mainly power focused weapon.

Overall your goal might be to eventually drop the training wheels and move towards fully offensive druid gear sets (Berserker’s or Viper’s) which make very good use of all stat points. The healing is more than good enough, even at the hardest bosses providing you’re experienced and know when to heal and when to DPS.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Q: Allies you heal with celestial avatar abilities gain increased damage (Grace of the land)

So, if they don’t get healed (if already at max health), they don’t get the buff, right?

Grace of the land is applied separately to the heals, so you can still give the buff to players that are at full HP. You can also give the grace of the land stacks to entirely different players than those that are being healed, due to the heals overflowing.

Bump, new applicants are always welcome!

Druid is a fantastic elite-spec for min-maxing purposes, but like every good elite-spec it also has some weaknesses. Future healing specs should aim to capitalise on those weaknesses in order to gain a spot against certain bosses.

• Druid healing is bursty, but they have very poor heal over time in comparison to existing Revenant or Ele healer builds. This does improve when using the elite spirit / traited water spirit but it’s still rather poor.

• Druid’s personal damage is extremely low, especially when using a staff to cover downtime in healing between celestial avatar availability. Any boss that encourages a team split will dimish the value of druid buffs and highlight their poor personal DPS.

• Druid’s can only heal one spot at once. Compared to revenant which can control the tablet to heal multiple locations simultaneously (Really cool to heal the green circles & melee group at VG for example). Both Ele / Rev healers also have extremely strong area healing over time with soothing mist / regen (+100% outgoing healing) which makes fights where players spread out (Matthias/KC etc) extremely easy to manage.

In summary, Druid’s are not the best healers. They are taken for their damage buffs in the pursuit of faster kill speeds against easy bosses. If bosses are made more difficult then we’d already see the emergence of stronger healers being meta.

Bump, still recruiting!

Pretty much, with Magi’s armour + weapon you’ll already be healing for a ton so trinkets don’t matter too much.

Just slowly work on the Magi’s/Zealot’s trinkets if you feel you need extra healing, which is unlikely.

Full berserker gear is fine for fractals.

In raids the main thing to be careful with is toughness, since that can pull unwanted aggro in wing 1/3, hence cleric’s can be risky to use. I would work towards either Zealot’s or Magi’s trinkets and slowly build them up over time. These can be tricky to get, either from dungeoneer for Magi’s accessories or raid drops/bloodstone fen.

PUGs will usually want you in some kind of healing gear, for that you can either use Zealot’s or Magi’s stat armour with a full set of monk runes. You can also take a Zealot’s/Magi’s staff with transference sigil to be extra safe. Also, always use rice balls as food when healing. Berserker trinkets should be fine, since your main goal is getting the 10% outgoing healing modifiers, but as above you can slowly work on getting healing trinkets if you’d like more raw healing power.

I would say that full healing Druid is considered meta for pretty much all pugs / casual guild runs at this point. The more offensive power/condition variants are rated higher as they find much more effective usage in groups which are more experienced with the content and thus don’t need quite as much healing.

The Staff healer build on Metabattle looks pretty up to date.

As for tips for a full healing druid:

• Use Pink Moa instead of Electric Wyvern for CC/Utility, it’s now much better in nearly all cases.

• Stack as much outgoing healing % as you can (Rice balls, Sigil of Transference, Monk runes, Natural Mender). It’s much more effective at increasing your healing than the raw healing power stat.

• Try not to be tempted to roll double staff, instead be smart about when to heal and when to deal damage. Remember that one of your primary jobs is to buff allies with grace of the land.

• Healing is subgroup prioritised, so be mindful of your squad set up when running a full healer. For example a 4-4-2 squad with only one full healer will result in only 4 players recieving the vast majority of heals.

• You have a ton of CC available (Path of scars, Pink Moa, Lunar impact, Natural convergence). Always be mindful of breakbars such as sacrifice at Matthias.

• You can provide perma-protection to a group using stone spirit and the Nature’s Vengeance trait. This is great for Matthias.

• Be willing to switch up your build for each encounter, some fights are fairly healing intensive like Matthias while others feel like a walk in the park if the mechanics are being handled correctly (i.e Sloth).

With a 4-4-2 comp you’ll always want both druids running spotter, frost spirit and ideally sun spirit. This is because only one application of spotter / spirit will be overflowing from each subgroup with a druid in it.

In 7-2-1 comps, the DPS druid in the “7” group will have decent but not 100% uptime of the buffs on the main DPS roles. The other druid in the “1” group can cover the downtime and buff the rev/chrono by also bringing spotter / frost spirit, especially since this Druid is probably Zealot’s/Magi’s and isn’t contributing much in terms of DPS.

In summary, 1 druid is rarely enough. I’d always recommend 2 druids bringing full buffs.

Elena.3642:

Yes, we actually tried that after our last fail at Vale Guardian. While I’m thankful for advice the problem is that that particular encounter requires at least someone in the group to have raid mastery to get through the tunnel to tower. As far as I am aware (and I checked a couple videos and wiki) there is no way to survive through that tunnel without mastery and no workaround that would enable the raid group where none of the members have that mastery to beat that initial step. I do plan to try and get mastery by trying to get into pug raid this weekend and then use my mesmer to maybe get my guildies successfully through encounter but that will defend if I am able to find a pug that will accept a necro that doesn’t follow current meta (aka power reaper). Thank you anyways.

Ah that’s indeed something I failed to consider. There is a small jump you can do that allows a chrono to skip the tunnel. It’s difficult to describe but you can leap (Using lightning hammer skill #2) from a small ledge close to the cliff (Just after the first little castle). This gets you up to where the bouncing mushroom is and you can portal others up to help with the turret. You could also in theory run all of the way around, blinking past the turret fire and climb up to the turrets from the ramps at the back of the keep.

As an alternative I’d be happy to help you guys out if you need someone to run through the cave for you (I am on EU). Also if you’re interested in getting your raid masteries unlocked you’d be more than welcome to join one of my runs for a quick VG kill.

I’d highly suggest giving the first encounter of wing 3 a try, unlike VG there’s no enrage timer there so your squad can take all the time you need to clear it. It serves as a much better intoduction to raiding than VG, who’s actually one of the hardest encounters!

Regarding your topic though, I feel enrage timers are there to discourage simply tanking through mechanics and thus are a very important aspect of maintaining difficulty; particularly for fights that don’t have a “soft enrage” mechanic. Nearly all of the enrage timers are set extremely generously so even defence oriented groups should not struggle to meet those checks. Most groups that struggle are failing on a mechanical level (i.e being teleported away by blues) and should focus on how to better deal with the mechanics such that too much time isn’t being wasted.

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.