Build:Druid - Alacrity Support Healer

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 and Utility

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on July 23, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

Healing Druid is a support build that provides its subgroup with Alacrity from Grace of the Land, high Might uptime, healing, frequent condition cleanse, and permanent Fury and Regeneration. It can inflict good amounts of CC, high Vulnerability if needed, and tons of utility from various pets and utility skills.

One of Druid's strongest features is the ability to provide the majority of its healing from long range via Staff and Celestial Avatar, only needing to return to the group for Might. This makes it excellent at handling mechanics without losing effectiveness, and makes it easy to support the tank when it's off-stack.

Skill Bar

Mace/Warhorn

Staff

Utility

Weapon Variants

While Staff can be replaced, losing it is a significant reduction in healing. Swapping out offhand Warhorn means you want to make sure the missing boons are covered elsewhere in your kit.

• Players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure cannot use Mace. Axe is the most common replacement, but any mainhand weapon could work.
• Longbow provides Point Blank Shot, a short cooldown and easily accessible knockback. On bosses where pushing or CC is important, you should use Point Blank Shot to help your squad.
• Offhand axe for Path of Scars for pulling adds on certain encounters.

Pets Variants

You will mainly be bringing these pets to fights:

• Jungle Stalker Has decent DPS, but is most useful for its Mighty Roar, which helps keep your Might generation up.
• Electric Wyvern and 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.
• Fanged Iboga is the highest DPS pet and has a long-range pull in Fang Grapple.
• 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:

• Red Moa provides Fury with its pet skill Furious Screech, useful if you're struggling with fury uptime.
• Wolf provides AoE fear, useful if your group is having trouble with adds (e.g. on Escort towers).
• Brown Bear provides Shake It Off for extremely condition-heavy fights.
• Fern Hound provides Regeneration if you have difficulty keeping it up.
• White Tiger is your second source of Aegis (with Stone Spirit being the first). As this pet teleports around randomly during its attack, it is strongly recommended to keep it on passive to be sure that the boon hits your group.
• Siege Turtle provides good Protection uptime, but more importantly a projectile-destroying bubble.

Spirit Variants

Spirits have three separate effects: They have an immediate effect when summoned, then the spirit slams the ground for a second effect, and finally it shakes and pulses boons for a few seconds.

• Water Spirit heals you, slams the ground to heal allies for the same amount, then applies Vigor.
• Frost Spirit provides Resistance, slams the ground to cleanse conditions, then shakes to apply Resolution.
• Stone Spirit provides Aegis, performs an attack (which is a blast finisher), then shakes to apply Protection.
• Storm Spirit applies Vulnerability to enemies in the area, performs a Daze attack, then shakes to apply Fury.
• Sun Spirit applies Blind to enemies in the area, performs a Burning attack, then shakes to apply Might
• Spirit of Nature cleanses conditions, slams the ground to revive up to five downed players, then shakes to apply Regeneration.

You will want Sun Spirit for the easiest Might generation. You will generally want to take Stone Spirit as well, as it is your best source of Aegis and provides a decent amount of Protection as well.

Other Skill Variants

Healing
Glyph of Rejuvenation is a massive heal, and as a glyph it also provides Protection via Verdant Etching

• Healing Spring is a good alternative on condition-heavy fights (e.g. Slothasor, Xera). If you take this run Trapper's Expertise.

Utility

• Glyph of the Tides provides a short cooldown AoE knockback and is the cornerstone of several raid boss strategies.
• Storm Spirit for more Vulnerability and CC.
• "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.

Elite

• Entangle on fights where the immobilize is needed.
• On fights where you need a faster revive, or on Soulless Horror (where you want to avoid Stability), then Spirit of Nature is the best (only) alternative.

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Specializations

Trait Variants

• Trapper's Expertise if running Healing Spring.
• 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.
• If you're not running any glyphs then Verdant Etching won't do anything and you might prefer one of the other options - be wary that the Stealth from Celestial Shadow can interfere with players as it will stop their autoattacks and is particularly disruptive for thieves that need to control when they stealth.

Specialization Variants

Marksmanship

With the loss of the unique buff from Spotter, it is much more viable to bring Marksmanship instead of Skirmishing. This traitline offers boons from Clarion Bond, extra CC from Moment of Clarity and a lot of vulnerability from the combination of Remorseless and Storm Spirit.

• 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 you can take Lead the Wind.

Wilderness Survival

If you're far off on your own kiting a mechanic, you can run Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing for more personal survivability.

Equipment

Head
Harrier

Shoulders
Harrier

Chest
Harrier

Hands
Harrier

Legs
Harrier

Feet
Harrier

Backpiece
Harrier

Accessory
Harrier

Accessory
Harrier

Amulet
Harrier

Ring
Harrier

Ring
Harrier

Mace
Harrier

Warhorn
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Relic

• Relic of Karakosa is a very powerful option that will be more effective if you are able to trigger it twice between each use of Celestial Avatar. However, two of your blast finishers are already powerful heals, which can mean this relic is wasted on those skills.
• Relic of the Flock is another powerful option. As with Karakosa, it adds healing to what is already a powerful heal, but converts any overhealing to barrier instead.
• Remember to also get a longbow with the same sigils as your staff.

Consumables

Food

• or ascended versions

Utility

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

Boons

Your main job for most of the fight is maintaining Alacrity and 25 stacks of Might on your subgroup. As a Druid you are well equipped to do this with Grace of the Land. You should also be aiming to maintain permanent Protection, Regeneration and ideally Swiftness.

Alacrity
Alacrity is applied by every Celestial Avatar skill. In general, you should be aiming to use Celestial Avatar whenever it comes off cooldown, and using enough abilities to maintain Alacrity until the next time Celestial Avatar is available.

Might
Might is applied by Rejuvenating Tides and Natural Convergence in Celestial Avatar, as well as Call of the Wild and Sun Spirit. Sun Spirit is almost half your Might generation, so it is required if you are the only Might source in your group.

Protection
Protection is applied by Oaken Cudgel, Stone Spirit, your pet's beast ability (via Invigorating Bond), and every glyph (via Verdant Etching). Using Stone Spirit and F2 off cooldown should be sufficient to make Protection permanent, but as you may wish to delay either of these for mechanics, it is helpful to bring at least one glyph to provide a safety net.

Regeneration
Thanks to the Nature Magic traits Rejuvenation, Wellspring and Windborne Notes, having permanent Regeneration is trivial.

Swiftness
By default, only Call of the Wild applies group Swiftness. The duration is almost long enough to make the boon permanent if used off cooldown, but both Skirmishing and Marksmanship offer ways to get a bit more: In Skirmishing, Quick Draw is effective when used on Call of the Wild, and in Marksmanship, Clarion Bond triggers Lesser Call of the Wild every time you pet swap.

Aegis and Stability
Stone Spirit and Glyph of Equality offer very convenient access to Aegis and Stability, respectively. If more is required, White Tiger provides Aegis on its beast ability, and Glyph of the Stars pulses Stability in the area.

Example Opener

As a healer, you will always need to be reactive to the encounter, so there is no one rotation that is always best. The following example is just one way of starting a phase.

Begin on Staff

1. Weapon Swap once you're in combat to trigger Quick Draw
2. Call of the Wild
3. Sun Spirit to get Might stacked up fast
4. Flourish and Oaken Cudgel
5. Celestial Avatar
6. Rejuvenating Tides while standing on your squad
7. Lunar Impact
8. Natural Convergence
9. Spam Seed of Life throughout - it has no cast time so you can cast it in the middle of other skills' cast times
10. Spam Cosmic Ray
11. Rejuvenating Tides
12. Lunar Impact
13. Release Celestial Avatar
14. Call of the Wild
15. Germinate ⇒ Burgeon ⇒ Cultivate - this provides an extra stack of Nature's Strength, allowing you to freely trigger Force of Nature when you wish.

The long opening Celestial Avatar usage allows you to Quick Draw Call of the Wild twice, and will also get you to the 30-second duration cap on Alacrity. This means that in subsequent Celestial Avatar uses, you can use skills 3-5 once each (you should also be able to get two Seed of Life in) to top the Alacrity back up to the cap.

Force of Nature is a powerful effect, but both Staff and Celestial Avatar provide more sustained healing, so to fully benefit from it you want to have it activate just before leaving Mace/Warhorn.

Given how strong druid's healing already is, the extra 25% may not matter, so perhaps more useful is the reset of Mace skills when it triggers. Triggering Force of Nature with Flourish then using it again before swapping for more burst heals could be useful if you know a big hit of damage is incoming, though druid already has a lot of tools for burst healing. Alternatively, lining up Force of Nature with a defiance bar for two uses of Oaken Cudgel will be very potent.

Healing

Healing is the secondary role you provide to your raid squad. While you should be regularly switching to Warhorn for Call of the Wild, the rest of the time can be spent on Staff as almost every skill there is a heal.

On most encounters, you want to enter Celestial Avatar off cooldown in order to maintain Might and Alacrity. While there, you should make sure everyone in the group is at full health (and Might) before exiting. This means you regularly burst heals on the group, and a combination of Regeneration, your heal skill, Solar Beam and Astral Wisp should provide significant sustained healing in between. This allows you to save Sublime Conversion and Ancestral Grace for an emergency burst heal.

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

• Go into Celestial Avatar and spam Lunar Impact, Cosmic Ray, Rejuvenating Tides and Seed of Life
• Glyph of Rejuvenation (if using)
• Drop a water field on your allies with Sublime Conversion or Healing Spring, and then blast it with Ancestral Grace Call of the Wild and/or Stone Spirit.

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 Glyph of the Stars (Celestial Avatar)/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 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 Variant" listed above.
• Kiting: As Druids can heal and support from range, they are sometimes asked to stand apart from the main group 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, will need to spend a long time in Celestial Avatar spamming the first three skills to maintain Alacrity at range. Might uptime is likely to suffer in this case, unless you can regularly return to the group for Rejuvenating Tides and Natural Convergence. Using Quick Draw on Call of the Wild will be helpful to mitigate this.
• Healing Through: Some advanced strategies rely on ignoring mechanics by having the healer heal through heavy damage. This generally involves saving Celestial Avatar and then spamming its healing abilities.

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
• Glyph of Equality
• Glyph of the Tides (not recommended as you generally need this skill for other mechanics)

General Tips

• Winter's Bite provides Chilled 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. You can also use Natural Convergence.
• Sublime Conversion blocks projectiles, which is relevant for certain encounters like Cairn.
• Your pets are dumb and sometimes 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 weapon skills until Celestial Avatar is available 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Glyph of the Stars (ideally cast inside Celestial Avatar) should be up for every flamewall attack. Placing it in the center will pulse Stability as people run around and also speed up any revives that might be needed.

Salvation Pass

Slothasor

• Sublime Conversion can be used against slubling projectiles.
• You can bring "Protect Me!" for an AoE stun break.
  • Alternatively you can use Glyph of Equality (Celestial Avatar) for stability. The downside is that you have to be sure you can be in Celestial Avatar.

Matthias Gabrel

• Bring Healing Spring for condition cleanse.
• Sublime Conversion can be used for projectile destruction but be careful not to accidentally destroy 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, Vine Surge, and possibly Muddy Terrain to keep wargs immobilized/crippled.
• Seed of Life can be used to blind trash.
• You can bring "Protect Me!" for an AoE stun break.
• Glyph of the Tides can be used to knock enemies back on the towers.
• You can bring 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.
• Healing Spring is useful on Mcleod as he spams Confusion on the group.

Keep Construct

• On this fight Druids are normally asked to push the orb into the rifts. Just go around with your Staff and position so that your autoattacks will hit it into each rift.
• After pushing through the last rift, you can use Hunter's Call on the orb to knock it out while you run back to the group and start buffing.
• Make sure you have Celestial Avatar ready for the burn phase.

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.

Bastion of the Penitent

Cairn the Indomitable

• You can kite on this encounter without dropping Alacrity if you're good
  • Make sure to use all your spirits at the start and dash to the group to use them all again every time there are greens
  • Use a mixture of Celestial Avatar, dodges, the special action key and Sublime Conversion to keep yourself alive
  • The Siege Turtle pet can provide you another source of projectile destruction
• 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 inexperienced groups "Search and Rescue!" is really useful for saving people who get ported.

Mursaat Overseer

• If the group doesn't have good cleave, you can set your pet on one of the scouts and it should be able to kill it before it reaches the end.

Samarog

• You can bring Entangle for immobilizing Rigom and clearing spears.
• Glyph of the Tides is great here, as it provides good CC and allows you to knock Rigom into Samarog during the split phase.
• If a breakbar is coming up, you should save Celestial Avatar for CCing with Lunar Impact and healing the fixated squadmate.
• If Rigom control is truly dire you could also bring a Longbow for a second knock.

Deimos

• The puddle kiter 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.
• You're a good choice to tank here, as getting ported causes your spirits to die.
• Make sure your pet is on the squad, otherwise the Sauls might fixate on it and not come to the group.

Hall of Chains

Soulless Horror

• This fight puts a lot of pressure on the tank, so make sure you keep them healthy.
• Fanged 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 Variant" traits above with Lead the Wind.
  • When a Tormented Dead walks into the group, do your first push with Glyph of the Tides, wait until the tormented dead is close to half health (often after being hit with a necromancer's Epidemic), then do your second push with Point Blank Shot and knock it to the edge of the arena.
  • Rapid Fire on the tormented dead can be used to stack up extra Vulnerability so that condis tick harder.
  • If using pets like Electric Wyvern or Rock Gazelle, it may be wise to keep them Passive as they can interrupt your knocks on the Tormented Dead.
• Seed of Life, and your blast finishers to cleanse conditions.

Dhuum

• The green fissures will Fear players who stand on them, so spamming Seed of Life around the time this attack hits can be very helpful.
• A Brown Bear is a popular choice of second pet, as it provides an easy way to cleanse condis after the Greater Death Mark.
• Alternatively, the Fire Wyvern can do a good job at killing Deathlings.
• Healing Spring can be useful for even more condi cleanse.
• Entering Celestial Avatar shortly after the knock and comboing 2->3 will also provide an area condition cleanse.
  • Try to stay inside Celestial Avatar during the pull so that you can spam healing on the group, and make sure they can immediately start the next phase at full Might
• The Reapers can be healed, and in normal mode have a huge modifier to incoming healing, so keep them topped up as well!
  • The Reaper closest to the entrance will be where the deathlings (and messengers) congregate, so pay most attention to it.
• Stealthing a Reaper gives them a unique stealth buff that lasts for 20 seconds. This will cause any mobs on it to leave and go to the next closest Reaper instead. This can be a useful trick with Celestial Shadow but be careful in case you do it by accident.
  • This can be extremely helpful if an Enforcer has spawned that you don't think you'll be able to kill before it reaches a Reaper.

Mythwright Gambit

Conjured Amalgamate

• Even if you're not collecting orbs, make sure to use Call of the Wild regularly so that whoever does it has Swiftness.
• Alternating Glyph of Equality (Celestial Avatar) and White Tiger can be used to prevent your group being stunned by the arms if no-one else is doing it.

Twin Largos

• It's not uncommon to lack Vulnerability on this encounter, so the Marksmanship variant might be valuable.
• Nikare's charge and Kenut's water spouts apply multiple disruptive conditions, so Healing Spring is very handy here. When facing Nikare, save it for when he starts the charge to quickly cleanse people.
• The orbs that fly out of the bosses during the breakbar attack are projectiles, so Sublime Conversion will turn them into heals instead - perfect for when people go and stand inside the hitbox.

Qadim

• Glyph of Equality is good value both for CCing the legendary creatures, and for providing Stability if magma elementals reach the stack during the burn phases.
• One of the most dangerous parts of Qadim's attacks is that they apply Vulnerability, so make sure that you're regularly cleansing it.

Key of Ahdashim

Cardinal Adina

• You're a very good candidate for taking pillar aggro, but make sure to get your spirits out quickly so you don't drop Alacrity.
• Make sure to use Call of the Wild frequently so that people have Swiftness to outrun the lasers.
• Be careful if using Celestial Shadow as the sudden Superspeed may cause people to zoom to their doom.
• Hold on to Sublime Conversion in the split phases in case you need to block the rocks from the hands.
• Spirit of Nature is very useful for maintaining health in the final phase as damage pressure increases, and also for rescuing people who get downed in the sand - as they are out of range of manual resses.

Cardinal Sabir

• This is a perfect encounter for the Marksmanship variant as Moment of Clarity affects the special action key CC, significantly improving your contribution.

Qadim the Peerless

• If the kiters drop an orb, they will likely need special attention so keep an eye out.
• Should a kiter die, you can fill in while still providing some support to the group, but you'll struggle to collect orbs so you may need to have a second player get them for you.
• Glyph of the Stars is useful to have both for its ranged res and as a backup source of Stability to protect from Qadim's knocks.
• Between Lunar Impact and your pet, you can break distortions solo.