Yasi.9065

In fractals its differently, at least atm for us since we arent a full static. We cant force pug power bs to run strength runes, we would never be able to fill that slot then. So, might and part of fury and protection has to be covered by firebrand as well.

Might (ha!) be differently with the comp becoming more popular, but atm you have to get more boon duration than you need for quickness.

You sacrifice way too much dmg that way, then you can also just go harrier fb and camp scepter.

Honestly, a harrier (or givers/minstrel) firebrand is a good investment. Worst case you can play it as healer or respectively healer-tank in raids, except VG mid and Deimos ranged you can tank everything on minstrel/givers firebrand quite nicely.

Zerker firebrand atm might be just a fluke, I cant really tell yet. Or it might become the new meta in fractals with renegade on harrier for pugs. Who knows exactly whats gonna get preferred.

> @"Draco.9480" said:

> for me double heals looks like a job of farming safely and not enjoying the challenge at all. if you think it's fun to play safe all the time then you're devoid of taste.

AND

> @"Yonatan.5143" said:

> it won't increase the chance at all. it only increase the chance in like 3-4 bosses. everything else having a 2nd healer will just make it longer and face more mechanics. for single healer you don't take druid for the sake of healing but for the sake of might and other buffs. single druid also has roles as pusher, entangle etc.

Completely irrelevant. This thread is about 2 healer+2 buffer comps, the currently most played comp in lfg squads. Please keep "but you dont need a second healer" out of this thread, this thread was NOT intended by me as a platform to discuss the comp itself. If you want to discuss that, please open a new thread and discuss it there.

To make this clear, I dont want this discussion here because of very good reasons, those being:

a) The majority of people posting stuff like "2 healers is a crutch, man up, git gud" cant even be bothered to sidestep dhuum marks and rely on second healers quite heavily in lfg squads.

b) Its time to acknowledge that theres a sort of "lfg squad meta comp" with different goals from the SC/DnT/LN/Whatever speedclear comps. That meta needs to be discussed for lfg raiding to become even remotely enjoyable - and thereby raids more attractive, more accessible to newer / more casual players. And it needs to be discussed without trolls constantly harping in, telling everyone how bad they are just for considering a second healer.

c) Without a baseline this thread will devolve in namecalling and people calling others toxic, elitist or bad. The comp is this baseline. If you dont like it, refrain from posting, this thread is NOT for you then.

Again, this thread is for discussions about the second healer in a comp consisting off:

2 healers

2 buffers

1 bannerwarrior

5 DPS

This thread is NOT for speedclears or lowman stuff, or the discussion of why speedclears and lowman stuff is "better" or "worse".

Our full zerker fb with pack runes, concentration sigil and soul pastries does about the dps of our bannerwarrior. Definitely depends on the amount of time we need to phase.

For pulls you got GS5 + F1 tome, skill 3, which surprisingly is pretty much enough. Axe on occasion, though its not strictly necessary and a scepter is more dps imo.

We are a bit struggling on might, but then we havent forced our bannerwarrior yet to run strength runes, only dumplings as food for PS trait to trigger.

Precast on singularity usually is banners + alacrity (renegade ofc) + elite shout and mantras. GGing is generally kept to a bare minimum, since re-casting mantras is painful and eats just way too much time.

For skips we either have a tempest or a daredevil, and everyone brings a xera portal.

All in all, it works very well and is really quite comfortable. I honestly can say, that I wouldnt want to go back to chrono... alone the amount of time spent with chrono on singularity precast is ridiculous and totally destroys fractals for me.

But this is current status, lets see what next tuesday brings. Either firebrand or renegade will have to be flexible to run as a healer maybe, and Im now rather swayed towards keeping renegade purely as a power specc and switching on firebrand. But this all depends on so many not-yet disclosed factors... like is the leaked instability rework really coming? How much extra dps would be boonrip on spb, how much for renegade. How much dmg do you get from certain instabilities... how much condi remove do you need.... do you need perma protection.... how much dps really IS power renegade with diviners, etc.

For fractals, Id tell you to wait until tuesday.

> @"Henry.5713" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > > @"Henry.5713" said:

> > > > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > > > > @"Henry.5713" said:

> > > > > Such a second slot could and many cases should be considered a waste no matter which class you use for it. The most obvious choice, once people realized a single druid is able to maintain 25 Might, would be to not even have a second healer slot then. That is, if the issue is actually only about the Might.

> > > > > I don't deny that there better options than a second druid, all with their own benefits, not to mention most of them do provide decent might for at least their own party, but none of them are strictly needed unless you really struggle without the additional healing in which case anything is an improvement even the trusty second Druid.

> > > >

> > > > Its nice that you think one healer should always be enough and people just need to "git gud" but please, not here.

> > > >

> > > > While I value any input, this thread is specifically tailored towards the most commonly used lfg squad comp -> 2x chrono, 2x healer (see first post).

> > > >

> > > > Minimalistic support comps are not suited for the majority of the raid playerbase, and they are in no way suited for lfg squads that are comprised of people that never played together and all have different skill-levels.

> > > >

> > > > Also, you are wrong. Even a shoutwarrior would be more of an improvement than a 2nd druid.

> > >

> > > You seem to have misunderstood me there. Bring a second healer if you need one, "unless you really struggle without one" is what I said.

> > > Let me try again, you did say they insist on having a second Druid for the sole purpose of being able to provide 25 Might and then proceeded to go into a long explanation on about how one Druid is able to do it all by themselves. Guess you are telling Druids to "git gud" at providing Might then?

> > > Chuckles aside, you seem to greatly underestimate what a single Druid can do if you think they are close to useless in comparison with the other builds you mentioned, even more so as the second Druid would be free to run Lingering Light being the second healer. Unless you yourself think the second Druid needs to have GOTL even though one can provide all of the Might needed.

> > > And no, I am not saying there aren't better options if you need to have a second healer. I simply think it is a bit much to claim anything would be better. PuG commanders go with what they know and they always assume Druids (or anything really) to be mediocre and struggle at pretty much everything, including Might. Thus they insist on having both which is indeed silly.

> >

> > No, Im not telling druids to "git gud", Im saying its so laughably easy that failing at it is a huge embarassement and should never be tolerated. Theres nothing, absolutely nothing, difficult about providing might, spirits and fury on a druid. Either you cant because your squad is so spread out that, and then its not your fault at all... and you cant change anything, or you are just plain afk. Yes, even a mediocre druid will be able to provide those things. The difference between a good druid and a mediocre druid is how good he can predict and cope with special situations... NOT how much might, spirit and fury uptime he can provide.

> > Im not "underestimating" druid healing. Ive been a druid main since HoT release up until PoF. Lingering lights is a very bad joke, even Ancient Seeds has more use than a trait that makes your healing more overheal than it already is. The problem is NOT not enough healing on druid, the problem is that you are locked out of your healing in critical moments. Other healer builds do NOT have this problem and in addition bring certain extras that benefit your squad immensely.

> > Tbh, I think you are just so stuck in your "2 druids is fine" spiel, that you dont even realize how slackening a second druid is compared to ALL alternatives.

> >

>

> Interesting comparison and assumption about the spiel I am supposed to be stuck on.

> What does make a Druid good? Now that is debatable. One could say what makes you good is to not struggle to solo heal and to be able to predict moments where your squad needs big healing to not be locked out of Avatar Form combined with providing the Might needed. Or one could take the route you did with your complaint about Might and put the blame on the squad as their movement or mistakes cause some of the downstates which is obviously never your fault. But of course that would be mean and me telling them to "git gud" again and we would have gone full circle...

Here's a few examples for you to think about.

VG -> Outhealing greens. Before the first green even spawns you already have to use the "big heals" because dps players, especially dhs, like to stand in VG cleave, while other dps players - mainly DEs - get ported and loose 1/3 of their health everytime. You'd need constant about 3k healing but druid always has a gap where healing drops to only regen ticks.

Gorseval -> Slow cc because dps havent found their cc buttons to smash. Theres a point, even if you do everything perfectly, have full avatar on beginning of the cc phase, that you run out of healing on a druid. "Good" druids can prolong this a bit with blasting a certain waterfield, but thats it. Slow to no cc gorseval shows you imo quite nicely the limitations of druid as a healer.

Sabetha -> Karde and after phase. People stand in cannons, in Karde's flamethrower, turrets dont get focused. Kiting druid starts trying to heal more and maybe even places a few burning fields near the group, which ofc that DE is gonna stand in.

Etc. Thats all things that I see on a daily basis in lfg raids. Did the druid do anything wrong? No. Healing on druid is designed to have this gap. To be burst healing and not constant healing. LFG squads however profit quite a lot from constant healing since you always have at least those players that just face tanks nearly every mechanic.

Ofc you could kick those players that practically force you to run something with constant healing. But as a commander you got other stuff to do than go check after each try which player ate the most dmg, then evaluate if it was due to failed mechanics or something harmless like rezzing someone downed in poison while he got healed up. Thats the kind of thing I do for my static, but sure as hell not for lfg squads.

As a lfg squad commander you learn to overlook stuff like that and just adapt your expectations - and your comp. At least good lfg squad commanders do that.

Sadly theres quite a lot of copy&paste lfg commanders out there, that just take the most commonly used comp in speedclears, multiply supporters in it until they only need about 2 pulls per boss, and call that "meta". Hence this thread.

> @"Henry.5713" said:

> Your Banner Warrior comparison is a good one. A second warrior may be a waste, and no I wouldn't take one either, but the Discipline version does come quite close to the better DPS builds out there which makes it far less of a waste than you think, not unlike what you said about Druids.

> Which means having two druids is only slightly worse than having any other healer present. You are basically picking something that is slightly less of a waste than a second Druid but a waste nonetheless. Once again, have your Firebrand or Renengade with their unique benefits if you really need a second healer. I never said they aren't more useful than second Druid even if not to the crazy degree you make them out to be. You seem to be offended by the fact that I do not call them a complete waste.

>

Theres a reason people arent stacking dps berserkers. Just because a build looks great against a golem doesnt mean its going to perform that well in raids. And I didnt say it would be a waste, I said nobody even thinks about that. Nobody calculates a comp with failure of bannerwarriors or chronos in mind. Why should you do that with druids? Why give druids that supposed "leeway", and also make their job way more difficult because of it?

Thing is the big majority of lfg squads NEEDS a second healer, preferably a second healer that can heal twice as much as a druid. They need that second healer because even with a dps more they dont reach dps checks, dont phase VG before second seeker spawn, dont get sloth to 60% before 2nd/3rd shroom, etc. Then you add a second druid, but for that second druid to be "enough" everyone has to watch out for mechanics and dont facetank them. CCs have to be on the spot etc.

And thats only the argument for "more healing" compared to druid.

Theres a whole other side to this that you are conveniently trying to downplay. You dont need 2 druids because 1 druid can - and does - already offer everything you'd need from him in a squad. Theres other healer builds out there that heal as much or more than druid and offer something else, like 10man alacrity, 5 man quickness, condi remove, insane healing, aoe revives, barrier. If you are filling a slot with a second healer, why not add something new to the squad? Why not bring 10man alacrity and chronos can bring more dps or well of precog. Why not add a firebrand so one chrono can drop shield and WoA for more dps. Why not bring a tempest healer that lets you completely ignore mechanics like gorseval cc. Why not bring a healscourge for clutch revives and barrier? Why bring that one healer which you already have and that cant add anything else to the squad? Thats what Id really like to know. Not how you and others that post in this thread think that a second healer is wasted anyway. That doesnt interest me even a tiny bit, nor is it even remotely relevant to this topic.

> @"Draco.9480" said:

> I would replace 1 druid with preaper at gorse. having double heal in general is a bad idea(...)

That might be true, or not, but please do not discuss this here. This thread is explicitely for 2 healer comps

As @"rabenpriester.7129" quite nicely put, theres different basic concepts tailored to different expectations. LFG squads in general want a nice, safe, reasonably fast kill. 2 healer comps are tailored toward this end. The question isnt "can" you do it with 1 healer, but rather "do you want to".

I pug a lot, on average 2-3 hours each day. The amount of players Id say that are good enough to go for a 1 druidhealer fullclear, is very small. Its not just the raw healing provided by a second healer, its also things like stability, aegis, and the amount of mechanics those 2nd healers do. Put succinctly, the second healer enables facetanking-golem-rotation-fixated dps players to feel like they are pros, when in truth, they are not even mediocre skilllevel.

But then, why not make *full use* of this fact? Why not bring a second healer that actually _really_ brings something additional to the squad? Why not use renegade healer to provide 10man instant 300 radius 100% alacrity, making your squad more flexible (chronos and firebrands can then provide quickness and blocks or dps)? Why not bring a tempest that can outheal nearly everything? Or a firebrand that can keep your squishy deadeyes alive and 100% scholar uptimed with aegis + stability? A scourge healer for auto-revive?

Why, for the love of all, would you pick the *worst* healer for that second slot?

From a druid perspective, even on desmina where you could remotely consider the possibility of a second druid for backup pushes, its not good. Two druids on desmina lfg squads means that the druid pushing cant focus on only giving might and pushing. Both druids have to give their best to keep everyone alive, while the pusher gets the added challenge of pushing golems out before some stray avatar3 or other stun interrupts the push. Its so much more easy if you have a real healer with you. You can focus on pushing, go into avatar every 20 seconds to refresh might, and generally have a way more relaxed -and safe- kill.

> @"Henry.5713" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > > @"Henry.5713" said:

> > > Such a second slot could and many cases should be considered a waste no matter which class you use for it. The most obvious choice, once people realized a single druid is able to maintain 25 Might, would be to not even have a second healer slot then. That is, if the issue is actually only about the Might.

> > > I don't deny that there better options than a second druid, all with their own benefits, not to mention most of them do provide decent might for at least their own party, but none of them are strictly needed unless you really struggle without the additional healing in which case anything is an improvement even the trusty second Druid.

> >

> > Its nice that you think one healer should always be enough and people just need to "git gud" but please, not here.

> >

> > While I value any input, this thread is specifically tailored towards the most commonly used lfg squad comp -> 2x chrono, 2x healer (see first post).

> >

> > Minimalistic support comps are not suited for the majority of the raid playerbase, and they are in no way suited for lfg squads that are comprised of people that never played together and all have different skill-levels.

> >

> > Also, you are wrong. Even a shoutwarrior would be more of an improvement than a 2nd druid.

>

> You seem to have misunderstood me there. Bring a second healer if you need one, "unless you really struggle without one" is what I said.

> Let me try again, you did say they insist on having a second Druid for the sole purpose of being able to provide 25 Might and then proceeded to go into a long explanation on about how one Druid is able to do it all by themselves. Guess you are telling Druids to "git gud" at providing Might then?

> Chuckles aside, you seem to greatly underestimate what a single Druid can do if you think they are close to useless in comparison with the other builds you mentioned, even more so as the second Druid would be free to run Lingering Light being the second healer. Unless you yourself think the second Druid needs to have GOTL even though one can provide all of the Might needed.

> And no, I am not saying there aren't better options if you need to have a second healer. I simply think it is a bit much to claim anything would be better. PuG commanders go with what they know and they always assume Druids (or anything really) to be mediocre and struggle at pretty much everything, including Might. Thus they insist on having both which is indeed silly.

No, Im not telling druids to "git gud", Im saying its so laughably easy that failing at it is a huge embarassement and should never be tolerated. Theres nothing, absolutely nothing, difficult about providing might, spirits and fury on a druid. Either you cant because your squad is so spread out that, and then its not your fault at all... and you cant change anything, or you are just plain afk. Yes, even a mediocre druid will be able to provide those things. The difference between a good druid and a mediocre druid is how good he can predict and cope with special situations... NOT how much might, spirit and fury uptime he can provide.

Im not "underestimating" druid healing. Ive been a druid main since HoT release up until PoF. Lingering lights is a very bad joke, even Ancient Seeds has more use than a trait that makes your healing more overheal than it already is. The problem is NOT not enough healing on druid, the problem is that you are locked out of your healing in critical moments. Other healer builds do NOT have this problem and in addition bring certain extras that benefit your squad immensely.

Tbh, I think you are just so stuck in your "2 druids is fine" spiel, that you dont even realize how slackening a second druid is compared to ALL alternatives.

> @"RaidsAreEasyAF.8652" said:

> On Firebrand, is Stalwart Speed better than Weighty Terms?

> With Weighty Terms and Alacrity you can reduce the recharge time of your quickness mantra from 12 seconds to 7.68 seconds. The Mantra Charge gives more quickness than Stalwart Speed while only having a 0.68 seconds longer CD. So it should be better, no?

You take stalwart speed because of the synergy with liberators vow, imo. On healbrand you can consider running weighty terms, quickness isnt an issue there anyway because you overcap it (boon duration is for other boons like protection, aegis, etc.). On quickbrand you'd have to test it, but from a first glance at it you dont get enough out of it to be able to run axe trait. You'd need more boon duration, which means firebrand runes, which means no renegade runes. Its probably about 3k less dps, but ofc you can try it :)

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> > @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > I'd love to see more pugmanders being open-minded to druid + a different healer and hopefully it's just a matter of time and adjustment that we'll see more variants. At the moment we (just) have

> > * stalled views

> > * people with already geared druids

> > * some very bad pocket heal druids (staff only, kinda useless pets, bad CA management, no usage of meaningful utilities & traits for certain encounters)

> >

> > The problem with the last point I made is: If your solo druid dies (I know shouldn't happen imho) and you have a different 2nd healer you'll most likely lack might, fury etc. and that's also a reason for pugmanders to take two of them because you'll never know.

> > In my static (and I know of some others as well) we don't use double druid for the full clear and either have a solo druid for most of the bosses or another 2nd healer to achieve a smooth run.

> > Let's see what the future will bring. I'm confident as I have been in pug squads that had scourge healers as well as revs, fbs and tempests in the past 2 months.

>

> In future i suspect druid will be a memory

I dont think so. Druid still brings with frostspirit a good offensive buff and is the only 10 man might stacker currently viable. The change to SoC made might-DE uninteresting because you drop too much dps now, herald has a HUGE ramp up time which isnt acceptable, and all other alternatives are 5 man. Not saying those cant be used, but 10man is usually easier to coordinate than having to search for 2x 5 man might stackers.

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> I'd love to see more pugmanders being open-minded to druid + a different healer and hopefully it's just a matter of time and adjustment that we'll see more variants. At the moment we (just) have

> * stalled views

> * people with already geared druids

> * some very bad pocket heal druids (staff only, kinda useless pets, bad CA management, no usage of meaningful utilities & traits for certain encounters)

>

> The problem with the last point I made is: If your solo druid dies (I know shouldn't happen imho) and you have a different 2nd healer you'll most likely lack might, fury etc. and that's also a reason for pugmanders to take two of them because you'll never know.

> In my static (and I know of some others as well) we don't use double druid for the full clear and either have a solo druid for most of the bosses or another 2nd healer to achieve a smooth run.

> Let's see what the future will bring. I'm confident as I have been in pug squads that had scourge healers as well as revs, fbs and tempests in the past 2 months.

For lfg squads its generally speaking way better to run with bannerwarrior and PS trait. You can throw on dumplings and already provide around 15+ might with food alone on that build. Thats your spare might buffer, if you really want to go and plan your comp around someone failing constantly. Then all mentioned healer builds offer varying degrees of 5-10man might output.

Im sorry, but Im a bit sick of people making excuses for druids. You dont bring a third chrono "just in case" one of your chronos dies (or is bad), and nobody considers bringing a backup bannerwarrior "just in case" banners dont get placed. Quite a lot dps builds buff themselves fury and some might upon reaching a certain point, so imo, druid isnt quite as irreplacable and important as the raiding community tries to make him. If he dies, he dies. If he's afk staff healing, you kick him and get a better one.

This "oh but we need a spare one" mentality is just so very very inefficient, and tbh insulting to mediocre to good druids.

> @"Henry.5713" said:

> Such a second slot could and many cases should be considered a waste no matter which class you use for it. The most obvious choice, once people realized a single druid is able to maintain 25 Might, would be to not even have a second healer slot then. That is, if the issue is actually only about the Might.

> I don't deny that there better options than a second druid, all with their own benefits, not to mention most of them do provide decent might for at least their own party, but none of them are strictly needed unless you really struggle without the additional healing in which case anything is an improvement even the trusty second Druid.

Its nice that you think one healer should always be enough and people just need to "git gud" but please, not here.

While I value any input, this thread is specifically tailored towards the most commonly used lfg squad comp -> 2x chrono, 2x healer (see first post).

Minimalistic support comps are not suited for the majority of the raid playerbase, and they are in no way suited for lfg squads that are comprised of people that never played together and all have different skill-levels.

Also, you are wrong. Even a shoutwarrior would be more of an improvement than a 2nd druid.

Hey,

this thread only concerns comps with 2x boon support + 2x healer.

At least on EU, the double druid habit is something that really baffles me. On the one hand, squad commanders are looking for best in slot dps on all bosses, while on the other hand they are absolutely fine with bascially just wasting a slot with so much more capability than just giving fury, mediocre heals and mediocre cc.

Contrary to popular belief, one druid is more than capable enough to buff up fast and maintain 25 might on 10man. The only prerequisite for this is to have a full Celestial Avatar at the beginning of each fight. Thanks to the reworked Grace of the Land trait your CA skills gives 2 stacks of might for up to 24 seconds duration per skill/pulse. This means we need 13 skills or pulses to buff up 25 might if theres no other source for it. CA4 pulses 5 times, CA5 pulses 3 times, so thats already 16 stacks of might. You can quickdraw CA4 for another 5 which puts you over 25 might... or you can simply spam CA1 and CA2 on your squad for the rest.

So, a nice opening would look like this: start on staff, swap to x/wh for quickdraw wh5+wh4, do NOT wait for it to come of cooldown but instead go immediately into CA, use CA4, CA5, spam CA1 and CA2 until your weapon swap (and quickdraw!) comes off cooldown again, leave avatar, get a quickdraw proc again on wh5, swap to staff, swap to x/wh for quickdraw wh5+4, go CA etc. Its easy, theres TONS of leeway and Im really sorry to say this, but every monkey should be able to maintain 25 might on 10man on a harrier druid with this. It doesnt even matter if you quickdraw wh5 regularly. Its nice if you do it, but apart from opening, its not necessary in the least.

So, the argument that "I dont trust a pug druid to maintain 25 might alone" is invalid. You wouldnt keep a dps in your squad that only does <5k dps now would you? So why keep the equivalent of it as even 2 druids in your squad? Not just keep them, but actually PLAN your whole comp around such players? Isnt it rather prejudiced to kick that power reaper because he only reaches 14k instead of 16k on gorseval, but then keep the druids too unskilled to do something as easy as upkeep 25 might?

Sorry, but this had to be said. Now on to more productive things.

Who ARE the alternative contenders for that second "healer" slot? Theres quite a handful. They all fill a niche in terms extras they provide while bringing considerably more healing, cc and condi removal than a druid can bring.

(The builds nearly all use monk runes, you can replace them everywhere with water runes though, no worries)

**Harrier Renegade**

Build ->

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAW8nnXMnNSumzJRZzNlst5oSY38UJ4bOskFNlqVA4PIPymctJUFA-jxhXQBAY/BEq8zfq/0Qlg0T3gueCAh6iAQKA/GsB-e

Healing ->

On kalla keep your elite up until energy empty. For clutch situations you have your healskill (which also acts like resistance!) and staff4. As long as players are attacking, they get healed roughly 500-600 for each strike, no icd.

On ventari, move your table a tiny teensy bit around where your squad stands, everytime you move it, you heal. Natural Harmony is for the very big heals, Purifying Essence is a condi remove that heals considerably.

CC ->

Staff5 removes a big chunk of the cc bar, depending on hitbox size. Its instant and low cooldown, so you have it up pretty much for every cc phase. Additionally you have Darkrazor summon on kalla (600), but darkrazor isnt instant, it ticks with 100 per second. On ventari you can sacrifice your tablet for a knockback (150). With some practice you can use that knockback quite nicely on VG for seeker control or on Samarog to help push in rigom.

Extra ->

Now, the real reason this build is for me at least definitely meta in lfg squads, is quite simply that it can buff 10man 100% alacrity quite easily via Orders from Above with Righteous Rebel trait, without allies having to stack closely or stand in wells until they close. This also adds a certain flexibility to the rest of your comp. The chronos can remove WoR and bring Precog Well or mimic or DE or Feedback or whatever is best suited. And instead of having to search hours for that elusive tank chrono you can also just let the Renegade tank while bringing in a quickbrand or healbrand for quickness and fury. Healbrand in particular is easy to play as well, in contrast to chrono.

**Harrier Firebrand**

Build ->

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAS3umsADFBjlKCLz5pBgJAMB2Pntz6JA-jxhXQBIU5nueCANUJYouIAAY/B6pbwfq/QKA/GsB-e

Healing ->

Firebrand heals mainly through passive ticks and symbol healing ticks. The build gives out aegis every 10 seconds, with additional aegis on shield4 and possibly mace3 if you dont have to provide fury. For clutch situations F2 tome brings a ton of healing, and you can bring elite signet for even more of that. For condition heavy encounters you can bring Mantra of Lore or Purging Flames. Merciful Intervention is also quite powerful.

CC ->

Banish, F1 tome skill3 pull, axe 3 pull, Bane Signet or Hammer of Wisdom or even Sanctuary can be brought for cc, depending on whats needed.

Extra ->

This builds biggest strength is that it is very versatile. You can tank most encounters on it without any trouble (xera and vg mid are the exception), while also providing 5man 100% instant quickness. Mantras might need a bit getting used to, though this build overcaps by quite a lot on quickness, so if you dont hit all with your mantra everytime, its no big deal. You can either replace the chrono in your subgrp, if you have a renegade healer, or the chrono in your subgrp can drop WoA for something more useful. In terms of utility, you can reflect with Wall of Reflection and backup yourself with F3 tome skill3 if Wall failed on Matthias for example. You can bring GS for another pull on Sabetha. Push back seekers on VG, pull in adds on Gorse / Sloth / Xera. The sheer amount of aegis and stability this build can bring even surpasses that of chaos chrono in its best days. Im sure Ive forgotten something, but except for portals, healfb seems to have an answer to pretty much every problem. Fury? No problem, just use axe. Might? Scepter. Blocks? Mace. Stability? 10man SYG or F3 tome. You have to adapt the build quite a lot, but it also offers a lot of utility that way.

**Harrier Tempest**

Build ->

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQFAWn0XCVYi9XCOYCcYilSAj4CUBCAun116btwGAA-jxhXQBAY/BEq8je6AC1FAohKB9n6P66BAQKA/GsB-e

Healing ->

Staff variant heals through water attunement skills and auras. Scepter/warhorn variant only through scepter3 on water and auras.

CC ->

The cc of this build is rather limited. On staff you have only really Gust, Static Field is too unreliable. You can swap out Aftershock for a cc utility, ice bow for example offers 300 defiance bar dmg on skill5, earth shield 2x 150 on skill 3+4 etc. On Scepter/wh you have air4 and water4 instead of Gust. You can bring quite a lot of immobilize, but sadly, soft ccs stack in duration not intensity so its not very efficient.

Extra ->

With scepter/warhorn this build can buff 10man fury and might - if theres someone buffing the tempest fury and might to copy then with fire wh4. Both variants offer 10man protection via earth overload and quite a nice amount of frost aura, which reduced dmg on top of protection. In terms of raw healing, the staff build has currently the most sustained healing output, and it is quite "widespread" which definitely is a plus on encounters like matthias, that force you to spread out a lot. The staff build also can ranged-revive with Geyser, which is quite useful in squads with unexperienced players.

**Barrier Scourge**

Build ->

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhaS0LweDW6GMKjATPgBQAQvnOUTqA-jBApA8bwG-e

Nope, not a mistake. There are several good and useful healscourge builds out there. Teapots Thinking Man Scourge for example, as a very strong barrier and rezz bot using magi gear and rune of mercy, imo the best build for carrying low tier/beginner raidsquads. Or a plaguedoctor variant thats useful for its epidemic on bosses with adds - as long as you have enough other condi dps applying the needed conditions. A harrier variant that can buff around 10might on 10man (never tried that one).

Healing ->

Well, not much. Healscourge works by preventing damage via barrier. The most important one is your F3 shade skill, that lets you give out a big barrier every 6-7 seconds.

CC ->

Flesh golem charge, warhorn 4, torch 5, spectral grasp. Fear and immobilizes as well.

Extra ->

Transfusion turns your F4 into an aoe revive skill. On activation you pull downed players in a radius of 600 to you and start reviving them. Transfusion pulses 9 times, that means theres only a few seconds between F4 uses that you dont pulse Transfusion. In the hands of an experienced player, the revive capabilities of this build together with barrier is incredibly strong. On the other hand, this build is unsuited to inexperienced players because they can not (yet) anticipated incoming damage properly, making barrier rather ineffective, and they might pull (accidentally ofc) downed players into oncoming mechanics instead of to safety.

Healscrapper is also a nice healing build though in current balance I wouldnt consider bringing it. Mind you, Im not saying its bad or useless, just.. it doesnt have the "extra" something other healers bring.

So, what to take from this now? Well, the era of 2 druids definitely is over. Done. No use clinging to it. Bringing 2 druids is like bringing 2 bannerwarriors. You wouldnt do that either, would you? I mean, it would still be viable and yet... no one even considers it.

> @"Kicast.1459" said:

> do nothing about bot please...we would have 10 minutes waiting queues if they remove 30% of active pvp accounts ;)

Thats what everybody said about bots in gw1. The economy would break, yada yada... never happened, the game got healthier everytime after a banwave.

> @"Ahrijlaken.9541" said:

> > Firebrand is broken af at the moment as well. Needs to be fixed/tuned down soon.

>

> As a new player guardian, can you explain why Firebrand is broken ? Is about aegis ? ANd the class did get nerf the last patch no ?

Compared to nerfed chaos chrono firebrand puts out more aegis and the same mount of stability, which is quite a lot. Additionally firebrand can bring either a lot more healing than chrono or a lot more dps.

What chaos chrono had that made it superior was role compression. Chaos chrono was a buffer build that could generate and sustain nearly all boons 100%, making other buffers obsolote. On top of that it brought >2k defiance bar dmg, and is one of the best professions to tank on due to sword skill 2, shield 4 block and the insane amount of stability it can generate on itself. In raids that kind of role compression means that you need less good players or top builds.

Firebrand doesnt have that kind of role compression, so it wont get radically nerfed - at least not on purpose. But there's gonna be some adjustments either to healing / dps output of the respective builds, or the generation of aegis. Removing aegis from healing mantra for example would be such a possible change, and this would impact quickness generation quite a lot. It would mean more boon duration is needed, basically nerfing the quickbrand build by hmm... roughly 5k dps. Or anet could reduce the duration of all aegis skills (maybe only keep retreat as long-lasting aegis) and increase the elite mantra re-charge rate. Thats the kind of changes you have to worry about in gw2, since it seems anet thinks its a form of content to never reach a balanced state.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> > @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > > @"Ahrijlaken.9541" said:

> > > > Firebrand is broken af at the moment as well. Needs to be fixed/tuned down soon.

> > >

> > > As a new player guardian, can you explain why Firebrand is broken ? Is about aegis ? ANd the class did get nerf the last patch no ?

> >

> > If a class is played above average like scourge and firebrand in WvW it's not because the classes are so much fun to play.

> >

> >

>

> Yet neither were/are over represented in fractals,dungeons,and raids, which is what people are discussing.

Give it time. Pugs are slow to adapt.

The new stats will put power firebrand+power renegade > chrono in fractals very quickly. The comp is already stronger, and will get even more so with diviner stats.

In raids fbs/ren/druid comp needs a bit of adjusting to, but imo its especially for pugs very strong due to above mentioned aegis output of firebrands, the kalla summons on renegade and spirits+might generation of druid.

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> My dream of herald boon support tank ☺

Have to tell you, as long as theres no frost spirit attached to that build... not going to happen in lfg squads. In statics its a viable option because slb (power and condi) is able to bring frostspirit. Though it would only really shine with 2 quickbrands and for that the mightstacking on herald takes way too long thanks to 1sec cooldown on shared empowerment. For optimal boons you'd probably want to add a tempest to the mix that just doubles your might at the beginning of each phase with wh4. But then its getting very restrictive in terms of comp and gameplay, also something a lot of statics dont want.

Boon herald - both harrier and berserker - is the best example of how anet just simply doesnt balance boons to content, but rather around profession design. You can overstack protection/swiftness/fury to last forever, but the one really important boon... you barely reach 25 on and only after around 20seconds. Really bad design. Because you need additional might stacks for boon herald to work. But if you bring a druid, then you dont need boon herald. Same with tempest.

And all of that, simply because of a 1sec cooldown on shared empowerment.

> @"Ertrak.9506" said:

> I find it amazing people even need a guide for this.

>

> I also don't understand why people are so scared of "4 heal" comp, ie 2 harrier/giver boon-FB 1 harrier renegade, 1 druid (/group might stacker). Pre nerfs, double chrono double druids comps were already effectively 4 zero-dps supports.

Ofc that depends on players skilllevels, but for more experienced raiders 4 healer is way too much healing on most raidbosses. So why not have one flexible firebrand that can either go healbrand or quickbrand or with new stats maybe even powerbrand. Thats just like old off-chrono, just.. better. And switching between heal food and condi food isnt quite as painful as having to waste 45min left on power food. So this solution is very reasonable, and helps you quite a lot on bosses like gorseval, MO or sloth, where you get punished with additional mechanics if you cant kill fast enough.

This is actually one of the most attractive aspects of this whole comp. So dumbing it down to 4healers kinda hurts my soul. But if you need that safety net... or want it... its also possible without having to change much.

> @"Ertrak.9506" said:

> Utility? still the same. 600-range pull-> GS, CC-> bane signet, sh5, hammer 4, tome 1-3. Ofc portals is still locked to mesmer, but dps mesmers aren't hard to find and both mirages and power chronos and can drop a utility for portal with next to zero loss. The comparison to previous double heal comps is completely in favor of fb-ren: more cc, more healing, more cleanse, (now) more boons, more stability/aegis.

Thats a very superficial view on mesmer pull. Focus pull is NOT projectiles, hence can not be blocked by mobs with defiance bar and it pulls on one single spot instead of around the guardian pulling. Also focus pull is ranged, as a guard with GS you have to run to the spot first that you want to pull to. Not really the same level, at all.

And yes, the rest I posted above and it was my main motiviation to even start this thread. Especially for pugs the comp is so much better fitting, even without switching between healbrand and firebrand its a dps increase over 2xchrono, 2xdruid by purely higher scholar and boon uptimes alone.

> @"Ertrak.9506" said:

> I don't understand why this community acts like quickness-dps FB is the only viable build for this comp. Just don't be stupid, easy.

Im sorry, but what I did was just translate the most commonly used comp in statics pre-chrono-nerf into fb/ren comp. You misunderstood something there. All the comps I posted above are not just viable, they are solid. Every raidgrp has to pick the one that suits their mentality best.

The suicide comp is suited for statics that really didnt run any healing except for condi druid before. Even then its imo not possible to get consistent kills with it in w5, but Im sure someone will post a video sometime in the future to disprove this ;)

The 2healer comp is for statics that killed all bosses before with only a harrier druid.

The 3healer comp is for experienced monday fullclear lfg squads (500+LI on EU).

The 4healer comp is for inexperienced or once-a-week raiders that dont mind spending 30-60min more on a fullclear than the 3 healer comp. (Yes, the difference is actually that small)

/edit:

I get your point, I really do. What a lot of the raiding community cant wrap their head around - yet - is that just because its an additional potential healer, it doesnt mean its less dps. Chrono could assist somewhat with healing before, but it was less than 3k healing/sec even with full harriers (yes, I tried it ;p ) simply because you are very limited in what you can bring to heal. Dps on chronos got shifted heavily towards phantasms, but because you couldnt bring those due to having all your utility skills and weapons choices dictated by boss mechanics or boon generation, the dps on buffchronos has been mediocre at best for basically nearly the whole past year.

Before nerf, the only things chrono could bring to raids was 100% boonuptime on nearly all boons, and massive cc. After nerf its "only" boon extension of druid's or herald's boons, quickness+alacrity and good cc. Dps is increased slightly because you can run domi instead of chaos and chronophantasm now.

So with 2 chronos, 1 druid you get 2x okay dps and good cc, with 1x meh dps, meh cc and enough healing.

With fb/ren 2healer comp (which is the pendant to 2xchrono, 1x druid) you get 2x good dps (on level with tactics bs) with meh cc, 1x good healing with very good cc but totally negligible dps and 1x meh dps, meh cc and enough healing. Yes you have to add another "supporter" to it and loose 1 top dps slot for it. But (except on kc) the dps of the quickbrands is enough to offset that, AND you gain another burst healer that will help you with scholar uptime. If you instead play with a dps renegade (though imo its not worth it atm... because you need 80% boon duration) you overtake 2chrono, 1druid comp.

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> Can't wait to see firebrand tanks to be absolutely torn to shreds by Xera and Desmina. The problem I see with these builds is that you'd have to relog your core support framework every couple of bosses, which is annoying af, takes time, takes a lot of organization and willingness of the support players to equip and learn more classes.

Actually, Ive tanked xera on pretty much everything, including builds like druid that dont have any blocks at all, without any trouble. So no, you really dont need a chrono for tanking xera. Its actually quite laughable. Id rather say a chrono is necessary for tanking VG than tanking xera. Xera is not even a challenge.

Desmina you need 2 tanks, but if for example you run a druid/healbrand/renegade/quickbrand support team for your fullclear, theres no reason at all to switch at any boss. Renegade can tank with retribution quite comfortably desmina, givers healfirebrand with mace/shield as well. The only "hole" compared to a more traditional 2 chrono, 1 druid, 1 healscourge comp is your condi removal in the grp of the quickbrand. But you can work around that by trading in dps (condi signet) for condi remove (regen mantra) on quickbrand.

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> I think the relogging part is the most important point. For that reason I doubt we'll see this comp in w5 and w3 any time soon. Highly doubt we'll see it in w6, because Largos portal strat is too strong, and so are portals at Qadim.

Ive never really used portals for largos, except for first time trying zerg tactic and then half my squad didnt even use it, so we just leave it. And tbh, I dont see the point of it at all. You have to send your chrono away to place the portal and phase then the largos nearly faster than your chrono can get to you. Nah, Im sorry, but portals are quite unnecessary on largos.

For qadim its also just a gimmick and gives you around 40-60seconds time. Thats nice for record runs, but the goal of a fullclear is to find the balance between not wiping and getting speedy kills. If you really want a portal there, bring a power chrono. Its quite good on qadim anyway. But you can also just dont use portals at all and be faster due to more blocks/stability during fight itself.

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> They also save time at w1 gorse pre, sab pre. Which leaves w4 as a wing you can clear witht his comp. Which, to me, begs the question: Why would you play fb/ren in a fullclear in any other wing, then? Relogging takes time, reorganizing takes time. These aren't "we finish the boss 20s faster" timesaves, sadly. Maybe you could solve these problems (including escort) with a portaling Mirage / Power Chrono, but then again you'd have to relog to a tanking Chrono on Xera and Desmina or your raid will become a clown fiesta. It would also lock you into 7 fixed classes to play, lul.

>

> I think this comp has a long way to go in raids, at least for fullclears.

I think you are wrong there. Portals at gorse pre are mainly one thing: convenient. I remember the times you'd not bring portals at all and instead just split up grps to north and south. Not really slower. Sab pre Ive yet to run with a lfg squad that uses even portal there, mainly because you need someone to say when to open which is inconvenient in chat.

Mind you, this is NOT about speedclears, as I said all the way up at the beginning of this thread. This is about convenience and safety. And sorry, but 2 chrono has also quite a lot of downsides nowadays, one being the long interval between boon application, another being less defense via aegis/stability. If you can work around that, good for you. If not, which is to say includes at least 90% of all pug raids, then fb/ren should be your go-to comp. The time you need more for not having conveniency portals, pugs waste on wiping, not doing dmg due to getting knocked around and lower boon/scholar uptimes.

And no, if you dont go for more aggressive strats that involve a fb switching between quickbrand and healbrand every other boss, then your support comp doesnt need to change at all. That however, you'd already do with 2nd healer on chrono/druid comp as well... so I dont see how this would mean more relogging at all.

Sorry, but I simply cannot agree with you on any of your points. ESPECIALLY for fullclears this comp is superior.

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> Also, random question: Can you go Herald for a tank and keep perma Alacrity up?

Herald cant output 100% alacrity - tank or not, Renegade can.

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"RaidsAreEasyAF.8652" said:

> > Eh, portals really aren't that strong on largos. Qadim sure, largos not so much.

>

> For usual statics they are. The portal strat makes it faster and much safer especially if you don't have 6 top mirage players knowing how to properly deal with every mechanic + dealing tons of dmg with that class.

I havent used portal in weeks with my static and we never have more than 1 mirage, mainly because people dont like the class and Im not into forcing people to play something they dislike just because we then have 20min time left instead of "only" 10min at the end of our fullclear. We always have between 20 and 40sec left on timer when finishing last platform. No, portal is just gimmicky and in no way relevant on largos.

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> Having to relog dps players isn't much of a hassle most often just a few clicks - log out with 2 click - select the other dps class in a doubleclick - wait in loading screen, click the raid wing, wait and go. Changing support classes most often means your top chrono tank needs to play fb/ren at almost the same level. Much harder than to play dps if you ask me since it isn't just playing a rotation. Furthermore the above mentioned different strategies for bosses make this composition not really smooth in terms of an organized full clear. Our team is far from being perfect or a speed run guild but it would cost too much time to specifically swap out so many classes on different players and this for almost every boss. It's very far from being optimal for us.

> It might work very well for pugging specific bosses or in W4 as a whole.

Whats the comp you usually run? 2 chronos, 1 druid, +1healer/dps? Then heres the pendant for you in fb/ren comp -> 1 tank renegade, 1 druid, 1 quickbrand, 1 heal/quickbrand. Same amount of relogging/build switching.

> @"hellsqueen.3045" said:

> > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> > > > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > > > While people who are more casual might spend money on the game (especially new players who feel they have to catch up), to assume that players who are most invested will spend none is plain incorrect.

> > > It's not that they spend none. Of course they do. It's just that generally they _aren't_ among the highest-spending crowd.

> > >

> > >

> >

> > That's all based on the assumption that people with gold will convert this gold into gems and not use cash.

> >

> > There is people with 25,000 hours of play time, 70 characters, 100+ gifts of exploration. Take a guess how much money they have spent on the game? I personally almost never convert gold to gems since I can spare money to get gems and buy things from the gem store if I want to. Not every one is a poor student who can't afford to buy gems (I've been through that time myself).

> >

> > The things is, if you can afford to buy gems, there is absolutely no reason to convert gold. That is time wasted. To assume that people will spend gold to get gems while being financially good enough off to spare money on the game is insanity.

> >

> > Again, this entire premise is flawed. People who are most invested are most likely to spend money and continued money on the game. That's the only fact you need.

>

> If I had the money, I likely still would look to conversion first over spending money because as much as I love the game, I would rather not use my money to buy mostly aesthetics **if they were within my easy gold earning range**. I would rather save my money to put toward new games as well, which are usually expensive. As an Australian, games sometimes release at $90 for us and sometimes more. And when I do buy gems, I buy gem cards because in AU it is cheaper to buy it from a store.

>

> My exception is buying content in general. When I was missing LWS2, I dropped money on that the moment it went on sale.

> And I immediately buy the expansions.

The absolute minority of the raid community earns enough gold through raids to regularly buy gems with gold. Thats players with 3+ raid ready accounts (though those cost money as well!), raidsellers.

Quite honestly, you cant go and point fingers saying "THAT part of the community doesnt spend ANY money on the game, they are all leeches!". The kind of content you like doesnt really define how much money you spend. It depends on how much money you have in rl, if you could possibly even spend something. It depends on your personal tastes (me for example, I just dont like 90% of the gemshop content and I stopped buying skins). It depends also on your mindset.

Except for powertrading theres no content in the game that creates enough gold to convert and buy constantly. And powertrading only if you are part of the top 100 doing it, because its a rich get richer environment.

Im quite honestly VERY annoyed with people constantly saying "raiders dont spend money on the game". Its untrue, and its slanderous. Please stop with it already. I know of several "just" openworld casuals that farmed SW for a couple hours each day and never spend any money on gemshop because they could constantly buy gems. Does that now mean open world casuals never buy gems with money? No.

And btw just because someone is "casual" doesnt mean that player is willing to spend money on the gemshop. The ones I know that spend most on gems, are those actually converting gems to gold to buy themselves legendaries. PvPers, WvWers. Id say the "casual" openworlder doesnt spend any more on the game then a raider or someone running fractals for fun. Stop feeling entitled.

> @"stone cold.8609" said:

> Thanks Yasi! How about something like this:

>

> http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAR7ensADFBjtCBGCBkCjl4BzqEkvSB7v0aaPtKA0AqXA-jxRBQBA4JAQk9HMjSwro8DP6Gm4FBgSq/AA-e

Elite has to be Feel My Wrath for fury/quickness, otherwise good. A guildmate that I run daily fractals with came up with that build and we have been testing it in fractals for some time now. It works very well. For skips we use a thief or tempest. Power chronos burst takes sadly way too long for fractals.

For bosses/instabilities that need more protection, you can switch out syg for hold the line. On Siax for example extra aegis is great for the aoe that spawns adds, so retreat there. With aegis up everybody can stay in melee range, which means you get a lot less poison-puke fields :)

> @"stone cold.8609" said:

> > @"Zhaid Zhem.6508" said:

> > For a lot of fractals and bosses !

> > Chaos, mama, Ensolyss, Ice Elemental, Snowblind, why not the ettin, captain Dulfy or even the Archdiviner.... Some people will say it's babysitting or "skillful counterproductive" but in a way this is what we're looking for in Pug, Aegis + stab cancel half the mechanicals we can ecounter, and so time saving.

> > Obviously you lack portal, the focus pull, that help a lot in fractals, but add a Mirage or a DPS chrono, problem soved.

>

> Agree with Zhaid for PUGs. So I've been looking at the builds that Yasi posted and have a question. If I am trying to maximize aegis and stability up time while still having some DPS to carry if needed, which one would I use? The quickbrand build, but with Mantra of Liberation?

If you remove Feel My Wrath you have to up your quickness duration by quite a bit. So that means giving up dps runes and bringing firebrand runes.

But, Quickbrand already puts out aegis every 10 seconds, which is quite a lot for its dps. Id try it without firebrand runes first and see if its even necessary.

For fractals, go with zerker armor, packrunes, concentration and force sigil. Basically dh build but with firebrand traitline (and traits) and some boonduration. It has greater burst and you have 1 utility slot free for for example retreat or syg or wor (compared to quickbrand). But this build only works in fractals due to fractal potions. Add to that a harrier renegade and you get a comp that offers more healing, more cc, more stability/aegis and more dps than druid/chrono.. The only thing you are missing is ports for skips (but a thief/tempest/pchrono can do that just as well) and frostspirit (slb can bring one without much dps loss). For pulls you have GS5 and F1tome skill 3.

> @"LadyKitty.6120" said:

> Aaand like usual, this heal-FB build doesn't have Empowering Might traited which is the main might source for boon-FB builds. Pure of Heart is nice for heals, yush, but with heal/boon renegade you're already good with heals, especially if both FBs are healers. With Empowering Might+quickmantra you're already close to 20 might uptime and with scepter you're overcapping.

I tested Empowering Might excessively. Without Commanders Gear its pointless. Yes, I tried accuracy sigil. I tried precision infusions. I tried leadership + magi. I tried precision food. You need > 50% crit chance for empowering might to become useful. And then you give up aegis heal, which is quite nice. Post patch, its just not worth it anymore, at all. Because to reach 25 with it, you need way more precision than current boonduration+healing power setups allow for. Using empowering might comes, for me, with a way too high cost in other areas. Maybe with new stat combinations... or if they change it to proc without crit. But as it is? And just to say "I can stack might!" without regards to PS trait and / or renegade might output... sorry, thats not how I build comps and builds.

> @"LadyKitty.6120" said:

> You may want to take Invigorating Bulwark for that juicy 25% outgoing heals as you should already get enough protection with shield 4, hammer symbol (if you use hammer, you can reach full might for sub by alternating between scepter and axe off-cd) and renegade's summons.

You only can bring 2 weapon sets to a fight. Which is kind of the problem I pointed out above. Scepter+Axe+Hammer -> 3 weaponsets.

And tbh you only bring a healfb in a fb/ren comp on bosses you NEED him. Those are bosses you need to overstack on boons because you need that protection/fury to last for mechanics. Your axe/hammer rotation - on top of it being a really fixed rotation - can only stack up around 10-12 seconds protection - if everyone can stack on boss for several weaponswaps.

Thats another thing. For hammer to give protection you need to stand at an attackable target. Thats not always the case. Protectors Impact you can cast without a target at the spot you are standing. together with shield4 thats around 12-13 seconds of protection you can stack up for lets say Dhuum 10% phase running out, and that without adding anything to your buff up rotation. Another alternative would be to bring Hold the Line and Invigorating Bulwark, which is what Id do on Dhuum.

Also, imo its not that juicy. You alread have 10 from transference sigil, 10 from buff food, 10+10 from monks runes. Thats 10+10+10+10 = 40. Your aegis trait heals for around 1250. So without invigorating bulwark thats 1750, with full stacks its 2062.5. Thats only 312.5 more. Not enough to be relevant in clutch situations, and unneeded all the other times that you are already overhealing anyway. Remember, healing modifiers arent stacked multiplicative.

> @"LadyKitty.6120" said:

> Not to mention possible herald as 4th healer (in which case you only need to worry about quickness and alacrity)...

I think everybody has enough of a brain to know to adapt them to other comps. In terms of <4 healer comps, quickbrand would be superior to a dps boon herald in terms of dps. So you'd rather take a harrier herald over a harrier fb.

> If the boss doesn't need stab, you can use Renewed Focus or Signet of Courage as elite. You get enough Stalwart Speed procs from using heal mantra. (You'll want to use it before it reaches 3 charges to avoid wasting good aegis). Or you can use elite shout for fury and guaranteed (read: excessive) quickness while allowing for ex. scepter+mace as main-hands for capped might+lots of extra blocks and regen.

The only time Feel My Wrath would be useful, is if you run Monk's Focus for fury. Otherwise its unneeded and tbh, just plain a waste of a good elite slot. Renewed focus I tried, and tbh, its unnecessary. The channel takes too long as well. But yeah, except for shout, all elites can work here. Mantra is nice for adding retal though.

And at last, the builds.

Firebrand Builds:

_Quickbrand_

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQRArf3fnsADFBjdBDWCBEEhF/BL7BVhyQWBgKQdaviuRHpA-jxhAQB6c/BbqEEiq/AgnAAA1PASlfW8kAQKAe2VB-e

Rotation is quite similar to dps firebrand, you just have to use your heal and quickness mantra additionally on cooldown, as well as Feel My Wrath elite shout.

You can drop boonduration down to 12%, but thats cutting it very close imo.

_Healfirebrand_

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNAneSnsADFBjtDBGCBkCjF+BbPj+RPpYBgZQRITG6HA-jxhXQB+T9H6pPIUPBAddKAaoSQAs/ACV+RKA/GsB-e

Dont let yourself be fooled by the lack of "big heals". Healfb does lots of small healing ticks, as well as provide a ton of aegis. Mainhand really depends on what you want to add to the build. Axe offers pull and fury, mace offers personal defense, more healing and yet more aegis, scepter offers immob and mightstacks, sword offers teleport, small reflect and like axe fury.

You'll need at least axe and scepter as weapons for different situations. Sword really is more of a gimmick nowadays, and mace is often too much additional defense.

The open utility slot you can bring whatever is needed. Hold the line for more protection, Wall of Reflection for reflects, Bane Signet and/or Spirit Hammer for cc, Stand Your Ground for even more stability/retal, Purging Flames or Mantra of Lore for additional condi clear, Merciful Intervention for the partial revive/heal, Retreat for a long lasting aegis and swiftness.

As for rotation, hold your symbol on cooldown for healing and the boon it provides, same goes for heal- and quickness mantras, as well as hold the line if you bring it. The rest use situationally. Elite mantra if you need stability, bane signet for cc, WoR for reflects etc.

Its also important to not forget about your tome abilities.

On F1 tome, the most interesting part is skill3, which is a 240 radius aoe pull, that pulls all enemies onto one spot.

For clutch heals you have your F2 tome, best place a symbol before using your F2 tome, then start there with skill5, skill2 if theres conditions and spam skill1 for the rest. You can also add skill3 for some extra boons, if you dont need to outheal some big mechanic and can spare the charge.

Your F3 tome has a reflect bubble on skill3, some resistance on skill4, lots of boons on skill5. If you use it, for reflect for example, always empty your charges using skill5, skill4, then spam the rest away with skill1.

_Tankfirebrand_

Nothing much changes, just bring enough givers pieces to get high enough toughness, and a mace.

Renegade Builds:

_Harrier Renegade_

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXmnXMnNSumzJRZzNlst5oSY38UJ4bOskFNlatJUF/B5R2ktCAA-jxhXQB+T9nGqEMUnCAAs/A90HornAACV+RKA/GsB-e

Theres a very good video on harrier alacrity renegade on fennecs youtube channel, it still applies, nothing really changed there.

Important to know, and a mistake I see way too often, your mainheal on ventari is NOT natural harmony. Natural harmony is your clutch heal or if you have to outheal mechanics (VG greens, matthias when rezzing someone in well, etc.). Your main heal rather, is just moving your tablet with your healskill; just move it around minimally for the heal to take effect.

As to your ccs. Staff5 is your main cc and it does around 800 defiance bar dmg to small hitboxes and >1k defiance bar dmg to large hitboxes. Additionally you have your Darkrazor summons on kalla, though its not a fast cc, and the aoe push on ventari elite. Staff2 sometimes works as a cc, but more often not since the enemy has to attack for it to unlock the skill. Axe5 is another pull.

_Harrier/cleric Renegade_

For tanking you can just switch your armor to clerics with durability runes for additional toughness. Clerics because kalla elite scales with power/healing power. If you dont want to optimize towards kalla elite, then givers+monk is also fine tbh. The damage difference isnt huge, and your kalla elite uptime isnt that high if you have to tank and provide alacrity anyway. So, basically, if you are regularly tanking bosses like desmina that you really should bring > 2k toughness on, just go with givers+monk. Otherwise clerics+monk/durability is more than enough to tank.

_Condi-alacrity Renegade_

Replace one sigil on weapons with concentration sigil and runes with traveler. But that build I barely tested myself, and tbh, I dont think its worth it that much. It does around 20k dps on golem which is decent, but really rather niche. If someone else wants to test this further, go for it. Im not that good on condi renegade to begin with, so theres sure ways to optimize it.

On to the funpart - the possible comps:

1) Suicide comp:

Grp1 -> Quickbrand + condi renegade with 80% boonduration and righteous rebel trait

Grp2 -> Quickbrand + harrier druid (or condi druid for the true believers among you)

2) 2Healer comp:

Grp1 -> Quickbrand + harrier/clerics renegade(tank)

Grp2 -> Quickbrand + harrier druid

3) 3Healer comp:

Grp1 -> Harrier/givers healfb (tank?) + harrier/clerics renegade (tank?)

Grp2 -> Quickbrand + harrier druid

1x givers/harrier healfb (tank?), 1x harrier/clerics renegade (tank?), 1x harrier druid, 1x quickbrand

4) 4Healer comp:

Grp1 -> Harrier/givers healfb (tank?) + harrier/clerics renegade (tank?)

Grp2 -> Harrier healfb + harrier druid

5) Pure comp:

Grp1 -> Harrier/givers healfb (tank?) + harrier/clerics renegade (tank?)

Grp2 -> Harrier healfb + power BS (to fill in missing might via PS and dumplings)

Ofc you can replace the druid with whatever provides needed might if you want to skip on spirits or have a slb providing frost spirit. These are suggestions, not a conclusive list.

/edit: Fixed typo, it 80% not 30%, sorry :(

Following is a list of each boss encounter, and which mechanics could be done by whom.

**Vale Guardian:**

* Renegade or firebrand tank

* Seeker control -> ventari elite knockback, shield5 or tome3 on firebrand, slb/druid with entangle

**Gorseval:**

* Firebrand tank is clearly better here, but renegade can tank also

* F1Tome3/Axe3 can be used to pull in ghosts

* Without entangle its better to split up and send one group south, the other grp north during split phase, though renegade brings quite a bit of chill/immob as well

**Sabetha:**

* Healfirebrand can kite quite easily, mantra range is far enough

* F1Tome3/Axe3 for pulls before/during flamewall, the only 240 radius needs some getting used to, but its doable

* A scourge helps a lot here with epidemic, but its not necessary

**Slothasor:**

* Stunbreak -> elite mantra on fb

* F1Tome3/Axe3 for pulls, also its very important to NOT drift towards wall and tank tightly on mid/towards entrance to stay on/near to spawnpoint of slublings

**Matthias:**

* Condi remove mantra helps a lot, but so does also torch5 and purging flames on fb

* Make sure to always heal up on boss after each bomb < 60%

* Wall of Reflection for reflect, or (way more risky though) you can use F3Tome3 alternatingly, best bring 1 WoR and then use F3Tome3 for backup imo

**Escort:**

* No portal means having to "escort" 3 dps players through the cave, its doable, but its easier to just log onto a chrono for this, Im sorry

**Keep Construct:**

* Firebrands can push quite comfortably with axe autoattacks, using axe3 for pulling orb towards a rift is kind of risky, but not more so than using axe4 on slb/druid for it

* Tank can be whoever likes it

**Xera:**

* Tank can be whoever, theres down and upsides to each

* F1Tome3 is quite useful for pulling in adds, also GS5 and axe3

* You need at least 1 dedicated cleave dps (holo, scourge, any build with a bigger cleave area than sword weaver or staff daredevil does its job)

* To not kill yourself with staff5 cc on renegade, if you need to cc xera after she was pulled to the edge, stand on the edge and use staff5 towards mid (!)

**Cairn:**

* Dont think theres any mechanics, is there? Aegis helps.

**Mo:**

* Renegade is best suited to take dispell imo, but it really doesnt matter much

**Samarog:**

* You can stack quite a lot of cc on healfirebrands -> hammer4, bane signet, spirit hammer, shield5, axe3, F1Tome3

* To push Rigom -> shield5, hammer4, hammer3 (immob), and if necessary followed by F1Tome3

* Its rather beneficial to let two dps grab aggro that dont bring much cc, or have to sacrifice a lot for cc, but well... thats not really something new

**Deimos:**

* If you want to play it really offensive, you can let a fb handkite, otherwise a dedicated additional one as usual

* Tank/BK: one firebrand tank or bk, the renegade tank or bk

**Desmina:**

* You can push with hammer4+hammer3 on fb if you are offtank. When golem is about to spawn, run out of the group towards edge, wait for golem to reach you, then hammer4 and hammer3... or shield5 and scepter3... whichever you like better.... or bring a druid

* GiversFirebrands are quite good at tanking desmina, but you can also let a renegade in clerics gear do it

**River:**

* Its meta already basically, just ditch the chronos and add another healer so you have 4

**Eyes statues:**

* If you split up here, make sure to have 25 might on each side, fb can stack some might with scepter2 and mantras, but needs another 5-10 stacks from either bs or renegade

* Sigil of paralyzation is the only stun-duration-increase, so you really should use that

**Dhuum:**

* Imo the safest solution to dhuum with fb/ren comp is to just stack up boon duration to 100% on each build

* Tank -> heal renegade

* Green+Kite -> condi or harrier druid

* Other 2 greens -> firebrands

* You can vary that, go more offensive by bringing quickbrands and sending up bs and a dps, but the druid kiter is really too strong to change that

**CA:**

* F1Tome3, axe3, GS5 for pulling in sword mobs /ccing shields

* Renegade can use axe5, Icerazor, Darkrazor, staff5, staff2 chain for ccing shields

**Largos:**

* Its better to zerg largos with this comp, though you can also go with 2x tank renegade, 2x quickbrand for a faster kill

**Qadim:**

* Maintank -> either a firebrand or (in my experience better) the renegade

* The rest really depends on the general tactic used, you can send one firebrand to babysit kiter if necessary, to do 3rd lamp, tank mat

* You might need an additional might stacker here, since the renegade is often too far away or needs his energy for survival, but a power BS can do that with dumplings as well for those phases (hydra mostly)

Hey,

first off, the following post(s) is NOT suited for speedclears. So please refrain from posting how one could optimize this or that to get more dps out of it at the cost of (in your eyes unnecessary) survivability. The whole point of this post is to offer said survivability to lfg squads and low to mid tier statics (Though I did include a suicide comp :) )

Ive decided to make this post in the hopes of making the fb/ren comp more accepted, more common, in lfg pug raids. Atm theres quite a lot of reservations towards it still, and Im hoping to give the more casual raiding community insight into this comp. Yes.. including builds with explanations how to play them ;)

First off, here's a (not conclusive) list of things that make this comp superior to 2 chrono, 1 druid, 1 healer comp being run by most lfg squads:

* Easy access to nearly all relevant boons

* Instant boon generation

* Aegis every 10 seconds

* On demand stability

And here's a list of things you will miss/have to consider when running fb/ren:

* No 600 radius pulls, which means you have to bring bigger cleave or adapt your strategies on some bosses (a scourge with epidemic helps quite a bit there btw)

* No mirror comp - so if you have to split up, it gets a bit dicey

* No portals in raids except if you can convince some poor sucker to play power chrono with portal for you

* Mantras are cone shaped, so positioning is very important, no more hovering at 400 distance to boss somewhere dear scourges and cBS

So, how to play this comp? Overall, not much changes tbh. Personally Id let the harrier renegade tank because he has with staff3 a quite similar block to chrono sword2. But one of the firebrands can also quite easily take over tanking.

The biggest "new" mechanics to get used to are the tablet and mantras. Ive found that most players learn quite quickly that when the tablet comes rushing they shouldnt run away from it to get the big heal from it, but it is something that will take a bit of time getting used to. Mantras are imo more difficult to get everyone accustomed to. Because of the cone shape it is very important that your firebrands stand furthest away from boss (or in front of boss) so they can hit the most players with their cone skills. It also means that your dps players need to stack behind the boss properly. This sounds like a lot of work, but Ive noticed that most players learn quite fast where to stand for healing/boons, so it really shouldnt be that big of an issue. But it is something to watch out for, and correct/point out if necessary.

> @"Emtiarbi.3281" said:

> I'm ok with Flux Bomb.

> Social Awkwardness needs to be changed/removed tho :p

Are you really though? Think closely. If you have to carry it out and miss both chrono wells because of this the next one will probably drop approx. 60 seconds later, because theres gonna be a mechanic in between preventing you from stacking ;)

> @"Safandula.8723" said:

> I like them, Seems fun to play. Last laugh Seems funny. They are not only annoying to deal with, but if dealt properly, they can award u nicely

Have you read them? I especially like the new idea for SA. You can now roleplay as grawl in grawl fractal and push teammates down the cliff. Or roleplay as harpy and... cliffside... solid ocean... =)

Also, I already checked, and not many skills with low cooldown stun long enough for this to be a thing... its just gonna be like current last laugh and nobody will bother with stunning first, because waste of dps.

How about anet instead would just finally add a proper scaling system, remove all instabilities and lets us have easy, normal and hardmode for raids as well that way? Sounds way better, sorry. :(