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, Boon support and Utility

Designed for: Raids

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on April 14, 2022 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.

Overview

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

One healing Druid is standard in almost every raid squad, with some squads running an extra healers for safety. Experienced Druid players can consider running the build variant Druid - Boon Support Condi DPS, which sacrifices healing to squeeze out more DPS.

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

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.

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 Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar 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 Rune of Superior Rune of the Scholar 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 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.

Template Code

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Specializations

Specialization 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.
• 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.

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.

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

Equipment Notes

• 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
• Seed of Life
• 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 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).
  • 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
• 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)

Miscellaneous Tips

• 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 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.
• 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.