Now that the new expansion is live, I wanted to open up a discussion about Guardian Druids and how everyone is feeling about our current state. With all the changes that have been implemented, I’m curious to see how you all are experiencing the new mechanics and playstyles.
Here are a few things to consider:
Survivability: Do you feel more resilient in dungeons and raids compared to previous expansions?
Damage Output: Are you finding a good balance between tanking and contributing to overall damage?
Talents and New Abilities: Which talents have you found to be game-changers, and are there any that you feel missed the mark?
Content Experience: How has your experience been in different types of content—mythic+, raids, and PvP?
Please share your feedback and insights! Let’s discuss how we’re adapting and what we hope to see in future patches. Looking forward to hearing from all of you!
It’s just based on heroics… but I felt pretty good when I was doing a thrash/raze build.
Then I switched to laser-bear and it’s feels VERY strong, but it could be a little precarious. You’re really counting on all that healing from your damage output, and I could see going from 0-100 pretty quick on over-estimating yourself.
But we don’t feel weak when we have CDs up. It’s just the same old story of bear: You feel squishy on pull unless you’ve got barkskin rolling, but after a few layered mains you’re good.
Playing EC and it feels “ok”. Not great so a bit worried going into m+ and will have to see how it goes. The other hero spec i am not interested in the slightest so it also feels a bit limiting.
I dont really have great gear yet because I took it a bit slow and played some other classes. Maybe it will change secondary stats are still garbage and all. I feel a bit rage starved at times and assume its a bit of the stat thing and me just not focused on my rotation since the content is not challenging yet.
i levelled it and dk to 80 after my hunter. took both dk and bear to heroics as soon as i got them to 551. both were around 550-560 with nothing fancy and no enchants except the dk self enchant.
bear felt extremely squishy. i was basically popping frenzy regen on cooldown along with trying to keep two stacks of iron fur going at all times. bear has really good damage but dk feels tougher thanks to their overall kit and death strike healing for several million in a single shot.
i’m going to do prot warrior next but i dont think it’s going to be much better than bear. most of the deadliest damage coming in the current dungeons is magic not physical and there’s a lot of it.
Bear feels great. Surprised at how good I’m finding Druid of the Claw for dungeons (as long as you have a Shaman around). Ursoc’s Fury could use a bit of a bump, but they never seem to be happy with its %.
I really like EC, but the healing feels so much worse after the tank nerfs to UF and EF that a large part of what made EC feel good was hit hard by those 50%ish nerfs.
Right now, DotC is feeling the best for me, but depending on how balancing happens after heroic week, hopefully both specs will feel good.
… maybe some day we’ll get work done to our general and spec tree to get us up to the other classes, but for now we’re good.
I haven’t felt squishy at all. In fact I am pulling extra to see how much I can actually take. So far the only death I took was when I stepped in a hole and fell to my death in that damn spider dungeon. Were you going into pulls without any mitigation rolling? Dungeon mechanic familiarity? Was the incoming damage magic or rot? Just trying to understand your experiences so far.
I am the opposite. I am really (dream ) grooving with EC. I feel like I always have a CD to pop from one pull to the next. The damage and self-sustain have been better than what I thought it would be.
I was really looking forward to "heal"moonbear with giant Thrashes and moonfire flooding me with heals on large packs.
The 50% nerf to EF and UF really hit that hard. For now, I’m enjoying my DotC bear with a bit of moonfire. I have nearly the same self healing as EC, but during Incarn I really go off with Mangle-Ravage spams buffed up with Vicious Cycle. Hit some pretty big Ravages so the damage feels good.
Only issue with DotC is feeling like I’m chained to a Shaman, but my M+ healer will be a resto shaman, so I’m ok with it.
Skyfury = Windfury = 20% higher chance to proc Ravage out of cooldowns. Combine that with as much haste as you can get and I’m pretty close to keeping up the Ravage dot on packs fulltime at full heroic gear (which I can only assume will keep scaling as we truly gear up).
During cooldowns, its great, mostly Mangle - Ravage (with 45% stronger from VC) while keeping thrash up and having moonfires spread around automatically.
Out of Incarn is where it has issues, as drought of Ravage sucks… lots of haste + Skyfury makes that feel better.
And a reminder, shifting to cat form is ONLY for raid bosses… if they had given bears access to Primal Wrath it could have been really cool, but sadly not.
Ive been levelling as guardian. Its pretty good. I can pull many mobs and just grind them down. Its not as good as prot pally - which does twice the damage. But hey its just levelling. I’ll re-evaluate at 80.
Its clunky. It really needed the melee range buff to feel good. Many things constantly keep being out of range and every other tank has 2 mobility buttons vs bears single charge.
Willpower surge +Strike of the heart (Huge cat dmg after 6mangles and you keep bear armor while cat)
Sounds like fun gameplay but the buff is NOT easy to keep up. 15second timer on it sounds great in theory but I have it fall often while utilizing other globals.
As a point of design, Druid of the Claw(for bear) is a missed opportunity that I can’t express harshly enough.
The special ability(Ravage, rip Massive Attack) is a random chance proc, so you can have dry spells and just feel like garbage.
Mangle gives a buff that allows you to shift to cat and do a big rip or bite, but only after 6 stacks of the buff, which takes 30 seconds(5 second cooldown at 80 haste values) to stack. Most packs are dead in heroics by then.
I feel like they had the right idea: you shift between forms then get a temporary buffs and benefits before shifting back, and that would be a fantastic design, damn the numbers. But they didn’t go that route; they gated it HARD.
) grooving with EC. I feel like I always have a CD to pop from one pull to the next. The damage and self-sustain have been better than what I thought it would be.