Druid - Boon Support Healer

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Part of the current metagame.

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great.

Focused on: Healing, Support, Utility.

Designed for:

Raid

Expansions required:

Information

Healing Druid is a meta-defining support build that provides multiple damage buffs to 10 players including Frost Spirit, Sun Spirit, and 25 stacks of Might with Grace of the Land. It also provides healing, CC, Glyph of Empowerment, Spotter, permanent Fury and Regeneration, high Vulnerability, and tons of utility from various pets and utility skills.

One healing Druid is standard in every raid squad, with some squads running an extra Druid or other healer for safety. Experienced Druid players can consider running the build variants Druid - Boon Support Condi DPS or Druid - Boon Support Power DPS, which sacrifice healing to squeeze out more DPS.

This guide is focused on raids. For the fractal version see Druid - Boon Support Healer (Fractal).

Skill Bar

Axe/WarhornHealingUtilityElite

Staff

Weapon Variants

• Longbow provides Point Blank Shot, a short cooldown and easily accessible knockback. On bosses where pushing or CC is important, you should swap out Staff and use Point Blank Shot to help your squad.
• Offhand axe can replace Staff for more DPS if you don't need the defensive utility. It also provides Path of Scars for pulling adds on certain encounters.

Pets

You will mainly be bringing these pets to fights:

• Juvenile Fanged Iboga is the highest DPS pet, which also inflicts good CC with its pet skill Fang Grapple. This is the pet you will have out most of the time.
• Juvenile Electric Wyvern and Juvenile Rock Gazelle deal mediocre DPS but provides very strong CC from their pet skills, Lightning Assault and Head Toss. You should have one of these as your secondary pet and swap to it if CC is needed.
• Juvenile Jacaranda is the second highest DPS pet and the pet with the highest cleave damage. It also has an immobilize in Jacaranda's Embrace, useful if more soft CC is needed.

In certain situations, you might also find these pets useful:

• Juvenile Red Moa provides Fury with its pet skill Furious Screech, useful if you're struggling with fury uptime.
• Juvenile Jungle Stalker provides Might with its pet skill Mighty Roar, useful if you're struggling with might uptime.
• Juvenile Wolf provides AoE fear, useful if your group is having trouble with adds (e.g. on Escort towers).
• Juvenile Brown Bear provides
  Shake It Off

  ½

  25

  Shake It Off

  Cure a condition on yourself and all nearby allies.

  Conditions Removed: 2

  Number of Targets: 5

  Radius: 600
  for extremely condition-heavy fights.
• Juvenile Fern Hound provides Regeneration if you have difficulty keeping it up.

Spirits

Spirits are unique Ranger summons that buff 10 players in a large radius around them. As they can affect an entire raid squad they are extremely powerful and almost all of them provide great benefits to a raid comp.

• Frost Spirit provides Might and a 5% increase to your squad's power DPS.

• Sun Spirit provides Vigor and a ~5% increase to your squad's condition DPS.

• Water Spirit provides Regeneration and sustained healing to 10 people in a huge radius. This keeps them from dying, sustains their
  bonus, and rapidly fills your Celestial Avatar.

• Spirit of Nature provides Stability and an emergency resurrect that can affect up to 10 people, including yourself.

• Stone Spirit provides Protection, which again keeps your squadmates from dying and sustains their
  bonus.

Most raid commanders will expect a Frost Spirit and Sun Spirit in their squad. You will generally want to take Water Spirit for your Celestial Avatar generation. Depending on the fight, many commanders will also expect Spirit of Nature and Stone Spirit.

Coordinating spirits: If there's another Ranger in the squad, you should coordinate spirits with them before the fight so that you cover all spirits between the two of you. This is usually done by pinging the spirits on your skillbar in chat. If you're the only Ranger then filling your skillbar with spirits is usually a safe choice.

When not to bring spirits: On many encounters, Druid is expected to bring utility skills to deal with mechanics, for example Glyph of the Tides for knockbacks or "Protect Me!" for a stun break. In these situations, you will not be able to bring every spirit as a solo Druid and will need to replace one of your spirits. Alternatively, you may realize that some of your spirits aren't doing anything and wish to replace them with other utility skills like Glyph of Empowerment.

You can swap out Stone Spirit in groups that don't need help surviving, Sun Spirit in groups that mainly deal power damage, or Frost Spirit in groups that mainly deal condition damage.

Other Skill Variants

Healing Skills

• Healing Spring is a good alternative to Water Spirit on condition-heavy fights (e.g. Slothasor, Xera). If you take this run Trapper's Expertise.
• Glyph of Rejuvenation if Water Spirit is already covered.

Utility Skills

• Glyph of Empowerment is an extremely strong damage increase for any power DPS in your subgroup and is the default go-to if you have a free slot.
• Glyph of the Tides provides a short cooldown AoE knockback and is the cornerstone of many raid boss strategies.
• Storm Spirit provides instant vulnerability and 300 breakbar damage, useful on bosses like Samarog where CC is important.
• "Protect Me!" provides an AoE stun break, useful for saving your subgroup on bosses like Slothasor.
• "Search and Rescue!" is a strong safety net for inexperienced groups.
• Glyph of Equality or Glyph of Alignment if you don't need anything else.

Elite Skills

• Entangle on fights where the immobilize is needed.
• Glyph of Unity if you need more Celestial Avatar healing and don't need Spirit of Nature or Entangle.

Specializations

Skirmishing:

Sharpened Edges Spotter Quick Draw

Nature Magic:

Instinctive Reaction Windborne Notes Nature's Vengeance

Druid:

Cultivated Synergy Verdant Etching Grace of the Land

Variants

• Trapper's Expertise if running Healing Spring.
• 24px Vicious Quarry if you don't need the safety buffer of Quick Draw.
• Bountiful Hunter to increase your DPS a tiny bit in experienced groups on low pressure encounters.
• Allies' Aid to carry inexperienced groups that are going down a lot.
• Invigorating Bond in fights with boon corruption where the Stability from Spirit of Nature might be corrupted into Fear.
• Primal Echoes if you need more CC, or if you need your staff skills a lot for some reason (e.g. projectile destruction on Cairn). It will also trigger when you enter Celestial Avatar.
• Celestial Shadow or Natural Stride is technically better when not running any glyphs, but they don't provide any real advantage so you don't have to retrait if you're lazy.
• Lingering Light if there is already another Druid with Grace of the Land. This will change your role from providing might to spamming massive heals on the group.

Marksmanship Pushing Variant

On some specific bosses, you will need to use Point Blank Shot to push and can't afford to have the projectile be intercepted. In this case replace Skirmishing with Marksmanship so that you can take Lead the Wind. Moment of Clarity will also provide increased CC from skills such as Storm Spirit and Lunar Impact.

Marksmanship:

Clarion Bond Moment of Clarity Lead the Wind

Wilderness Survival Kiting Variant

If you're far off on your own kiting a mechanic and aren't able to grant Spotter to your DPS, you can run Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing for more personal survivability. You can also consider traiting Primal Echoes in Druid.

Wilderness Survival:

Oakheart Salve Shared Anguish Poison Master

Equipment

6x

Superior Rune of the Monk

18x

Healing Infusion

Remember to also get a longbow with the same sigils as your staff.

Consumables

Food

• Delicious Rice Ball

  Delicious Rice Ball

  Nourishment (30m):

  100 Healing Power+10% Healing Effectiveness (Outgoing)+25% Magic Find during Lunar New Year

  Consumable

Utility

• Bountiful Maintenance Oil

  Bountiful Maintenance Oil

  Nourishment (30 m):

  Gain 0.6% Outgoing Healing Increase for Every 100 Healing PowerGain 0.8% Outgoing Healing Increase for Every 100 Concentration+10% Experience from Kills

  Consumable

Usage

As a Druid you wear many hats in a raid encounter. This is your priority during fights, from highest to lowest:

1. Stay alive
2. Do mechanics
3. Rescue teammates low on health
4. Maintain boons and healing on your squad
5. Maximize your DPS

Boons

Your main job for most of the fight is maintaining 25 stacks of Might on your squad. As a Druid you are uniquely equipped to do this with Grace of the Land. At the start of the fight, and any time Celestial Avatar is available, you should go into Celestial Avatar and do the following might sharing rotation:

• Celestial Avatar
• Lunar Impact
• Rejuvenating Tides while standing in your squad
• Seed of Life
• 24px Release Celestial Avatar
• If done right the Seed of Life will explode shortly afterwards, healing teammates and granting you astral force for your next Celestial Avatar.

In addition to spamming Celestial Avatar you will want to spam Call of the Wild on your warhorn. This will top off your subgroup's Might and Regeneration, and grant Fury to your Chronomancer who can then sustain it with Signet of Inspiration. You can Quick Draw Call of the Wild if you have trouble with boon uptime (see "Quick Draw" below).

Combined with the passive pulsing might from Frost Spirit, you should have no trouble maintaining 25 might on your squad.

Healing

Healing is the secondary role you provide to your raid squad. Many new Druid players focus excessively on healing their teammates and camp Staff for the whole encounter. In reality, you don't need to do this as Regeneration and your Celestial Avatar rotation are enough to take care of random damage and keep people topped off. You only need to swap to Staff if you need emergency healing or utility.

Healing becomes important when mistakes or mechanics cause your teammates to get dangerously low on health. As a support healer, it's your responsibility to keep them alive, top them off, and maintain their

bonus. You can provide burst healing in any of the following ways:

• Go into Celestial Avatar and spam Lunar Impact and Cosmic Ray
• Activate Aqua Surge or Glyph of Rejuvenation
• Drop a water field on your allies with Sublime Conversion or Healing Spring, and then blast it with Ancestral Grace or Call of the Wild

A combination of these should be sufficient to heal your team back up to full. Make sure to turn on "Thick Party Health Bars" in your options so that you can see who needs healing at a glance.

If your teammates still go down after you babysit them and drop all your healing on them, that's on them, not you. Make a judgment call on whether it's worth putting yourself in danger to revive them, or popping your Spirit of Nature to give them a second chance.

Quick Draw

Quick Draw is a very useful trait that provides a safety buffer for both your boons and healing. Every 9 seconds, this trait will activate after you Weapon swap or enter/leave Celestial Avatar, and it will reduce the cooldown of the next skill you use that has a cooldown. This is usually going to be Call of the Wild or Lunar Impact. This extra buffer is great for new Druids or for chaotic fights where you can't keep up a regular rotation.

Quick Draw has a 9 second cooldown, so get a feel for the timing or keep an eye on your skill bar to see if Quick Draw is active. It's better to autoattack for a few seconds rather than accidentally waste Quick Draw on inconsequential skills.

Quick Draw also won't trigger if you are in the middle of a skill cast when you 24px Release Celestial Avatar, so remember to finish your cast animations.

Mechanics

As a utility support class, Druid is often called upon to do specific raid mechanics. These are varied and highly encounter dependent. Ask your commander what they want you to do in any given fight.

• Entangling: On many bosses, Druids are asked to bring Entangle to immobilize or clear adds. An example is on Gorseval where you have to keep 4 spirits from reaching the center. Generally this boils down to pressing Entangle when your commander tells you to.
• Pushing: Druids have 2 reliable knockbacks in Glyph of the Tides and Point Blank Shot, which means they usually have the responsibility of handling knockbacks ("pushes"). An example is on Soulless Horror where you will be asked to push Tormented Dead far away from the main group. If asked to do this, position carefully and have your pushing skills ready when the time comes.
  • If there is a risk of your Point Blank Shot getting intercepted then you should run the "Marksmanship Pushing Variant" traits listed above.
• Kiting: As Druids can heal and support from range, they are sometimes asked to stand apart from the main grop to keep a specific mechanic away. An example is on Sabetha where you may be asked to stand further away to kite flak. In these scenarios, you should run as many spirits as possible, drop them all on your group at the beginning, then go to your kiting spot and stay there while dropping heals on the main group. You won't be expected to maintain might (although it's obviously a nice bonus if you can).
  • If you're so far away that you're out of Spotter range, consider running the "Wilderness Survival Kiting Variant" traits listed above.
• Healing Through: Some advanced strategies rely on ignoring mechanics by having the Druid heal through heavy damage. This generally involves saving Celestial Avatar and then spamming Lunar Impact and Cosmic Ray.

CC

You can help with breakbars using any of the following skills:

• Lunar Impact
• Fang Grapple or Lightning Assault or Head Toss
• Point Blank Shot or Path of Scars
• Storm Spirit

  1

  20

  Storm Spirit

  Spirit. Summon a storm spirit that grants nearby allies a chance to apply vulnerability when attacking.

  Storm Spirit (6s): 75% chance to apply vulnerability on hit.

  ₃Vulnerability (10s): 3% Incoming Damage, 3% Incoming Condition Damage

  Number of Targets: 5

  Effect recharge: 10 seconds

  Duration: 60 seconds

  Radius: 1,000
    
  Call Lightning

  20

  Call Lightning

  Spirit. Your storm spirit sacrifices itself to generate a powerful blast of electricity.

  Damage: 353

  Daze: 3 seconds

  Number of Targets: 5

  Radius: 240
• Swapping to staff or Celestial Avatar with Primal Echoes traited
• Glyph of Equality
• Glyph of the Tides (not recommended as you generally need this skill for other mechanics)

Miscellaneous Tips

• If running Glyph of Empowerment, you should spam it off cooldown, unless your teammates are busy and can't make use of the buff, or a burn phase is coming up which you should save the buff for.
• Spirit of Nature only lasts for 60 seconds and has a very long cooldown. Save it for the phases when people are most likely to go down.
• Place your spirits where all your squad members will be in range of them. This is important if you will be constantly moving (e.g. on VG).
• Winter's Bite provides Chill and Weakness, which will be a DPS increase for many classes due to traits like Superior Elements, Modified Ammunition, and Exposed Weakness. Always use Winter's Bite off cooldown if possible.
• If you need to cleanse conditions, use Seed of Life. The light field can be blasted with Lunar Impact or Ancestral Grace. If you need a lot of condition cleanse take Healing Spring and Trapper's Expertise. Vine Surge can also cleanse certain conditions like chill and immobilize.
• Use Entangle, Jacaranda's Embrace, or Vine Surge if you need to immobilize things. In dire situations you can use Natural Convergence (not recommended).
• Sublime Conversion blocks projectiles, which is relevant for certain encounters like Cairn.
• Always cast another spirit before Sun Spirit. This is so that when you see the other spirit expire, you can manually activate Solar Flare just before Sun Spirit expires for extra damage.
• Your pets are dumb and will take damage from enemies and mechanics. Swap them out if they're about to die.
• Seed of Life can be used to blind adds.
• If you have nothing else to do, maximize your DPS and astral force generation by spamming axe/warhorn skills until you need to heal or do your boon rotation again.

Encounter Specific Tips

Spirit Vale

Vale Guardian

• This fight puts a lot of pressure on the tank, so make sure you keep them healthy.
• Bring Entangle for seeker control. You can use Glyph of the Tides to knock them away and Entangle to immobilize them.
• Pop your spirits during the split phases so that they will be up for the next boss phase. If the tank plans to rotate around the arena, place your spirits near the center so that your squad can still benefit from them while on the move.
• If you're healing through greens, save your Celestial Avatar for it -- not having it up right after a green circle will likely lead to a raid wipe.
• In inexperienced groups "Search and Rescue!" is really useful for saving people who get ported.
• If you get ported use Ancestral Grace to quickly dash back.

Gorseval the Multifarious

• The tank will be standing a short distance from the main group, so make sure you tag them with your healing and Celestial Avatar.
• Pop your spirits during the split phases so that they will be up for the next boss phase.
• Bring Entangle to immobilize the Charged Souls. With high group cleave, you can immobilize them very near the center and have your power DPS cleave all the Charged Souls down.
• If you are delaying breakbars, be prepared to spam healing through the breakbar phase so that you can heal your DPS through the retaliation. It's ok to camp in Celestial Avatar for this section as there isn't any other damage pressure and your Water Spirit will refill your astral force during the split.

Sabetha the Saboteur

• Keep an eye on the squad members doing cannons and be prepared to refresh their Might when they come back.
• Seed of Life can be used to blind the adds so they don't knock your teammates into the flamewall.
• Place Spirit of Nature in the last 25% phase.

Salvation Pass

Slothasor

• Consider traiting Invigorating Bond for this fight as the Stability from Spirit of Nature might be corrupted into Fear.
• Place your spirits near the center so that your squad can still benefit from them while on the move.
• Sublime Conversion can be used against slubling projectiles.
• You can bring "Protect Me!" for an AoE stun break.

Matthias Gabrel

• Bring Healing Spring for condition cleanse.
• Save Spirit of Nature for the 60% phase so that you can share stability to counter Downpour knockdowns.
• Sublime Conversion can be used for projectile destruction but be careful of accidentally destroying Bloodstone Shards.

Stronghold of the Faithful

Siege the Stronghold (Escort)

• On this fight Druids are normally asked to babysit Glenna. Try to remain as close to the group as possible without putting Glenna in danger. If you can't get close, you can still leave Glenna for short periods of time to stack might with Celestial Avatar and Call of the Wild.
• Use Entangle, Jacaranda's Embrace, and Vine Surge to keep wargs immobilized.
• Seed of Life can be used to blind trash.
• You can bring "Protect Me!" for an AoE stun break.
• You can bring Juvenile Wolf to fear mobs as an emergency measure. If you aren't escorting Glenna, you can use it to fear mobs when you go up to the towers.

Keep Construct

• On this fight Druids are normally asked to push the orb into the rifts. Just go around with your axe and position so that your autoattacks will hit it into each rift. Your Chronomancers will help you by pulling the orb.
• Make sure that your pets are set to Passive, otherwise they might push the orb out of the arena.
• Make sure you have Glyph of Empowerment and Celestial Avatar ready for the burn phase.
• Save Spirit of Nature for the first and third burn phases.

Xera

• This fight puts a lot of pressure on the tank, so make sure you keep them healthy.
• Bring Healing Spring for condition cleanse.
• Seed of Life can be used to blind adds.
• Due to the very high damage pressure in this fight, a healer should always be on the main platform. If you're solo healer this means you should always go back down if you get ported. If there are two healers, decide who is going back down if both get ported.
• Coordinate with your tank about where they're going to be tanking, so you know where to place your spirits ahead of time.
• During the pre-event, you should summon and instantly pop your spirits on each island.
• Make sure your pet is on Passive so it doesn't attack the orbs during the orb pushing sections.
• Some squads will require you to bring Spirit of Nature for the buttons in the pre-event. Use it to resurrect your button crew when the Bloodstone Shard has around 30% health remaining - this should give them enough time to kill it and then leave buttons before they get downed a second time.
• Pop your spirits during the split phase so they will be ready for phase 2.
• During phase 2, try not to have Juvenile Fanged Iboga out, as Confusion will be converted to Retaliation if Xera stands in a shard field.

Bastion of the Penitent

Cairn the Indomitable

• Ask your commander if they want a kiter. Adding a kiter makes the fight slower but much easier. If there is no kiter then Cairn's autoattacks will be hitting everyone and you will be under a lot of pressure to keep your teammates alive.
  • If you trust your squadmates not to get ported, you can stand just a short distance away from Cairn and "kite" without necessarily having to stand on the edge of the arena.
  • If you're kiting on the edge of the arena, use the "Wilderness Survival Kiting Variant" traits above and just afk in staff. You can easily use Ancestral Grace, Sublime Conversion, your dodges, and your special action key to dodge every set of shards.
• Don't be afraid to camp in Celestial Avatar and spam healing if the group needs it.
• You should always take one agony, as you can heal and buff from range, and you can always heal yourself if you get low.
• Use Ancestral Grace for mobility.
• In high DPS groups Spirit of Nature can be used to share stability and ignore greens.
• In inexperienced groups "Search and Rescue!" is really useful for saving people who get ported.

Samarog

• You can bring either Spirit of Nature for stability, or Entangle for immobilizing Rigom and clearing spears.
• Storm Spirit is great here, as it provides high CC and instantly refreshes vulnerability after each breakbar.
• If a breakbar is coming up, you should save Celestial Avatar for CCing with Lunar Impact and healing the fixated squadmate.
• Point Blank Shot is useful for pushing Rigom during the split phase.

Deimos

• The tank takes heavy damage after blocking Deimos's Mind Crush attack, so watch out for this and make sure you keep them healthy. In Deimos CM this will apply to the entire squad.
• Make sure your pet is on Passive, otherwise the Sauls might fixate on your pet and not come to the squad.
• Sublime Conversion can block the projectiles from Demonic Tears.

Hall of Chains

Soulless Horror

• This fight puts a lot of pressure on the tank, so make sure you keep them healthy.
• Juvenile Iboga is strong here as Soulless Horror takes a lot of damage from confusion.
• As the Druid you are normally tasked with pushing Tormented Dead. To do this you need to equip a longbow and Glyph of the Tides, and use the "Marksmanship Pushing Variant" traits above. When a Tormented Dead walks into the group, do your first push with Glyph of the Tides, wait for the Scourge to use Epidemic, then do your second push with Point Blank Shot and knock it to the edge of the arena.
• Use Healing Spring, Seed of Life, and your blast finishers to cleanse conditions.
• Be careful of placing Spirit of Nature as the Stability will be corrupted into Fear if anyone accidentally touches a boon corrupt zone. Consider running Invigorating Bond for this.