Everything You Need Support Druid Script

[[ This is a script for the Support Druid World vs. World guide for Guild Wars 2 on YouTube. You can find that video here. https://youtu.be/odl96bqD544 ]]

Hey everyone, this is Sheff, and in this video, we're going to talk about everything you need to know to play Support Druid in a World vs. World group. This includes basic profession mechanics, build options, synergies, rotation and skill combos, and your role in a larger organized squad. Each of these sections is timestamped, so if you'd like to skip around the video to the parts you want to see, go right ahead.

Like any secondary support, your role as a Druid in an organized group is to quickly react to incoming damage and conditions to keep your party members alive. Druid has the single strongest resurrect utility in the game, coupled with great overall condition clears and healing, and you even have a bit of boon support and general utility as well. Druid's unique profession mechanic is its Celestial Avatar. Druids gain 0.75% Astral Force when dealing damage to foes, and twice as much when healing allies. When your Astral Force meter is full, you can activate your Celestial Avatar form, replacing your weapon skills with more powerful abilities, and also improving the function of your profession-specific Glyph skills. While this form is active your astral force slowly depletes, and must be built up again before it can be reactivated. While your Celestial Avatar is active, your 1 skill is a small 1200 range heal with no cooldown, your 2 skill is a small heal and condition clear that generates a Light field, your 3 skill is a large heal and Blast finisher, your 4 skill is a channeled heal that generates a Water field, and your 5 skill pulses cripple and slow, immobilizing any enemies still near you when it finishes channeling. Celestial Avatar lasts for fifteen seconds, and if you exit the Avatar form early, your remaining Astral Force is rounded down to the nearest 25%.

Beginning with our gear, we'll be using the Minstrel prefix for everything, as this gives us all of the attributes we need to be a durable and tanky healing profession. For our weapons, we'll use Staff and Mace/Warhorn, and we'll use a Sigil of Transference and a Sigil of Energy on each of these to improve our healing and provide access to additional dodges. On our runes, we'll use Runes of the Monk for additional healing power, and for our Relic, we'll use Relic of Karakosa to generate additional heals from Blast finishers.

For utility skills we'll use Healing Spring, "Protect Me!" Frost Spirit, Glyph of Alignment, and Spirit of Nature. Healing Spring is a heal and condition clear that doubles as a Water field, letting you Blast your Healing Spring for additional healing if you need it. "Protect Me!" is a group stunbreak that also provides you with protection and barrier. Frost Spirit does a number of things -- on initial cast it provides Resistance to nearby allies. Then, the Frost Spirit slams the ground, which is a Blast finisher that also removes conditions from allies. And finally, the Spirit shakes, which gives Resolution to nearby allies. Glyph of Alignment, when not in your Celestial Avatar form, spreads conditions to nearby foes. But when used in your Celestial Avatar form, it instead heals and removes conditions from nearby allies. And your elite utility skill, Spirit of Nature, also has several effects. When cast it converts up to five conditions on nearby allies into boons. Then, it slams the ground, instantly reviving up to five targets. And finally, it shakes, providing regen to nearby allies. Ranger professions also have the ability to use up to two pets, and for this build we'll take the Juvenile Siege Turtle, and the Juvenile Brown Bear. The Siege Turtle gives us a projectile destroying dome, while the Brown Bear gives us an additional group condition clear. But that said, there's a lot of decent pet options to use, and the overall impact of your pet is going to be relatively low in a group fight, so feel free to try other pet options with a support utility skill like Fern Hounds for an additional heal, the Frost Aura from a White Moa, or even the boon corrupt from a Spinegazer.

For our traits, we'll use Skirmishing 311, Nature Magic 231, and Druid 112. In Skirmishing, our minor traits don't really contribute to our ability to support allies, but our major trait Fang and Claw provides a source of Fury when we use our Beast F2 skill, and Quick Draw gives is a source of additional Quickness, as well as a cooldown reduction on our next weapon skill that we use. We'll get into this a bit when we dive into the specific rotations and skill combos that Druid uses, but be aware that tracking whether you have Quick Draw active can be a little difficult, as entering and exiting Celestial Avatar also count as weapon swaps.

In Nature Magic, our minor trait Lingering Magic gives improved healing from Regeneration, and Rejuvenation gives us an additional source of Regeneration when we use our Beast skill. Our major trait Wellspring also generates Regeneration when we use our healing skill, and provides additional healing power based on our Power, and despite the fact that Minstrel has no Power statting, we still have a free 1000 Power just for being level 80, before factoring in boons like Might. Windborne Notes adds regeneration to our Warhorn skills, and also gives a small heal to allies when we apply Regeneration to them. And our grandmaster trait Nature's Vengeance lets our spirits slam a second time. This means that our Frost Spirit clears conditions from allies twice, and also Blasts twice, triggering Karakosa twice. But it also means that our Spirit of Nature resurrects allies twice, for potentially ten allies revived from downstate off of a single cast. These slams happen three seconds apart, so it's unlikely that you'll rez a full ten allies off of a single Nature Spirit cast, but it's still one of the most powerful traits that Druid gets overall because of how hard it becomes to convert downs that are being supported by a handful of Druids with Spirit of Nature.

Finally, in Druid, our minor trait Natural Mender provides a flat 15% increase to healing to others, and also gives us eight astral force every three seconds to help rebuild our Celestial Avatar. In our major traits, Druidic Clarity provides an additional three condition clears when entering our Celestial Avatar form, while Celestial Shadow provides stealth and superspeed to allies when exiting it. And in our final grandmaster, Lingering Light, we increase our healing to allies by a further 20% on top of Natural Mender, and also reduces the cooldown of Celestial Avatar by half a second any time we heal allies with a Celestial Avatar skill. There is no internal cooldown on Lingering Light triggers, which means that your only real limit to how often you can use Celestial Avatar is how quickly you can regenerate your Astral Force after it ends, and you can generally ignore that it has a cooldown.

Now that we've covered traits and utilities, let's talk about how Druid works mechanically. Your most powerful heals and condition clears are in your Celestial Avatar form, so your general approach to playing Druid will have two phases -- one phase where you are in CA, and one phase where you are collecting Astral Force to reactivate CA. Despite the fact that Druid is a reactive support that generally tries to clear conditions and heal allies in response to incoming damage, I've generally found that CA lasts long enough, and astral force is easy enough to get, that you rarely want to wait to activate it. Instead, your goal should be to try and enter CA as many times as possible, to trigger the additional condition clears from its activation, the stealth and superspeed from its deactivation, and benefit from the strong weapon skills and upgraded utility skills that you get while you are in this form. Staff 5 and Staff 3 are your best tools for applying boons to allies and positioning before a fight begins -- the Regeneration that Staff 5 gives doesn't have a target cap, so open a fight by placing this line down in front of your group so that everybody in your squad crosses it. Then, hit this line with your Staff 3 to reposition into your group, and trigger a Blast, before entering Celestial Avatar as soon as incoming damage and conditions begin to appear on your squad. At the very start of a fight, entering CA should always trigger Quick Draw, which reduces the cooldown of the next weapon skill that you use. The best way to handle this is to cast Lunar Impact, CA 3, on any field that your squad has placed down, making sure that you wait for the entire cast time to complete to make sure you consume Quick Draw with CA 3 specifically. After this, cast CA 3 again, and as it's channeling, cast CA 2 underneath it. Because CA 2 is instant, the field will appear first, and then CA 3 will immediately blast it, triggering Karakosa and cleansing additional conditions from allies. With CA 2 and CA 3 both on cooldown, your next priority should be to channel Rejuvenating Tides, CA 4, before casting CA 3 into CA 2 again when they're off cooldown. You can cast CA 2 first if you want, but the field has a very short duration, and you'll need to use CA 3 immediately afterwards if you want to guarantee blasting a Light field specifically. Your autoattack, Cosmic Ray, is a filler skill for any time you don't have other skills off cooldown, and Natural Convergence, CA 5, is generally something you don't need to worry about while in your CA form. However, you do want to keep an eye on Glyph of Alignment, as this utility skill is only worth using while you are in CA, and is a good heal as well as condition cleanse when used this way.

Your Astral Force decreases at a set rate, and isn't consumed by the skills that you use in Celestial Avatar, so you should expect to spend 15 seconds in CA every time you use it. The cooldown for both Rejuvenating Tides and Lunar Impact is eight seconds each, which means you should be aiming to use each skill twice while you're in CA. You don't need to cast them immediately when they are off cooldown, and you can afford to wait a little bit before using them, to avoid healing party members that are at full health, or removing conditions that don't exist from allies. So keep a close eye on your party UI while you're in CA to make sure you're extracting maximum value from your skills in this form. But after your Astral Force runs out, and you exit your Celestial Avatar form, your next goal is to rebuild your Astral Force as quickly as possible so that you can re-enter CA. Every time you strike a foe, you regain 0.75%, and every time you heal an ally you regain 1.5%, so your best way to regain Astral Force quickly is to focus on skills that hit multiple targets, strike multiple times, or pulse multiple heals. Your best options here are Staff 4 and Warhorn 4 for damaging enemies, and Staff 5 along with blasting your Healing Spring utility heal for healing allies. After your first rotation you should still be in Staff, so line up Staff 4 in order to hit as many targets as possible, place Healing Spring at your feet, blast it with Staff 3, then weapon swap and blast it again with Warhorn 5. This should get you pretty close to reactivating CA by itself, but if you need a little extra lifeforce you can use Warhorn 4 as well, which strikes a single target up to 16 times, generating up to 12% of your total Astral Force. Past this point it's very difficult to ensure that entering CA will trigger Quick Draw, so keep in mind that when you re-enter, you'll want to start by creating a field with CA 2 and blasting it with CA 3, rather than using CA 3 first and waiting for the cast to finish.

That's your basic set of skill combos for Druid -- maximize your healing skills while in CA, maximize your healing and damage ticks while out of it. But there's a few other points to note about the build overall. First are your pets -- pets tend to not live very long in World vs. World, so you want to prioritize using their abilities early, before they succumb to their inability to dodge. Your Juvenile Siege Turtle is your strongest pet, and also the easiest to deploy before a fight, so look to use the projectile dome early. Then for whatever your backup pet is, wait on the pet swap until you need it. For example, my backup pet is the Juvenile Brown Bear, which clears conditions. Swap to it when you see conditions that need to be cleared, and use it immediately, to guarantee that you can use its ability before it dies. Second, you want to find good opportunities to use Frost Spirit. The front half applies Resistance, while the back half slams twice, clearing conditions each time. This is a great utility skill to use any time your group is sitting in melee, or about to reposition out of melee, to make sure that players in your squad are able to move freely, and aren't getting bogged down by conditions. Finally, your Spirit of Nature elite utility skill is the strongest skill you have access to, and one of the strongest utility skills in all of World vs. World. The initial cast converts conditions to boons, but more importantly, the back half revives up to five nearby allies with each slam, and with your Nature's Vengeance trait, you'll slam twice, reviving up to ten allies total. Being on comms so that you can hear if other Druids are using their Spirit is a massive help, and if you can call your own Spirit, that's even better, as a single use of Spirit of Nature is enough to turn the tide of a fight. That said, there is a delay of 2.25 seconds between cast and actual rez, so you'll need quick reactions to make good use of the skill. Alternatively, you can precast the Spirit if you expect players in your squad to enter downstate, and cancel the cast before it finishes if your squad successfully dodges or survives a spike. If you're playing with a larger organized group, talk to your commander or to other Druids in your party to see if there's a specific order that players are going to cast their Spirits of Nature in, to avoid wasting multiple Spirits on the same players in downstate.

Druid's playstyle in World vs. World has a lot of moving parts, so in the following fight clip, try to see for yourself what my priorities are at each stage of the fight, and what skill combos I'm using.

[[ fight clip ]]

Druid is one of the defining features of the current World vs. World meta, alongside support professions like Firebrand and DPS professions like Scrapper and Holosmith. The strength of its rez utility in Spirit of Nature is unparalleled, and it also has heals and cleanses on par with other secondary supports like Tempest, Scrapper, and Evoker. As a result, Druid fits into a wide variety of different squad compositions, and complements a large range of different playstyles. It's possible to play one Druid per party as a core secondary support, but it's also possible to opt for support professions with slightly higher flexibility, and only run as many Druids as you need to handle your rez utility, which is usually something like one Druid for every ten to fifteen people in your squad. But if you want to play a strong, consistent secondary support profession with the ability to flip the outcome of a fight with well-timed skills usage, Druid is the profession for you. And if you decide to pick it up and try it out, I hope that this video is a useful resource for you. If there's anything that I covered here that isn't clear, or that you disagreed with, I'd invite you to leave a comment to let me know, and if you want more videos like this one consider liking the video and subscribing to the channel. I also stream on Twitch, if you'd like to watch me play some of these builds in realtime and talk with me about it over there. But until then I've been Sheff, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Build Link: https://gw2skills.net/editor/?PO0EYKNssCWIbhhwIxyVyrVWy9uC-DWJYjR9fZkZKUdF471hQEg9wbp9NLA-w