Guardian in 10.0.5

Classes Druid
185

Ha no, I have had the opposite exp and it has been much easier on the druid. Most likely its because when i played the prot war it was in the first few weeks where people where still learning the dungeons. It was not easy for me to keymaster with my prot war, I am not an elite player and PUGing brings so many challenges i feel like class mitigation is usually not at the top of the list. Mostly just hoping people dont leave the group after one mistake or they actually know the boss mechanic.

I only bring up him maxxing out on a 13 because he tried to devalue my opinion based on my mythic+ rating.

186

Main thing is you said bear was good earlier which is just sooo wrong in so many ways.

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187

Have any of you found a build that implements one of the new talents? Raze is the only one of the four new capstones that have potential but I can’t quite decide how to build around it or if it’s even worth it in the long run.

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Well I mean there are people playing bears that have already reached a mythic rating far beyond anything I will ever see, so I dont feel like i have pushed up against the ceiling yet, and def not at +13 azure vaults like the previous guy lol. My guess is i will start having issues around 16-17 but who knows

I am just speaking from my own exp, I like the playstyle and so far have not had too many issues. I would like to see a dire bear form maybe at some point but other than that I like it. If you want to be a prot war you can roll one dont force changes to bears that not everyone will enjoy

189

That’s the wrong take. No bears in top 200 means whatever your skill cap is, it’s 3 keys lower than what you’d get if you played prot warrs. Sure, you won’t see m20+, but you still are absolutely seeing the effect at +12 or w/e.

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190

you will start randomly getting killed to trash and one shot mechanics far before 17 to 18 level if you do not have defensive abilities up and sometimes if you do. I was testing a few different builds this week and they did not pan out that well so doing lower keys and getting killed on 13s and 14s at times.

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191

Clearly touched a nerve there, eh? Good.

Don’t comment about how bears are in a good place and don’t need work when you are maining the most overpowered spec in the tank meta. Enjoy Prot, glad its working out for you. It’s nice to be the FOTM. But don’t jump on a bear forum and argue that bears shouldn’t be fixed because you nailed KSM on this tiers OP spec but run the odd lowball key on something else.

This is a discussion about how bears are doing and right now there are zero, ZERO bears in the top 200 M+ runners. The second lowest tank spec out of top players is DH at 28th. Every other spec has at least one player in the top 30, bear has NONE in the TOP TWO HUNDRED.

Glad you’re enjoying your Prot, have fun, but don’t try to argue bear is in a good place because you got KSM on your warrior. If anything, your proving the point of all the people arguing against you.

Edit: Why do I only have a +13 AV? Because I got KSM without needing anything higher, its a crap run, and there is zero reason for me to do any runs in there until I get close enough to 2400 for it to matter. Why do I give a crap what my AV run is if I’m between 2k and 2.4k? I’m at 2150 right now, there’s zero reason for me to give even the tinniest crap about what my highest AV is dude.

I called out your HIGHEST key being a +12 on the easiest run this season because that means you aren’t getting nearly one shot by unavoidable damage with mitigation up like people here are talking about. You’re outraged response that the LOWEST key on my dashboard is only a +13 AV misses the entire point of both my post and the discussion.

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192

You got brown eyes…

You mean all 3 times they mentioned dungeons/mythic+ (rdruids, disc and arms? While in the same sentence they say, " Our goal is to also avoid much impact to their raid performance." which implies their core balancing is with raiding. Don’t put words in their mouth.

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M8, you are in the extreme minority here. What are you actually on, have you taken a second to see what people are saying about bear.

The vast vast majority of actual bear players say this absolutely sucks. Bear is unarguably weaker now then they were last week.

I find it funny you are trying to say i dont know what people would want when im litterally agreeing with the fact that, raze is horribly undertuned, lunar beam aswell, berserk nerf was idiotic, bear needs a proper magic dmg reduction mechanic, tnc needs bug fixes, bear hp should be increased dramatically, and many many more massive problems with bear.
These problems are talked about in every single place that bear is mentioned.

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194

Just these 3

Addressing the first 2, takes away the need for the third.

Massive HP pools used to be our magic mitigation. But we no longer have that. Give us a proper magic damage mitigation OR give us massive HP

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195

Just pointing out you have not completed high enough content to have these type of complaints. My response wasnt to the entire point of your post, it was to you trying to devalue my opinion based on my mythic score. Maybe next time put the stone down and dont throw it given the state of your own mythic accomplishments

Edit: What unavoidable damage are you getting one shotted from in your ilevel 400 on a 15 or 16?

196

I could not agree with this more, bring back the high hp bear. The more I have read posts on these forums the more I feel like this is the solution that works best in terms of giving druid an identity and also fixing the issues at high keys

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197

Still missing the point. Go time some 15s and 16s on your druid, then come back here and say bear is in a good place and just as much fun to play and as viable as Prot when you’re pushing high tyrannical keys. You are STILL arguing in literally the post right before this one that they don’t need work because YOU haven’t had trouble running 11s and like the way it feels.

“I am just speaking from my own, exp, I like the playstyle and so far have not had too many issues.”

Everyone else on this thread is telling you that it’s not viable at the cutting edge and has huge problems starting at 15s and you are still arguing, that based on your limited experience in much lower keys and the fact that you have KSM on a completely different class, that they are wrong. You have no leg to stand on. The fact that your highest key is a +12 SBG is exactly why your personal experience is an invalid point of reference for this discussion.

If you were arguing based on overall M+ rankings, mythic raid representation, or some other objective metric (which all show bears WAY behind) then your personal score wouldn’t matter. But when you say “my own exp” and “have not had too many issues,” as they basis for why you are against a much needed rework, the fact that you are nearly 500 points away from KSM on your druid is absolutely relevant.

Also, what mechanics? Dude. Again, go run some 16+ keys on your bear. The jade kick from the 3rd boss in TJS is like an 18-wheeler to the face. Did it on a 17 and was under 20% HP every time, spamming FR and kiting to clear the heal absorb so that the healer could even start getting me up. Finished the run and actually one-pulled that boss but we were well over timer due to team’s struggles elsewhere in the dungeon which is why it isn’t in my highest runs. In that case, it wasn’t even my inability to mitigate the hits that bricked the key, but Christ what a difference that fight is to a DK or a Prot Warrior. Just Spell Reflect or AMS and it isn’t even there.

No way I could do that fight on anything higher without big externals, but to some other tanks it’s like “what kick?” THAT is the problem bears have right now. Since your highest run in there is +10 you don’t see any of that, which again is why it matters that your arguing there are no problems based on your personal experience and your personal experience as a bear for that key taps out at +10.

It sucks to be called out, I get it, I’m sorry it upset you. That doesn’t change the fact that bears are FAR harder to push keys on than any other tank right now AND they just got nerfed. Us Bear mains are justifiably pissed about that and you arguing that we’re wrong because you haven’t felt that pain while pushing keys way below your skill cap isn’t helping.

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198

The issue is this: Look at HoV tyrannical.

1 awesome prot warrior has done it on a 25.

A few tanks have done it on 24.

Lots of tanks have done it on a 23.

The best druid tank has only done a 22. Why? Because we can’t survive.

MDI champs playing druid with MDI level teams are only doing the keys that joe-mythic-raider prot warrior or BDK is doing. And that’s when they have access to great comps and externals.

How are lowly M+ pug tanks even going to get 20s done in that?

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199

They arent. The perception is that you do not pug a guardian. Damage has been done. it is over for pugging.

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200

is Raze fixed? or my numbers are off ?

201

I still think the Guardian third tier is too talent bloated and that the affinity concept is outdated with the talent trees. Numbers can be tuned, but ideally I’d love to see the following changes for Guardian:

  • All Berserk talents consolidated under Berserk: Ravage
  • After the Wildfire changed to an active ability usable after spending 200 rage; stacks up to 2 charges
  • Tier 3 talents relocated / adjusted as follows for 14 points total:
    • Scintillating Moonlight merged with and moved to Fury of Nature (tier 2)
    • Ursoc’s Fury moved to Berserk: Unchecked Aggression (tier 2)
    • Rend and Tear / Untamed Savagery moved to Ursoc’s Fury
    • Lunar Beam buffed moderately and moved to Berserk: Persistence (tier 2)
    • Moonless Night moved to Scintillating Moonlight
    • Dream of Cenarius Moved to Moonless Night
    • Pulverize moved to Dream of Cenarius
    • Flashing Claws reduced to 1 point (15%)
    • Twin Moonfire removed
    • Galactic Guardian procs instead apply to Starfire if talented to make Starfire instant cast, usable in bear form, grant 8 rage, and applies Moonfire to all targets hit (otherwise, the current implementation with Moonfire at 300% and additionally applies the DoT effect to 5 nearby non-cc’d enemies)
    • Thorns of Iron deals arcane damage instead of physical
  • Sunfire, Rejuvination, and Swiftmend added to Ursine Adept (Rejuvenation and Swiftmend buffed moderately)
  • Tooth and Claw damage reduction also works against magic
  • Raze consumes only one stack of Tooth and Claw (fixed)
  • Buff Dream of Cenarius to return to pre-10.0.5 levels with the recent separation of Protector of the Pack
  • Path added to class tree nodes between Sunfire and Remove Corruption
  • Path added to class tree nodes between Nurturing Instinct, Natural Recovery, and Astral Influence
  • Path added to class tree nodes between Natural Recovery and Improved Sunfire
  • Gale Winds / Incessant Tempest moved directly under Typhoon; Typhoon connects directly to Mass Entanglement / Ursol’s Vortex
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202

I haven’t posted on these forums in ages, but I agree that guardian feels worse than it has well, since I started playing druid back in Legion, and this rework did not uhh…work.

I mostly play balance and resto in DF so far because of it. Moonbear build worked well enough for the occasional M+ or filling in as a raid tank, wasn’t great but got the job done, and now it’s worse than it was before the patch. I was looking forward to playing bear more, but now it’s looking like I’ll just play it less.

Main problems with guardian as I see it in no particular order

Talent tree is bloated at the bottom, we have 20 tier 3 nodes, the most of ANY tank. We can only pick 10 of them. Several talents really shouldn’t be at the bottom, for example the 10/20% thrash proc chance one should be reduced to 1 point and moved further up. To contrast this, the tank with the fewest, to no surprise, is prot warrior. They have 12 1 point tier 3 talents, and 1 2 point tier 3 talent. Guardian druid has 16 1 point talents and 2 2 point talents in tier 3. It feels more like we’re choosing what to give up than choosing what to take with so many.

Lot of 2 point nodes. 2 point nodes are usually numerical and boring and it feels bad to invest in them.

Berserk - why does this require 3 talents? Why are these talents mandatory to path to other talents? Consolidate this to one talent, especially since you’ve nerfed the topmost one to only be 50% cooldown reduction.

Lunar Beam - severely undertuned. Give it way more damage/healing, and IMO some utility like maybe it acts as boomkin solar beam would and is an aoe silence/interrupt. Warrior literally has this with challenging shout, AND theirs is way easier to get to and higher up in the tree. Capstone abilities SHOULD be strong, and this one feels like it should be in tier 1 with current tuning.

Utility competes with damage – ie the infected wounds 50% slow, no one ever takes it. It’s fine for utility to compete with damage if it’s STRONG utility, but a 50% slow as a talent, even if it’s “permanent” is weak. Many other classes can do similar slows baseline or as part of other abilities they’d take for damage anyway. Either make it baseline or merge it into another talent so it gives damage + utility.

Ironfur - boring, not impactful, even with the new ironfur talent that gives it a little damage. And that talent is not worth taking since it’s on tier 3 and competes against 19 other talents for 10 points. It’s just not very fun to use and often you can’t even really tell the difference. A lot of damage is magic which ironfur does absolutely nothing against. It’s wild its better to just ignore your low CD tank defensive rage spender and blow all your rage on maul instead because it literally does nothing on heavy magic damage fights or pulls. Which brings me to another point…

Magic damage – we’re weak against it. Yeah, we’ve got some CD’s we can use like barkskin, SI, rage of the sleeper, etc. but once you cycle through those you’ve got nothing. Magic damage is usually much more threatening than physical this expansion. We need something against it. I suggest reworking ironfur and making it work against magical damage, or going back to the legion model where you could use ironfur for physical damage and mark of ursol? (i think it was called that) to mitigate magical, but you can’t do both at once.

Presumably bugs:
Tooth and claw DR doesn’t work against magic
Raze isn’t a guardian ability so it doesn’t benefit from any talents or the +50% damage buff aura they gave to guardian before DF launched because we were so bad.

Identity – bear used to be the “big wall of HP” tank, and the “dodge agility tank” in past incarnations. I dont really feel like we have any sort of identity any more. I can’t think of anything bears really excel at any more or any particular niche we have.

Utility in class tree – this goes for all druids, but locking stuff like typhoon behind a huge investment in moonkin focused points feels bad. These utility talents really should be more accessible without such a huge investment

EDIT: heres a thought for magical damage, why not something we can press to “convert” our ironfur stacks to instead mitigate magic? That way it has a drawback and interesting gameplay, we can hit it and convert our stacks, but we might be vulnerable to physical damage momentarily if we don’t have rage saved to put ironfur back up.

Put it on a short CD like spell reflect.

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203

Also, was there an undocumented “fix” for Protector of the Pack? I’m almost positive it used to apply to Regrowth before Dream of Cenarius 3x multiplier. Now it appears to only add the flat value of ~20k.

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It’s hard to believe that you actually expect readers to believe that random trolls in GD who have never played Druid or tanked understand Druid tanking better than Druid tanks.

That is just so breathtakingly out there. But you do come up with some curious takes when you are needed to man the barricades and fight to defend your masters.

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