Oh thank goodness. I’ve always wanted to power shift into cat form while tanking. This will surely be fine.
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Off tanking in raids like it was before SL?
From a Feral perspective this is… SIGNIFICANTLY better than Wildstalker. The Dreadful Wounds provide a lot of the bulkiness that current Feral lacks and I actually like the concept of shifting into Bear Form as part of our rotation and further benefiting from Bear Form’s natural tankiness.
I also don’t think that the Wildpower Surge node is a problem for Guardian. As Grizzle said, it’s better for raid fights where you can shift to cat for extra damage while off-tanking and for fights where that’s not viable (or dungeons) just take the other choice node and enjoy the decreased magic damage.
This tree actually looks pretty decent to me.
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Definitely looks way better then wildstalker and at least both specs can use everything in it. My big complaint is the huge dip into Ferocious Bite for feral. Will go more into my thoughts when they post the thread.
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Why make us spend the GCDs to shapeshift for Wildpower Surge rather than just having the Rip/FB button light up and we get an animation of being a cat for a second rather than losing 20% armor, HP, and GCDs?
A spec that forces someone doing the job of a tank to nerf their own survivability this much seems like a nonstarter.
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It doesn’t nerf your survivability as much as it first seems. Keep in mind that you keep 80% of your bear form health and armor and retain your Ironfur due to Wildshape mastery. Yes it’s a hit to survivability, but not a massive one.
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Because i dont think its meant to be used while youre actively tanking.
One side seems more ST/Raid oriented, and the other more AoE/M+
Personally i think the tree looks good overall. Just sucks we have to wait for TWW to get these lovely changes
If you want to play optimally that will require it be used while you’re tanking, though…
That’s not how that works. Being dead is never optimal. Even if it’s a massive DPS increase it’s not going to be optimal if the durability hit is too costly. And I don’t think that the DPS difference is going to be that massive. It will require more attention to use it over the other choice node, but I don’t think it’s as bad as you seem to think.
Even if it’s not as bad as I think it’s still not a great design. This could be done in a way that doesn’t require the loss of GCDs or any survivability at all. The trade off has no purpose beyond creating unnecessary risk and giving me a feature I can only use sometimes when I’m offtanking.
I think encouraging Druids to use their other forms when it’s appropriate is a good thing. Off-tanking has always been a good time for Guardian to go cat and I don’t think that reinforcing that idea is bad. Actually your concerns are why I’m glad that this is a choice node so that you don’t have to do any form swapping even if you choose the Druid of the Claw tree. The only design flaw I see is that Wildshape Mastery becomes a dead node for Guardian without Wildpower Surge. I think that node should be reworked a bit but I think the core concept is fine.
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Incorrect. Using it just because it’s available is not considered optimal. As stated:
During raids how much of that fight are you actually holding aggro and taking direct hits to where shifting out of Bear is going to make you go splat? 50% roughly. Or how it’s designed to be. What are you doing for that other 50% ? USED TO BE that you’d shape shift into Cat to increase your damage.
I think they’re going back to that. I mean, by your logic, since Feral form did more dps during raids, even as Guardian, the “optimal” way to tank back then would have been to tank in Cat form yeah? No
Come to the lunar side Kaercha. We have cookies
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I am all for finding ways to make being a cat sometimes as Guardian relevant but we’ll have to agree to disagree on the method because this ain’t it.
MAYBE if you could find a way to keep it from costing 2 GCDs I would be okay with it but as it stands I get to choose between Druid of the Claw without Wildpower Surge being TnC: The Tree or being trapped in a moonlight prison as Elune’s Chosen and I am less enthused about TWW.
You know full well what I meant, don’t be disingenuous.
The way to play at high end with this is going to be increasing your own cognitive load (a hot topic these days) by knowing as a tank when the best time to take a survivability hit is to fire off a Rip while you have aggro. It’s the same reason you’re not supposed to run defensive trinkets after a certain point. Balancing on the knife’s edge of survivability to pump out more numbers.
For the record, I raided in ye olden days when I would spend half the fight in cat form and I LIKED THAT. Let’s do that! Not this.
This tree feels like it was built primarily for cat, with some bear stuff tacked on.
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Yeah. The magic DR sprinkled in is nice touch, but unless they buff the armor and HP thing to be 100% for 10+ seconds, that’ll never matter. You won’t ever drop 20% of your tank to rip something. Likewise, you’re not gonna toss your energy to swap over and thrash. I wish they’d stop trying to make master shapeshifter a thing. I’m gonna spend a risky 3 globals for an extra rip? Please.
Just make it, instead, empower your own abilities. Something like “momentarily shift into a cat on your next mangle to also apply rip”. Animation change only, doesn’t actually shift you. Then the ursine one “your next swipe/thrash momentarily shifts you into bear form and deals 100% extra damage”.
As it is, those whole side of the tree is kinda stupid. 4 Forms. 4 Roles. You’ll never make “master shapeshifter” a thing. Stop trying. You killed that possibility when you gave forms a cd.
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Thats what this is. Youre building up while youre in bear form. Taunt swap, now you get an empowered Rip out of the gate, and while youre building combo/spenders, youre beefing up for when you swap back to Bear.
The extra damage is nice, but the extra 15 rage means you no longer have to swap back early to build rage for that first IF. Swap back, increased damage, 40 rage out of the gate, IF, back to tanking and building for another wicked Rip.
Its their safe way so that way we dont flood the forums with “this kills every time we use it”. Sure you can push your limits and try to use it while actively tanking for increased damage (boss fights you’ll be able to survive the white damage between abilities). But as a general rule, it has to be fairly simple for “everyone” to use at all levels of play.
Thus it feeling like its directed at strictly off tanking moments
I see you posted this in the other thread too, but I agree. The magic DR is definitely them going “we get it, bears are weak to magic damage”.
The rest of it, I agree that trying to make shifting work, simply won’t. However, having something that allows you to apply rip or other spells while doing your normal bear rotation…
Just kinda makes me think “hey you know all these base spells you REQUIRE us to take in the General tree? you could just make them usable in bear form in some way.”
All of this feels like a much more complicated way of doing just that. I would rather they make the tree all about BEAR abilities for the bear spec, or just go the route of giving us more druid spells usable in form if they want to make us use more of the kit. The way they are showing it, I can never see anyone using it.
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I like the idea of being much more effective at doing DPS during offtank situations, I can see this potentially making guardians one of the better raid tanks. There are some bosses where tank swaps are a full 15-20 seconds at a time, so going full-on cat during down periods could be great.