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 Med Kit, Elixir Gun, and Shortbow to sustain your team while saving your most powerful skills (such as Bulwark Gyro and Vital Burst) for when your group is taking heavy damage.

Numerous blast finishers provide your allies with and via Kinetic Accelerators and additional healing thanks to Relic of Karakosa. Each application of on your allies also provides an additional cleanse due to Anticorrosion Plating, and each condition you cleanse will apply and sometimes boon conversion thanks to Comeback Cure and Equal and Opposite Reaction. The area of effect of your Gyro skills Purge Gyro and Bulwark Gyro 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 Bandage Self and Function Gyro. Fill downtime when other skills are on cooldown or there is low pressure on your group with Med Blaster in Med Kit. 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 Arc Detonator 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 Essence of Living Shadows, Essence of Liquid Wrath and then Essence of Animated Sand back to back will trigger the chain reaction effects of Essence of Living Shadows and Essence of Liquid Wrath, 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.

• Essence of Living Shadows – Trigger the chain reaction of this skill whenever possible for the extra cleanses
• Essence of Liquid Wrath – Each application of is an additional cleanse so it is valuable to trigger the chain reaction
• Essence of Borrowed Time – Can be used to finish a chain reaction or situationally for the stun and daze on enemies or for the and blast finisher
• Essence of Animated Sand – 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

• Vital Burst – 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
• Supply Crate – Another emergency burst heal and stun. The initial cast and Detonate Supply Crate Turrets each have a blast finisher. If you wait a second after the turrets land before using Detonate Supply Crate Turrets they can use their overloads which include Cleansing Burst for more healing, Smoke Screen, and Electrified Net
• Bandage Blast – A nice low cooldown filler skill to use whenever you are in Med Kit
• Essence of Living Shadows – The strongest of your pulsing heals
• Blast finishers on any combo fields also heal thanks to Relic of Karakosa. Blast finishers on water fields, such as Cleansing Field, trigger additional healing.
• Super Elixir – This has a moderate heal on the first pulse and smaller heals on the later pulses
• Med Blaster – 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

• Fumigate – Offers 5 condition cleanses on 5 allies in a short time frame, but does not cleanse any conditions on yourself
• Shortbow chain reaction with Essence of Living Shadows, Essence of Liquid Wrath and Essence of Animated Sand or Essence of Borrowed Time is 5 cleanses again in a reasonably short time frame
• Cleansing Field – If your group isn’t moving it’s good to get this down for pulsing cleanses
• Purge Gyro – 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
• Super Elixir – 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 Elixir Gun for Fumigate
• Bandage Self – Grants two cleanses and Function Gyro an additional cleanse thanks to Cleansing Synergy, Reconstruction Enclosure and Anticorrosion Plating
• Blast finishers on Light Fields, such asPurge Gyro and Super Elixir, trigger an additional area condition cleanse

Toolbelt Skills

• Bandage Self – 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
• Chemical Field – Can be used on enemy downstates since helps prevent them from being revived
• Healing Mist – This is your only stunbreak so save it for emergencies
• Defense Field – 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
• Function Gyro – 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 Relic of Karakosa and Kinetic Accelerators 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:

• Essence of Animated Sand
• Essence of Borrowed Time
• Infusion Bomb – the Blast Finisher goes off after 1 second and is centered on you instead of where you placed the area of effect
• Acid Bomb
• Function Gyro
• Supply Crate and Detonate Supply Crate Turrets 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 Cleansing Field can be blasted for extra healing
• The Light Fields on Purge Gyro and Super Elixir can be blasted for an area condition cleanse
• The Dark Field on Essence of Living Shadows 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

• Fumigate and Med Blaster 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 Acid Bomb can be canceled by hitting Weapon Swap
• You can swap into Med Kit while using Fumigate as long as you don’t use any other skills with an animation

Stacking Sigil

Use the Shortbow with the Superior Sigil of Life 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 Superior Sigil of Life to keep the stacks when going underwater!

Alternatives

• Want even more buttons to press? Elite Mortar Kit has an additional pulsing heal with Elixir Shell and a pulsing Blind and Light Field with Flash Shell. Elixir Shell 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 Supply Crate if you are not using Relic of Karakosa
• Over Shield – for the additional damage reduction
• Sneak Gyro – If your commander wants to utilize the stealth and for extra
• Relic of Antitoxin – for additional cleanses at the cost of healing
• Relic of the Zephyrite – for pulsing and cleanses when entering Elite Mortar Kit every 30s