Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Kitty's alternative healbuilds that actually BOON (for pugs)


Recommended Posts

@"DirtyDan.4759" said:Why are you talking in third person and calling yourself kitty? Is this a mental thing?

Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes? Use warhorn kitten.

Well, that druid build is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek. But lately Kitty's seriously seen so many druids camping staff spamming auto-attack and entering CA maybe once in 90 seconds (average) that even that "Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes" would be more useful than lots of stuff Kitty's had to endure lately. At least it'd automatically bring enough fury to bring proper fury uptimes when combined with pack-runed chrono. Kitty's not even joking when she's saying that she's seen lots of druids with less than 20% fury output lately. That's total output, not the uptime btw. (and any healer should be outputting at least 200-250% unless there's 10-man-furybot in squad). And even if some druids bring warhorn, they never swap to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"LadyKitty.6120"For necro builds:Why would you ever run serpent siphon at any raidboss?If it only hits one enemy, it will only create one bubble for barrier, that teammates have to walk through first to get the barrier/cleanse/mightAlso: why staff and why scepter?Staff provides nothing to the group that you can get anyways: regeneration from dodges, also you loose vulnerability application by choosing the staff trait.

As for scepter: there's literally no boss, that requires you to kite as healnecro, why would you choose scepter over mainland dagger then? Dagger has the best lf generation just from autoattack out of all weapons.

Harbingers shroud + life from death is okayish on some bosses, where unlockable aoe comes from boss (like outhealing greens on VG)But I still like vampiric presence more than life from death. Lfd isn't really useful. The only situation it is useful: you need full health + barrier to survive a certain mechanic (yeah doesn't happen often). VP even gives dmg buff.On other bosses, desert empowerment is much better and gives additional might and cleanses more frequently

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIfhGyJJNQVvgpNA7NYpbwmeADgAAVHYEco07pD1kKA-jRyGQBk7JAAVlgLVJUtU20G9DBV9HXs/gCVKAgTCQAgDg37e37ew7v/+7v/ed/93f/93f/93fvUA+NYD-e

If needed switch out sigil of water for concentraiton.But water + regen + vp will keep your group alive from arena tick dmg.

When taking fear of death (to get almost free f4's, switch in 1-2 more ring+ accessory with shaman stats to get higher lifeforce pool.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@"DirtyDan.4759" said:Why are you talking in third person and calling yourself kitty? Is this a mental thing?

Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes? Use warhorn kitten.

Well, that druid build is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek. But lately Kitty's seriously seen so many druids camping staff spamming auto-attack and entering CA maybe once in 90 seconds (average) that even that "Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes" would be more useful than lots of stuff Kitty's had to endure lately. At least it'd automatically bring enough fury to bring proper fury uptimes when combined with pack-runed chrono. Kitty's not even joking when she's saying that she's seen lots of druids with less than 20% fury output lately. That's total output, not the uptime btw. (and any healer should be outputting at least 200-250% unless there's 10-man-furybot in squad). And even if some druids bring warhorn, they never swap to it.

Where do you find even those people? Why would anyone want to raid with players who aren't even willing to output the barest minimum of what you can expect of someone who has never tried PvE, let alone raids, before. Next you'll be coming up with "afk-build" which are focused around being more useful than someone who just GGs before the fight even starts because you happen to play with lots of "afk players" lately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Henry.5713 said:

@"DirtyDan.4759" said:Why are you talking in third person and calling yourself kitty? Is this a mental thing?

Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes? Use warhorn kitten.

Well, that druid build is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek. But lately Kitty's seriously seen so many druids camping staff spamming auto-attack and entering CA maybe once in 90 seconds (average) that even that "Boon staff auto attack druid with pack runes" would be more useful than lots of stuff Kitty's had to endure lately. At least it'd automatically bring enough fury to bring proper fury uptimes when combined with pack-runed chrono. Kitty's not even joking when she's saying that she's seen lots of druids with less than 20% fury output lately. That's total output, not the uptime btw. (and any healer should be outputting at least 200-250% unless there's 10-man-furybot in squad). And even if some druids bring warhorn, they never swap to it.

Where do you find even those people? Why would anyone want to raid with players who aren't even willing to output the barest minimum of what you can expect of someone who has never tried PvE, let alone raids, before. Next you'll be coming up with "afk-build" which are focused around being more useful than someone who just GGs before the fight even starts because you happen to play with lots of "afk players" lately.

Make minion master great again.

-No pls dont. It's freaking annoying and no fun to play at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Nimon.7840 said:@"LadyKitty.6120"For necro builds:Why would you ever run serpent siphon at any raidboss?If it only hits one enemy, it will only create one bubble for barrier, that teammates have to walk through first to get the barrier/cleanse/mightIt's an AoE-barrier at the targeted area that will take effect instantly so you can throw it on whoever you want to grant barrier to (preferably as close to 5 as possible). That's a tiny bit of extra might and a bunch more barrier.Also: why staff and why scepter?Staff provides nothing to the group that you can get anyways: regeneration from dodges, also you loose vulnerability application by choosing the staff trait.Staff causes fear with Reaper's Mark which is very useful for keeping up Lifeforce, especially if you have to drop a lifeforce-utility for some boss-specific skill. On bosses without adds and heavy condi/damage pressure, lifeforce can sometimes become an issue. The other marks also help with lifeforce generation. And if you seriously try to output as much barrier and might as possible, you'll need all that lifeforce (not to mention spamming Nefarious Favor for condi-cleanses...). Staff's Mark of Blood also means that you don't need to dodge exactly every 8 seconds to provide the regen for your sub. Mark of Evasion does seem like good enough for regen as is...written. But in real situation, it's not enough, Kitty can tell with the experience of 100+ boss kills as a heal-scourge by now (Kitty hates playing a single class that much but lately that carry potential has been needed more than before). And if Kitty's words aren't enough, stats also show that heal-scourges in general output about 50% regen. That's total output, not uptime, while Kitty's usually outputting 400%+ regen on her heal-scourge. And furthermore, since big portion of heal-scourges heals are preventing the damage with barriers, you'll want to provide proper regen to maximize your actual heal output.As for scepter: there's literally no boss, that requires you to kite as healnecro, why would you choose scepter over mainland dagger then? Dagger has the best lf generation just from autoattack out of all weapons.How about Sab's flak kiter, possibly Cairn's shard kiter, Deimos' Oilkiter, Largos Kenut-kiter and also pylon kiter in W7? Also works nicely if squad does greens at VG for nostalgy. In 10-person-squad, heal-scourge is pretty much always the 2nd healer and thus takes the kiter role so the 1st healer can boon more efficiently. Besides, heal-scourge's barriers can be applied from range so having it on squad instead of kiting would be quite ineffective.Harbingers shroud + life from death is okayish on some bosses, where unlockable aoe comes from boss (like outhealing greens on VG)But I still like vampiric presence more than life from death. Lfd isn't really useful. The only situation it is useful: you need full health + barrier to survive a certain mechanic (yeah doesn't happen often). VP even gives dmg buff.On other bosses, desert empowerment is much better and gives additional might and cleanses more frequently

VP heals slightly more if people can trigger it every 0,5 seconds without disruptions but it's a continuous minor heal and relies on people attacking the boss. But if you need burst heals (for ex. no-green VG or Gorseval's long rampage), slightly improved resses and heals when boss is invulnerable, you're better off with Life from Death (and if you're carrying the squad, those things becomes really wanted). Harbinger Shroud provides about 50% more barrier output compared to Desert Empowerment. Using Harbinger Shroud does mean a bit less cleanses and 0,6 less might uptime but that's a fair trade for that extra barrier. And yush, VP gives about 160 dps per player, usually for 5 so 800 total dps (assuming that people are hitting exactly every 0,5 seconds). But like people have derided heal-necro for, that 800 extra squad dps (in best case) is almost nothing compared to Spotter or AP. Dem better ppls said.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIfhGyJJNQVvgpNA7NYpbwmeADgAAVHYEco07pD1kKA-jRyGQBk7JAAVlgLVJUtU20G9DBV9HXs/gCVKAgTCQAgDg37e37ew7v/+7v/ed/93f/93f/93fvUA+NYD-e

If needed switch out sigil of water for concentraiton.But water + regen + vp will keep your group alive from arena tick dmg.

When taking fear of death (to get almost free f4's, switch in 1-2 more ring+ accessory with shaman stats to get higher lifeforce pool.

Gosh....if you start taking Shaman's stuffs, you'll lose healing power for...condi damage that's only good for epi (which makes it so painful to see people using shaman's/marshall's heal-scourge with dagger at any boss that doesn't need epi) and slightly higher lifeforce pool which is like adding vitality instead of healing power to build for higher survivability. Higher pool only means that it takes a tiny bit longer to dry out if you can't fill it faster than you lose it.Another problem with that build is that it's starting to lack boon duration to the point that you might compromise might uptimes and certainly do if you don't have a good 10-target-mightbot.Kitty also noticed that you took Vital Persistence instead of Fear of Death which again increases your LF pool as well as increasing survivability for weaker LF generation and also taking Signet of Undeath over Shadow Fiend for slightly better LF generation to compensate. Without Fear of Death, you can get enough lifeforce back with dagger as weapon...if you can stay at melee a lot. But if you can't melee, nope.One of the main reasons to use Shadow Fiend over Signet of Undeath is the condis it provides. Chilled and Weakness aren't the most usual condis and since Oppressive Collapse benefits from high condi count (and some classes also have condi count dmg modifiers like holo and thief), those condis are helpful for keeping up extra stacks of might. For that same reason Kitty prefers scepter in power-heavy squads for torment, bleed, cripple and poison uptime. Sometimes it's a "Bring Your Own Condis"-party.And that increased incoming healing isn't quite needed due to heal-scourge's inherent tankiness. Kitty actually had to check her logs to see if she's died or downed as heal-scourge and she's gone down only twice in last 20ish boss kills when some Matt squad seriously felt like friendly-bombing her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:@LadyKitty.6120For necro builds:Why would you ever run serpent siphon at any raidboss?If it only hits one enemy, it will only create one bubble for barrier, that teammates have to walk through first to get the barrier/cleanse/mightIt's an AoE-barrier at the targeted area that will take effect instantly so you can throw it on whoever you want to grant barrier to (preferably as close to 5 as possible). That's a tiny bit of extra might and a bunch more barrier.

So did it get changed? Cause that's not how it used to work and I didn't read anything in patch notes.

Also: why staff and why scepter?Staff provides nothing to the group that you can get anyways: regeneration from dodges, also you loose vulnerability application by choosing the staff trait.Staff causes fear with Reaper's Mark which is very useful for keeping up Lifeforce, especially if you have to drop a lifeforce-utility for some boss-specific skill. On bosses without adds and heavy condi/damage pressure, lifeforce can sometimes become an issue. The other marks also help with lifeforce generation. And if you seriously try to output as much barrier and might as possible, you'll need all that lifeforce (not to mention spamming Nefarious Favor for condi-cleanses...). Staff's Mark of Blood also means that you don't need to dodge exactly every 8 seconds to provide the regen for your sub. Mark of Evasion does seem like good enough for regen as is...written. But in real situation, it's not enough, Kitty can tell with the experience of 100+ boss kills as a heal-scourge by now (Kitty hates playing a single class that much but lately that carry potential has been needed more than before). And if Kitty's words aren't enough, stats also show that heal-scourges in general output about 50% regen. That's total output, not uptime, while Kitty's usually outputting 400%+ regen on her heal-scourge. And furthermore, since big portion of heal-scourges heals are preventing the damage with barriers, you'll want to provide proper regen to maximize your actual heal output.

I do understand staff, I used it in some builds as well. But staff can also be bad, if you fear away for example slubs. You have to be very careful with that fear on some bosses :)

As for scepter: there's literally no boss, that requires you to kite as healnecro, why would you choose scepter over mainland dagger then? Dagger has the best lf generation just from autoattack out of all weapons.How about Sab's flak kiter, possibly Cairn's shard kiter, Deimos' Oilkiter, Largos Kenut-kiter and also pylon kiter in W7? Also works nicely if squad does greens at VG for nostalgy. In 10-person-squad, heal-scourge is pretty much always the 2nd healer and thus takes the kiter role so the 1st healer can boon more efficiently. Besides, heal-scourge's barriers can be applied from range so having it on squad instead of kiting would be quite ineffective.

I see more tempests than scourges. Because of better boon uptime. Can provide vigor, permanent fury, protection.

Kiters? On sab you only need one healer. Better take Condi scourge as kiter.Deimos oil? No thanks, scourge doesn't have a block. So it's not a good choice (only if you have a good chrono tank)Largos? You playing double druid anyways for protection and better might uptime and vigor.W7 pylon kiter? I was told: 3 condiscourges with parasitic contagion and 1 heal for the rest of the group ( didn't have time to kill that boss yet)

Harbingers shroud + life from death is okayish on some bosses, where unlockable aoe comes from boss (like outhealing greens on VG)But I still like vampiric presence more than life from death. Lfd isn't really useful. The only situation it is useful: you need full health + barrier to survive a certain mechanic (yeah doesn't happen often). VP even gives dmg buff.On other bosses, desert empowerment is much better and gives additional might and cleanses more frequently

VP heals slightly more if people can trigger it every 0,5 seconds without disruptions but it's a continuous minor heal and relies on people attacking the boss. But if you need burst heals (for ex. no-green VG or Gorseval's long rampage), slightly improved resses and heals when boss is invulnerable, you're better off with Life from Death (and if you're carrying the squad, those things becomes really wanted). Harbinger Shroud provides about 50% more barrier output compared to Desert Empowerment. Using Harbinger Shroud does mean a bit less cleanses and 0,6 less might uptime but that's a fair trade for that extra barrier. And yush, VP gives about 160 dps per player, usually for 5 so 800 total dps (assuming that people are hitting exactly every 0,5 seconds). But like people have derided heal-necro for, that 800 extra squad dps (in best case) is almost nothing compared to Spotter or AP. Dem better ppls said.

Harbinger + lfd:If you need burst heal: you need to wait 3 seconds for it (or did this get changed as well?). That's not a good burst heal on demand.Also if you take both, you most of the time waste either the heal or the big barrier.You use it for barrier to prevent dmg? Well then the heal isn't needed, because you prevented the dmg.You need the heal? Then the barrier gets wasted and will block arena tick dmg.

Yes harbingers shroud does have its uses. But not on all bosses. It's good on all bosses that bomb your whole squad. But there's not many of those mechanics.Most of the times your better of with desert empowerment due to higher barrier uptime to permanently prevent small hits from your sub group.

If needed switch out sigil of water for concentraiton.But water + regen + vp will keep your group alive from arena tick dmg.

When taking fear of death (to get almost free f4's, switch in 1-2 more ring+ accessory with shaman stats to get higher lifeforce pool.

Gosh....if you start taking Shaman's stuffs, you'll lose healing power for...condi damage that's only good for epi (which makes it so painful to see people using shaman's/marshall's heal-scourge with dagger at any boss that doesn't need epi) and slightly higher lifeforce pool which is like adding vitality instead of healing power to build for higher survivability. Higher pool only means that it takes a tiny bit longer to dry out if you can't fill it faster than you lose it.

If I take 3 shaman gears, I'm at the same healpower that you are sitting on your build.

Another problem with that build is that it's starting to lack boon duration to the point that you might compromise might uptimes and certainly do if you don't have a good 10-target-mightbot.Kitty also noticed that you took Vital Persistence instead of Fear of Death which again increases your LF pool as well as increasing survivability for weaker LF generation and also taking Signet of Undeath over Shadow Fiend for slightly better LF generation to compensate. Without Fear of Death, you can get enough lifeforce back with dagger as weapon...if you can stay at melee a lot. But if you can't melee, nope.

VP is the most common pick in the internet. I like fear of death more as well ;) cause it gives free f4's

One of the main reasons to use Shadow Fiend over Signet of Undeath is the condis it provides. Chilled and Weakness aren't the most usual condis and since Oppressive Collapse benefits from high condi count (and some classes also have condi count dmg modifiers like holo and thief), those condis are helpful for keeping up extra stacks of might. For that same reason Kitty prefers scepter in power-heavy squads for torment, bleed, cripple and poison uptime. Sometimes it's a "Bring Your Own Condis"-party.And that increased incoming healing isn't quite needed due to heal-scourge's inherent tankiness. Kitty actually had to check her logs to see if she's died or downed as heal-scourge and she's gone down only twice in last 20ish boss kills when some Matt squad seriously felt like friendly-bombing her.

Vital persistence is mostly taken for the hp it gives. So lf generating skills give more flat lf.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apologies for the mess ahead. Forum's formatting gets weird with this long conversation.

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Nimon.7840 said:@LadyKitty.6120For necro builds:Why would you ever run serpent siphon at any raidboss?If it only hits one enemy, it will only create one bubble for barrier, that teammates have to walk through first to get the barrier/cleanse/mightIt's an AoE-barrier at the targeted area that will take effect instantly so you can throw it on whoever you want to grant barrier to (preferably as close to 5 as possible). That's a tiny bit of extra might and a bunch more barrier.

So did it get changed? Cause that's not how it used to work and I didn't read anything in patch notes.Actually, thanks for pointing that out. Kitty had indeed misinterpreted and -understood how that particular skill works =.=' It's indeed mainly good for bosses with lots of adds (VG, Sab, Sloth, Xera). Though it also means...Kitty can edit the original post to use Blood is Power instead for even more might output!Kitty will clarify it at the end of this post so other peoples won't misinterpret the tooltip and animation anymore.

Also: why staff and why scepter?Staff provides nothing to the group that you can get anyways: regeneration from dodges, also you loose vulnerability application by choosing the staff trait.Staff causes fear with Reaper's Mark which is very useful for keeping up Lifeforce, especially if you have to drop a lifeforce-utility for some boss-specific skill. On bosses without adds and heavy condi/damage pressure, lifeforce can sometimes become an issue. The other marks also help with lifeforce generation. And if you seriously try to output as much barrier and might as possible, you'll need all that lifeforce (not to mention spamming Nefarious Favor for condi-cleanses...). Staff's Mark of Blood also means that you don't need to dodge exactly every 8 seconds to provide the regen for your sub. Mark of Evasion does seem like good enough for regen as is...written. But in real situation, it's not enough, Kitty can tell with the experience of 100+ boss kills as a heal-scourge by now (Kitty hates playing a single class that much but lately that carry potential has been needed more than before). And if Kitty's words aren't enough, stats also show that heal-scourges in general output about 50% regen. That's total output, not uptime, while Kitty's usually outputting 400%+ regen on her heal-scourge. And furthermore, since big portion of heal-scourges heals are preventing the damage with barriers, you'll want to provide proper regen to maximize your actual heal output.

I do understand staff, I used it in some builds as well. But staff can also be bad, if you fear away for example slubs. You have to be very careful with that fear on some bosses :)Which is why it should be targeted so that it hits the boss without hitting the slubs. Having most of the mark towards the walls instead of center is good way to do it. Though if the slubs have already been pulled directly into the boss, they'll die to cleave before they escape too far. (and if you manage to fear them before they die to cleave, it's looots of lifeforce omnomnom)

As for scepter: there's literally no boss, that requires you to kite as healnecro, why would you choose scepter over mainland dagger then? Dagger has the best lf generation just from autoattack out of all weapons.How about Sab's flak kiter, possibly Cairn's shard kiter, Deimos' Oilkiter, Largos Kenut-kiter and also pylon kiter in W7? Also works nicely if squad does greens at VG for nostalgy. In 10-person-squad, heal-scourge is pretty much always the 2nd healer and thus takes the kiter role so the 1st healer can boon more efficiently. Besides, heal-scourge's barriers can be applied from range so having it on squad instead of kiting would be quite ineffective.

I see more tempests than scourges. Because of better boon uptime. Can provide vigor, permanent fury, protection.

Kiters? On sab you only need one healer. Better take Condi scourge as kiter.Deimos oil? No thanks, scourge doesn't have a block. So it's not a good choice (only if you have a good chrono tank)There's this thing called "Unholy Sanctuary" which means you don't need a block. Ofc it'll require quite a bit of skill to pull it off, but it's doable. Kitty even has a vid about her doing it (search "oilkiter scourge gw2" on youtube).Largos? You playing double druid anyways for protection and better might uptime and vigor.Druids provides better protection uptime and vigor, yush, but after the split heal-scourge provides just as high might uptime as druid would. Assuming that you have proper boon duration. (which your build doesn't have, to be honest)W7 pylon kiter? I was told: 3 condiscourges with parasitic contagion and 1 heal for the rest of the group ( didn't have time to kill that boss yet)3 condiscourges or 2 condiscourges and a heal-scourge. Parasitic Contagion isn't mandatory btw. Kitty tried W7 Qadim CM yesterday and she had no issues staying alive by rotating Sand Cascade-Harbinger Shroud-Sand Flare. Though since kiters are also doing the orbs with port-forth-and-back skill, rifle deadeye with Shadowstep is also an option (though requires more skill due to lower health pool).

Harbingers shroud + life from death is okayish on some bosses, where unlockable aoe comes from boss (like outhealing greens on VG)But I still like vampiric presence more than life from death. Lfd isn't really useful. The only situation it is useful: you need full health + barrier to survive a certain mechanic (yeah doesn't happen often). VP even gives dmg buff.On other bosses, desert empowerment is much better and gives additional might and cleanses more frequently

VP heals slightly more if people can trigger it every 0,5 seconds without disruptions but it's a continuous minor heal and relies on people attacking the boss. But if you need burst heals (for ex. no-green VG or Gorseval's long rampage), slightly improved resses and heals when boss is invulnerable, you're better off with Life from Death (and if you're carrying the squad, those things becomes really wanted). Harbinger Shroud provides about 50% more barrier output compared to Desert Empowerment. Using Harbinger Shroud does mean a bit less cleanses and 0,6 less might uptime but that's a fair trade for that extra barrier. And yush, VP gives about 160 dps per player, usually for 5 so 800 total dps (assuming that people are hitting exactly every 0,5 seconds). But like people have derided heal-necro for, that 800 extra squad dps (in best case) is almost nothing compared to Spotter or AP. Dem better ppls said.

Harbinger + lfd:If you need burst heal: you need to wait 3 seconds for it (or did this get changed as well?). That's not a good burst heal on demand.It is. Just requires knowing the boss well enough to know when to use it. Heal-scourge in general requires knowing the mechanics well to negate them properly with barriers as barriers are kind of proactive heal (mitigates damage before it happens) compared to actual reactive heals (mitigates damage after it happens). And that's the one thing that makes a good heal-scourge.Also if you take both, you most of the time waste either the heal or the big barrier.You use it for barrier to prevent dmg? Well then the heal isn't needed, because you prevented the dmg.You need the heal? Then the barrier gets wasted and will block arena tick dmg.It's not a waste as it heals damage that has already happened and then mitigates the damage about to happen.Yes harbingers shroud does have its uses. But not on all bosses. It's good on all bosses that bomb your whole squad. But there's not many of those mechanics.Most of the times your better of with desert empowerment due to higher barrier uptime to permanently prevent small hits from your sub group.

Looks like you misunderstand how it works. You can use Harbinger Shroud pre-emptively to block heavy hits and Life from Death heals people at the moment you apply the barrier. So for ex. if you use it to block greens at VG, it'll first heal about 25% of ppls' health and then block about 30% health worth damage and if you use Serpent Siphon or Sand Cascade with it, you'll have full 50% health worth barrier on ppls. Since the greens deal damage equal to 80% of health (or is it 90%...Kitty hasn't paid enough attention), you'll want peoples to have as high health as possible before the green explodes. Sometimes people manage to eat mechanics between barrier application and thus lose the barrier which makes it even more important to top them off before green. (And if you've ever healed no-green as something else than scourge, you know that you need to top them before green and heal them again after explosion.)

If needed switch out sigil of water for concentraiton.But water + regen + vp will keep your group alive from arena tick dmg.

When taking fear of death (to get almost free f4's, switch in 1-2 more ring+ accessory with shaman stats to get higher lifeforce pool.

Gosh....if you start taking Shaman's stuffs, you'll lose healing power for...condi damage that's only good for epi (which makes it so painful to see people using shaman's/marshall's heal-scourge with dagger at any boss that doesn't need epi) and slightly higher lifeforce pool which is like adding vitality instead of healing power to build for higher survivability. Higher pool only means that it takes a tiny bit longer to dry out if you can't fill it faster than you lose it.

If I take 3 shaman gears, I'm at the same healpower that you are sitting on your build.

Another problem with that build is that it's starting to lack boon duration to the point that you might compromise might uptimes and certainly do if you don't have a good 10-target-mightbot.Kitty also noticed that you took Vital Persistence instead of Fear of Death which again increases your LF pool as well as increasing survivability for weaker LF generation and also taking Signet of Undeath over Shadow Fiend for slightly better LF generation to compensate. Without Fear of Death, you can get enough lifeforce back with dagger as weapon...if you can stay at melee a lot. But if you can't melee, nope.

VP is the most common pick in the internet. I like fear of death more as well ;) cause it gives free f4'sAnd free F4's are a big thing 'cause they're your actual main heal.btw, in your gw2skills-build you seem to use Well of Blood. Kitty used to use it still 9 months ago, but she's since then learned the nature of scourge as pre-emptive healer and to time barriers better and Sand Flare alone is enough to give full barrier for 5. And at bosses that can do slightly higher damage than dpser's max health (Matt's Hadoken and timed bombs, for ex.), you're actually better off with Sand Flare to mitigate that damage so that the dpser will only drop to 20% health instead of getting downed and downed time is lost dps time. Though there are a few occasions where Well of Blood can make a difference of wipe or success: full squad down at KC (after white-or-red failure downs everyone and WoB must be used pre-emptively so you can ress yourself), CA (after totally unshielded thunderclap) or Slothasor (if literally everyone eats the shake). MightyTeapot's full squad down and recovery with Well of Blood at KC was also perhaps the main factor which started all this hype about heal-scourge (though like usual, Kitty had already been playing it for a long time before that and the mainstream).

One of the main reasons to use Shadow Fiend over Signet of Undeath is the condis it provides. Chilled and Weakness aren't the most usual condis and since Oppressive Collapse benefits from high condi count (and some classes also have condi count dmg modifiers like holo and thief), those condis are helpful for keeping up extra stacks of might. For that same reason Kitty prefers scepter in power-heavy squads for torment, bleed, cripple and poison uptime. Sometimes it's a "Bring Your Own Condis"-party.And that increased incoming healing isn't quite needed due to heal-scourge's inherent tankiness. Kitty actually had to check her logs to see if she's died or downed as heal-scourge and she's gone down only twice in last 20ish boss kills when some Matt squad seriously felt like friendly-bombing her.

Vital persistence is mostly taken for the hp it gives. So lf generating skills give more flat lf.

Le wut? Vital Persistance gives slightly higher LF pool but it doesn't increase healing power. It only increases your personal incoming heals by 20% and it has nothing to do with the heals you do to others.

About Serpent Siphon:"Unleash ghostly serpents toward foes in the targeted area; serpents striking their targets become magical sand, which grants allies a barrier."For clarification, Serpent Siphon drops a packet of barrier near each enemy it touches and the first player to touch the packet gets the barrier. So one enemy means one packet and 5 enemies means 5 packets. And one player can also run through them all to get all the barrier and others getting none as each packet gives barrier just for one player, not for five."serpents striking their targets become magical sand, which grants allies a barrier." prolly gives a mental image that it indeed becomes a small pile of sand that will give barrier to allies around it (at least that's how Kitty had thought it works until now) but it grants barrier to an ally. And as that sand ball spawns at the center of the enemy's hitbox, you almost never get to see it in the raids since there's pretty much always someone dpsing in the hitbox. It'd be kinda clearer (at least to a non-native english speaker) if it was phrased like "serpents striking their targets become orbs of magical sand, which allies can touch/collect/gather to gain a barrier".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For some reason reading this third person view post was interesting and fun, will bookmark this thread and wait for the healer firebrand statsIve heard blocks can be used against Vale Guardian teleports and there is Firebrand being the number 1 Aegis giver ^^

If kitten can inspire the world that Firebrand healer is a good secondary healer, I will have a ton more fun using that healer in a raid!(At the moment finding a pug group that allows a firebrand healer is a miracle... at least for me!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kitty I find your writing style and particularly your self-aggrandizement to be so off-putting that it's hard to get past it to see the value in your posts.

You make interesting builds and I do enjoy some of your ideas.

But this way you feel the need to present them by constantly talking about yourself really sucks the value from them.Just my feedback.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mindcircus.1506 said:Kitty I find your writing style and particularly your self-aggrandizement to be so off-putting that it's hard to get past it to see the value in your posts.

You make interesting builds and I do enjoy some of your ideas.

But this way you feel the need to present them by constantly talking about yourself really sucks the value from them.Just my feedback.

It's called Illeism might be a sign of narcissism, personality disorder or result of extreme stress.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Krzysztof.5973 said:

@mindcircus.1506 said:Kitty I find your writing style and particularly your self-aggrandizement to be so off-putting that it's hard to get past it to see the value in your posts.

You make interesting builds and I do enjoy some of your ideas.

But this way you feel the need to present them by constantly talking about yourself really sucks the value from them.Just my feedback.

It's called Illeism might be a sign of narcissism, personality disorder or result of extreme stress.

My feedback was certainly not intended to infer some form of personality disorder. It was only to say that the OP's constant talking about themselves detracts from the value I get out of their posts.You may want to look at why you made this comment, @Krzysztof.5973, it's pretty unhealthy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mindcircus.1506 said:My feedback was certainly not intended to infer some form of personality disorder. It was only to say that the OP's constant talking about themselves detracts from the value I get out of their posts.You may want to look at why you made this comment, @Krzysztof.5973, it's pretty unhealthy.

It's explanatory statement. Are facts unhealthy?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The inherent problem of your builds is that they are either false advertisement or trying to fix a problem that isn't there.Your "Staff 1 Druid"-Build is still requiring the player to use CA, press spirit actives and pet swaps which are the elementary things that the quote by Kitty "less than mediocre" druids are obviously not pressing in the first place. The only thing the build does is stripping swiftness from your group by taking away warhorn, removing some easy vulnerability application + good CA generation through warhorn 4, reducing the healing that is already quote by Kitty "at the lower end of the scale" by 15% (-150 Healing Power, loss of Monk Rune multiplier).

Assuming that a druid is capable of pressing spirit actives, keeping spirits alive, doing the CA might rota (without your quickdraw variant) and using their staff skills appropriately for heals, swapping your weapons is no more complicated than swapping your pets which you no longer have to do unless you want access to the second pet skill for CC.What I want to say is: The build you provide does not make the build easier to play than the meta heal druid, it just removes some of its power and options and presents it as an easier build. This is false advertisement. Nothing is easier, it's simply weaker. It works if you know how to play it but it's weaker and you can make many weak builds work if you know what you're doing. People not knowing what they're doing is the problem, not the build they're "using".

Secondly, a "less than mediocre" Druid that camps staff and spams 1 without doing any of the things mentioned is best dealt with by either teaching them to play, kicking them or swallowing it and telling them to take Lingering Light and fill the Boon Druid role yourself or play a class that can be played as primary 10-man boon support (e.g. Heal Tempest).

The reason that double druid is still commonly seen is that many people have a Druid geared but no other support as a logical result of the past meta. Not as you say for making up for 2 "less than mediocre" druids. If they're both bad, you'll still have bad boons. It should also be noted that with the recent changes that nerfed its offensive capabilities, its defensive support capabilities were improved in return, making it a fair option for the secondary healer in pugs if running Lingering Light.

Secondary supports should be played because they bring different strengths than Druid and complement the support that a Druid gives in a productive way. As such, a secondary support should not be played with the mindset that you "have to produce might" unless you want to run a no-Druid comp or it is one of your classes strong suits in the first place and it enables your Druid to take Lingering Light. If you run with a pug that has a mediocre Druid at least, the builds that you present here will all bring redundant coverage that is completely worthless.The idea of having a backup plan is not wrong (e.g. turret build on engineer) but in the moment you're abandoning your class's actual strengths in favor of pretending to bring Druid utility as the default setup, you're doing it wrong.Play your class to its strengths.Take Scourge for the barrier, pulling people out of mechanics where they can't be rezzed and Epidemic.Take Scrapper for strong sustained ranged healing, damage reduction, condi clear, pushing and superspeed.Take Druid for boons, spirits, pushing, rooting adds and Spotter.Take Tempest for Boons, more boons, auras, sustained healing and Rebound.Take Firebrand for blocks, Stability, Quickness, some boons and strong healing.Take Renegade for Alacrity, Might, Assassin's Presence and buffs from the Kalla legend.And so on.If your primary support is refusing to lift their weight you can still adapt, kick or leave.

The builds you present are all identical or worse versions of builds listed on various sites dedicated to providing meta builds. More often than not, it would be enough if people read the descriptions on these sites that tend to sport superior formatting, wording and visualisation and surprisingly also tell you how you can provide boons on the respective class if needed.

And yes, you can slap Pack rune on each of the 10 squad members and you no longer have to worry about Might, Fury and Swiftness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Ok..well that whole kitty thing is...not cute. But whatever.

I do think that some builds on sites can be tweaked for puglife. However, the logic behind your builds are...not my thing. I am not going to focus on scourges concentration trait just to give might, you do realise vitality makes your life signet passive stronger. Scourges carry potential is to raise the dead...my might is not going to save the day, if it will I'd play a different healer/class.

Tempest/Herald concentration makes perfect sense (they are disgusting booners now)...but scourge no.

I wanted to read the rest but after reading that and rune of the pack druid???? really? you are going to sacrifice the already nerfed healing for something your horn already does? Because that will make druid carry puglife better?. I dunno. Might as well build a diviner druid with longbow or something if you really wanna be kitty about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"aetemes.2603" said:Ok..well that whole kitty thing is...not cute. But whatever.

I do think that some builds on sites can be tweaked for puglife. However, the logic behind your builds are...not my thing. I am not going to focus on scourges concentration trait just to give might, you do realise vitality makes your life signet passive stronger. Scourges carry potential is to raise the dead...my might is not going to save the day, if it will I'd play a different healer/class.

Tempest/Herald concentration makes perfect sense (they are disgusting booners now)...but scourge no.

I wanted to read the rest but after reading that and rune of the pack druid???? really? you are going to sacrifice the already nerfed healing for something your horn already does? Because that will make druid carry puglife better?. I dunno. Might as well build a diviner druid with longbow or something if you really wanna be kitty about it.

"Concentration trait"? As far as Kitty knows, scourge doesn't have any traits that give concentration so guess you mean stats. Signet of Undeath does give some lifeforce, but you don't really need it with all the lifeforce staff and utility skills provide. Signet of Undeath's active is also almost never needed as Blood Magic traits already ress well enough. If you ever needed to activate Signet of Undeath, it'd need to be a super-desperate situation and it has 2 big problems: 1. It takes so long to cast that the people you'd need to ress are most likely dead by the time you finish casting and 2. It takes super-long to cast and you'll also very likely end up downed if you stood rooted in place for 2,5 seconds in the kind of situation where all your other resses have already been used.And tbh, scourge's big thing is providing barriers to prevent people from taking lethal damage from big hits. If barriers, regen and other heals aren't enough, then there's indeed those resses to save the day. But you really shouldn't rely on resses for being the sole reason you're in the squad as resses shouldn't be needed to begin with and downed time is dps loss. Besides, resses themselves are a fixed % (increased by Mercy runes if you use those) so it doesn't matter if you have the concentration or not.And though everyone seems to keep on repeating about "need vitality for bigger lifeforce pool", everyone seems to forget one vital thing (which also causes soldier's gears to be ineffective): bigger pool only means that it will run out of stuff slower but it inevitably will regardless of how huge it is if you don't fill it fast enough.Your might and other boons do mean higher dps and like everyone likes to repeat, higher dps means faster kill means less mechanics to deal with. And Kitty's never ever had issues hard-carrying even with slightly lower vitality. She personally gets downed maybe once in 20 boss kills and the amount of healing+barrier alone keeps most peoples alive even with boon duration gears.And besides, though everyone seems to love dagger so much, it doesn't provide regen and if the primary healer dies, staff's regen does help at keeping peoples alive since scourge doesn't otherwise have too much pure heals.

Since people don't seem to believe that Kitty's build actually works well, here's a video with exactly the same gears and traits as Kitty's build in OP, just even more boonsome utility skills. No lifeforce problems detected though Kitty kept on spamming stuff off-CD and no survivability issues either despite the heavy bombardment from cannons (since some people kept messing up the cannons).

And when it comes to Pack Druid...looks like Kitty's biting charrcasm wasn't obvious. Though rest of the builds are serious, that druid certainly wasn't. (like, "+So squadies get proper fury and swiftness uptimes even if druid literally presses 111111..." and "-Super-boring build to play (unless you decide to play druid CM and avoid using any weapon skills just to make the rotation in the log look noob-y)" certainly isn't making fun of bad druids). Kitty's just a bit mischievous, like cats tend to be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"LadyKitty.6120" said:Kitty's just a bit mischievous, like cats tend to be.

Ow my kitty.

Ok, well I meant the concentration stat as in I don't want to use harrier/runes/sigils that have to do with booning.(Although yes scourge has the Sand Sage mini trait that gives concentration teehee.)That being said, I do realise...that's what I think is good, but not everyone likes cats.

I also play every single class, and always love to fill the gaps with what I think would be the best at it, but not everyone does that...so maybe that would work for them.

I meant the amount of passive life force you get per tick with signet scales with vitality (so does the weapon skills cause they are percentage based), so that way I am being as safe as possible about not having enough life force just because I was spamming like a kitten. That and of course having more vitality means increase my chances of being the last man standing to save the day if things go down and revel in the disgust of what scourge does.

I didn't really object to scepter/staff/dagger. I use dagger though cause it has the strong heal and just feels cooler. I just hate scepters animations and sound but I think scepter's life force generation was improved...but that's who cares.

All I am saying is - personally - if I would pick scourge to carry a pug, I would think "Hmmm...do people tend to mass die a lot on this, and can I just be the force to remedy that with the least risk possible" and coincidentally it would provide the best shields/healing that was already kinda stronger than prenerfed druid too?? wow.I would not think, "would this would go smoother if I can give dps boons - boon scourge is the play!" cause necro's booning is yawn and drops off as you can see in your video. Why not even take might booning like CM's runes to not need as much since might is really all you can give out a lot of..you get a bit of condition damage.

Saying people shouldn't be dying...then you're not really about that puglife.

I get the feeling like me you are angered by what happened to druid, and you decided to vent the frustration through mad experimenting. I understand that...I am sad about druid too :(. On druid if someone dies...it's annoying...how am I gonna do anything with all the channeling needed to barely keep might stacks...it's so annoying. Ow hold up while I ground target the coaster sized floor with a10,000 years channel - the power of the stars!.

Anyways....I don't see in your video a 'puggy' situation...and you don't need to find one...if you are happy with your builds cool, but I think players reading this and maybe starting out would appreciate reading why someone may lowbrow them for deciding to play using these builds, they wouldn't 'not work'. Is all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"aetemes.2603" said:I would not think, "would this would go smoother if I can give dps boons - boon scourge is the play!" cause necro's booning is yawn and drops off as you can see in your video. Why not even take might booning like CM's runes to not need as much since might is really all you can give out a lot of..you get a bit of condition damage.

Yush, the boons obviously fell off from Kitty herself since Oppressive Collapse only boons the ppls near the target and kiter ain't one of them. So the might from Oppressive Collapse went fully to ppls on the boss which is the optimal situation since you don't need the might as kiting healer and there's still the target count. Fury might've dropped shortly since heal-scourge doesn't provide 100% fury uptime by itself (which is why chrono fills it with pack runes, too) and chrono was probably too far for their fury to reach the kiter when pack runes ticked. But otherwise, from what Kitty's reading the log, none of her fury and regen and only small portion of swiftness output was wasted.

I get the feeling like me you are angered by what happened to druid, and you decided to vent the frustration through mad experimenting. I understand that...I am sad about druid too :(. On druid if someone dies...it's annoying...how am I gonna do anything with all the channeling needed to barely keep might stacks...it's so annoying. Ow hold up while I ground target the coaster sized floor with a10,000 years channel - the power of the stars!.

Actually, Kitty's rather happy with what has been happening to druid recently. It was broken OP compared to other supports and she's been advocating for balancing the support classes for 2 years now to allow more support builds to be played in raids. (which has been happening though some people are still stupidly stubborn about double-druid 'cause "other supports can't bring boons!")

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Keep it up kitty ... the more people play and are successful with non-meta builds, the more you prove how ridiculous it is to adhere to player's self-made rules about the 'correct' way to play with them.

PUG's are a whole different consideration and the people that have been pushing meta on them for ever are doing a massive disservice to them and the game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...