I don’t personally find Guardian boring, though I do see how others could find it so. Thematically, I love how Guardian works. From a class fantasy perspective, the form does everything you’d expect it to do. But I will say this, the spec is still clearly designed around the Legion artifact abilities. Abilities, now long absent. There’s definitely room here for our existing abilities to be buffed in effect, and form.
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Indeed. We don’t need Lacerate back, for example. Lacerate was rolled into Thrash at the community’s request, a few years ago. It should stay removed.
You can spice up the spec plenty without adding more buttons, I went into great detail about how to do that on the alpha forum.
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There are a number of talents in the Guardian tree that seem like they’re designed to make the spec more nuanced/interesing to play. Guardian of Elune and Pulverize both introduce new interactions between abilities, as do the Guardian’s Wrath Azerite trait, and Sharpened Claws PvP talent. The trouble is that those talents/traits are (mostly) not competitive with other, easier to use options.
I’m firmly in the camp that believes Guardian needs a significant makeover, but if Blizzard is determined to put that off for yet another expansion, they could do worse than buffing some of those talents into relevance.
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Pulverize is actually getting NERFED in Shadowlands. 10 second duration with a (LOL) 30 second cooldown!
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Averages out to be what, a 6% damage reduction? Old one was a 9%.
Rend and tear, which is a passive on the same tier, you dont have to do anything to activate other than your normal rotation, is also a constant 6%. Hmm, which will be the go to talent, i wonder…
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Plus Rend & Tear gives a damage bonus and works against more than 1 target!
The advantage of Pulverize was that it worked against ALL damage, even AoE’s and environment effects. That’s getting removed in Shadowlands, too! It will only reduce damage from ONE target.
I really don’t know what Blizzard is smoking.
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This is terrible if true. I read it as a barkskin type of effect.
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I agree that they could add to the spec (Guardian) without adding to the actionbar and still make it an interesting and engaging play style.
They should remove abilities that are added via a talent and in return have the talents enhance the abilities.
15:
Brambles improves Barkskin (leave in current state)
Blood Frenzy improves Rage Generation (leave in current state)
Make Bristling Fur improve the Armor % or Duration of Iron Fur.
25:
Tiger Dash improves the Dash Talent
Renewal replaced with an extra charge of Frenzy Regen (3)
Wild Charge Baseline Ability gains and extra charge (2)
30:
Balance Affinity - Increase range of all Spells
Feral Affinity - Increase Movement Speed and Damage to Bleeds & Dots
Resto Affinity - Increase Healing Given and Received
Guardian Affinity - Decrease Damage Received and Increase Stamina (applicable to other specs)
35:
Baseline Bash Ability -> Improved Upon Bash Talent (Extra Duration or Shorten CD)
Baseline Roots Ability -> Mass Entanglement Talent
Heart of the Wild replaced with Baseline Hibernate -> Cast on Humanoids. (Think Wyvern Sting)
40:
This row is fine as is (more on this later)
45:
This is row is fine. Each talent serves a unique purpose and is viable in different situations.
50:
Rend & Tear
Each stack of Thrash reduces the target’s physical damage to you by X% and increases your damage to them by X%
Lunar Beam changed to Lunar Protector (Placeholder name)
Each stack of Thrash reduces the target’s magic damage to you by X% and increases your damage to them by X%
Thick Hide
Increase your Armor and Stamina Contribution from items by X%
I have always felt that Thrash and Swipe were just too redundant. Remove Swipe and keep the application of Thrash just the way it is and how it interacts with Talents but add an ability similar to Fury’s Whirlwind
Ability that causes your next 2 single-target attacks (Mangle/Maul) to strike up to 2 additional targets for 50% damage.
This now gives interaction with Talents on row 50 and 40 (Soul of the Forest). GG and Incarn still have usefulness but now has a challenger to Encounters with less than 3 adds.
Pulverize is now baseline and replaces Swipe’s absence on the Actionbar to the on demand damage reduction at the cost of Thrash stacks.
These changes would also free us up from Vortex/Typhoon “pick your poison” that we will have to dance around because we will have the ability of improved CC in form via Bash, Roots and Hibernate.
I may be way out of bounds on this but I like to hear from other Guardians on how they envision a Guardian Toolkit. For the most part people do not want Cookie Cutter specs or Niche Roles in a group composition. I feel that each row would make a player decide on their talent loadout depending on encounter.
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Why are you all so scared of actually having buttons to press? Prot warriors have 22 buttons to press + azerite major + 1-2 trinkets + professions (pots w/e). I dont hear their community lamenting that they have too many buttons. In fact all i see is the world’s best playing prot warriors. No, you dont need to use all of them every pull, but you have niche abilities for certain times, which is what separates the good tanks from the bad ones.
Are you scared of the skill ceiling and skill floor of the spec actually separating?
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Who said that I am scared of having too many buttons? My Druid has more Keybinds than my Warrior, DK , DH, Paladin and Monk tanks. I was responding and agreeing with Tewa in regards to they don’t need to give us extra abilities for the sake of extra abilities. Tewa’s reference of removing the bleed from Thrash to give us Lacerate again was a spot on example.
Get out of here with that skill level ceiling and floor BS. This is about making a spec more interesting to play. It is about giving the spec the proper tools for players to use.
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I’ve played all the tanks in BFA fairly exstensively and tbh they all just feel the same to me. You got your 2 main attacks, your active mitigation and your AOE. They sliiiiiiiiiiightly differ but when i jump from one tank to another it doesnt really feel like much of a change. I keep going back to druid though mainly for the QOL stuff. Stealth, insta flight form, etc. Always miss that stuff on other classes.
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Seems implicit in your statements about not wanting more buttons…
Not everything can be fixed by slapping passives onto the buttons you have.
This cant possibly be true. Please tell me how you have more than 22 buttons you actively use while tanking, which is what prot warriors have.
Warrior (22): Avatar, Last Stand, Shield Wall, Shield Slam, Thunderclap, Shield block, devastate, ignore pain, revenge, taunt, victory rush, pummel, berserker rage, heroic throw, rallying cry, intimidating shout, shock wave, heroic leap, intercept, spell reflect, demoralizing shout, storm bolt.
Druid (15): Bristling fur, wild charge, typhoon, moon fire, thrash, swipe, mangle, maul, survival instincts, frenzied regen, ironfur, growl, barksin, skull bash, stamp roar.
Maul is questionably whether its ever worth using, considering its a single target 40 rage 125% autoattack crit.
All the warrior cooldowns are at or under 1 minute with azerite traits and anger management other than shield wall. Survival instincts is a 3 minute CD 50% for 6 sec, versus shield wall 4 minute 40% for 8 sec, but shield wall is up far more often with anger management, every rage bar knocking 10 seconds off its CD. With memory of lucid dream up, its not uncommon to generate a full rage bar every two GCD.
Not that its strictly relevant to how boring the spec is, but the top 500 keystone runs, have a grand total of 24 druid tanks in them, ~4%. All 24 runs are the same 2 dudes. Not well represented. Worse in top 1000, only 35.
Assumption on your part. Read my response as a response to Tewa’s post. But in case you can’t or won’t do that I will spell it out. They do not need to separate abilities (i.e. Thrash + Lacerate example) for the sake of giving us more abilities. Do we also need similar abilities (Thrash & Swipe) when they could improve upon one that would allow it to interact with the spec more effectively? I also mentioned that we would receive Bash, Charge, Lacerate baseline. I asked for one to be removed and three to be added baseline.
I really don’t get where you are coming from. I am not advocating from a dumbing down or pruning of the spec. I am asking for potential changes to make it more engaging and more well rounded. Why are you throwing Warrior knowledge at me as well? I understand Warrior and have yet to compare the two classes. My druid has more keybinds because Druids have more abilties available to them.
I use the same keybinds setup for every character and I tend to put the similar abilities between classes on the same keybind since most Tank setups are similar in abilities (Taunt, active mitigation, etc). My personal playstyle is to try to keybind every ability that could possibly be needed at any given moment. I currently have 43 keybinds associated to action bars. On my druid I do not have any empty keybinds in fact I have a few abilities that are macro’d together into one keybind ( Remove Corruption, Soothe, Battle Rez). Bash/Typhoon share a keybind as well as Vortex and Chage.
My Warrior keybinds are almost 100% filled but I do in fact have more keybinds and macro’s for my Druid than any other class I play. Brewmaster is right up there as well all though I really don’t play it.
My setup is different than yours. It does not make one of us right nor the other one wrong.
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I agree these fill the same roll, and it sucks to have to spam swipe when you see brewmasters with their fire and forget aoe buff that does it for them.
You brought it up saying you had more buttons that a prot warrior
This statement wasnt true and immediately makes me question anything else you say.
What?? Guardian druids have 32 abilities total. Some of those are out of combat only, and many are off spec abilities from your affinity that you would be a clown to try and cast while tanking.
I apologize, i cant take you seriously, and i’m afraid you might be trying to troll.
Not trolling you and read the entire posts. I try to keybind every ability. No I am not popping out of Bear to cast of a Rejuv, Swiftmend, Wild Growth while actively tanking but I might do so after a pull to help with Nercrotic or while I am FC’ing in RBG’s. You also have to take into consideration PvP Talents.
When actively tanking I am using maybe 15-16 abilities and most of those are situational and not used on cooldown. I also have a keybind by Pots/Healthstones, Focus and my Cloak. My total number of keybinds remains the same. That is how I run my setup.
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Considering that in SL Guardian will have HotW, effectively allowing you to be a proper “off tank” again, with a proper dps spec, or conversely, a clutch healer, combined with the other abilities we’re getting baseline, I’d say it should be better than it is right now.
That being said, every time someone calls Guardian boring, someone else eventually compares EVERY. SINGLE. ABILITY. to Warrior, to show that the rotation is almost identical. They have Thunderclap, we have Thrash, they have Revenge, we have Swipe, etc etc etc. Other than Heroic Leap and 1 extra charge, Bear and Warrior are almost identical outside of damage and defense tuning. And now Druid will once again have the utility to be worth taking over a Warrior or Blood DK.
True to a point but that can be applicable to every tank spec. Each tank still offer’s a touch of flavor that separates them from the other spec. Some tanks may be similar in some regards but no two specs are identical.
HOTW will not be the “thing” that makes us more desirable than other tanks.
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Someone should let all the players that tank know so maybe we can get more than a 3.5% representation at high level. “Its the same guys!”
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That’s why I said the only major difference is the numbers tuning. It isn’t really going to matter anyway in SL as Dks of all specs are gods again and have uber utility. BrM is so easy it’s boring, and Prot Paladin is extremly fun and going to be very strong. Guardian is still going to be the least played tank. Maybe if Blizzard would give Druids back all the utility they’ve taken away that would change. It has nothing to do with Guardian in itself, Druids as a whole are getting boned.
1 Like