Man, I can’t wait to spend 9.0 getting rejected from groups for being a bear. 9.1 still getting rejected because a meagre numbers buff won’t fix the issues, and then getting to play in 9.2 and 9.3 when some borrowed power mechanic finally hides how broken guardian is right now.
Followed by “We have deleted the guardian spec, because few players were playing it. This will allow us to focus more resources on resto and moonkin, who really need it” in 10.0
I’d rather that Feral and Guardian were separated from Balance and Restoration as a separate class so they’d be considered in their specificity instead of the all-in-one package we’ve been organized in since Launch.
This is someone who has played Guardian for a while.
I was playing guardian back in vanilla when it was just feral. I’ll never stop, but we were in a better place back then, numbers wise, if not community perception wise. Outside the handful of fights that were explicitly designed to screw bear tanks (nefarian).
I could absolutely have made the case that a properly geared bear in MC/BWL was a better choice. I can’t make that case in 8.3, and I definitely can’t make it in 9.0 as is.
We have lost the unique advantages we used to have, and occupy this really awful spot where we are worse at everything.
You left out the part where johnny-come-latelys who rely exclusively on the pan-tanking broken part start mouthing off about “Well I do fine, I don’t understand what the problem is” or my favorite “But we do everything with JUST a group of Guardians and everything is fine”.
That’s just a given when it comes to druid in general.
People who don’t actually see/understand the underlying problems, but who have played during brief windows where overwhelming player power hides those problems, are convinced we are all just crazy.
Then the curtain gets pulled back, and they go back to their warrior/monk. Every single expansion.
One of the reasons I’d wish leveling alts wasn’t so easy.
Don’t start hating me just because I got tired of Blizzard kicking the bear in the face. 
Or give up and go Resto. But tbh this time it was for the better of the guild. Too many wanting to tank and not enough reliable healers. But totally gonna Bear it up for M+.
I hear that. But let’s face it, Monk is the only Healing class introduced since Launch, meanwhile all 3 of the new classes has a Tanking spec.
Sure, maybe there are possible situations where you can weave this kind of interesting gameplay in. But the question I would ask is was Bear shifting gameplay so good that they needed to nerf it? Because that’s the hardest ‘No!’ I can think of.
A Paly tank can do this with one two GCDs, and weave it in without the opportunity cost of damage skills. A DH can get this effective healing from just a Spirit Bomb and the movement from an off GCD leap, zero opportunity cost and 1 GCD. Contrast with the minimum of 5 GCDs you had to spend there, all the opportunity cost of missed attack skills and whatever defensive capability you had available in the form of Rage or Ironfur stacks. It is staggering how much it costs us to do this kind of utility.
Ironfur stacks should persist across forms. And if a non-bear takes Guardian Affinity, their baby one stack of Ironfur should be no different.
This alone would be huge.
Actually, I agree, druid needs buff in dps/defense/utility. They are taking away utility and they are taking away the borrowed power. It’s gonna be feel real bad.
I’m not saying druids are good, or druids are fine. Just that they are fun and should take more than 3 buttons to play at their best, even if that best isn’t so good.
Guardian isn’t BAD, its just BADLY DESIGNED, in my opinion at least. The rotation is uninspired and boring AF. But I LOVE the lore and idea of the class.
I haven’t any difficulty as a semi-casual player clearing a +15 when I know what I’m doing, so I dont think their innefectual. That said its nightmarishly repetitive and full of random “working as intended” things that the other tanks dont have to worry about.
Use the engineering belt enhancements? Drops bear form.
Use the NightFae soulshift thing? Drops bear form. (I’ve heard)
Use an offspec heal YOU TALENTED INTO? Drops bear form.
etc etc… I’m sure there are others but these just popped into my mind first. And of course dropping bear form can be very very bad.
So, for me the skill and fun comes from doing these things effectively and pulling off something amazing with typhoon, wild charge/tiger dash, spamming hots as you kite about, and buying the healer 10 seconds to catch up after a bursting or necrotic incident.
That being said, I freely admit that this is frequently NOT possible, many of our talents are terrible, serve no purpose, and seem to exist only to confuse new players (I selected Lunar Beam once and still hate myself).
Ya but now each time you have to drop bear form it’s equivalent to popping a CD. I actually don’t mind shifting. They should just make it powerful to shift and make shifting the bear thing.
Like make it so when we shift to heals we turn into a tree that has bonus armor and healing when using “heart of the wild” making this talent actually do something useful.
Yeah, I completely agree with that. The spec would be a lot more fun to play if I could safely leave form and do those things much more frequently. Example: Like if your standard rotation involved keeping up rake and rip on your primary target and that didn’t cause you to lose most of your armor and a chunk of health.
What if the affinities actually just buffed your form itself…
-Feral lets you cast rake as a builder, maul applies 10 secs of rip.
-Balance lets you cast sunfire as a builder, maul applies 4 secs of starfall.
-Resto lets you cast rejuv as a builder on up to one target, Maul consumes your rejuv with swiftmend.
Wow look at that, the rotation is more complicated, maul has a use again, and the affinity row has meaning. Yeah i’m sure it would need tuning, but the point is I came up with a possible solution in like 2 mins, and I’m no-one special. How can Blizzard not do the same? Theres thousands (tens of thousands?) of posts of feedback on the class.
I don’t mind bundling but I definitely like a higher ceiling from not bundling effects. If you could Ironfur 3x, go Cat, Rake and Rip for an ACTUAL damage increase, and swap back to Bear while DoTs are ticking? Mmm.
I think Druid won’t really ever be “right” again because of the role system. They won’t allow “hybrids” in the game. Even pure DPS heal better than a Ret Paladin, for example…
Something that might help is making talents trees again, where rows 4/7 are dynamically generated from the higher choices.
The idea is like - you only get Galactic Guardian if you take Balance Affinity, for example.
It’s tough for the team to manage 7 rows of static talents, so I don’t have high hopes, but it would still be nice to see.
+1 on this. Huge change that allows guard the option to swap out and use the druid toolkit without instantly dying.
What a magnificent unpruning this Beta has been.
Has this been confirmed to be working as intended?
Going to be pretty salty if this isn’t fixed. Will be another huge slap in the face, after zero response on guardian concerns.
“… these Iconic Class abilities. So you made it clear that they are just some abilities that hold a special place in your heart, and you want to see them back. And like, these are some spells that in their original incarnation were class wide, for whatever reason you’ve always had them, but we’ve taken them away. Here are just an example of couple spells that are coming back class-wide.”
Slide shows Raise Dead, Frost Shock, Consecration, Ursol’s Vortex, Shiv and Death Coil.
Holinka lied to Druids, f- the unpruning.