Just a heads up, if you think that this dmg nerf will somehow effect composition you’re sorely mistaken. The ONLY reason Outlaw/Prot are so entrenched in the meta is literally reaping. Prot warr’s with the correct azerite traits are still going to pull insane aoe, they always have. It’s just highlighted now by Reaping, if I were you I’d be more concerned with Blizz making Feral a viable spec, than other classes getting nerfed, but that’s just me.
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I think the point is that you can use guardian’s utility, pretty regularly. Brez, stampeding roar, sooth, hibernate and roots, cleanse, charge interrupt that is ranged, typhoon for kiting or displacement, incap roar, and self/group healing with resto affinity.
Well the hope is when Reaping is gone + the number nerfs, people will be motivated to 1) Play feral and 2) take them
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All that means is that the route to access that utility is cumbersome and tedious and disrupts fluid game play. That’s very different in my book than saying a class doesn’t have utility.
In either case, the real problem is the means by which we access that utility.
A couple things…
First I think the designers hoped that Vortex would bridge that gap. In a number of ways it does in its own way. But the problem with getting Vortex to start with was the fact we had to give up Intimidating Roar, which was actually a decent talent to take for M+ for certain dungeons.
I think what Blizzard should have done is to have made Wild Charge baseline. Then they could have added Ursol’s Vortex in its place and allowed us to pick between Tiger’s Dash, Initimidating Roar, and Ursol’s Vortex.
That said, I do think we should have gotten Blood Paws back as part of our baseline toolkit when Legion ended. It was built into the toolkit prior to Legion and the fact the designers completely didn’t bother to fix that when it was raised continually throughout alpha and beta just baffles me.
Here is what I would love to see
- Frenzied Regeneration taken off the GCD.
- Cast Remove Corruption in bear form.
- Cast Hibernate in bear form.
- A damage ability that is baseline or a talent, e.g. Rage of the Sleeper.
- Thrash applies a movement snare.
- An Adaptive Fur type of concept.
- Wild Charge made baseline and Intimidating Roar returned in tier 2.
15 Likes
I guess we have different ideas of what utility is then, to me actually being able to reliably and safely “utilize” an ability is factored into the utility of it.
If the risk / cost of an ability is to high it can prohibit its usage; this is a factor of the overall utility.
I mentioned earlier that Druid’s hibernate is much more limited in use compared to paralysis / imprison
Every other tank can have near 100% slow uptime.
Stampeding roar, incapacitating roar, brez, and soothe are nice, but overall compared to other tanks druids lack utility since much of their utility is either too risky / costly to use in many cases.
2 Likes
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/rise-of-azshara-ptr-initial-class-changes/149899
Druid
- Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth are no longer castable in Cat or Bear form by default.
- Feral Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 22 that allows Remove Corruption and Soothe to be cast in Cat Form.
- Guardian Druids now have a visible passive learned at level 10 that allows Soothe, Remove Corruption, Moonfire, and Rebirth to be cast in Bear Form.
- Developers’ notes: Guardian Druid is limited in its practical ability to use some utility abilities while tanking, and we’re loosening that restriction by allowed Remove Corruption in Bear Form. We’re also cleaning up Druid shapeshifting rules slightly: the use of magical-themed spells, in Feral forms, is allowed by passive upgrades given to Guardian and Feral specializations specifically. This represents their special mastery of their “home” form that allows for limited spellcasting, and from a gameplay perspective, this allows Feral/Guardian Druids to use spells in form where there is a strong practical need. At the same time, there are situations where there is no fantasy justification or gameplay need, and spellcasting might be more restricted. For example, non-Guardian Druids can no longer cast Moonfire in Bear Form.
- Guardian
- Ironfur and Maul now cost 40 Rage (was 45).
- Mangle now generates 10 Rage (was 8).
- Developers’ notes: Ironfur is intended to be maintainable with high uptime, up to 100%, and have some overlaps on top of that. Currently, depending on talent configuration, Druids may only be able to barely maintain full uptime on Ironfur. Making Ironfurs much more available should allow better control over timing and overlaps, as well as improving Guardian mitigation overall.
- Shifting to Bear Form now gives 25 Rage (was 20).
- Developer’s notes: It should now be much easier to get the first Ironfur activated promptly after engaging an enemy, due to the increased starting Rage and lower cost.
- Mangle and Thrash direct damage increased by 15%.
Not bad? What do you guys think.
Still no snare.
Removing Moonfire from any other Druid shifting into Guardian further damages the emergency/utility off tank capability of any other Druid.
Still no ability for Feral or Guardian Druids who take Resto Affinity to use the heals without losing several GCDs shifting out to cast (Ferals) and/or taking insane risks to use them (Guardian). We won’t even bother discussing the utter lack of desirability of the other affinities for Guardian outside the extended range from Balance.
I get the feeling that Guardians will be pigeon-holed into a specific talent setup now, where before it was dependent on your personal desires. Meaning, GG and Incarnation gone as options. Also Earthwarden and Survival of the Fittest get trucked by Guardian of Elune due to the synergy with Mangle and its new damage bonus. This synergy in damage carries on into the next row with Rend and Tear, with the damage bonus to Thrash. Brambles will probably be the new go to for the first row.
And lastly, nowhere did I see a mention of FR off the GCD. That needs to happen even if nothing else is done to adjust FR.
Edit: Oh and still no offensive cooldown. How silly of me to forget it. But understandable, since the Devs have been for the last 9 months.
Edit 2: Sorry, need to be positive, right? Ummm… Yes, these are all needed changes. Kudos. Don’t stop.
11 Likes
Nah, honest feedback >
If the goal is better gameplay and players dont express how these changes are effecting them in positive or negative ways it just makes it harder to get it right.
I am genuinley liking what I’m seeing.
The ease of casting utility while in feral is great, I’v legit gotten whisps from heals thanking me for help purging debuffs
I hope to guardian buffs have more to come. I don’t know about other bears, but I don’t have that much of a problem with rage and it’s pretty easy keeping up at least 1IF at all times essentially.
All in all, this is a great start, but I hope this is just that, a start
1 Like
Typhoon
Why is this a negative?
Kite, incap, typhoon, swiftmend-rejuv-bear form.
In what world is GG no longer an option??
Earthwarden is already only useful when you specifically know AAs will truck, and SotF still has strong synergy with Masterful Instincts. Nothing has changed from that.
Brambles was already a really good option? More damage, and some magic/dot mitigation, which guardian does not otherwise have
You don’t need to be positive, but at least make sense?
Bear is very smooth to heal vs physical damage when played properly. Prolly third best behind War/monk. Near 100% uptime on 2 stacks of ironfur is not hard at decent gear lvls
1 Like
Instead, they just take more damage and require more healing than dk and paladin, who have their self healing. And I really disagree that bear is less spiky than paladin.
I feel like this is gonna be a reoccuring thing, at higher ilvls, bear slowly creeps its way up the tier list as huge hp pools, decent armor gains as well as mastery helps healers alot
Every tank scales well with gear. If you want to get technical, monk probably scales best, but the difference is pretty minimal.
I was trying to elude bears scale better than most, but yeah I have read monks scale incredibly well, especially for raids.
If you want to get REALLY technical, everyone scales with gear
: P
I completely disagree. In fact, I’d argue that the changes they’re proposing actually loosens an already cookie-cutting / pigeon-holed build we typically take today because certain talents clearly excel beyond the other no matter the scenario.
I haven’t ran the numbers yet, but I could possibly see for single-target where we can actually take Soul of the Forest and do competitive (if not more damage) than a Guardian that has traditionally taken Galactic Guardian. I believe that’s actually a good step as it once again gives us agency in focusing on where we feel our bulk damage should be, AoE or boss.
With the damage boost to Mangle and Thrash, that may now mean that there are possible reasons to take Incarnation over Galactic Guardian. There has been minimal reason to take Incarnation since Mangle and Thrash hit like noodles.
I also don’t the Level 90 or Level 100 choices really deviating from what players are already picking on those rows. The same rules will continue to apply. Specifically for Level 100, if your a numbers player, you’re going to take Rend and Tear. If you’re a player that prefers mitigation, you’re going to take Pulverize.
As for Brambles, I think that will continue to be content or player choice driven. I most likely will continue to use Blood Frenzy as pairing it with the possibly more viable talent choices like Incarnation will likely be our new super bear defensive mode where we can actually maintain ridiculous stacks of Ironfur on those really dangerous pulls that we’ve traditionally avoided or regret.
TLDR: I just do not see talent agency as doom-and-gloom as you described it.
1 Like
Guardians can easily overlap multiple IF applications or use certain azerite traits to get multiple applications to proc, but I can assure you that no Guardian is able to maintain 2 IF stacks at a or near a 100% up-time interval.
6 Likes
No, like. no one scales that much better than anyone else. That’s a thing of the past, specs haven’t scales SUPER INSANE since like, MoP. There was some absurdity in Antorus, but that’s because of just how stupidly high ilvls got, not how the specs themselves are designed to scale. If that makes sense.
Possibly, but I can’t help but wonder if there is some merit to Wildheart’s theory.
There have been times as tiers get released and secondary budgets go up, certain tank class power feels as though it increases ever so slightly more exponential than others which feel more linear.
it just seems like there are certain tanks are not as clunky or impacted by the lower secondary budgets we tend to work with in the earlier tiers and as those budgets increase, the scale is very linear where other tanks are more penalized upfront with the lower secondary budgets but come into their own and actually become strong, ideal candidates toward the later part of the expansion.
2 Likes
Let’s assume thinking +100 ilvl from now.
DK can have essentially infinite RP gen, and require little external healing. Prot will have extremely high armor, and a crit block will reduce an attack by as high as 90%+. Paladin will have high SotR uptime and low CD on HotP. Druid will have high uptime on multi-stack ironfur and maybe a not-stupid CD on Frenzied regen. Monk will have essentially free reign to rotation IsB-Purifying-repeat.
If you want to get technical, vdh is probably the only tank spec that doesn’t really scale well with gear, due to all the crap they lost with their artifact.