What do you guys think if blizzard return Lacerate stacks to a rotation + make pulverize and infested wounds baseline? For me it sounds almost perfect. The only missing parts will be Innervate and Leader of the pack, but I can live without them.
Also I really miss class specific debuffs (e.g. Faerie Fire or bleeds debuff from Mangle, but I understand that game have changed since then and there are no place for them in the current state).
I’m a big fan of Faerie Fire and I’d love to see it return. Here are some ideas as to how it could fit in modern WoW as the static armor debuff doesn’t quite fit the game any more:
It would be great, especially I like 3% phys/mag damage given that other classes already have it.
NO, NO, NO.
Lacerate was removed at the bear community’s request, being rolled into Thrash.
The last thing we need is a required single-target poop ability added just to create more busywork.
As for Pulverize, being baseline would be great, but I want the current version, not the nerfed Shadowlands version (10 second duration, 30 second cooldown…).
I see, you are right. And what about class specific debuffs (like mangle and ff). Do you think if it can work well with current state of a game?
I’ve written at length about the state & future of Guardian in the alpha forums here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-druid-class-changes/490706/13?u=tewa-hyjal
And here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/feedback-druid-class-changes/490706/14?u=tewa-hyjal
Such a great feedback, I really hope that they will consider it in beta. I like your vision of bear much more comparing to what we have today.
I’m starting to play my bear, trying to push keys and yeah it’s just a pretty dull spec, I still enjoy it. Like everyone has mentioned, you can’t leave bear form to do anything very long unless you want to die. I like how the different affinity options give you choice, but in reality you get few opportunities to do anything with them in M+.
What if there was an ability/passive that gave you a short window to cast spells from your affinity while in bear form, I think that would be all you need to spice guardian without any big changes. Just something like a 2 charge ability on 90 second CD that gives say 4 seconds to cast a few abilities from your affinity, whether you catweave for extra damage while tanking, or use balance spells to help kill something away from you which can’t be taunted, maybe you need some group heals to help your healer or something, maybe the healer died and you just need to top up the group one last time, I just think there needs to be a way to do this while in bear form. Give us the utility while also interacting with our selected affinity.
Agreed. Heck, I’d accept allowing them to cost Rage or Energy to cast them while in the spec’s Form, which would help make Feral more interesting as well.
Or what if the Incarnation Talents offered this ability while under its affect? It would definitely make them much more interesting.
What if we could actually use our class abilities in bear form, just like how Prot Paladins can use their class abilities without having to drop their shield.
I think Warriors should have stances unpruned, and abilities should be locked to Sword & Board vs 2-hander. It fair for Druids, why not Warriors too? (/bitter sarcasm)
More class changes up on the beta, and by class changes, blizzard means covenant abilities. Not actual class design. Lol.
Its comically absurd at this point
I wish they would spend their time making interesting and compelling class changes, rather than trying to shoehorn in “improvements” to a terrible covenant ability that might actually be worse than the previous awful incarnation.
I disagree, at least with rage generation in its current form.
Do not forget that there is the gimmick essence that enhances rage generation and azerite traits that provide periodic extra mitigation stacks with Ironfur, all of which will be non-existent in Shadowlands. That said, the current state of how fast Guardian builds rage doesn’t warrant adding extra consuming spells to the table outside of active mitigation. This problem already exists with Maul and is why its never used outside of off-tanking or trivial content scenarios now.
I think it’s important to remember that:
So in both these hybrid tank scenarios, accessing spells from sibling specs do force a trade-off, that trade-off being they’re going to take more damage while they’re actively tanking.
The question then becomes is a Guardian loosing 40-50% of their health and their substantial armor value equal to the above trade-off?
And if we were casting Regrowth in bear form, we wouldn’t be able to dodge either, which is a good comparison.
Now let’s look a little further:
*Does BrM drop all his defenses to cast Paralysis? No.
*Does Prot Paladin drop his shield to cast Repentance? No.
*Will Guardian have to drop all his defenses to cast Cyclone? You betcha.
Nor does Blizzard go and make a big deal out of a “class wide ability” going to these classes in Shadowlands, except these specs can’t even use them. (i.e. Heart of the Wild)
Exactly, which is precisely the stance I was trying to convey, Guardian simply gives up way more in their trade-off for access to their sibling spec spells than any other hybrid tank, hands-down.
Allowing access to these spells with this trade-off then means that when we need to use these spells, we have a trade-off that is comparable. That’s much different than
I just personally think that the Affinity row just muddies the water now that they’ve tied spells that can be used in form with those that can’t.
I would rather they cost Rage than not being able to use them at all, in other words, as they are now.
Still, a strong argument could be made regarding Rage costs being almost at an all or nothing level needing to be adjusted.
That’s what did it for me too. Out of all the other changes, Frenzied Regen on the GCD just felt awful to use, and completely unnecessary. I remember thinking “well, to hell with this then,” logging in to my Brewmaster, and haven’t picked Guardian back up since.
Not only that but FR no longer increases due to increased dmg intake. its just a flat % now. Which is even worse.