Druid - Celestial Eclipse Roamer

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage, Mobility and Control

Designed for: WvW Roaming

Difficulty:

Easy

This build was last updated on March 29, 2024 and is up to date for the March 11, 2025 patch.

Overview

A Cele WvW roaming build for Druid which makes use of

Eclipse

along with Immobilize and Daze spam to bring down its prey.

Skill Bar

Axe/Dagger

Sword/Warhorn

Utility

Skill Variants

Utility

For the optional slot:

• Spike Trap
  - unblockable CC on low CD.

• Glyph of Equality
  - instant daze + a stunbreak on low CD.

• Glyph of Alignment
  - the Immobilize could be used to set up burst, Weakness is good for mitigating damage, and being able to put several different conditions on the target at once is a great way of kicking off combos. In Celestial Avatar form this could instead be used to cleanse conditions if needed.

• Signet of Renewal
  - stunbreak + mass cleanse, and the passive healing could even help you charge up
  Celestial Avatar
  . Replacing Signet of Stone with this is also a viable choice.

• Lightning Reflexes
  - low CD stunbreak with an evade frame that could break you out of Immobilize, also gives you permanent Vigor uptime with
  Primal Reflexes
  . Could also replace
  "Protect Me!"
  on the bar.

Elite

• Glyph of the Stars
  - better survivability. Stability against CC, cleansing against conditions, and a water field for healing combos.

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Specializations

Variants

• Light on your Feet
  improves both condition and strike damage, but gives up the versatility of CD reductions from Quick Draw.

Variants

• Take
  Druidic Clarity
  if you're having trouble dealing with condition builds. Once you get used to the build this shouldn't be necessary however.

• Natural Balance
  adds a bit more damage to the build. While the Stealth from the other trait is generally better, depending on your sigil choices (like running both Geomancy and Hydromancy) your gear might have a level of anti-synergy with
  Celestial Shadow
  (as explained below in the sigil variants section) that could make Natural Balance a bit more attractive.

Specialization Variants

For a more defensive version you could replace Skirmishing with Nature Magic.

The reason we recommend Skirmishing as the main option in WvW but not in sPvP comes down to a difference in balance, meta, and available gear options. In WvW

Celestial Avatar

has 50% lower cooldown than it does in sPvP while we also have access to a more powerful version of

Sigil of Cleansing

plus food buffs in general - these make it possible to play with less defensive traits, and the extra pressure from Skirmishing gives us a better chance to win against high sustain builds that could otherwise stalemate us. If however you're struggling with the build and need extra sustain, Nature Magic remains a viable (and safer) option:

Equipment

Head
Celestial

Shoulders
Celestial

Chest
Celestial

Hands
Celestial

Legs
Celestial

Feet
Celestial

Backpiece
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Accessory
Celestial

Amulet
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Ring
Celestial

Axe
Celestial

Dagger
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Sword
Celestial

Warhorn
Celestial

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

Relic

Relics

• Relic of the Fractal
  - useful proc that could increase the condi variety of your bursts.

• Relic of the Mirage
  - improves your condition variety, making it harder for enemies to cleanse your more important conditions.

• Relic of Antitoxin
  - better cleansing.

Sigils

• Superior Sigil of Geomancy
  can sometimes proc when you exit
  Celestial Avatar
  , as exiting/entering forms counts as weapon swapping. If this happens in melee you'll immediately break the Stealth granted by
  Celestial Shadow
  which can be rather awkward especially when you were on low health trying to escape. If you don't want to take this risk then replace Geomancy with either
  Superior Sigil of Torment
  or
  Superior Sigil of Generosity
  .

• Superior Sigil of Hydromancy
  over
  Superior Sigil of Cleansing
  - adds more pressure if you can give up some condition removal. You'll run into the same problem with the
  Celestial Shadow
  proc as you would with Sigil of Geomancy, but one major benefit of this sigil is that Chill is a movement impairing condition, so you'll always get the Immobilize from
  Serpent's Strike
  if you open with this skill after swapping to Sword, no previous setup's necessary.

Runes

• Superior Rune of the Sunless
  - slightly more defensive version of Trapper. It's also a great replacement if you don't want to bother crafting Trapper runes.

Consumables

Food

• Spherified Peppercorn-Spiced Oyster Soup

• Holographic Super Cake
  and other health-per-second food can help a lot with building Astral Force.
  • Budget:
    Mango Pie

Utility

• Optimal:
  Magnanimous Tuning Crystal
  or
  Tuning Icicle
  , whichever is cheaper (the difference beween them is negligible, a grand total of 2 condition damage stat in favor of Tuning Icicle).

• Budget:
  Compact Quality Tuning Crystal
  either from Canned Food Crates found in WvW
  Skirmish Chest
  s or purchased from the Permanent Portable Provisioner.

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

• 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.

• Dodging grants Protection and Protection heals you.

• Smokescale's F2 ability is
  Smoke Cloud
  which could be used to combo Stealth with Sword/Warhorn skills and
  Lunar Impact
  .

Damage

• Weapon swapping to Axe procs 3 stacks of Bleeding and Poison from your sigils, this is a source of instant burst. It's especially useful against more slippery opponents like Thieves because you get to exploit any small gaps in their defenses to punish them.
  • Serpent's Strike
    on Sword is a gapcloser with Immobilize, making it an ideal skill for setting up a weapon swap burst.

• Axe/Dagger is your main damaging set, Sword/Warhorn is much more defensive by nature.

• Splitblade
  is a cone-shaped attack and should be used in melee range (point-blank) to ensure that all the projectiles hit the main target.

• Winter's Bite
  is the best skill on Axe. While it does less damage than Splitblade it applies up to 3 different conditions to the target, which overall puts more pressure on them. The Weakness even helps with mitigating incoming damage.

• If you're using
  Stalker's Strike
  for the damage and not the evasion, you should first make sure your target is snared.
  Serpent's Strike
  has the benefit of allowing you to use
  Stalker's Strike
  as the first skill after swapping weapons for
  Quick Draw
  synergy while still getting the most damage out of it.

• Eclipse
  makes
  Celestial Avatar
  amazing at applying cover conditions. While CA skills don't do a lot of damage they can apply a wide variety of conditions, if the target was already pressured this form can quickly overwhelm them by making it way harder for them to cleanse your more important conditions.

• In CA
  Lunar Impact
  is a source of ranged Immobilize, you could use this on fleeing enemies to stop them or set up skills like
  Natural Convergence
  .

• Seed of Life
  isn't very dangerous but an instant ranged poison isn't bad, and could be used while casting other skills.

Sustain

• Healing Spring
  is your best skill against conditions, constantly cleansing you as long as you're staying inside the AoE ring. It's also a Water Field, Sword/Warhorn has 3 skills that could be used inside this field to combo extra healing while CA has
  Lunar Impact
  .

• Other great cleanses are
  Seed of Life
  in Celestial Avatar (somewhat spammable instant skill) and
  Superior Sigil of Cleansing
  on Sword.
  • If you drop
    Seed of Life
    halfway through casting
    Lunar Impact
    you can combo an extra condition removal.

• Entering
  Celestial Avatar
  dazes nearby enemies. This is an instant way of lifting some pressure off of you that could be done even while you're stunned.

• Both sets have skills with evade frames:
  Stalker's Strike
  on Axe/Dagger and
  Serpent's Strike
  on Sword/Warhorn. Using these right after weapon swapping could reduce their CD thanks to
  Quick Draw
  .

• Signet of Stone
  is a great defensive skill against Power-based burst damage, with this you could facetank an entire burst combo and even cast healing skill or counterpressure enemies while it's active.

Related Builds

• Druid - Celestial Eclipse Duelist - sPvP version of this WvW roaming build.