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

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on October 11, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

Healing Druid is a support build that provides its subgroup with Alacrity, 25 stacks of Might from Grace of the Land, healing, frequent condition cleanse, and permanent Fury and Regeneration. It can inflict good amounts of CC, high Vulnerability, 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 every ~25s to activate spirits for Alacrity. 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

Axe/Warhorn

Staff

Utility

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 Variants

You will mainly be bringing these pets to fights:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Jungle Stalker provides Might with its pet skill Mighty Roar, useful if you're struggling with might 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 only source of Aegis. 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.

Spirit Variants

Spirits provide pulsing boons around them in addition to Alacrity when their active skill is used. Three spirits are required for permanent Alacrity uptime.

• Water Spirit provides Regeneration and sustained healing to 10 people in a huge radius. This keeps them from dying, sustains their Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar bonus, and rapidly fills your Celestial Avatar.
• Frost Spirit provides Might and pulsing Chill when activated.
• Stone Spirit provides Protection, which again keeps your squadmates from dying and sustains their Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar bonus.
• Storm Spirit provides Fury and a small amount of CC when activated.
• Sun Spirit provides Vigor.
• Spirit of Nature provides an emergency resurrect that can affect up to five people, including yourself.

You will want Frost Spirit for the easiest Might generation. 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.

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 need a minimum of three spirits to maintain Alacrity, so be careful not to swap out more than two utilities.

Other Skill Variants

Healing

• 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.

Utility

• 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 - Stability with Glyph of Equality (Celestial Avatar)

Elite

• Entangle on fights where the immobilize is needed.
• Glyph of the Stars provides pulsing Stability, making it more reliable than Glyph of Equality if you don't need the shorter cooldown. It also works as a ranged res while in Celestial Avatar.

Template Code

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Specializations

Trait Variants

• Trapper's Expertise if running Healing Spring.
• 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.
• Cultivated Synergy if you are using a heal skill other than Water Spirit. Aqua Surge does not trigger Cultivated Synergy, limiting its usefulness.
• Lingering Light if you don't need to provide Might. This will allow you to spam massive heals on the group.

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. You can also consider traiting Primal Echoes in Druid.

Equipment

Head
Harrier

Shoulders
Harrier

Chest
Harrier

Hands
Harrier

Legs
Harrier

Feet
Magi

Backpiece
Magi

Accessory
Harrier

Accessory
Harrier

Amulet
Harrier

Ring
Harrier

Ring
Magi

Axe
Harrier

Warhorn
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Staff
Harrier

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

• Remember to also get a longbow with the same sigils as your staff.
• The gear above is designed to cap boon duration when using +100 concentration food. If you are not using such food, you can switch some of the magi pieces to harrier.
• Thanks to Instinctive Reaction, cleric stats would provide more healing power than magi, but this will put you at 1159 toughness which may interfere with tanking.

Consumables

Food

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. 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
• Natural Convergence
• Other skills off cooldown until your group hits 25 Might
  • Spam Seed of Life throughout - it has no cast time so you can cast it in the middle of other skills' cast times
• Seed of Life
• Release Celestial Avatar
• Timed correct, Seed of Life will explode shortly after Release Celestial Avatar, 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 Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar 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 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).
• 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
• Call Lightning (ranger) from Storm Spirit
• 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)

General Tips

• If you don't need it for Alacrity, you can save Spirit of Nature for 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 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. In dire situations you can use Natural Convergence (not recommended).
• Sublime Conversion blocks projectiles, which is relevant for certain encounters like Cairn.
• Your pets are dumb and can 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.
• 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.

Salvation Pass

Slothasor

• 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.
• 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 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 Staff and position so that your autoattacks will hit it into each rift.
• 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
• 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.

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.

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.
• 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.
  • 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.