Druid: General Guide

General druid gameplay consists of the following:

1. Alternating between Group Wolf and Self Wolf abilities off cooldown
2. Debuffing a mob target via Blessing of Ro (which also provides an opening heal)
3. Debuffing a mob via Season’s Wrath
4. Applying any DoTs you have up
5. Sustaining damage via nukes (and remote nuke for heal)
6. Healing any group members via pure heal spells in between
7. And burning when Improved Twincast is available with the rest of your group

Since you are a utility and priest class, your priority is to heal your own party members that take damage. Druids also have quite a few AA healing abilities as well as remote nuke-heals that make it easier to heal in between DPSing, and without the need to change targets.

How Wolf Abilities Work

These abilities should be maintained off cooldown, yielding you a 100% uptime of having some type of wolf on yourself. They increase direct damage, reduce mana cost of all spells, and increase healing power of spells. It is your main form of saving mana in the long-term.

How Debuffs Work

Druids have a variety of debuffs. The two most popular ones are Blessing of Ro (which also heals the mob’s target) and Season’s Wrath. Given the fact that you predominantly use fire-based spells, these are low to no mana cost debuffs to always be applying on mobs.

How Healing Works

Just like other priest classes, druids have a variety of single-target heals plus a group heal spell to boot. However, what makes druids special are their remote nukes that also heal the mob’s target. Remote nuke healing is a staple of druid play in group content.

How DPSing Works

Druids have several DoTs and nukes. DoTs are usually applied first (with the number at your discretion depending how fast a mob is dying), and then nuking in between for sustained dps.

Spell Specializations

Specializations reduce mana cost for certain categories of spells. Druids become more viable damage casters if they can keep up with expensive damage spells. Pure heal spells only use a fraction of mana versus what heavy-hitting damage spells cost anyway.

Evocation (Primary Specialization) – Affects dual (DD/DoT) component spells such as Nature’s Sweltering Wrath and several pure direct damage spells.

Conjuration (Secondary Specialization) – Affects several DoT spells as well as remote nukes.

If you made a mistake and need to reset your specializations, you can always visit Ostorm in the Temple of Solusek Ro, and do his specialization reset quest.

Druid spell sets will change over time as you get better gear and more mana to squeeze in more damage spells. A bulk of several heal spells will stay consistent across these sets.

Raid Druid

This what a spell set for a raid druid might look like:

1. Twincast
2. Sootheseance
3. Adrenaline Spate
4. Lunarush
5. Survival of the Unrelenting
6. Nature’s Sweltering Wrath
7. Horde of Duskwigs
8. Sunpyre
9. Tenebrous Sunray
10. Remote Sunbolt
11. Winter’s Wildbrume
12. Summer Sunpyre
13. Bloody Roar

Best Balance for Main Healing and DPSing in Mission Groups

This tends to be a better setup with single-target DPSing and main healing in mind. However, you can swap Tenebrous Sunray for Clotavida if you need a spam heal.

1. Twincast
2. Sootheseance
3. Adrenaline Spate
4. Lunarush
5. Survival of the Unrelenting
6. Nature’s Sweltering Wrath
7. Horde of Duskwigs
8. Sunpyre
9. Tenebrous Sunray – or Clotavida
10. Ecliptic Winds – or Primal Frost
11. Remote Sunbolt
12. Winter’s Wildbrume
13. Frenzied Growth

Group Geared / Auto-Granted AAs Only – Mission Groups

Druids that have barely made it to max level and relying on auto-granted AAs will not have powerful healing spells. They will fair better using a healing twincast spell to proc for their next two pure heal spells. This spell is called Sundew Blessing.

1. Sundew Blessing
2. Soothesceance
3. Adrenaline Spate
4. Clotavida – used as a fast-swap gem
5. Lunarush
6. Survival of the Unrelenting
7. Bolstering Growth
8. Horde of the Duskwigs
9. Sunpyre
10. Primal Frost
11. Bulwark of the Reptile
12. Luclinite Skin
13. Frenzied Growth

Solo Play (ie: for Rooting or Kiting)

You won’t need many heal spells here. It’s also recommended to keep up whatever spells you don’t want to be bothered swapping in and out. You will be moving around a lot when solo’ing.

1. Twincast
2. Sootheseance
3. Adrenaline Spate
4. Savage Roots
5. Bolstering Growth
6. Survival of the Unrelenting
7. Nature’s Sweltering Wrath
8. Horde of Duskwigs
9. Sunpyre
10. Remote Sunbolt
11. Winter’s Wildbrume
12. Summer Sunpyre
13. Bloody Roar

Most of the time people will only send you a /tell for skin. However, there are other buffs to use if certain classes are not present or if you’re a main healer in an exp group.

Basic Buffs

Skin line (HP) – Druid skin buffs are highly sought after as they increase HP, increase mana regen, and can stack with cleric symbol and AC buffs.

Damage Shield line – If no mage is present, druids should buff their groups with a DS

Health Regen line – Both druids and shaman get the same line of health regeneration buffs. If there is not a shaman around, you can use yours instead.

Self Buffs

Mask of the Duskage Tender (lvl 120) – Spell that is your self mana regen buff and stacks with other mana regen buffs. This will get replaced with Wildtender’s Unity AA at max ranks.

Preincarnation (AA) – Auto-granted buff AA that grants you a chance to not die, making you invulnerable for a short period of time.

Tank / Short-Duration Buffs

Fervent Growth (lvl 117) – Temporary max HP booster. Note that shaman also get this spell. It is primarily used on warriors or yourself (or some random squishy player if you wish).

Bulwark of the Reptile (lvl 119) – Short duration buff to throw on tanks. When the tank is struck in combat, it will apply a debuff on the mob, lowering its attack power and AC, and healing the tank back. This good in group missions where you have a tank dealing with multiple adds.

Swarm of Fireflies (AA Ability) – Applies Firefly Guardian Spirit buff. A life-saving ability where if the tank drops below 40% health, it will instantly heal them with a large heal plus apply a strong HP regen buff. Druids should use this ability on hybrid tanks only on raids (assuming clerics are using their Spirit on warriors).

Bear Spirit (AA Ability) – A very short duration buff, usually best for anticipated damage (ie: as the tank engages a named, or if the tank’s defense wears off). It will increase the tanks maximum HP (similar to Frenzied Growth), increase AC and chance to dodge melee attacks.

Mana Management Buffs

Bolstering Growth (lvl 116) – while this spell is found under the pet category, it’s a mana management self-buff. It can only be used once every 5 minutes to give you around 10K mana back. It’s good practice to try and use this as soon as you hit 80% mana.

Wolf Abilities (AAs) – these last 4 minutes and will be discussed in the next chapter.

aDPS stands for assisted damage per second. Your aura and group wolf are great for your own spells while also considered aDPS for your group.

Aura

Nightchill Aura (lvl 118) – only aura to have up that adds cold damage procs to damage spells.

Group Spirit of the Great Wolf (AA)

This is generally an ability you want to always hit right off the bat, and continue to reuse immediately off cooldown. It offers the following benefits:

1. Reduces the group’s mana cost of spells
2. Increases the chance of group’s DD and heal spells to crit.
3. Increases the crit strength of group’s critical DD spells.
4. Increase the group’s mana regeneration.

Spirit of the Great Wolf (AA)

When Group Wolf wears off, you then activate this self-wolf ability. It does everything that the Group version does but by slightly higher percentages/values.

• Warning: if you hit Group Wolf with Self Wolf on, Group Wolf will not overwrite your Self Wolf. However, Self Wolf will overwrite Group Wolf.

Always Alternate Wolf off Cooldown

You can basically keep up a wolf ability on yourself 100% of the time by alternating between both group and self wolf abilities. Besides added DPS, don’t neglect the fact that both of your Wolf abilities reduce the mana cost of spells and increase your healing power. Druids are an extremely mana-hungry class once they incorporate DPS into their gameplay.

Druids have A LOT of debuffs. If you inspect them closely, you will notice some are fire-based and others are cold-based spells.

Blessing of Ro (AA Ability)

Casts the highest rank of Cinch of Ro (lvl 116 spell) you know. Lowers attack, fire resistance and AC. It also heals the mob’s target for at least 16K HP. It is both a debuff and heal spell all in one. It barely costs any mana to cast, and is a fast-casting ability.

Cinch of Ro (lvl 116) – fire-based spell

• Heals a mob’s target by over 16K HP
• Decrease Attack by 121
• Decrease Fire Resistance by 86
• Decrease Armor Class by 185

Season’s Wrath (AA Ability)

At max-purchased rank, increases the damage mob takes from cold and fire spells by 17 to 25%. No other debuffs will conflict with this one.

Sunray & Moonbeam Line of Spells

Tenebrous Sunray will probably see the most mileage from these two. On raids, you may have a druid assigned to it and another assigned to Onyx Moonbeam.

Tenebrous Sunray (lvl 116) – fire-based spell

• Increase Spell Damage mob takes by 1738
• DoT damage of 2874 per Tick
• Decrease Fire Resistance by 92
• Decrease Armor Class by 84

Onyx Moonbeam (lvl 119) – cold-based spell

• Increase Spell Damage mob takes by 1738
• DoT damage of 2874 per Tick
• Decrease Cold Resistance by 92
• Decrease Armor Class by 74

Primal Frost (spell)

This is a lvl 119 cold-based spell with a strong attack reduction component. On raids, you may have a druid assigned to it.

• Heals mob’s target by over 11K HP
• Decrease Attack by 371
• Decrease Armor Class by 33

A majority of healing you provide falls within three categories.

1. Instant duration heal spells – such as single-target and group heal spells
2. Target’s target healing from Remote nukes (and Composite where applicable)
3. Various activated AA Abilities

Lastly, there will be curing in some cases (mostly, in certain group missions or raids). You won’t have a choice but to prioritize cures regardless of what you are doing.

Curing

The two main cures to be concerned with are:

Sanctified Blood (lvl 118) – cures disease, poison, corruption and curse counters.

Radiant Cure (AA) – this is a group cure in the form of an AA. It cures poison, disease and curse counters. It also has a 95% to remove one detrimental effect

• Note: it does not cure corruption counters like Sanctified Blood does

Healing Basics

Ideally, for single-target healing in exp groups, you can do the following:

• Blessing or Ro – as an opening target’s target heal and debuff on a mob
• Remote Sunbolt – as a target’s target heal and DPS on a mob
• Sootheseance on cooldown
• Adrenaline Spate on cooldown
• Spam Clotavida if everything else is on cooldown

For any standard Group Healing, you can use Lunarush.

Activated AA Ability Healing

Regardless if you heal or DPS more on a druid, heal AA Abilities are used often. Many of these are FREE (or close to free) heals that you can activate in between other tasks. These should all go on a dedicated Hot Bar along with the other AA tank buffs discussed:

Convergence of Spirits – Instant emergency heal ability, which also applies a heal over time

Blessing of Tunare – Targeted AE or “splash” heal ability. Useful when Lunarush is down.

Wildtender’s Survival – Instant AA version of Survival line of heal spells. Casts the highest rank of the “Survival” line of group heal spells. Does NOT share the same timer as the memmed Survival spell. Best used if any party member is at 50 or below HPs

Nature’s Boon – A stationary healing ward healing all nearby players.

Spirit of the Wood – This is a strong group heal-over-time. Can also be used with TB or MGB.

Battle rezzes can save the day!

Call of the Wild (AA Ability)

This is an autogranted ability – also known your “Battle Rez”.

The ability will call back a deceased player to their corpse with a 0% rez, and regain 20% of their mana and endurance. It has a 2 minute reuse time. The player will be able to get a 96% rez on the same corpse later on.

Staff of Forbidden Rites (Item Clicky)

Two battle rezzes are better than one!

This is another useful tool for battle rezzing. However, it is granted from completing a series of raids or as a raid drop. Any Druid serious about raiding will work on getting this item. It will click-cast a 90% resurrection and has a recast delay of 30 seconds.

Rejuvenation of Spirit (AA Ability)

This a regular 96% resurrection spell that can only be cast once you are out of combat and in a resting state.

Druids can do considerable burst damage. Most of it will come from their DoTs. The number of DoT and nuke spells you keep up will fluctuate depending on gear, AAs and event at hand.

DPS Basics

• Apply DoTs first
• Sustain DD/Nukes after

General DoT Order

1. Nature’s Sweltering Wrath
2. Horde of the Duskwigs
3. Sunpyre
4. Chill of the Dusksage Tender (if up)
5. Tenebrous Sunray

Single-Target General Sustained DPS w/ AA Nukes

On single-target fights, it makes sense to sustain nuke DPS. This may not work well on multiple mob fights, and you’ll find yourself quickly drained of mana.

1. Remote Sunbolt
2. Nature’s Fire (AA)
3. Winter’s Wildblume
4. Nature’s Bolt (AA)
5. Summer Sunpyre
6. Nature’s Frost (AA)
7. Bloody Roar

Winter’s Wildbrume and Summer Sunpyre are your lowest-cost nukes. These can also be used in an alternate fashion to try and proc GoMs and use them with higher cost DoT spells.

With so many DoTs and Nukes possible to cast, it’s imperative that you have a system to organize such spells and abilities. This will impact your Burns.

Hot Bar Organization

Druids cast a lot of spells. It pays to organize your Hot Bars in a manner to differentiate burns abilities, lesser burns, DoT-related spells, and Nuke-related spells.

Some other abilities were shoved in there for lack of room, but in general:

1. Hot Bar: Burn-related abilities that can be clicked and/or social key activated
2. Hot Bar: Lesser-burn related spells and abilities as well as self-wolf
3. Hot Bar: DoT-related spells
4. Hot Bar: Nuke-related spells
5. Hot Bar: Heal-related spells and abilities

With the exception of single-target heal spells, much of what you will be doing DPS-wise is clicking off Hot Bars for sake of keeping some type of an order.

Social Keys

In the above example, there are four social keys worth creating at least.

WOLF – will instantly activate Group Wolf and announce it to your group chat

BURNS – this will instantly activate:

• Improved Twincast (ITC)
• Destructive Vortex (DV)
• Nature’s Fury (NF)
• Focus of Arcanum (FA)

MYwolf – this will activate your self-wolf ability along with Spire of Nature

CHpls – this is useful if you have an enchanter in group. When burning, they should wait to buff you with Chromatic Haze until you land Nature’s Sweltering Wrath.

Preburn

These are events that should occur before you start burning.

1. Click: Silent Casting
2. Click: Distant Conflagration
3. Click: BP Click (clicky item)
4. Click: Blessing of Ro
5. Click: Season’s Wrath

Burn Order

DoTs and nuke spells you keep up will vary depending on what you are doing.

1. Click: “Wolf” Social Key to instantly activate: Group Wolf + announcement in group
2. Click: “Burns” Social Key to instantly activate: ITC + DV + NF + FA
3. Click: Nature’s Sweltering Wrath
4. Click: Horde of Duskwigs
5. Click: Sunpyre
6. Click: Chill of the Dusksage Tender (if up)
7. Click: Tenebrous Sunray (if up)

… and then go into your sustained nuke DPS mode while re-applying any worn off DoTs in between for as long as Improved Twincast is on you.

Lesser Burn

While DC, ITC, DV and NF are on cooldown, this can be a time to use lesser burns in the form of Twincast and Spire of Nature.

Twincast (lvl 85) – obtained from the Seeds of Destruction expansion. Get a group of friends and acquire the rank 3 version of it. It lasts 18 seconds and has a 5 minute refresh.

• Use it as you would if it were ITC – by giving priority to DoTs
• OK to overwrite non-twincast DoTs with Twincast Dots

Spire of Nature (AA) – increases your personal DD crit chance and increases the total healing of your personal instant duration heal spells. Also gives your group a small HP and AC boost

• Won’t affect your DoTs, but still does something for your sustained nuke damage spells.
• Can oftentimes be paired with self-wolf on yourself, too.

Druids have several CC abilities in the forms of roots, snares and punts. The main thing to keep in mind is that such spells and abilities will not prevent mobs from damaging players within reach. Be aware of where you are rooting or punting mobs.

Roots

Vinelash Assault (lvl 97) – this is an AE “beam” type spell. It will root all mobs within a wide beam in the direction you are facing. Once the root wears off, it will snare the mobs.

Snares

Entrap (AA) – will snare a mob for 14 minutes and has a 2 second reuse time.

Punts

Spore Spiral (lvl 69) – single-target punt and root

Paralytic Spray (AA) – punts up to 8 mobs in a frontal-cone from you and then roots them

Paralytic Spores (AA) – single-target version of paralytic spray. Does not share same timer

Wall of Wind (AA) – punts up to 8 mobs in a frontal-cone from you and then snares them

Being that druids can heal themselves, a bulk of survival comes from that alone. However, when trying to escape mobs or facing near-imminent-death scenarios, there are a couple of other spells and abilities to go over and consider for use.

Touch of the Divine

Preincarnation (AA) – this an autogranted ability that applies a 1 hour buff with a chance to both heal you and cast Touch of the Divine (invulnerability) on you. You can click the TotD buff off in your song window once you feel you are safe.

Fade

All classes have some form of a fade ability.

Veil of the Underbrush (AA) – allows you to escape combate from mobs that are up to 5 levels higher than you, and also places you as the last possible target for rampage attacks.

Movement Related

Hitting certain abilities may help you move quickly out of deadly auras or get closer to a zone line if mobs are chasing you.

Mistwalk (AA) – instantly teleports you 243 feet forward in the direction you are facing

Group Cheetah (AA) – instantly boosts movement speed of you and your targeted group by 115% for a short period of time. Another useful ability to quickly navigate around any detrimental floor auras or dashing away from mobs.

Emergency Succor

Lastly, there are two abilities if you just know you’re about to die.

Egress (AA) – Self-evac, instant ability that will teleport you to a safe spot within a zone.

Exodus (AA) – Group-evac, instant ability that will teleport your group to a safe spot within a zone. Note: Any player that is invulnerable (ie: Divine Aura) will be left behind.

Druids are great solo players. They tend to fare better in open zones where there is ample room to move around.

Root > DoT’ing

This is a simple method of solo play where you keep a mob stationary in place via a root.

• Good for congested spots where you want to be in one spot and focus on a single mob
• Can sit on a mount to regen mana faster
• Not good for nuke/DD spells which have a chance to break roots early

How it works:

1. If a mob is at a distance, you can pull it via Entrap (AA) which is a long-duration snare.
2. Once the mob is at a desired location, you can use Savage Roots.
3. Debuff the mob immediately with Season’s Wrath (increases your spell damage)
4. Apply your DoT spells, relax on a mount and enjoy watching the mob’s HP tick down.
5. Note that Nature’s Sweltering Wrath has a DD component built into it, and it can potentially break your root spells early.

Kiting

This is a method of solo play where you typically snare a mob at a distance, throw any DoTs on it, and run around with it slowly chasing you until it dies.

• You can swarm kite multiple mobs at a time
• Requires a lot of open room (preferably an outdoor zone)
• You can comfortably use any nuke spells, too, without worrying about any roots breaking.
• Good for non-caster mobs that won’t apply any detrimental movement effects on you

Single-Pulling

Druids have a calm-line of spells available to them. These will ONLY work in outdoor zones.

Nature’s Succor (lvl 116) – will lower the aggro radius of mobs up to level 120. This should make it easier to pull a mob that’s near another mob, but not side by side.

You can then use Blessing of Ro to pull the mob single (no snare), or use Entrap if you want it to come slowly to you.

Dirty Single-Pulling

If you simply must get a mob at no cost and have no desire to swarm kite, you can aggro it, snare it with Entrap once out, and then either Egress yourself or use Veil of Underbrush to fade. At some point the add mobs will walk back to their spawn points/camp, leaving the single snared mob alone.

If you use Egress, keep in mind that you will be evacuated to whatever the succor spot is in the zone. Using this tactic assumes you know how to find your way back to the snared mob.

Charm

Yes! Druids can charm. However, you are limited to animal-type mobs only. There is both a regular charm spell and a Dire Charm AA. You can only charm up to level 118 mobs though. It won’t be as great as enchanter charming, but it can work well, especially if you choose to also keep up a merc for molo-play.