Mace solves protection to a degree that Invigorating bond really isn't that good anymore, it's just a 4k Heal on a 20s cooldown. Nature's vengeance is my go-to now. With Water and Stone Spirit it creates an extra 5k heal (and you don't even need to waste your pet ability for it) PLUS extra effects if you bring other Frost/Storm spirit. It's basically better for heal, breakbar and condi cleanse - that'd be every situation.
HI Just 2 little thing: 1) mace auto-attack (and ambush) do not proc the 5th nature's strength. So it force of nature won't trigger randomly. 2) if you are optimistic and don't use Allies's Aid, but use Wellspring, you convert Power to Healing power, so you heals a bit more in harrier's gear.
I think you sell frost spirit a little short. When traited, it cleanses a wopping 6 conditions! *And* it gives resistance, which is really important for conditions that you never want to hit a player, like slow, chill, immobilize, and fear. In many encounters, Resolution is just +1 boon for builds that care.
I have been absolutely loving Mace, though it's definitely seeing more use in my Heal Untamed over my Heal Druid. I also have dropped Invigorating Bond in exchange for Nature's Vengeance, like many people have already commented. Here's hoping the (probably) inevitable Mace Nerf sticks to the off-hand, and not my beloved main-hand.
Sometimes, and I’m not 100% on this, but when I search and rescued a player, and they die while the pet is still reviving them or as they started reviving, the pet will work to rez the dead player. Even on strikes or raids… though maybe it’s a fluke.
I works that way everywhere outside of strikes/raids to my knowledge. Function gyros also, but they have a timed life so they cant get them up after death. But in a fractal the pet can fully rez someone IF the search and rescue was started before their death.
@@MuklukUA-camSometimes Search and Rescue doesn't work/trigger for me, although I'm 100% sure in range of the skill to the downed player. Is there a reason for that? Am I doing something wrong? I read somewhere that pet swapping right before using it can help so I try to do that but I'm not sure if it's working for me tbh 😅
the healing on mace is so good that i pretty much never run staff anymore. instead i run mace/wh+mace/mace. it lets you really play around the force of nature much better and you have extra cc and personal sustain if you need to tank. moreover marksmanship is currently just the better choice over skirmishing. with lesser call of the wild you never run low on swiftness, fury and might, no matter how bad your boon duration is. and with moment of clarity you do crazy amounts of cc. if you run a paralyzation sigil, just using mace 3 and 5 twice does almost 1.5k cc, that's more than 2 moa signets. if my quick calculations are correct, you can do about 4.5k cc max every 30s with corresponding pets and utils. that's literally the sammy cc bar solo
Seems like the biggest takeaway is that Anet needs to start working on properly customizable UI. Oh, and that make alacrity should be moved to like spirit abilities or something that isn't what feels like should be panic buttons.
was hard for me to swap out my axe/warhorn for mace warhorn because i love the range so much but now that i've tried mace for a week or so i absolutely love it. also playing some duel mace untamed and its fun as hell
With the comments about feeling bad needing to go into astral form to give alac on druid. I'm curious how heal untamed will feel with the mace. Guessing it's already on Muk's radar or in editing, but mace/wh + staff heal quick untamed sounds like it'd be juicy considering how this went.
im playing it, its ok, but in comparison to hfb or heal chrono it makes me sad that qheal untamed can do only a part of the job, mainly cleaansing isnt that great, you need to rely on water trap and bear cleanse only, you can consider taking signet of renewal but with high chance you kill your pet with it
@@SuperPalinek frost spirit with nature's vengeance. its even more free utility wise since staff ambush also gives prot so no need of stone spirit or invigorating bond the only thing that makes untamed a no go for some fights its that has 0 stab, because all of druids stab its on druid only glyphs
I’ve been running marksmanship instead of skirmishing and I like it a lot. I feel like the only worthwile trait (quickdraw) is offset by having permanent alacrity, plus you get the improved daze trait which turns glyph of equality, CA 3 and even some pet skills into giant bar breakers.
Mace/mace is amazing for a power untamed build that does decent damage (18-20k dps) and has good sustain. Basically the meta open world build for rangers ATM.
Really like the freedeme of Druid to pick whatever for 7-9. Now even more than before^^ But still having to switch into Astral for the 0 rezz is just painfull ... "Ohh you all got downed at the same time? Welp, just used my astral form, gues most of you will die now~"
Great video. I can't help but notice that you skipped a lot of boon application, general rotation etc that you covered for every other support build. I guess some inherent bias since you know in and out about the class but still greatly appreciate the video
"Oh, it's my birthday, I can hit the button again" 😂 I was a druid main forever so I got really good at not wasting my Quickdraw, but when I started using it it felt a lot like that... Half the time you get a free Warhorn 5.
I'm also a ranger main, and almost druid main, I love the mace now, it's amazing. Finally someone that think like me, guck power and go toughness and vitality 😂
I've been playing berserker untamed with mace mace and mace warhorn for solo open world and can face tank legendary bounties. Pretty nasty. If you aren't using staff in off set couldn't you do double mace for the barrier and faster weapon skill reset?
Kinda appreciate you using Search and Rescue because every time I put it on I feel like a bad druid who's planning for failure and who should expect my team to avoid insta-down mechanics 😂 I also have gotten drilled into my head to always maximize boons so I've been running storm and fire spirit for fury and might and CC, and stone spirit for protection and aegis on some bosses. Meaning I'm basically back to casting spirits all the time as if they were still giving alacrity... I should just check if people even need me to manage might and fury uptime any more, or if I'm just stuck in the 10-man boon days.
Mukluk, What do you think of alacrity being nerfed in WvW and PvP? 🤔 is alacrity such a problem for competitive play? Surely not. I understand you still have perma celestial avatar mode but at the cost of having the original cooldown of everything else and your group doesn’t benefit. What’s your take? 🤔
Druid feels like it's tricky on how to make giving alacrity mechanically interesting. I'll agree that as it is right now it doesn't look mechanically interesting (I don't really play druid or ranger at all). Maybe making fields the ranger provides create alacrity?
How do you reconcile the use of Glyph of the Stars with the fact that you need to be using CA for alacrity uptime? I run Druid support as well and I like having my "hey, get your butts off the ground" button, but I find myself gravitating more towards Spirit of Nature instead of Glyph of the Stars because when I'm using CA for alacrity, I worry that I won't have CA up to use Stars in the correct stance.
In most cases, they can wait on the ground for a few seconds for you to get back into astral and use glyph. Plus glyph does boons, heals, and stability in the area. The biggest reason is 48 second cooldown.
in fact, relic of dwayna is quite a lot better than relic of the monk on druid since you have very strong regen. otherwise even flock is better than monk, especially if you want access to safety barrier
I usually use staff 5+3 for a big burst heal, although most of the time that's just to generate CA so I can go back to giving alac on time... Might as well cast both anyway if you've already swapped 😂 I've been running axe/warhorn out of habit, but I should definitely swap to mace now. I'm just annoyed with Anet that they gave me a redundant healing weapon (staff, warhorn and CA are plenty) instead of some amazing new DPS weapon I can easily reach 40k with 😂
Not a smart comment. I just wanted to know your barrier to entry on druid as a healer. Im wanting to get into support and i have been following your videos as of late to help decide. But this time you didn't mention if you would come back to it again or said if its easy to get into do to the amount of buttons etc. The astral form part does seem concerning so im not sure if its for me T.T. So i am just trying to figure out what would be a good healer for raiding as a new healer
I think druid is one of the easier classes to pick up. You primarily use mace/warhorn and astral form, and rarely staff. The rotation isn't anything too intense and you have tools to handle a lot of different problems. It doesn't have as many buttons as tempest or heal brand, and isn't as button intensive as healbrand or berserker.
Druid is fairly easy to pick up and understand and do the basics but actually mastering it is an entirely different story. As Muk said a few times, there's many tools that you can combine selectively to suit the individual group and fight and also your own playstyle but learning about all of that, the different options you have and when & how to use them so you can actually get the best out of this spec is not easy at all and requires a lot of experience and practice. I personally don't have a lot of problem with needing to go into CA to provide alacrity. I made it a habit to use it almost always as soon as it's available again, especially in the early stages of the fight so I can add up some stacks as quickly as possible which allows me to use CA more intuitively and as needed for the rest of the fight. That does bring up the problem that one needs to be in CA to use Glyph of the Stars to revive players. When you just used your CA and suddenly many people get downed, well, they probably gonna die. To avoid that, especially when playing with pugs, it's good to know the encounter and anticipate beforehand when such situation may occur so you just won't go into CA a little before an attack that people often fail/get downed to (for example). That's what I mean with Druid may be a bit hard to master; it's a massive help if one knows their way around, to adapt the many tools you have in the most optimal way for each individual situation. But as I said earlier already, it's really not very hard to become a somewhat decent and useful Druid since the basics can get picked up easily. Just actually mastering it is a different story, at least in my experience. But maybe I'm just not a very good Druid 😂
Every time you pet swap your pet loses all of its boons and is back to zero. I prefer to use builds that pet swap when you need a tool the other pet provides, rather than pet swapping on a rotation and constantly stripping all of its boons off. I still use marksmanship when I need the fat CC traits though.
7:35 "It is the only way a druid can give stability*" , mental typo there.
Was about to come in and comment this correction :) I was like "There's no way he doesn't realize how good of a CC Astral 3 is, right??"
@@riddlesphinxx Right!! And one of the spirits also slams some CC :D
10/10 thumbnail
This isn't just a breakdown of druid mace. This is great rundown of druid itself. Thanks Muk!
This thumbnail is truly a work of art.
Mace solves protection to a degree that Invigorating bond really isn't that good anymore, it's just a 4k Heal on a 20s cooldown. Nature's vengeance is my go-to now. With Water and Stone Spirit it creates an extra 5k heal (and you don't even need to waste your pet ability for it) PLUS extra effects if you bring other Frost/Storm spirit. It's basically better for heal, breakbar and condi cleanse - that'd be every situation.
Traited storm spirit with paralyzation sigil and moment of clarity is sooo much cc
HI
Just 2 little thing:
1) mace auto-attack (and ambush) do not proc the 5th nature's strength. So it force of nature won't trigger randomly.
2) if you are optimistic and don't use Allies's Aid, but use Wellspring, you convert Power to Healing power, so you heals a bit more in harrier's gear.
So many of your videos remind me of classes that I haven't played in a bit, but now I want to revisit them. Thanks. Great vids.
I think you sell frost spirit a little short. When traited, it cleanses a wopping 6 conditions! *And* it gives resistance, which is really important for conditions that you never want to hit a player, like slow, chill, immobilize, and fear. In many encounters, Resolution is just +1 boon for builds that care.
I have been absolutely loving Mace, though it's definitely seeing more use in my Heal Untamed over my Heal Druid. I also have dropped Invigorating Bond in exchange for Nature's Vengeance, like many people have already commented. Here's hoping the (probably) inevitable Mace Nerf sticks to the off-hand, and not my beloved main-hand.
Sometimes, and I’m not 100% on this, but when I search and rescued a player, and they die while the pet is still reviving them or as they started reviving, the pet will work to rez the dead player. Even on strikes or raids… though maybe it’s a fluke.
I works that way everywhere outside of strikes/raids to my knowledge. Function gyros also, but they have a timed life so they cant get them up after death. But in a fractal the pet can fully rez someone IF the search and rescue was started before their death.
@@MuklukUA-camSometimes Search and Rescue doesn't work/trigger for me, although I'm 100% sure in range of the skill to the downed player. Is there a reason for that? Am I doing something wrong? I read somewhere that pet swapping right before using it can help so I try to do that but I'm not sure if it's working for me tbh 😅
The greatest thumbnail of all time!
the healing on mace is so good that i pretty much never run staff anymore. instead i run mace/wh+mace/mace. it lets you really play around the force of nature much better and you have extra cc and personal sustain if you need to tank. moreover marksmanship is currently just the better choice over skirmishing. with lesser call of the wild you never run low on swiftness, fury and might, no matter how bad your boon duration is. and with moment of clarity you do crazy amounts of cc. if you run a paralyzation sigil, just using mace 3 and 5 twice does almost 1.5k cc, that's more than 2 moa signets. if my quick calculations are correct, you can do about 4.5k cc max every 30s with corresponding pets and utils. that's literally the sammy cc bar solo
Seems like the biggest takeaway is that Anet needs to start working on properly customizable UI. Oh, and that make alacrity should be moved to like spirit abilities or something that isn't what feels like should be panic buttons.
Ironically, being tied to the spirits is exactly how it worked before they moved it to CA abilities instead
was hard for me to swap out my axe/warhorn for mace warhorn because i love the range so much but now that i've tried mace for a week or so i absolutely love it. also playing some duel mace untamed and its fun as hell
With the comments about feeling bad needing to go into astral form to give alac on druid. I'm curious how heal untamed will feel with the mace. Guessing it's already on Muk's radar or in editing, but mace/wh + staff heal quick untamed sounds like it'd be juicy considering how this went.
im playing it, its ok, but in comparison to hfb or heal chrono it makes me sad that qheal untamed can do only a part of the job, mainly cleaansing isnt that great, you need to rely on water trap and bear cleanse only, you can consider taking signet of renewal but with high chance you kill your pet with it
@@SuperPalinek frost spirit with nature's vengeance.
its even more free utility wise since staff ambush also gives prot so no need of stone spirit or invigorating bond
the only thing that makes untamed a no go for some fights its that has 0 stab, because all of druids stab its on druid only glyphs
I love staff when running south meta on Dragon's stand, Adrian's axe spin move is brutal otherwise
I’ve been running marksmanship instead of skirmishing and I like it a lot. I feel like the only worthwile trait (quickdraw) is offset by having permanent alacrity, plus you get the improved daze trait which turns glyph of equality, CA 3 and even some pet skills into giant bar breakers.
Zhu Li did the thing with dat thumbnail tho! Top notch memeing!
Because what druid really needed was more heals, more boons, and more cc
Mace/mace is amazing for a power untamed build that does decent damage (18-20k dps) and has good sustain. Basically the meta open world build for rangers ATM.
muk's thoughts on applying alac via astral form 5:05
Really like the freedeme of Druid to pick whatever for 7-9. Now even more than before^^
But still having to switch into Astral for the 0 rezz is just painfull ... "Ohh you all got downed at the same time? Welp, just used my astral form, gues most of you will die now~"
Great video. I can't help but notice that you skipped a lot of boon application, general rotation etc that you covered for every other support build. I guess some inherent bias since you know in and out about the class but still greatly appreciate the video
I run beastmastery instead of skirmishing to use my pet's ability more often lmao
"Oh, it's my birthday, I can hit the button again" 😂
I was a druid main forever so I got really good at not wasting my Quickdraw, but when I started using it it felt a lot like that... Half the time you get a free Warhorn 5.
I'm also a ranger main, and almost druid main, I love the mace now, it's amazing. Finally someone that think like me, guck power and go toughness and vitality 😂
What is it with game devs putting core buffs you need to track in a list of buffs where it's text is tiny and moves around?? holy cow man.
Staff 5 is a good projectile block
I've been playing berserker untamed with mace mace and mace warhorn for solo open world and can face tank legendary bounties. Pretty nasty. If you aren't using staff in off set couldn't you do double mace for the barrier and faster weapon skill reset?
Kinda appreciate you using Search and Rescue because every time I put it on I feel like a bad druid who's planning for failure and who should expect my team to avoid insta-down mechanics 😂
I also have gotten drilled into my head to always maximize boons so I've been running storm and fire spirit for fury and might and CC, and stone spirit for protection and aegis on some bosses. Meaning I'm basically back to casting spirits all the time as if they were still giving alacrity... I should just check if people even need me to manage might and fury uptime any more, or if I'm just stuck in the 10-man boon days.
Mukluk, What do you think of alacrity being nerfed in WvW and PvP? 🤔 is alacrity such a problem for competitive play? Surely not. I understand you still have perma celestial avatar mode but at the cost of having the original cooldown of everything else and your group doesn’t benefit. What’s your take? 🤔
That thumbnail! XD
Druid feels like it's tricky on how to make giving alacrity mechanically interesting. I'll agree that as it is right now it doesn't look mechanically interesting (I don't really play druid or ranger at all). Maybe making fields the ranger provides create alacrity?
The next one has to be Untamed...it just HAS to be
...right?
How do you reconcile the use of Glyph of the Stars with the fact that you need to be using CA for alacrity uptime? I run Druid support as well and I like having my "hey, get your butts off the ground" button, but I find myself gravitating more towards Spirit of Nature instead of Glyph of the Stars because when I'm using CA for alacrity, I worry that I won't have CA up to use Stars in the correct stance.
In most cases, they can wait on the ground for a few seconds for you to get back into astral and use glyph. Plus glyph does boons, heals, and stability in the area. The biggest reason is 48 second cooldown.
in fact, relic of dwayna is quite a lot better than relic of the monk on druid since you have very strong regen. otherwise even flock is better than monk, especially if you want access to safety barrier
I usually use staff 5+3 for a big burst heal, although most of the time that's just to generate CA so I can go back to giving alac on time... Might as well cast both anyway if you've already swapped 😂 I've been running axe/warhorn out of habit, but I should definitely swap to mace now. I'm just annoyed with Anet that they gave me a redundant healing weapon (staff, warhorn and CA are plenty) instead of some amazing new DPS weapon I can easily reach 40k with 😂
The weakness of Druid is their traits are scuffed/sun optimal for a healer
Eh....I prefer my Axe and shortbow. I run that just fine in open world stuff.
Clickbaited, I thought this was anime.
Not a smart comment. I just wanted to know your barrier to entry on druid as a healer. Im wanting to get into support and i have been following your videos as of late to help decide. But this time you didn't mention if you would come back to it again or said if its easy to get into do to the amount of buttons etc. The astral form part does seem concerning so im not sure if its for me T.T. So i am just trying to figure out what would be a good healer for raiding as a new healer
I think druid is one of the easier classes to pick up. You primarily use mace/warhorn and astral form, and rarely staff. The rotation isn't anything too intense and you have tools to handle a lot of different problems. It doesn't have as many buttons as tempest or heal brand, and isn't as button intensive as healbrand or berserker.
Much thanks for the insight
Druid is fairly easy to pick up and understand and do the basics but actually mastering it is an entirely different story. As Muk said a few times, there's many tools that you can combine selectively to suit the individual group and fight and also your own playstyle but learning about all of that, the different options you have and when & how to use them so you can actually get the best out of this spec is not easy at all and requires a lot of experience and practice. I personally don't have a lot of problem with needing to go into CA to provide alacrity. I made it a habit to use it almost always as soon as it's available again, especially in the early stages of the fight so I can add up some stacks as quickly as possible which allows me to use CA more intuitively and as needed for the rest of the fight. That does bring up the problem that one needs to be in CA to use Glyph of the Stars to revive players. When you just used your CA and suddenly many people get downed, well, they probably gonna die. To avoid that, especially when playing with pugs, it's good to know the encounter and anticipate beforehand when such situation may occur so you just won't go into CA a little before an attack that people often fail/get downed to (for example). That's what I mean with Druid may be a bit hard to master; it's a massive help if one knows their way around, to adapt the many tools you have in the most optimal way for each individual situation. But as I said earlier already, it's really not very hard to become a somewhat decent and useful Druid since the basics can get picked up easily. Just actually mastering it is a different story, at least in my experience. But maybe I'm just not a very good Druid 😂
Mace nerf incoming.
why are you not playing marksmanship? isn't that way better?
Have to assume he really loves quickdraw... I know I do, I still use it. Find marksmanship pointless except for niche roles in w5 (pusher and eye cc)
It is yeah
he doesnt really pet swap
Every time you pet swap your pet loses all of its boons and is back to zero. I prefer to use builds that pet swap when you need a tool the other pet provides, rather than pet swapping on a rotation and constantly stripping all of its boons off.
I still use marksmanship when I need the fat CC traits though.