Can we take some risks and etch-e-sketch some specs that have stagnated? Guardian Druid specifically, but I’m sure there are several others that could addressed. Every rogue spec for another example.
And I don’t mean a talent tree shuffle and a new key bind, I mean toss it out and start from the concept up like what was done to demonology back in the day.
I will pay any amount of money. I’ll volunteer my personal time. I will even consult for free.
Reworking specs because of stagnation seems weird. When this happens it can essentially delete someone’s favorite spec for no reason other than people should try a different class maybe.
Reworking unpopular, unfun, and low performing specs send like a better approach.
I admit it’s a risk, but it’s going to be the only way.
So, enlighten us if you please.
How would you re-do gaurdian druid from the ground up?
Blizzard, please throw out an entire class and remake it. Why? To take risks and etch-e-sketch.
Idk if I would throw guardian out the window and start over but I think we need to get away from moon fire and frenzied rejuv.
Lunar bear in general is lame fantasy imo
Having iron fur off gcd is good but it should have more oopmh instead of having to hit it so frequently for stacks.
Guardian is the El camino between a healing tank and a damage resistance tank, if feels slow and doesn’t have enough opportunity to shift forms during gameplay.
Druids as a whole should be more shifty imo.
Fluid form was a good start but it should be baseline for all druids and expanded to lean into the druid fantasy.
Well for one the optimal way to play probably shouldn’t be macroing your defensive into your offensive abilities lol
I’m not a class designer, but I’ll take a whack at it.
Let’s start from top: we gotta be designed around the current content. Like 15 years ago, you’d swap tanks for different situations for arbitrary design reasons, so it made sense that tanks had niches. But modern tanks just don’t have that baggage. They’re good at everything and just tuning makes the difference.
Skill expression for tanks is often less about how sturdy you are (that’s basically a binary check, so just “be tanky”) and more about how you apply your damage and utility. So we need a core rotation with decisions from moment to moment that let you do more damage and farm back utility.
The most fun tanks have is when they are in control of the situation. Mob control, and self sustain. Pretty much all modern tanks have tools to gather and stack mobs, a few aoe stops, and a self-tank that scales with incoming damage. Blizzard also seems to be afraid of passive tanking, so it would have to be some kind of active mitigation scenario.
Ok, so give those parameters, here’s what I’d do.
Guardian mastery is replaced with a unique tank mechanic: Predatory Instinct. What this will do similar to old vengeance mechanic with an added durability component. As you take damage, you’ll do more and more damage and maybe convert a portion of that incoming damage into a HoT on yourself, or give you more resource to spend so it’s not automatic.
Your primary rotation will be building rage (we’ll keep rage for simplicity in this example, but could be whatever) to spend on keeping yourself alive. Your AM could be tied to a specific spender. Like maybe instead of IF is just redesigned to be applied when you maul. Maul costs rage and deals a bit of damage, but it then gives you IF. (No longer stacks). FR loses its “charges” and CD and just has a rage cost. Thrash is your builder, spend on IF or Maul as the situation requires for survival.
So you run into a pull thrash + maul sets up your base tank, then you thrash to FR to stay alive and weave in mauls to keep IF up. Next we need some kind of rampage-y ability to cash in on that thrash damage. Maybe an AoE pulverize that consumes thrash stacks or thrash maybe empowers your next pulverize to hit more targets and do more damage etc.
What we want to avoid here is having every button being an OK button to press at the moment and also avoid too much similarity with existing specs (shield
Slam procs or blackout combo, etc). So spamming, thrash and alternating maul and FR would keep your base tank up, but would not be your best expression of damage. It’s tempting to add a reset to pulverize here. But I don’t think that’s the right way to go. I think instead having thrash stack up a secondary effect on the druid that empowers pulverize might be better. And then we could have trash add a variable number of those based on crit.
I think that’s as sophisticated as a DPS rotation needs to be tanks. Keeping your base active mitigation up and spending resources on self healing Seems like a blast. Now we get the mob control. It already has a few mob control tools. They work really well in a world where every enemy just runs at you and white swings. But for modern while, we need to add an AOE silence and an enemy stacking tool. Ursula’s vortex has a great visual. I say we keep that and just add an effect via a talent that it pulls mobs into it. We could also add a silencing roar. There is the risk of being too similar to disrupting shout, I know, but there are only so many ways to silence a bunch of casters so they run together. Or just to cut back on the total kit and not become another VDH level god spec we just add the silence to vortex as well — 3 talents for one spell. Gets the job done without locking the group down forever with back to back to back CC chain.
I think Mark of the wild is good group utility. Perhaps bears can just bring an empowered version of that as their main contribution as opposed to trickle group healing like we did in dragon flight. (I wouldn’t even call or capable of a trickle. It’s more like condensation). Alternatively, we just lean into that den mother “Help – The – healer” niche so we synergize well with more with bursty, healer types, like preservation Evoker with a more interactive version of after the wildfire and perhaps an AOE version of frenzy regeneration that we can cast for rage when we ourselves are not in eminent danger.
So here’s the play style. On pull, thrash and maul to set up active mitigation. Then we thrash to a couple of stacks of our self buff and pulverize, now we have threat. Continue the thrash and pulverize cycle with regards to how many stacks you have for maximum efficiency based on amount of incoming damage. We spend rage generated this way on either forensic regeneration on ourselves or say wild growth for the whole party (this will cost rage for bears) if there are no imminent tank busters. We dropped vortex into the middle of the pack, stacking and silencing the mobs together for AOE. Maybe a short cooldown big hitter ability would be appropriate here as well, maybe 30 or 45 seconds.
Offensive cool downs could be something like pulverized doesn’t consume stacks so you could just spam it. Defensive cool downs could prevent incoming damage or have you radiate more healing to the party. Defensive coverage is important for tanks, especially in high keys. That way, the passive tank doesn’t have to be so strong that it becomes super boring at low difficulty.
More mastery would allow you to tank more mobs by stacking up more frenzy regens and give you more damage in those situations, within reason. I know I said, make it like Pandaria vengeance, but it would not do to be as strong in modern wow with every other tank being anemic.
Lastly, bears need another form of avoidance. Most tanks are able to avoid almost all incoming damage. Bears are forced to endure it. This leads to strange difficulty curve with respect to incoming damage versus tank survivability. It would be easier if bears could just “shrug off” some of that damage. Perhaps we could tie that to mastery instead of the rage or healing component.
I appreciate that you had an idea in mind and didnt just shrug and say
“Itʻs their job not mine, they can figure it out”