Blizz has a fairly new post up in the SL Class feedback forum. It would likely be better if we had some Guardian players that are in beta join in that. Looking last night i saw 1 Guardian mention in almost 200 post.
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Bumping this because I am also a guardian druid main who doesn’t want to be forgotten! Give us some love, Blizz! <3
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It really is. The other tank specs have aspects to them that make them a lot of fun in their own ways.
But guardian is just God awful bland boringness.
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I see this often and I’m just curious how is Guardian anymore boring that say a Warrior that hits Thunderclap every other ability during Avatar and every third when outside of Avatar?
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Guardian is…how to put this, the most ‘upkeep’ based tank, insofar as I’m aware/would describe it.
Let’s compare it to monk, since they were the most similar and got the best (imo) QoL change for brewmaster. Brewmaster used to have to split charges between ironskin brew and the cleanse brew - however, that just meant that the brewmaster went more for UPTIME on ironskin brew over, say, using it to absorb specific attacks, and then the cleanse was used in a more ‘when needed’.
Ultimately, the playstyle evolved to the point where Ironskin brew buff could be made totally passive and it wouldn’t necessarily change BrM’s playstyle - and that’s basically what Blizzard did, making it so that your attack skills did the job of upkeeping Ironskin brew for you because it really wasn’t an interesting mechanic in the first place. It was, as I said, an ‘upkeep’ thing.
Ironskin brew is similar to Ironfur in that manner - it doesn’t really have any sort of…mechanical interplay in that you keep up at least one stack most of the time, and occasionally ‘burst’ up to 2 or more stacks to deal with hard hitting skills. It’s gotten to the point where it’s mostly passive mitigation you get just by hitting buttons when they’re up, as opposed to something you have to pay attention to (like when to cleanse stagger).
Take a look at…I think Purvilize? It was changed from an UPKEEP skill - aka you can brainlessly keep it up pretty easily by thrashing, then consuming thrash to get the damage mitigation - it’s basically fire and forget. You can maintain the buff by doing what you would normally do.
If I recall correctly,k in Shadowlands they’re changing it from an ‘upkeep’ skill to something you have to find the ‘best’ spot to use it - from effectively passive mitigation that has a short ramp-up time to…IIRC the duration is 10 seconds, the damage reduction is much more powerful, and the cooldown is 30 seconds.
Now - that’s not to say WoW is a super action game. Even the most complex or ‘interesting’ or ‘active’ of tank mitigation still falls very, very short of what other games are putting out, so I want to avoid going down that path. But, suffice to say, Guardian really is the most basic of tank specs at the moment. I mean, just look at Brewmaster - blizzard changed Ironskin brew to be more passively upkept because it became such a ‘approach 100% uptime as close as possible’ skill it was just boring. So now gameplay has shifted more towards cleansing at the proper time and shielding at the proper time, and buffing the shield through using cleanse.
Hopefully this clears things up. Obviously, tanks are going to have skills they use on repeat, such as swipe for guardians, devestate for warriors, and so on and so forth.
It’s mind boggling how Blizzard saw the issues with Brewmaster’s design, but has completely failed to see the exact same issue - and then fix it - in druid. It doesn’t really seem like much of anything would change if Blizzard made swipe/thrash upkeep 1 stack of ironfur or equivalent armor buff, and then just nerfed rage gen accordingly or something…because the druid is probably gonna always have at last 1 stack of the buff rolling anyway. I do hope guardian gets something more interesting to manage than just a buff you occasionally use multiple times to get overlap.
Edit: That ended up longer than I thought it would. But heck, why not add more.
OKay so druid’s ‘thing’ is the multi-roll stuff. I mean, it’s kinda obvious what blizzard pushes druid towards…yet Guardian sufffers from this issue where the role it fills, and how it fills it, ensures it can’t benefit as much from any sort of multi-role abilities. Shift out of bear form and you lose all your armor and a chunk of health. Bears are just blobs of armor and health, really, with a bunch of extra skills they can’t actually use or use far too rarely.
Why not just let bear druids use all the skills they get from Resto attunement, but put the skills on a longer cooldown and make them stronger? Give it the Pulverize treatment - longer cooldown so you need to use it at the right moment, but bigger impact. Currently, their design has a lot of…clashing.
I disagree.
I think it makes more sense that the spells we should be able to access can be cast but with appropriate penalties, just not as harsh a penalty as we get now when we shift out of form.
PPally and BrM do not loose their active mitigation while casting Flash of Light or Vivify; however they are unable to dodge, block, or parry attacks during the casting of the abilities. So why not give druid similar treatment.
Bear Form
Your affinity spells can be cast while in bear form; however casting spells that have a cast time or alternate shapeshift requirement prevents you from dodging attacks and your physical mitigation is reduced by x% during the cast.
The idea is that this allows a Guardian to use abilities across all their affinity toolkits with a decent penalty but one which wouldn’t be so detrimental.
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BrM isn’t marketed as ‘the hybrid class’ or whatever you would like to call it. It doesn’t have an entire row of talents dedicated to giving BrM off-role skills.
Now - I think you have a pretty decent idea, I just disagree with the premise. Prot paladins and BrM are pretty much never going to cast Vivify/FoL in combat…and why would they, those skills are baseline anyway and they have better things to be doing.
I don’t think it’s a very good comparison to equate baseline skills that seem like they were put there for out of combat healing up(?) to a core feature/class fantasy of druids and then use that to treat them the same or similar.
That’s why I suggested giving the skills the Pulverize treatment. Obviously, having like…half a resto druid in addition to a tank that, while (imo) lackluster, can still actually do the content…That would, imo, start edging into OP territory - but longer cooldown/higher benefit/higher cost would give the guardian something to play around with.
That said, I’m PvE only so…who knows how it’ll turn out in PvP, but somebody else can think about that.
On another note, I think it’d be cool if the usage of whatever skills the bear gets from affinity had some sort of mechanic to it, so it isn’t just ‘here’s some free skills you can use’ - not an outright DRAWBACK, but a mechanic. But I don’t think it’s a very good idea to outright punish bear tanks for wanting to actually indulge in the class fantasy and make use of talents.
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I think it does not matter whether the spell is baseline or an extension provided by a talent option, the outcome remains universal and that is as a tank you have much better things to be doing like generating threat, mob control, or the most obvious being mitigating damage.
So in truth, I think what you said has merit and applies even to Guardian.
That’s part of the problem with the affinity row, its a mixture of both worlds. You have situations where the affinity rows are only applicable out of combat and others where they’re applicable in combat, and then others where you’re in combat but you aren’t actively tanking.
Balance Affinity
This is great for all specs in combat.
Feral Affinity
This is great for all speces in combat outside of Guardian while actively tanking.
Resto Affinity
This is great for all specs, in or out of combat except for Guardian. With the changes to Swiftmend, its value is severely devalued during combat and the only real reason to dabble with this as a Guardian during combat is for Vortex; otherwise its really only an out-of-combat or while off-tanking option.
Guardian Affinity
This is great for all specs, in or out of combat.
At this point in time in SL, the only real reason to take any affinity is mostly limited to 2 questions:
- Do you need a knockback, if so you take Balance.
- Do you need a grip to keep mobs from fleeing, if so you take Resto.
That’s it.
There’s no fantasy here at all. They’ve literally taken a set of talent options which during BFA were possible for Guardian and said you can have one or the other, that’s it. There’s no reason why those choices should be mutually exclusive that has any tie to fantasy.
The reason it was done was to break Guardian out of the cookie cutter choice which was almost always that you took Resto Affinity.
I’ve said this countless times in other posts, the affinity row is garbage and it should be done away with entirely. If we’re suppose to be focusing on class identity here, then why aren’t all these things merely baseline in the first place and this entire row replaced with relevant choices that are spec specific?
This is probably why how you describe these affinities working will never get done because that’s exactly how the non-druid communities will perceive these changes and thus the end result will be a neutered version that really will end up having very little impact or use in practice.
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At first I was confused about how bear was boring. Then I realised it probably could be boring if you only raided.
In mythic plus, im constantly shifting to off heal or to kite. Jumping all over the place collecting mobs chain pulling, pressing vortex and typhoon and burning CDs to stay alive. I mean I don’t really think any other tank spec is much more interesting.
You can’t get too far into mythic plus on Guardian if you just sit there and push thrash, swipe, and iron fur. You’d die and your damage would be low.
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Which you can’t do in Shadowlands.
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You can’t both typhoon or vortex I agree we should have both.
But shifting will become even more important because it will raise our health 28% and our armor 28% for 4 seconds. I pretty much shift on every boss cast bar to Swiftmend or regrowth. Once the boss casts I’ll have a heal go off and also 4 seconds of a strong CD.
I already shift on packs or bosses that are difficult. Doing this in a way to not get hit and get off a heal or kite takes more skill than just sitting there spamming iron fur.
I think typhoon might be replaced by instant cast mass roots and possibly instant cast single root.
These are riskier to use because large damage can instantly break them. It would be nice to have the PvP talent that makes them last longer.
Perhaps roots will take more skill than typhoon.
Anyway I’m not arguing that Druid is good right now. They’re not. They need love. THEY NEED BUFFS. I’m only arguing they are fun to play.
I’m just saying you can’t walk into an 18+ and spam thrash, swipe, and iron fur and expect to time the key. Druids are more than 3 buttons and NOT boring if you are playing correctly. The class fantasy of Druid is shifting to other forms. That’s what I do and to me it’s not boring.
Druids survivability and extra buttons come from having to shift and use other forms to not die. This isn’t traditional mitigation, but it’s necessary imo.
EDIT: You are missing the knock back from typhoon, which I used to interrupt all the time. But you can use incapacitating roar and (if you have it) war stomp.
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You’re going to be disappointed in a few months, then.
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I know you need a hot. But I usually regrowth to get out of form then swift mend.
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I think alot of people are downplaying the changes to swiftmend in SL. It’s harder to use than before, for sure, but it’s still doable. I’ve been leveling on the PTR as multiple druid specs and I just basically soloed the last boss as Guardian with resto affinity. There is a moment when the boss stops attacking you to cast something and that is when I popped rejuvenation - swiftmend - back to bear form just in time to start tanking again. It saved my group a wipe because everyone died except me about 2/3 of the way through the fight.
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The crickets are getting pretty deafening.
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Anyway, just to be clear, I think Guardian needs buffs and/or more utility. I think we are possibly the worst tank. I also think we have a lot of potential.
But on the other hand I think the spec is fun and I also think the spec is more than three buttons if played properly.
I am not saying Guardian is fine, just that I enjoy playing it. I’ve played all the tanks (except Monk) to at least 10+ keys. Non of them felt more complicated than Bear.
All took skill to play well.
I mean Bear survival is a lot more about timing and positioning than the other tanks (in mythic plus).
DK is also about timing, but less about positioning.
Druid tank is the one I have to move the most with, that’s what shifting is for.
Edit: I mean in TOS today I shifted to cat sprinted, jumped off a small cliff. Mid air rejuvenation/Swift mend. Land far enough away then hard cast regrowth and back into bear form followed by a cd and back into iron fur.
To me this is more than swipe, thrash and iron fur.
Meanwhile they gave Brewmasters back stagger working on magic damage, today. Hilarious.
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I don’t think anyone disputes that it’s still doable but it comes at a cost of having to spend 1 additional GCD than before to accomplish the same result. No matter how you try and spin that, its an overall net nerf to its use compared to how we can take advantage of this affinity on live.
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That’s all well and good, but that begs the question why is this necessary?
The more a tank has to rely on these gimmicks to live in a M+ just illustrates that our spec isn’t on par with other tanks and that this distracts and takes away from the group’s ability to effectively deal damage on the pull.
This ends up moving the trash out of your dps class’ AoE.
This puts melee at a disadvantage if the trash runs in obscure pathings.
The healer may not know what you’re doing and you get out of heal range.
So while you lived and saved the pull, there are consequences that the group has to live with by having to play in this way as a tank and I just don’t agree that we rely on this for us to be tanky.
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For warriors it’s heroic leap, avatar, charge, etc. Execute is also making a comback.
For paladin’s it’s Avengers shield and all their utility, Avengers Wrath, plus managing their whole host of defensive cooldowns.
For DKs it’s their grips and the way they have to maintain their health with Runepower. Also their rune management.
For monks it’s the rolls/transcendence/circle/aoe stun, and stagger management. Lighting mobs on fire is also pretty satisfying. Super mobile, can do some clever stuff.
I’ve never actually played DH, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about DHs not being fun to tank with.
For Guardian its… ? Pretty much the only thing that’s fun about Guardian is typhoon, ursal, and shift/swiftmends, and they are losing typhoon and the ability to swiftmend without a hot. Their rotation is boring, their cooldowns are boring, Berserk is boring, their animations are boring, their mobility is boring, their active mitigation is boring. They are the most milk toast spec in the game. Every now and then their is a fight where you aren’t tanking the whole time and you can utilize your affinity to do some neat stuff with, but those are few and far between outside of raids.
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