Druid - Spirit Support Druid

The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good

Focused on: Support, Sustain and Mobility

Designed for: PvP Conquest

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on August 07, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

A PvP Druid build made to support allies in teamfights.

Skill Bar

Staff

Sword/Warhorn

Utility

Skill Variants

Healing

• Healing Spring - better option against condition-heavy comps and has synergy with Windborne Notes.

Utility

• Signet of Renewal over Signet of Stone - better option against condition-heavy comps. The passive healing is also quite nice even for building Astral Force and unlike Signet of Stone this is actually a stun break.

• Stone Spirit over Frost Spirit - AoE Weakness and Crippled to enemies and defensive boons to allies. Great if the enemy team does not have much condition damage.

Pets

Siege Turtle is the best support pet for rangers right now, but if you don't have End of Dragons then something else will have to suffice. Couple of suggestions:

• Blue Moa - Protection and AoE healing.

• White Moa - AoE Frost Aura to provide damage reduction and inflict Chilled.

• Brown Bear - AoE condition removal.

• Black Bear - AoE Weakness for damage mitigation.

• Wolf - AoE CC.

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

• Survival Instincts offers better direct damage mitigation at the expense of condi cleansing.

Variants

• Take Evasive Purity if you're up against a comp with heavy condition pressure and you need the extra cleansing to survive.

Variants

• Druidic Clarity could help you out against condition-heavy comps, but the instant Daze from the other trait usually does more to help your team.

Equipment

Staff

Sigil

Sigil

Sword

Warhorn

Sigil

Sigil

Rune

Amulet

Relic

Equipment Variants

Relics

• Relic of the Water - more cleansing.

• Relic of the Flock - extra healing on your heal skill.

Usage

Elite specialization basics

• Rangers with the Druid specialization gain access to Celestial Avatar (CA) which uses a resource called Astral Force (AF).

• You build AF mostly through healing yourself and allies. The amount healed doesn't matter. Consistent sources of healing like Regeneration and Protection via Rugged Growth are great at building Astral Force.

General

• The CD of Celestial Avatar can be reduced by healing allies with CA skills. This only works in teamfights, as neither healing yourself nor your pet counts for this trait. Always try to exit CA with 10 stacks of Lingering Light or close to it!

• While the build is weak against CC, it does have a few tools to combat it:
  • Glyph of the Stars grants AoE Stability to nearby allies and it has quite a large radius, but due to the long cast time sometimes it can be hard to use this skill under pressure. It works best preemptively, using it right before you'd get into real trouble.
  • Celestial Avatar skill #5 Natural Convergence is a channeled ability that has Stability on it. When you're trying to heal under pressure you should interrupt Natural Convergence right away by moving or by weapon stowing, that way you get to use the Stability to cover other skills.

• Ancestral Grace recharges faster if it heals an ally - pets also count for this if no allies are nearby.
  • If you're doing a max range Ancestral Grace with no nearby allies, you could swap pets before arrival to make sure that you land on your pet for reduced recharge.

• Dodging grants Protection.

• Smokescale's F2 ability is Smoke Cloud which could be used to combo Stealth for you and your team. Both weapon sets and Celestial Avatar have combo tools for blasting this field.

• "Protect Me!" is the only stun break in the build by default so use it wisely.

• If you're out of stun breaks Signet of Stone and stealth from exiting CA are your best bets for surviving CC chains.

• Despite the excellent healing, the build is rather squishy. Try to avoid standing directly on capture points whenever possible and use your mobility skills/stealth to stay out of harm's way.

Celestial Avatar rotation

While you don't have to follow this all the time, it's a good sequence for both damage and sustain.

1. Cast Lunar Impact and try to maximize the targets in its radius, both friend and foe. Enemies will be dazed while allies will be healed.
2. Place Seed of Life below your character near the end of the Lunar Impact cast, BEFORE Lunar goes off. This is an instant skill with a very brief combo field duration, you want this to be blasted by Lunar Impact for extra condi cleansing. If you don't need cleansing AND the enemy you're fighting isn't in melee range, place this under them instead for the Blind.
3. Natural Convergence - here you have a choice. If you want to pressure the enemy, continue channeling the skill. If you're low HP and healing is more important, interrupt the skill immediately and cast Rejuvenating Tides. You'll protect the cast with the Stability from Natural Convergence.
4. Both skills listed under step 3 have long cast times, Natural Convergence even roots you in place. If you're taking a lot of damage consider using some of your utility skills like Signet of Stone or "Protect Me!", or simply cut the skill short and drop out of Celestial Avatar so you can disengage safely.
5. Seed of Life once more then drop out of Celestial Avatar. Disengage with stealth and superspeed if you're still pressured.

Support and sustain

• Using combo fields and finishers is an important part of Support Druid in PvP.

• Staff is your support weapon while Sword/Warhorn is more of a utility set with combo tools and mobility for personal survivability.

• Glyph of the Stars and Sublime Conversion can be excellent sources of healing, but only if you can properly utlize the water combo field by blasting it for allies or using leap finishers for pesrsonal survivability.
  • Blast finishers (AoE healing): Lunar Impact (CA), Call of the Wild (Warhorn), Ancestral Grace (Staff).
  • Leap finishers (self-healing): Pounce and Serpent's Strike (Sword).

• Astral Wisp can be attached to allies if you target them! This maximizes healing uptime and reduces the chance of missing this skill. If there are no allies nearby you could even attach it to your pet, as pets won't dodge it.

• Solar Beam can also target allies, but this is a rather weak filler skill. You could use it to top off allies who barely need healing but it's not enough to save them from lethal damage.

• Sublime Conversion and Siege Turtle's Hunker Down are great anti-projectile skills that could shut down many ranged specs.
  • Both of these are stationary. Hunker Down spawns on top of your turtle but doesn't follow it, and you can even swap pets without losing it.

• Condition cleansing in the build mostly tied to big CDs, or they're locked behind Celestial Avatar access:
  • Frost Spirit removes conditions twice after being placed and even pulses boons useful against conditions.
  • Glyph of the Stars cleanses conditions with each pulse.
  • Seed of Life (CA skill #2) cleanses conditions for allies inside the ring after a short delay. This is your most spammable source of AoE cleansing and has no cast time, therefore it can be used even while CC'd. Using Lunar Impact inside Seed of Life is a combo that removes another condition from nearby allies - for this you should cast Lunar Impact first and place Seed of Life in the middle of the cast.
  • Pet special abilities cleanse 2 conditions from you and nearby allies once every 20 seconds via Empathic Bond.
  • Vine Surge can free allies from all movement impairing conditions. You might want to use this skill before touching your other CDs to increase the chance of your other cleanses removing damaging conditions.

• Warhorn skills apply AoE Regeneration.

• Call of the Wild is the most supportive skill on Sword/Warhorn - the Daze and Weakness serve as damage mitigation for allies while the Swiftness could help them kite. Being a blast finisher it could also be used for AoE healing and stealthing.
• Water Spirit does massive AoE healing but it has a delay, which isn't ideal for burst healing. For that you should resort to CA and water field blasting mostly.

Reviving allies

• Glyph of the Stars revives allies with each tick when used in Celestial Avatar.
  • The Celestial Avatar version of this skill could even be used to rez yourself if you manage to drop it on your location right before you go into downed state.

• Manually reviving an ally procs "Search and Rescue!" once every 85 seconds, causing your pet to assist for a faster rez.

• Consider Stealthing downed allies to prevent stomp attempts and to make it harder for enemies to cleave them.

Top Streamers

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