Druidic Healer
Druidic Staff Build
Do you want a mechanically intense build, with constant focus needed to rotate healing over time stacks on your team, single target burst heals on a low cooldown, and high mobility with no cast times to hold you back? Sounds a little scary I know, and this build is not for the faint of heart, but mastering it can provide your team with incredible healing potential with high versatility boasting consistent healing alongside single target pickups to heal those team mates receiving heavy burst.
Nature healing is more complex than holy healing. Whilst holy healing is ‘restorative’, directly healing the health your teamates have lost after they have lost it, nature healing can be considered more to be mostly ‘preventative’. Keeping up your stacks of Healing over Time (HoT) on you team members, and yourself is vital. This healing over time is going to be actively replacing the damage dealt by enemies with health restored, with your E and W spells being used to help focus heal team members that have taken heavy burst damage. USE YOUR HOTKEYS for nature healing. F1 / F2 / F3 / F4 keys can be used to quickly switch targets to apply your HoT’s to your team. Arrange your party order to your liking to make this easier (e.g tank on F1, MPDS on F2, RDPS on F3 and F4) and remember their corresponding keys. It is also very important that you get used to self casting, this is done by pressing ALT+Q/W/E to target yourself with the spell. Alternatively you can set direct hotkeys for self casted spells.
Rejuvenation: Applies a stack of Healing over time (HoT) indicated by a leaf spinning around your target. This stacks up to three times. With an incredibly low cooldown this is a great way to stack your “Druid Robe” to maximum effect. It can be a good idea to stack your team with 2 stacks on the way into a fight, and top them up with the third stack once the battle begins to give the best up time possible. Watch the stacks, and make sure you restack your team. You MUST keep focus on keeping your stacks of HoT’s up on yourself and your team. If you want to push right in on the engage, you can activate your Druid Robe on your way into a fight to give your team incredible sustain to win a trade of early damage.
Cleanse Heal / Protection of Nature: Cleanse heal can be a great way of making sure you and your team don't get locked down for damage, freeing them of all CC effects. It removes one stack of Rejuvenation from the targets in exchange for a burst heal, with the more stacks on target granting more health. This also means that it has the amazing utility of taking your team’s stacks down from 3 to 2, allowing you to top them back up to three stacks again, instead of having to wait for the three stacks to expire to restack them entirely. “Protection of Nature” can be a useful switch instead where your opponents are more focused on high single target damage.
Spiritual Seed: A powerful single target heal with a short delay. You can cast this spell on up to two allies, including yourself. This cannot be purged or removed, but it can be reduced by anti-heal debuffs. With there being a delay on the heal, you will have to remain vigilant to make sure your target receives the heal when they need it, this may mean preempting damage and placing the heal on an ally before they have taken the damage to allow it to land right after it does.
Equipment abilities
Graveguard Helmet
A single target heal sacrificing 15% of your own health to heal 25% of a team member’s health. The amount healed is increased based on your heal power, so increases with you wearing a cloth robe, ‘adrenaline driven charity’ passive, and ‘obsessive burst’ robe skill. As long as you are in a good position, the Healing over Time stacked on yourself will quickly replace that lost HP sacrificed by the skill. Be careful not to use the helmet if you are in a bad spot, and remember that you cannot cast it on yourself.
Druid Robe
Obsessive Burst is the spell offered by the Druid Robe. Whilst many prefer the easy defensive option provided by the cleric robe, the Obsessive Burst spell increases your healing done by up to 60% for 10 seconds, ramping up by 6% each stack per spell cast. That healing done IS your defense, granting incredibly strong Healing over Time for your team and yourself to power through damage being dealt with constant healing replacing it. At maximum stacks this turns your “Spiritual Seed” into near a full heal for your party.
Cleric Sandals
Given how mobile the Nature Staff is, and how fast paced the play is, cleric sandals can be the best way to actively avoid damage. The blink is an i-frame (invulnerability frame), so a well timed blink will protect you from burst damage (Hard but like I said, this build is not for the faint of heart). The instant reposition blink offers allows you to create space and maintain it to keep yourself and your team healthy.
Lymhurst Cape
You will need energy for this build, the Lymhurst Cape is non optional and is imperative for keeping your energy levels topped up. Remember, if you run out of energy you can’t cast healing spells, and if you can’t cast healing spells, your team dies.
Mistcaller
This offhand simply reduces your cooldowns, meaning you have your spells up more often. This just means more healing, and better defensive uptime.
Passives
Aggression / Toughness on cloth and plate armors respectively. To boost your healing and defense vs players. “Adrenaline Driven Charity” is an amazing passive to really increase your healing done by 20%. The difficulty is in timing this passive activation before you deliver your major healing such as “Spiritual Seed”, but once you master this you will notice your heal power pick up in a major way.
Avalonian Pork Omelette
Grants you some extra cooldown reduction (cdr) stacking nicely with the mistcaller, but also some extra defense vs players stacking with the toughness passive on your graveguard helmet. Remember that cooldown reduction has diminishing returns, so an avalonian pork omelette is a great way to push your cdr up without overdoing it, and sinking good value into protecting yourself from enemy damage.
Resistance Potion
Increases your defense vs players, meaning your healing done stays at full effectiveness. Many people ask why not gigantify potion? Well that doubles your max and current hitpoints, therefore halving damage received, but then also effectively halving your healing received. It also improves your defense vs crowd control, meaning you will be stunned/silenced/rooted for a shorter duration. You may want to bring energy potions with you if you find you are not being focused often, but are running short on energy.
Strengths
- Keep healing on the move
- Cleanse to defend against Crowd Control
- Powerful Healing over Time
Counters
- Heavy Mace purge removing HoT’s
- Great Curse Staff removing HoT’s