Plaugedoctor's stat combination intrigues me, could it be viable to invest in?

My personal playstyle is getting a lot of value from tanking damage and giving near the best regen I can. I really enjoy both withstanding heavy blows and being a clutch healer and being able to shrug off quite a few blows while reviving other players.Currently all my weapons apart from one, my helmet, paldrons and gloves are cleric's (+power, +toughness ++healing power), my chest piece and shield is minstrel's (++toughness, +vitality, ++healing power, +concentration) and my legs and boots are soldier's (++power, +toughness, +vitality). I am running Superior Rune of the Dolyak to get the most out of my high healing power and half my weapons have Superior Sigil of Life to boost this further.I have a lot of fun with the playstyle this combination allows me. I frequently experiment with weapons and specializations to keep things fresh while staying true to my build design intention.I unlocked firebrand, but felt I couldn't get behind the specialization, but taking a look at the Plaguedoctor stats (+Condition Damage, +Vitality, +Healing Power, +Concentration) I'm considering giving it a go. Especially, there seems to be a bit of a powercreep in story instance boss fights. While I have some increase in power, it doesn't seem to be enough for me to solo content (not that I mind joining in with others, it can just take quite some time before I can join a party). It took me just over 20 minutes to beat the Mark II Beta Exterminator Golem.What would be a nice way to mix and match this?

You prolly want celestial given your criteria. Unless theres a quad stat with +power + precision + healing + vitality that has been released since last i checked.

Id personally would take Condi/Vit as major and Heal/Expertise as minor trait so I can replace some of my trailblazer gear with something like that. It doesnt seem like expertise comes as a major stat anywhere so im doubtful they include it, but if they went Condi/Exp + vit/heal what would be perfect for what I use him for. :)

If I wanted to play support Id want condi/heal as major and concentration/expertise as minor attributes.

Thanks a lot guys, I'll sub out piece by piece with your advice in mind and see how it works out for me!

I have a build I've thrown together that reaches 100% burning and 100% boon duration with conc sigil.

Finishing the shards to stat swap my axe and im ready for a full test.

Id imagine hitting around 20k ish would be possible. Did a sloppy solo test on dummy without everything and without profession buffs and hit 12k solo.

Real perks are the overkill on quickness, allows you to sustain it better in situations where the group has to seperate, and ability to quickly go into tome 2 or 3 and load up on defensive boons (dat resistance!) in between your big damage portions of your rotations.

Looks like the defensive twin of seraph gear. May be interesting for PvD, but still not the stat combo that would be needed to make PvE support FB a thing.

We should need a power/ferocity/concentration/healingpo.

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:We should need a power/ferocity/concentration/healingpo.

What for? Power scales poorly with FB and core/DH don't make much use of conc/healing. What we'd need is power/ferocity two-stat for core/DH (won't happen) and condi damage/X (major) + expertise/concentration (minor) for FB, with X ideally being healing. Though renegades would need that stat combo much more than FBs, in turn bringing support FB closer to being a thing by complementing the combo.

To be clear, I'm fine with changing my playstyle to be less heavy on support to play firebrand. I think having some celestial gear could be neat to ween me off it, and in the meantime try out a minor emphasis on healing power or whatever.

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:We should need a power/ferocity/concentration/healingpo.

Thats not entirely true. I've seen one really good Power based Firebrand build that uses the tomes to stack personal boons. Generally tomes are stronger as a group utility, because of how easily it can share them... but a Selfish Firebrand build is possible if you squander the Tome's utility to boon spam. Core can also make use of both Healing and Conc..... but the only reason no one does this is because it'd basically be a Bunker build, and Firebrand is more potent.

Consider how you can take the DH Power build, trading ~25% personal damage modifiers for a secondary Quickness generator for Split groups that can get Alt Might, replacing both a Chrono and Druid by pairing with a Kala Rev. Conceptually this can work, which leaves the only point of contention being the DPS bench marks and the value of the healing in a particular raid wing. Given the scaling of HP on FB, running half this stat just to add some healing, and running the rest in a more offensive stat could be ideal as well. When you consider the main reason Druid runs Harrier for the higher Concentration, since its already overhealing and drops CA once its stacked might, they too could benefit from a combo thats power damage + concentration with minimal healing, if at all.

This may not be what you’re looking for, but you could probably tweak it to get some healing if you wanted to.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRAnf7dnsADVChNDBeBD0Ehl4BbvleT7pWbgXwjqKAslqXA-jhiAQBQ7BAcK1fAwZAAHaGSkeAaqEcJ7PIGlHkUJm0OIAAA-e

I personally cannot abide being squishy, so that preference alone keeps me from playing meta builds and joining fractal pugs where the meta-mentality is imo the most toxic. I play strictly solo pve nowadays thanks to said toxicity, and this build is a lot of fun.

It boasts a large health pool, where Guardian is usually lacking, combined with high Armor makes you feel tanky, the constant regen from VoR and SoC, frequent mantra heals and Aegis keep you in the fights most people have to roll out of. Top it off with 2k Condition damage, great trait synergy and frequent tome usage from Renewed Justice makes it feel pretty strong offense wise. I frequently see 10k+ burning ticks and watch scores of people get downed by damage that barely tickles me.

I have a similar soulbeast build as I just immensly enjoy this playstyle.

Without reading other replies I would say that it could be interesting if one stat was swapped for expertise which condi builds really need in PvE

For Firebrand it would be interesting if Vitality was swapped for Expertise since a Guardian cannot get much use out of Vitality

For Scourge I would imagine a support build where the Concentration is swapped for expertise.

Both of these could .subs have been interesting mixed support DPS options but with the current state plaguedoctor offers us I doubt it. Maybe in WvW???

@starlinvf.1358 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:We should need a power/ferocity/concentration/healingpo.

Simple thing: we don't really need a power-based support build when we have exactly the thing you describe in a condi-based build. That stuff already exists. You can sacrifice ~15-20% of your damage to achieve permanent quickness for a correctly positioned group. Sacrifice a bit more damage and you add some decent baseline healing. Sacrifice most of it and you go full healer with quickness and some other boons. All possible with the currently available gear. And yes, it can be coupled with a renegade for alacrity, so you replace chrono and druid.

Why does practically no one do it? Because there's no point in it at the moment. FB and renegade are more clunky than chrono/druid, bring less support/utility and have no substantial advantage. If there was the stat combo I mentioned, renegades could take the support role while still putting out decent damage. FB would also profit from the set, although less than renegade. That way, FB/ren would suddenly have an advantage over chrono/druid, namely substantially superior damage. Then you have a choice, chrono/druid for better utility (including CC) or FB/ren for better damage. A power-based set does not achieve this, thus it is pretty pointless.