Outfitting a Druid Healer for Raids

There is some contradicting information out there right now. Questions are:

1. What is the currently preferred stat prefix for a mix of healing/damage? So far, I have multiple sources saying it's either Harrier, Marshal or Zealot. I guess the real question is how much healing is TOO much .. is that even a thing to have too much in raids?
2. Is full zerker enough of a capable healing setup with a capable group? I suppose I could simply go in and test it, but I don't want to waste my groups time or my gold.

In raid, I use Harrier with warhorn traited cause we use only 1 warrior and our ele are too lazy to blast fire field. This way I can provide perma fury/regen.Tbh, if you are not in very elitist you shouldnt try to add damage (aka Zealot/zerker) cause in most case, the dps increase will still be trash where boon will give a whole lot of might especially with the recent nerf of GOTL.Since you are providing buff to 10 players (except warhorn ofc), boons look a way to go to me. Warhorn, spirit, GoTL.I would say the same thing for Marshal, a small increase of damage but barely useful (noticeable ?), so if you wanna deal damage go for condi druid with viper, but it's going to be harder to do your job in healing role than harrier gear.

My 2 cents.

tldr : i don't think mixing healing/damage is good if you are not with a very good group, and if you are in that case, viper druid should be the way to go.

For optimised healing, you may want to look at Khar's reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7bfx7s/theorycrafting_25_optimized_boon_druid_builds/

At the current state of balance, I'm not convinced that it makes sense to try to mix healing and damage capabilities as a druid when your main jobs are a) boons (especially might) and b) heals. If we had a stat combination with healing/concentration and additionally either condi damage/expertise or power/precision, that might become interesting, but at the moment I'd recommend to do the main jobs properly and not sacrifice them for some paltry damage.

With regard to the second question, I have a little experience from a while ago as condi druid (technically not different from berserker druid with regard to healing). It's enough for some bosses in the old wings, but it's definitely nothing I'd want to play at bosses like Matthias. Others have probably more and more recent experience with this.

Honestly it depends on how skilled your raid group is. More healing power is obviously safer but if your teammates are on point with their dodging, etc then they will need less healing than a team that is facetanking all the damage. I personally would start with more healing power and over time slowly replace it with more damage gear until you find the sweet spot based on how much damage your group is receiving. You should be able to tell when you reach the point where you are struggling to keep the heals going.

Most tank are 2k toughness these days.. so you can mix and match ur stat minstrel and harrier to get at least 80% in boon duration and bit of toughness to help you survive better.I play regeneration build since day 1 of raid way before the build become meta.. had to hide my offhand wh in pug. :) But this is one build that is easiest to run.. so much aoe healing and burst.. hf raiding and druiding.

You are basically supposed to bring the following in order: Boons > Healing > Pet utility such as CC > some personal damage.All of this while trying not to have more toughness than the tank. Harrier does all of this rather well. There is also the option to run the more defensive mix nowadays with a concentration sigil as mentioned above. We are no longer pidgeonholded into having zero toughness as we used to be during the 1005 toughness chronomancer days.

I assume most people who'd argue about the personal damage of druid probably never even played it themselves or at least not to the degree where they'd notice that proper healing and powerful boons usually do far more to increase the overall DPS than you could ever do by playing cDruid, the best damage option you have.

@Talindra.4958 said:Most tank are 2k toughness these days.. so you can mix and match ur stat minstrel and harrier to get at least 80% in boon duration and bit of toughness to help you survive better.I play regeneration build since day 1 of raid way before the build become meta.. had to hide my offhand wh in pug. :) But this is one build that is easiest to run.. so much aoe healing and burst.. hf raiding and druiding.

And I thought I was the only one. Always felt like an envoy of the idea that powerful regeneration could actually be considered a damage increase in raids due to Scholar buff uptime on your allies. Though, I have yet to pug a single raid at something like 900+ LI and counting which certainly made having things my way easier.

@"Obtena.7952" said:There is some contradicting information out there right now. Questions are:

1. What is the currently preferred stat prefix for a mix of healing/damage? So far, I have multiple sources saying it's either Harrier, Marshal or Zealot. I guess the real question is how much healing is TOO much .. is that even a thing to have too much in raids?
2. Is full zerker enough of a capable healing setup with a capable group? I suppose I could simply go in and test it, but I don't want to waste my groups time or my gold.

Since your main job isnt actually healing, but rather keeping up might and fury nowadays, zerker is kinda dead. It was before because its been inferior to condi druid for ages, but now its just... full on dead ;)

Just go with full harriers. If, for some reason, you dont have access to harriers yet, here's my non-pof druid ->http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBHhZwCjgxUA+WBAnQnYA8TtqmVB-jBiGABso+jb6DUe+DAKB9/UAsjyvyfCAEt/ApA8bmF-eWorks only with nature magic, which makes this build more of a band-aid until you can get full harrier.

@Regen buildThe usefulness of that build put aside, why would you even consider using minstrel? You get pretty much the same healing power with harrier/magi mix WITHOUT forcing chronotank to run high toughness. Sorry, but using minstrel on a druid has never been as useless as it is atm, and it usually is only needed by really bad players that cant survive without the extra defensive stats offered by magi/minstrel.And if you want to run regen build without having to use concentration sigil, harrier actually gets ahead in terms of healing power. Though tbh, healing power scaling is so bad, it just doesnt even matter how much of it you have on a healing druid, as long as its more than 1k for encounters like VG no greens.

OK thanks all. .. I went harriers with Clerics on Trinkets only.

@Obtena.7952 said:OK thanks all. .. I went harriers with Clerics on Trinkets only.

as long as you have around 80% with boon and with a bit of toughness, you are fine..with healing, you need to visual and sort of predict where tank and zerg going.. so you can cast your heal at a spot where benefit most. I usually lay healing spring at tank blast it a few times with staff3, ca3, wh5 to get most heal out of tht.

@"CptAurellian.9537" said:For optimised healing, you may want to look at Khar's reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7bfx7s/theorycrafting_25_optimized_boon_druid_builds/

At the current state of balance, I'm not convinced that it makes sense to try to mix healing and damage capabilities as a druid when your main jobs are a) boons (especially might) and b) heals. If we had a stat combination with healing/concentration and additionally either condi damage/expertise or power/precision, that might become interesting, but at the moment I'd recommend to do the main jobs properly and not sacrifice them for some paltry damage.

With regard to the second question, I have a little experience from a while ago as condi druid (technically not different from berserker druid with regard to healing). It's enough for some bosses in the old wings, but it's definitely nothing I'd want to play at bosses like Matthias. Others have probably more and more recent experience with this.

I went to the reddit link and started to read. I had to stop when my eyes started bleeding. Way TMI to take in!

@Ceddwen.7260 said:

@"CptAurellian.9537" said:For optimised healing, you may want to look at Khar's reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7bfx7s/theorycrafting_25_optimized_boon_druid_builds/

At the current state of balance, I'm not convinced that it makes sense to try to mix healing and damage capabilities as a druid when your main jobs are a) boons (especially might) and b) heals. If we had a stat combination with healing/concentration and additionally either condi damage/expertise or power/precision, that might become interesting, but at the moment I'd recommend to do the main jobs properly and not sacrifice them for some paltry damage.

With regard to the second question, I have a little experience from a while ago as condi druid (technically not different from berserker druid with regard to healing). It's enough for some bosses in the old wings, but it's definitely nothing I'd want to play at bosses like Matthias. Others have probably more and more recent experience with this.

harrier/minstrels mix for fractals and raids. swap out a few pieces of minstrels for magi or harriers depending on your tanks setup. this combo gives the highest boon uptime.

harrier/magi mix for higher healing power and lower boon duration.

There's a good chance that in the future 2 druid teams are going to run 1 primary healer and 1 primary buffer, imo Druid fills the buffer role better so if you only want a single set of gear i'd go for harrier/minstrels.

If you run a team of one buffer druid and another main healer, I'd not be surprised if the "primary healer" no longer was a druid. In that function, other classes (especially tempest) beat any druid.

@"CptAurellian.9537" said:If you run a team of one buffer druid and another main healer, I'd not be surprised if the "primary healer" no longer was a druid. In that function, other classes (especially tempest) beat any druid.

But you dont need much healing in a good group. Healing is mostly a crutch to carry bad players. The little amount of healing required can still be done by a single druid in most cases.Just one druid with a mix of harrier/magi will do plenty for most stuff.And it wont change until Anet either deletes all unique buffs from druid or greatly increases the amount of unavoidable damage

Even at vale guardian one druid should still be enough to outheal skipping greens

Congratulations, and now you realise that what you've written is hardly relevant for >90% of the groups out there.

@CptAurellian.9537 said:Congratulations, and now you realise that what you've written is hardly relevant for >90% of the groups out there.Just like healers other than druid are not relevant to 90% of the groups out there. You just take a 2nd if one isnt enough. Because then you can take more spirits and glyph of empowerment for both sub groups.

I was told this week that Harriers are now no longer the preferred option ... is this true?

@"Obtena.7952" said:There is some contradicting information out there right now. Questions are:

1. What is the currently preferred stat prefix for a mix of healing/damage? So far, I have multiple sources saying it's either Harrier, Marshal or Zealot. I guess the real question is how much healing is TOO much .. is that even a thing to have too much in raids?
2. Is full zerker enough of a capable healing setup with a capable group? I suppose I could simply go in and test it, but I don't want to waste my groups time or my gold.

I was full Magi and then flipped to Harrier's after POF. I found my HP too low and was struggling to stay alive in PUG raids and T4 fractals so i started to wear Magi's Accessories which really helped a lot. Basically, I run the standard Snow Crows builds on my Druid but adjust based on the group. If I have a strong co-healer, then I wear 2 Harrier's accessories; if I am teaching a new Druid, I may toss on my Magi trinkets. Overall, Harrier's is the main stat you are looking for atm but Magi's to start is ok too.

Snow Crows literally updated this 2 days ago.https://snowcrows.com/raids/ranger/

@"Ceddwen.7260" said:I was told this week that Harriers are now no longer the preferred option ... is this true?

Snow Crows ran tests this week and found Harriers to still be meta.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/8jw7zi/sc_updated_benchmarks_0805_patch/

Harrier is more of a versatile, 'always works - you don't have to worry' build than anything else and the place to start. Harrier/Cleric/Concentration/Instictive Reaction is the one to go for if you were to min-max stats properly. Puts you at around 1400 toughness, 100% boon duration on warhorn swaps and 1675 healing power. Comes with a sacrafice of about 200 power which means very little for a support druid.Talking about META, Snow Crows still place a single cDruid as the more optimal build for 7 of the bosses - something most groups would never do to begin with.