After the June 2022 patch many traits and skills involved in druid have changed quite a bit. This video is still accurate in terms of tips and tricks but the specific build no longer does exactly what it shows in the video. As of March 2024 you will want to use mace/warhorn + staff if you have maces unlocked from SotO instead of axe/warhorn staff. Search this channel for "druid" to find more up to date information if needed.
A few tips: 1. Spotter is often dropped in favor for Hidden Barbs, which is a 33% bleeding damage boost. This is because 1. Orange Tiger and Sand Lion do basically the same damage, with orange tiger giving fury and 2. Your quickness provider should be giving fury as well. Quickness providers that aren't giving fury are probably doing something wrong on their end, it's that easy to give enough fury to keep up with your warhorn and what they usually can provide. 2. While Lingering Light is great, druid really shines with Grace of the Land, a trait that makes Celestial Avatar give might per heal. Your burst heals are so incredibly strong within Celestial Avatar that you don't particularly need the extra healing- start encounters with warhorn 5, then CA 4-3-4 to build up some might (10s baseline, 20s with max boon duration. 4 gives 5 might total per cast, so 11 might from CA, 6 might from warhorn 5, and then frost spirit fills up the rest while active). You can instantly cast CA 2 while using CA 4 to add extra might while using those longer casts. After building up might, use CA 3-4-3 (again with intermittent 2s) for your big burst healing. While it might seem counterintuitive to take less healing for might when you can drop spotter due to your quickness provider's fury uptime, might can be a little harder depending on what quickness provider you are playing with, especially if pugging (playing with randoms). 3. A decent alternative to rune of the Monk, your end goal rune (which needs dungeon currency), is a set of Superior Runes of Water. It provides the same healing power and boon duration buffs, just with a different T6 effect (in this case condi cleansing when removing a heal skill). Definetly upgrade to Runes of the Monk though (which gives a +1% healing buff when you heal an ally, stacking up to 10 times, which in encounters is very easily achievable) no matter what healing runes you use. 4. Instead of healing spring, run Water Spirit. This frees you up to do different things with your utility skills, as you provide quite a bit of regen in a wide area ever since the June 2022 changes- you fill up on CA juice in about the same time, however Healing Spring has a significantly smaller area. However, dropping healing spring for water spirit lets you also take Sharpened Edges, a small 33% bleed chance on critical hits. Not huge, but a little useful since more damage=faster clears. 5. To add onto 4, if you struggle for healing overall try adding Glyph of Unity instead of sun spirit (your least valuable spirit). While in CA, glyph of unity will tether to 5 allies and add an additional heal when they heal from any source, including regeneration. As of writing, this skill has a 1.0 healing coefficient, which makes each individual pulse very strong- with the amount this skill can pulse, it outputs insane healing. You can run 2 spirits for alacrity if you want to run healing spring+unity, however it is incredibly tight on your timings and if any spirit dies you're probably going to lose a lot of alacrity uptime. 6. Jacaranda can do incredible damage (for a pet anyways) on stationary targets. If playing endgame content such as raids it may be useful to run jacaranda over a different damage pet, assuming you don't need both slots for utility. It also doubles up as a great immobilize, and I personally run it on the Gorseval the Multifarious raid boss every time I fight it, although there are some other scenarios you want it for. 7. Druid in Fractals... sadly can suck at times. Like, a lot more than other alac healers. This is mainly due to some fractal mechanics hitting your spirits and ones such as Flux Bomb can instantly kill them, meaning you lose your alacrity uptime. Be aware of what mechanics hit Player AI (spirits, pets, minions, elementals, mechs, clones, etc) in every piece of content, with fractals being the most notable for their anti-spirit mechanics.
Your guides are very helpful. Most of the videos on the build sites just show gameplay without any explanation. I greatly appreciate your contribution to the community.
As always; Thank you for all the hard work you put into these videos Muk, this is especially helpful to me as I recently picked up Druid and didn't really click with any other guides, I've always played healer in other MMOs but found healing in GW2 a little tough to decipher... Now I'm feeling much more confident.
Same. I play Astrologian on FF14 and love it but always found GW2 healing a little intimidating for some reason. Thanks to this guide, I'm gonna start running world bosses this weekend to get used to healing in a less raidy environment :D.
I just started learning druid as an alternative to my soulbeast, and it's really cool to see all the heals. Now I just need to get with a consistent party to practice and play with.
From my experience when your squad gets better you will see less of those green numbers but your DPS will love you for providing close to 100% Alac and topping off their health if they are power. Switching between different experience levels is truly an interesting challenge.
You remain the best in GW2 at giving a honest breakdown of all the changes and discussion for how these changes effect the game with just the right touch of humor :). You continue to amaze, make smile and of course STAY a global Icon
I recently started learning Druid because I was told it was the easiest healer to learn. It is my first time being a healer but it's pretty fun seeing green numbers.
Not sure it's the easiest but it's most important that you like the playstyle. The three "main healers" Alac Druid, Quick Firebrand and Alac Mechanist aren't too different in difficulty. I think Tempest is a bit more difficult and Scourge is a bit special. IMHO the important thing to remember as a healer is that you don't learn a rotation. You usually have a priority list and some combos but besides that you have to keep an eye on how the fight develops. Which is both a pro and a con.
I recently rejoined Gw2 few weeks ago your videos have been helpful upgrading/ gearing up my characters with the new expansions. Your builds are excellent including giving some alternatives for some if out of cost range.
It's worth mentioning that Quick Draw has a 10 s internal cooldown. Really wish they'd display those. Or did they remove it? If no allies are in range the Water Spirit has an even easier time keeping other spirits alive. Rune on the Rebreather? There's underwater content where I'd take a Druid to? I think the Lynx is also pretty good when it comes to damage but maybe something changed since I last looked into that. And honestly the damage that the pet does currently isn't really much to consider. Better look at the utility skill. You called your Brown Bear Wojtek? Nice! Overall great guide and nothing I could disagree with. I currently prefer using Water Spirit (unless condi heavy fight of course) because that gives me the freedom to use one slot for a utility skill or a CC Spirit like Storm. I maybe shouldn't do that but it seems like it's easier with beginners. Also I think the Druid makes for a worse tanks as some of the other healers because less access to Aegis and Stability. Although they have improved that quite a bit with the White Tiger for example.
Nice guide, i would suggest a slight modification for the build : Full Harrier with ascended heal food allows you to reach almost 100% boon duration, making sigil of concentration useless. To replace it you have sigil of water that adds a nice healing boost to the build
That's min maxing though. In regards to most PvE scenarios (with the exception of raids), I do not bother with ascennded food an usually just use the birthday cake, because I am lazy.
I just wish Anet beefed up the individual alac per spirit so we aren't so limited in our kit choices. Two spirits then a free util like SaR/Protect Me etc. would be lovely. I used to run more with the elite spirit than Glyph of the Stars but you've made a convert out of me lol. Thanks for the guide Muk.
I still miss when we needed someone to /gg before a fight to fill up the Astral form bar. Druid: "I need to drink your blood for my heal juices!" Random pug: "what?..." Druid: "I AM NECRO WITH HEAL JUICE"
wondering why fern hound was only mentioned for minor healing - this pet can keep up 80%+ regeneration (that scales with YOUR healing power) by itself by just autocasting f2 - which makes it absolutely no brainer for beginners. take glyph heal for 20k burst heals and have a happy day. CA2 spam is enough cleanse for most scenarios anyway
Excelsior! My time machine has worked! I have returned to the time when Mukluk did Ranger guides... What do you mean it's 2023? Well my time machine failed but everything went better than expected.
hmm since moving spirits has a 20sec~ cd, how do you play with them if you heal in fractal? Only use them if you are really sticking to a fight on a small area?
Lingering Light is such a great trait when you don't need to share might, but how often is that? You're doing your party members a huge disservice by not granting more might when you have it so readily available.
quick generation of a lot of might is always strong, even if you can cap might anyway. stacking it up faster for burn phases or after mechanics is very valuable. And the little extra heal is almost never relevant
And if you find yourself in that situation there is nothing stopping you from swapping to that trait. In my own experience, groups that are overflowing with might generation has become the norm, but if you need more then absolutely! Take that trait if it is what your team needs!
@@MuklukRU-vid Then should it not be your default to bring as much might as possible on a support build instead of assuming it gets covered by someone else? If your team can determine they don't need the might from Grace of the Land, you can make the decision to swap off instead.
Noob question regarding the 3 spirits and keeping alacrity up: after putting all 3 spirits into play, do you reactivate them one by one just as the alacrity is about to run out or is it okay to reactivate them all at once for one big stack of alacrity?
Activate them every time they are available and you will keep alacrity up 100% of the time. If you need to delay activating them a bit because you will have to reposition them soon that is also fine.
so you don't take the traditional "Grace of Land" to stack might with celestial form -> cause might isn't that lacking in "modern" party setups compaired to legacy meta?
That is my norm yes. It is rare that I find myself in a group that isn't always at 25 might (while I am providing about 15). However if I did find myself in that situation, I could swap to grace of the land that day, there's nothing stopping you from doing that.
If you are swapping to axe/warhorn and quickdraw procs, use it on wh5, if you are swapping to staff and it procs, use it on the 3 or 5, if you are swapping to astral, usually the 3.
@@MuklukRU-vid Thanks for the response. Based on what you pointed out, I did some testing too and found that using the F2 tool tip for the damage potential when choosing a pet is not useful. The tooltip damage showing had nothing to do with average dps of the pet. Live and learn.
The Phoenix has great stats but those animations totally kill the DPS. Most pets will go to their target and do damage or shoot at range. The Phoenix prefers to yeet around the arena.
This build is intended for low damage and buffing/healing others. So you could easily use this in open world events around other people, but if completely on your own it would take you a long time to kill things.
@@MuklukRU-vid I can't decide between Harrier or Plaguedoctor, help me doctor Muk. I mostly wander around in metas but I need the legendary currency from raids/hm strikes.
Ranger in general has been in my blindspot for way, way, way too long. Doesn't even make sense, it's one of my favorite class archetypes, and I *usually* play druid in most games. I think this gave me the little nudge I needed to start checking it out.
I'm playing druid purely for many big green numbers so my build is pretty much just that. Almost no boon support and it's not optimal at all. The build in this video is much better. Like the extra healing from glyph of unity seems mostly completely unneccessary, but I just love the idea of pushing healing as much as possible so I can''t not use it. xD
@@MuklukRU-vid makes sense. That’s what I assumed. I used to play the game years ago and recently got back into it. Pretty new to WvW content but enjoying it a lot. Trying to find a decent Druid build for WvW.
Celestial Shadow stealth WARNING: Giving Stealth to DPS can cause them to lose DPS or mess up their rotation. Examples who it effects: Reaper 111 auto-attack in shroud 3 second no damage Deadeye uses its stealth attack and can mess up the rotation lazy mechanist letting it auto-attack 3s no damage Untamed has no effect, if you are auto-attacking you are not pressing buttons that deal damage 😏
@@kaltaron1284 There are other sources of stealth like Scrapper Stealth Gyro or Heal Thief using stealth to heal 😂 This is minor as from ~100 hours healing is Druid in Raids only 3 people complained about it. One PUG and Two friends which I also then proceed to troll 😏
@@kaltaron1284 Yeah, i get the point he's getting to, every class benefits from being able to dodge when a deadly mechanic is about to happen, but it bugs me so much that an extra dodge isnt always a positive thing. When i get an extra dodge playing daredevil i always feel like "god damn it, i must get rid of this asap". It is a feelsbad moment and it doesnt need to be like that. The least they could do was making so daredevil dodge is a dps increase, instead of the reverse. Just bump the damage number higher, it is that simple. Yet they sleep on thief, for some reason. I get the feeling there's not many people at anet who understand thief in PvE, if any at all.
@@diogoreis6367 It should be a dps increase because you get the damage buff more often but I'm not sure. To be honest if I don't want to stress about it I just take Staff Master. It's a dps loss sure but you can keep your dodges for when you need them and have a consistant bonus. IMHO the greatest worth of Daredevil is not the dps but the utility from the stolen skills. Not very useful in experienced squads but useful to help noobs.
@@kaltaron1284 what i mean by dps increase is that it should do more damage per second than just autoatacking, which isnt the case as of today. The reason we dodge as power daredevil is to deplete our endurance in order to keep up the modifier from Havoc Specialist and to keep up bounding dodger, not because of bound's damage. Bound's damage per se isnt a dps increase, and it totally should be, so that we dont get ourselves on those weird scenarios where we dont know if we should dodge to finish up a boss or just keep autoatacking/spamming 2. We should always be rewarded by using a dodge, not just sometimes.
@@kaltaron1284 Also, if u take Havoc Specialist and have 1 endurance bar constantly (in order to be safe the whole time), u still get more dps than picking Staff Master. There's probably no situation in PvE where u need your 3 dodges to be available, which makes Staff Master a bad pick everywhere.
Ever since they nerfed grace of the land and added a few stacks of might to nearly every dps, I've found myself with 25 might in nearly every group I've been in. Example: Engineer rifle 2 gives allies 5 might with 100% uptime even on full zerker
This is a party build not a PvE build. I understand its focused on support but 90% of the time you are going to be by yourself its not helpful. Go into story and fight Mordramoth fight balthazar let me know how well that went while you are buffing and healing NOBODY.
You are correct and I'm sorry for any confusion. But druid is a healing/buffing class so that was kind of inferred. Endgame PvE consists of open world, dungeons, fractals, raids, strikes, dragon response missions, etc, and in nearly all of those a druid would play as full support.
