New Level 80 healer what should I do to start gearing up?

[Outlawstar.5837]

First I want to say despite my next statement I love Guild Wars 2 so far the story was interesting and I look forward to doing the expansion stories as well. The story itself is straightforward but I also want to start gearing up my newly minted druid I leveled the slow way as was suggested by my friends on Discord. But now that I am level 80 I am DYING to start healing I just want to do my preferred role. I made the mistake of asking in general chat in Lion's Arch and got the response to return to DPSing for the next several months. Obviously since I have little interest and love for DPSing I logged off, did some soul searching, watched some anime.... Came back.

 

Now I'm gonna be a smart kitty (not in game, I can't get into Charr) and I'm gonna ask here hoping to find a good alternative. My friend out of game did suggest to craft healing gear but isn't that a huge money drainer?

[Klipso.8653]

Best in slot gear will always be expensive

[blambidy.3216]

U do not (have) to craft to get the gear. There are plenty of other ways to get the gear. However crafting is a good way to get the gear. Farm for gold. Then buy mats, then craft what you need. However there’s other methods if you don’t want to...

 

Pvp. Doing ranked pvp gives you leatherworkers marks. After a few chests you get in ranked pvp you get these marks. Get 3 leather workers. Or 3 artificier for staff, can get you an ascended item in the fractals lobby. However you should also do fractals which gives you the currency to buy ascended armor, and weapons. Also for pvp you get ascended shards for ranked pvp. These shards you can purchase for ascended trinkets.

 

Also fractals gives drops for random trinkets you could get. Since your trying to do Druid, iv gotten more magi armor in fractals then any other. Salvage it and keep the insignias (if) you are crafting. Or if you get an ascended weapon or armor, you can take that to the mystic toilet and get the right magi ascended armor or weapon by converting it.

 

Also trinkets you get fastest with living world season 3 maps. Bitterfrost being easiest to get a backpack and ring and accessory. The. Lake Doric for amulet.

 

Crafting is not fastest way but is one of best ways to do it. But will cost a lot of gold farm to do it. But crafting will go a long way. It will give you way more money in return then when you first put gold in to get mats for making your crafting to higher tiers

[Haleydawn.3764]

The best stat right now for a healing Druid is Harrier. It provides a lot of boon duration as well as healing power so your might stacks will last longer. It has no toughness which makes it a BiS for raiding.

I’ve geared a few of my characters just from drops in Fractals.

Crafting is your main source, but it’s timegated if you don’t have the gold to buy the components you need outright. You would also need the recipes for Zehtuka if you wanted to straight up craft Harrier gear.

If you already have an Ascended set, you’ll need Insignia of the Harrier/ Mordant Inscription to stat swap it.

 

Crafting or buying from PvP/Fractal/WvW vendor *any* Ascended items is a gold sink. Regardless of the stats. So if you want to gear up, it’ll cost regardless.

 

What I plan on doing with my Druid is having an Exotic dps set (currently in berserkers), to use in open world, and having a Harrier Ascended set for instanced content.

[Snow.2048]

Luckily the second best stuff is dirt cheap so you can start learning your healing trade while earning your best in slot gear (see above posts for info on bis), as you have stated that you really just want to heal. With your friends understanding and help, you can get by while you work towards super epic gear. Just a quick guide:

 

A cheap armor set in exotics to start off is Magi, its not great but it'll get you healing power without toughness (aggro is bad). If you are impatient, buy a set from the TP for 30-60silver a piece (so two dailies and you got a set).

If you can handle dpsing for a bit longer, run Ascalon Catacombs dungeon or if you like pvp/wvw reward track Ascalon Catacombs (I recommend both if it suits you, the armor chest at the end of the reward track gives you the most expensive pieces and doing the easy paths gets easy tokens, use the tokens to buy the cheap pieces.) If you just run the dungeon, 14 explorable runs (limit yourself to 1x each path per day for daily bonus, if you somehow get into all 3 paths each day, you'll be there in less than a week). Why bother at all you might ask? The runes of the monk that come free in the armor is one of the best healing runes in the game, which you can later salvage to put in your fancy best in slot gear should you not fancy a different set.

 

Then you need trinkets. If you have living story 3, you can get a full set of ascended trinkets with magi stats for little effort. However, you can skip this step and go straight to harrier from PoF heart vendors if I'm not mistaken, so it might be best to just do that depending on what you can afford.