Support Scrapper

October 2024

Introduction

Heal Scrapper is an excellent choice for anyone looking to sustain their squad in large-scale WvW fights. As condition-focused builds grow in popularity in the WvW zerg meta, you stand between your allies and a most terrible fate of having nearly every condition in the game on their buff bars, rendering them helpless as they watch their health fall with inevitability down to zero. Power damage, conditions, siege, you name it, Scrapper is one of the strongest builds to help people sustain through it.

While Scrapper falls short of Ventari Vindicator for raw healing output, it excels in other ways with a strong, consistent output of condition cleanses, , and boon coverage including , , , , and . This build has a lot of room for skill expression due to the high number of skills, combinations and different effects at your disposal, but it is also reasonably approachable. Making sure to press all the buttons a lot goes a long way.

Build Fundamentals

You are the primary source of healing and cleanses for your subgroup. The biggest priority for any support build including Heal Scrapper is to stay alive to continue supporting your allies through careful positioning, dodges and your own supportive skills. Cycle through the multitude of healing and cleanse skills at your disposal in , , and Shortbow to sustain your team while saving your most powerful skills (such as and ) for when your group is taking heavy damage.

Numerous blast finishers provide your allies with and via and additional healing thanks to . Each application of on your allies also provides an additional cleanse due to , and each condition you cleanse will apply and sometimes boon conversion thanks to and . The area of effect of your Gyro skills and follow you as you move and grant on the first pulse, making them particularly effective for supporting your group on the move.

You can also help allies who are in danger away from the rest of the group from , , and  by cleansing these conditions and granting them via and . Fill downtime when other skills are on cooldown or there is low pressure on your group with in . Don’t waste your best skills padding the cleanse meter in Arcdps when there is no need! While your primary responsibility is to your own subgroup, any surplus healing and cleanses can splash over to other subgroups and still be beneficial for sustaining the entire squad.

Shortbow

Each Shortbow skill except for the auto attack has an effect on the initial cast and a chain reaction when another Shortbow skill is fired into its area of effect. Chain 2 or more Shortbow skills back to back to trigger the chain reaction effects of all but the last skill in the chain. For example, chain casting , and then back to back will trigger the chain reaction effects of and , as well as the initial cast effects for all three skills.

Shortbow skills can be thought of as having a chain reaction priority, i.e. which skills for which it is most important to trigger the chain reaction. These are also generally the skills you want to use first in a chain.

• – Trigger the chain reaction of this skill whenever possible for the extra cleanses
• – Each application of is an additional cleanse so it is valuable to trigger the chain reaction
• – Can be used to finish a chain reaction or situationally for the stun and daze on enemies or for the and blast finisher
• – The chain reaction is low priority, and this skill is best used to finish a chain reaction or as a low cooldown blast finisher

Though you usually want to cast these Shortbow skills on top of yourself, they can all be used and chained together from range if necessary.

Healing

• – Your biggest burst heal with a short cast so it’s best to keep it for when burst healing is needed and not use it off-cooldown. The tooltip indicates no cast time, but unfortunately, this skill cannot be used in the middle of other skill animations
• – Another emergency burst heal and stun. The initial cast and each have a blast finisher. If you wait a second after the turrets land before using they can use their overloads which include for more healing, , and
• – A nice low cooldown filler skill to use whenever you are in
• – The strongest of your pulsing heals
• Blast finishers on any combo fields also heal thanks to . Blast finishers on water fields, such as , trigger additional healing.
• – This has a moderate heal on the first pulse and smaller heals on the later pulses
• – Use to keep allies topped up whenever there is low pressure on the group or all of your more important skills are on cooldown

Condition Cleansing

• – Offers 5 condition cleanses on 5 allies in a short time frame, but does not cleanse any conditions on yourself
• Shortbow chain reaction with ,  and or is 5 cleanses again in a reasonably short time frame
• – If your group isn’t moving it’s good to get this down for pulsing cleanses
• – Unless other condition skills are on cooldown, this is best saved for when you need condition cleanses while on the move or an instant cast cleanse skill to use while crowd-controlled or other emergencies. The combo field actually only lasts for 4 seconds, not 5 as indicated on the tooltip
• – Only has one cleanse on the initial pulse. It also has a pulsing heal and a light field so it’s good to use this when you are already in for
• – Grants two cleanses and an additional cleanse thanks to , and
• Blast finishers on Light Fields, such as and , trigger an additional area condition cleanse

Toolbelt Skills

• – Gives a longer duration of than your other skills, and is especially useful for helping yourself or allies around you catch up to the group if caught behind
• – Can be used on enemy downstates since helps prevent them from being revived
• – This is your only stunbreak so save it for emergencies
• – This is your only source of , so it pays to use it wisely. Try not to use this when your subgroup already has . Good times to use it are typically before the first engagement in a fight when skirmishing from range or in the middle of your fight when there is downtime in . It can also be useful situationally for the projectile block
• – Useful for quickly giving allies from range, helping them if they are caught out of position. It can also be used situationally as an additional blast finisher and cleanse

Blast Finishers

The combination of and provides a decent amount of healing, and when using a Blast Finisher on any combo field from you or an ally, use Blast Finishers regularly. Thinking about which fields you are blasting can be helpful but should only be worried about after you are comfortable using the Blasts for healing in the first place.

The following skills all have Blast Finishers:

• – the Blast Finisher goes off after 1 second and is centered on you instead of where you placed the area of effect
•  and each have a blast finisher, and the blast finishers are centered on you instead of the turrets

Your Blast Finishers prioritize your own Fields and whichever of those Fields was created first. You can think about which of your Combo Fields you want to follow up with Blast Finishers:

• The Water Field on can be blasted for extra healing
• The Light Fields on and can be blasted for an area condition cleanse
• The Dark Field on can be blasted for area . This can be powerful if you are within melee range of the enemy group
• The other Combo Fields in the build are generally lower priority for blasting

Additional tips

• and will only hit in front of you, so it’s best to be positioned slightly behind the rest of the group when using them
• The backward leap on can be canceled by hitting Weapon Swap
• You can swap into while using as long as you don’t use any other skills with an animation

Stacking Sigil

Use the Shortbow with the until you have reached the maximum 25 stacks, then switch to the other Shortbow when you next get out of combat. Remember to also equip one of your underwater weapons with to keep the stacks when going underwater!

Alternatives

• Want even more buttons to press? has an additional pulsing heal with and a pulsing Blind and Light Field with . is unblockable but the other skills are projectiles that can be reflected or blocked so be careful about firing them into enemy groups. Take this over if you are not using
• – for the additional damage reduction
• – If your commander wants to utilize the stealth and for extra
• – for additional cleanses at the cost of healing
• – for pulsing and cleanses when entering every 30s