Ranger Full Healer Druid (PvE, raids)

[Nag 36]

This is a look at the Druid's role as a dedicated healer in group PvE content. Druids boast some of the strongest healing in the entire game, and can keep an entire team (and their various pets, minions etc.) alive through the roughest of times. This build is specifically tuned for raids, where people take constant damage and need constant healing. For smaller groups and solo play, this build is rather slow due to low damage, and has unneccessarily much healing, so it's not recommended for those situations.

The version I will discuss will be the most healing-focused one, playing as a dedicated healer/support with negligible DPS output. There are DPS-oriented Druid builds out there that are quite strong, but when your team is less experienced or has Necromancers who want you to spamheal their minions, this build will generally provide more useful to the group. As such, I won't really go into detail about how to maximize your DPS – this build is about learning to pump out as much healing and support as possible, then you can tune into more DPS when you're comfortable with healing (or you can stay as a dedicated healer, it's legitimately good!).

This build also has the advantage of being quite cheap for a raid build, having pretty low-cost gear requirements. Healers are also always highly sought after in raids, so it's a good choice for getting into raiding.

This build requires HoT to play, no way around it, sorry.

 

Equipment

Full Magi's gear (Healing Power/Precision/Vitality). Exotic quality is more than good enough. Ascended stat combination name is [Hronk's], but I really wouldn't craft that unless you're bored, as your healing will be more than good enough with Exotic.

For trinkets you can't really go wrong. You can pick up some exotic Magi's trinkets (there are no Ascended Magi's trinkets), use Ascended Cleric (Healing Power/Toughness/Power) or just keep the good old Berserker's (Power/Precision/Ferocity) trinkets.

Magi's, Zealot's (Power/Precision/Healing Power), Cleric's or Berserker's Staff as your main set - I heavily recommend Magi's, but your choice. Anything (even a second Staff!) works as your second set, as most sets can have a use for different situations – see below for a discussion of different weapons.

 

If you want to go more offensive, then you'll want either Berserker's, Zealot's or even Viper's (as Condi Druid is actually a very good way to go if you want to do more DPS as a Druid). However, as this guide focuses on the most heal-oriented Druid setup, I won't discuss how to make the most out of these offensive stat types here. You will see a lot of people loving their Zealot's sets, though, and that's fine, the healing is a bit worse but it has marginally more damage to make up for it - and for skilled groups where incoming damage is very low, this can be a good tradeoff.

 

A pretty good option for your trinkets is getting Exotic Magi's trinkets (of all sorts, including backpiece) from the Karma Vendor at the Temple of Lyssa in Orr or as random drops in Fractals, then slot them with Crest of the Magi. It costs a fair bit of karma / takes some lucky loot drops, but they're kind of "ideal" unless you somehow get Ascended Magi's trinkets from the raids. Feel free to mix in some Ascended Cleric's trinkets, though, they have a bit more Healing Power - just make sure you have less Toughness than your tank.

 

If you do a lot of PvP or did a lot of dungeons back in the day, the dungeon collection for Twilight Arbor and Honor of the Waves both give you an Ascended Magi's Accessory for completing them, but yeah, that's kinda hard to get and not really something I'd grind for.

 

Runes / Sigils

 

Armor: [Superior Rune of the Monk] x6. [Superior Rune of the Druid] x6 works as well if you'd rather spend money than run Ascalonian Catacombs (although Ascalonian Catacombs is a perfect source of Magi's armor with Rune of the Monk, since the dungeon vendor sells this exact set); the Druid runes are more focused on short bursts of healing, while Monk's is about consistent, sustained healing.

Staff: [Superior Sigil of Transference] and [Superior Sigil of Water]. Since Sigil of Transference is quite expensive, a budget option could be [Sigil of Benevolence], although it's unfortunately not very well suited  to all raid content. Still, it's actually quite good in some fights with many adds, like against Sabetha.

Second weapon set: If you are running a double Staff build, you can just use the same things as the main Staff on it. If you are running any other weapon, the Sigils are kinda up to you, as they won't matter that much unless you want to do something specific with them. If you had Transference on your main set, having Benevolence and Water on your off-set is okay, although Transference and Benevolence would be the "best" option for add-heavy fights.

 

Traits

Nature Magic: 3/2/3

Skirmishing: 2/1/1

Druid: 2/2/1

 

If you are running a lot of spirits (any two of Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit and Water Spirit), consider changing the last trait in Nature Magic to Nature's Vengeance (top trait), as it will increase their effective range and grant some very nice boons to your group.

 

Utility Skills

Heal Skill: If you need personal healing, Troll Unguent is your best bet. Once you are comfortable with your own health, you can go for Glyph of Rejuvenation, which heals and buffs other people.

Utility Skill: Frost Spirit and Glyph of Empowerment. For your third slot, you can run Sun Spirit to boost your Condi-geared teammates, Glyph of the Tides for extra CC (invaluable on Vale Guardian) or Glyph of Alignment as a general heal. “Search and Rescue!” is also a very strong rez skill if that is needed.

Elite Skill: Glyph of Unity. Rarely you can use Spirit of Nature, but it is generally not worthwhile. Entangle is an amazing Immobilize, which can be especially useful on the second boss of Spirit Vale, Gorseval.

 

You should not underestimate the other heal abilities, Water Spirit and Healing Spring. If you have enough healing to keep yourself up without problems, these healing skills add a lot of healing to your group. Water Spirit gives a lot of sustained healing to your entire group. Healing Spring adds nice burst healing and condition clearing, although it's generally a bit clunkier to use than the Glyph of Rejuvenation.

 

Practice

Unlike most DPS classes, healing Druids don't have a “rotation” they stick to, but rather several ways to tune either more DPS or more healing as each situation requires it. The trick is to learn the most important combos.

The most important feature of the build is the Quick Draw trait: “When swapping weapons, the next ranger weapon skill you use will recharge 66% faster.” Furthermore, going into your Celestial Avatar form will trigger this trait, allowing you to get reduced cooldown on your most powerful heal, the Celestial Avatar 4 ability, Rejuvenating Tides. Thus whenever you go into Celestial Avatar form you want to use:

 

Rejuvenating Tides (Celestial Avatar 4).

Lunar Impact (Celestial Avatar 3).

Either spam 1 (Cosmic Ray) or 2 (Seed of Life) on people (1 heals more but 2 clears conditions and applies Blind) until 4 (Rejuvenating Tides) is off cooldown.

Rejuvenating Tides (Celestial Avatar 4).

Keep spamming 1 or 2 until Celestial Avatar form is over to give people Grace of the Land, and use 3 and 4 whenever they are up. If people are already full health but you'll need to heal a lot later, you can exit Celestial Avatar early to conserve a bit of astral force.

 

You can also use Celestial Avatar 3 (Lunar Impact) as a small CC instead of a heal if that is necessary. Celestial Avatar 5 (Natural Convergence) is generally not worth using as it has no healing, although you can use it as a soft CC (cripple/slow/immobilize) if you're desperate. It does okay damage too, but has a long channel and you can't move while casting it.

Whenever you swap back to Staff, you want to use either Astral Wisp (Staff 2) for both DPS and healing, or Ancestral Grace (Staff 3) for burst healing. You don't have to disable your autoattacks, please disregard that.

If you need more burst healing, Sublime Conversion (Staff 5) is a Water Field and Ancestral Grace (Staff 3) is a Blast Finisher, so place Sublime Conversion near allies and use Ancestral Grace on top of it. Make sure the center of the AoE is on top of the water field (a thin line), or you won't get the AoE healing.

Finally, Vine Surge (Staff 4) is good for soft CC (immobilize), and is very useful for Seekers on Vale Guardian. It also cleanses conditions, but does not heal.

 

Unlike what I've claimed before, Quick Draw is not wasted by autoattacks, so you can keep your autoattack on, yay! But Quick Draw has a very limited window to use it before it expires, so make sure you use an actual ability (e.g. Staff 2, Staff 3 or Celestial Avatar 3 or 4) as soon as possible after switching weapon sets to get the most out of this amazing trait.

 

Try to use Glyph of Unity (the Elite Glyph) while in Celestial Avatar form, as its "normal" version is quite useless. Also, be aware that Glyph of the Tides is a Pushback normally, and a Pull while you are in Celestial Avatar form; so if you want to push stuff away from your team, make sure you don't accidentally use Glyph of the Tides in Celestial Avatar form! (And vice versa)

Regardless, every time you use a Glyph you will also leave behind a Seed that works just like your Celestial Avatar 2 (Seed of Life) skill, healing, cleansing conditions and giving a stack of Grace of the Land to your allies, making all Glyphs good as heals and buffs.

 

Pets

 

Pets add a lot of flexibility to the Druid's arsenal. Pets are not affected by your own stats, so DPS-type pets will still do good damage even if you're in full healing gear, and support type pets are just as good even if you go full DPS gearing; the only thing that affects them is certain traits and any buffs on them.

 

DPS Support

Juvenile Tiger – Provides a lot of Fury for your team.

Juvenile Jungle Stalker – Provides Might for your team.

 

Pure Single Target DPS

Juvenile Panther

Juvenile Lynx

Since it got nerfed recently, the Juvenile Bristleback isn't as good as it once was, but it's still an okay DPS pet.

 

AoE DPS

Juvenile River Drake

Juvenile Marsh Drake

If you need AoE Condition Damage, switch River Drake for Salamander Drake or Juvenile Fire Wyvern.

 

Hard CC

Juvenile Pink Moa (a surprisingly strong Daze)

Juvenile Wolf (Fear)

 

Immobilize - very useful for Vale Guardian, the first boss of the first raid wing!

Juvenile Jungle Spider

Juvenile Krytan Drakehound

 

Defensive Support

Juvenile Fern Hound – Can moderately heal allies, which charges your astral force a significant amount.

 

Weapons

As stated earlier, most weapons serve some purpose, so be prepared to keep all of them handy. As they are mainly your off-sets, you don't need these to be very high quality or to have very good stats.

Surprisingly, having a Staff as your secondary weapon is quite good, as you can swap between your two staves to constantly trigger Quick Draw to get very low cooldown on your Staff 2 (Astral Wisp) or Staff 3 (Ancestral Grace).

If you need some CC, a Longbow has a nice pushback on Longbow 4 (Point-Blank Shot), and you can use it twice in pretty rapid succession due to Quick Draw. The other weapon sets are mostly either for DPS or personal defense, and is up to personal taste, really.

A Sword/Dagger set as your second setup is great for spamming Cripple, which is quite valuable at certain parts of the fight against the second boss of Spirit Vale, Gorseval. Stats don't really matter, but if you want to optimize you can get Viper's with a Sigil of Hobbling (+20% Cripple duration) and maybe Sigil of Ice or something (chance to Chill on hit). Both are very cheap, and you can get extra (exotic) Viper's weapons by completing HoT story on another character, but you really don't need to worry too much about optimizing this set.

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by Nag

[Arvinthir 38]

This is exactly the thing I need! Thank you^^

I'll dive into this soon and be back with noob questions if you don't mind!

[Nag 36]

That feeling when you've known for several days that you've forgotten something, but can't remember what...

I finally added pictures to Traits and Utilities! I also fixed some errors, so recheck your traits so they match with what's shown.

[Nag 36]

I fixed some more errors that were very kindly pointed out to me. Of special note: Traits are now actually correct, you can now turn your autoattack back on (yay!) and Zealot's gets... slightly more love from me. It's still not my favorite gearset.

[Arvinthir 38]

What's the amount of healing power I should be aiming for? I don't wanna invest in cleric trinkets and all, just to realize I have too much toughness/too little dmg.

[Nag 36]

I've done some updates based on new experience I've gained.

In particular, I'm very much starting to favor full Magi's over anything else. It's very strong, and getting exotic Magi's trinkets is actually quite easy, if you have some Karma stored up or just get lucky with Fractal drops. I've also added some love to the less-known healing skills.

With Exotic armor and trinkets, Ascended weapon and food + utility, I'm looking at ~1645 Healing Power. However, you'll probably start feeling good about your heals at around 1400 Healing Power, and they'll be passable at 1300.

Still, the % boosts to your healing are at least as important or more, so Monk's runes, Delicious Rice Balls and Sigil of Transference/Benevolence are all good times.

The full Ascended Magi's set with Infusions and everything (which I wouldn't recommend to anyone but the most dedicated healer!) has around 1800 Healing Power.

4 hours ago, Arvinthir said:

What's the amount of healing power I should be aiming for? I don't wanna invest in cleric trinkets and all, just to realize I have too much toughness/too little dmg.

While you can definitely get too much Toughness, you can't really get "too little dmg". As I said, there are offensive Druid builds, but more and more the Full Heal Druid is becoming popular, as it reduces a lot of pressure off of the team and allows your teammates to do full DPS without worrying about healing skills, dodging, and even allowing the team to facetank certain attacks and mechanics to keep doing DPS - for example, a strong healer can allow the team to just stand in the break bar AoEs on Gorseval and keep doing DPS.

I will maintain my stance that I'd rather have a single Full Heal Druid than a hundred wannabe-DPS Druids, although of course, your mileage may vary.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Nag

[Susimusta 48]

 

17 hours ago, Nag said:

While you can definitely get too much Toughness, you can't really get "too little dmg".

Yeah, try not to have any toughness at all to be honest, because the case is usually so that the tank is actually not full Toughness-geared like my Guardian tank is,  but rather just has a few toughness pieces --> you will pull aggro.

[Nag 36]

On 3/13/2016 at 2:25 PM, Arvinthir said:

What's the amount of healing power I should be aiming for? I don't wanna invest in cleric trinkets and all, just to realize I have too much toughness/too little dmg.

Still, getting two Cleric's (or Apothecary's) rings from Fractals and stowing them away on your Druid is relatively painless, and you can just replace them with Exotic Magi's based on your tank.

By the way, I'm really regretting leaving the Staff I got from the Druid specialization collection as Cleric's... life would have been much easier if I had statswapped it to Magi's. I made a second Magi's staff, though, but I'm probably going to have to statswap the old one too. Losing the Sigil of Transference (or having to buy an Upgrade Extractor) really hurts, though