Guardian druid is the EASIEST tank spec to play. That’s because you are relegated to swipe 90% of the time.
Its the least played because #1 its boring #2 its bad.
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Back in Legion I used a boost to raise my Guardian to max level, and I was almost instantly filled with regret. I’m a casual, so I’m not so concerned with how well something performs. What I care about is “is it fun.” No, the current Guardian is not.
I’m not sure that Guardian can be fixed without just straight up adding buttons to press, but I entirely agree that the buttons added should synergize with each other to allow for some sort of skill cap.
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Legion was when Guardian was at its peak. It’s far worse, now (and in Shadowlands).
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I personally have only 17 keybinds for commonly used bear abilities: Incap, typhoon, vortex, skull bash, swipe, thrash, moon fire, mangle, fur, regen, hibernate, bark, si, taunt, soothe. Stampede, incarnation. I have rebirth bound to an obscure click because I have to use it once or twice a dungeon.
Plus potions and trinkets I maybe have 20, plus even more for offhealing and other consumables. Of all those keybinds maybe 5 are required for beginner bears using proper macros.
The spec is incredibly easy to learn baseline but finesse has a high skill ceiling. You can get pretty far just slapping Ironfur onto every single ability to have 100% uptime, assuming you otherwise Decently know the content and have decent gear. I’m not sure how Bear difficulty is even a discussion. I say this as an almost 3k Bear. It’s incredibly easy and allows you to learn the dungeons themselves because your spec is that effortless at the baseline expectation.
I remember seeing Guardian in NH, and it was amazing! The spec lost so much from Artifacts.
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I mean this is it, exactly. In terms of rotational abilities, Maul, Mangle, Thrash and Swipe aren’t terrible. Most specs “boil down” to 4-5 buttons now. The problem is the rest of the kit. Why can’t we have a Demoralizing Roar with no CD that lowers enemy attack power by 20% or something? Why can’t we have a Faerie Fire back that decreases the armor of the target for the entire group? Why can’t moonfire have a proc that makes it hit all targets within 5 yards of the target? That’d look neat and add to our cleave damage. Why we get an Ursoc back or something to better deal with magic damage? I’d love two charges of Feral charge in bear form… How about something like Balance’s [Fury of Elune] talent where on a 1min CD we can call down a pillar of burning lunar light that tears through a mob pack?
Guardian needs more buttons, more ability synergies, better ways to mitigate magic damage and more mobility. This seems obvious to everyone except the guy in charge of Guardian development, apparently.
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Well, you can take one of those off in Shadowlands.
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I’m still enjoying my Guardian, but then again I’m a bit of a die hard druid.
I’m pretty unhappy with the loss of the Ursoc’s/typoon combo as it was my goto for much of the recent part of this expansion. I’m unsure whether we will still be able to cast those spells in forms?
I feel that Renewal (which in the current form I personally would take over WC) is just a fix for how horrible FR feels on the GCD (and how much of a trap it will return to being at the start of a new xpac). I also dislike the extra self healing as with changes to FR its not really needed imo.
I wish they would just take FR off the GCD and be done with it. Failing that if it stays on the GCD then give us some interesting implications when we use it (eg when used at high health it turns into a long HoT, when used at low health its a burst heal).
I may be one of the few druids who does not particularly want to see WC become baseline (despite using it a lot as resto/boomy). For talent row 25 instead of renewal I’d much prefer guttural roars (if a larger radius is not doable, then the duration could be extended or cd reduced) to give us group utility to compare (note not compete) with mass grip/rallying cry etc. No-one is ever going to take tigers dash in its current form (not even for flag running in pvp) it should simply just make sprint usable in bear form.
HotW will depend on tuning, but having it on a cc row just seems weird - I would prefer having bloody paws back and it would fit my cc theme for row 35.
Lunar beam - why do we still have this? its universally hated except when cheesing logs. either move HotW here or give us a new talent that has the fun parts of Rage of the Sleeper (ie leech, cc immunity, and increased damage) as a passive or an on use.
Apart from those comments, I did want to give a shout out to Tewa as I agreed with the vast majority of your Alpha feedback.
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The problem is that those 4 abilities might as well be 2 abilities. Maul and mangle feel exactly the same to press. Same with thrash and swipe. The small mechanical differences don’t make up for the fact that these abilities look, feel, and sound almost exactly the same. One of each being on CD is not a meaningful difference. This “4-5 button” rotation has been artificially inflated by duplicate abilities.
Edit: Before anyone freaks out, I’m not suggesting anything get pruned, just that existing abilities get reworked to add more rewarding gameplay. For example, instead of thrash/swipe’s current functionality, why not have one of them be a spammable rage generator and the other be a hard hitting rage dump that applies a damage reduction to all enemies hit?
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Thanks! /highpaw
Hopefully somebody from Blizzard is reading.
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Maul is not on most bears actionbar though.
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I use maul a ton when offtanking, tank swapping, or as a dps bear. It can be 10% of my total damage at times.
Yeah its my least fav druid and tank spec. Too clunky.
Been leveling a prot paladin…and what a blast it is. Sadly! The abilities does something more than just dmg. The tempo is higher, and talents are meaningful.
More defensive cd’s that are on different timers with different strengths.
Choises to be made, engaging playstyle, so far.
I love bearform, I even got magetower and the rbg skin. But its been hibernating during most of bfa. I want my bear to be good and fun, but its not atm. And to top if all of they giving our utility to resto and balance, so theres no point bringing a bear tank to a dungeon ever anymore.
I wonder what it takes to make devs give a frigg ^^
This seems like such an odd attitude. Why does the presence of 22 abilities equate to a better experience, over another generalized class that has, say… 11 abilities? I admit, I do not understand at all how the number of abilities matters in the least. Please explain. Because what matters from my vantage point is capability. Does 11 abilities produce the capability the class needs? If not, then we should be looking at additional abilities. Or buffing those the class already has.
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Thrash and Swipe are more different than Rip and Shred. A straight damage versus a stackable bleed are hardly the same. Not to mention I’ve noticed a significant difference for threat generation in Thrash’s favor.
Maul and Mangle, though, only have a difference in resource cost. It used to be much worse with Maul doing little more damage than autohits back in WoD. Still, half the time I don’t have the Rage for Maul because it is either keeping up Ironfur or Frenzied Regen (danger of pugging and getting bad healers). It’s not uncommon for Pulverize to replace it on my bar, depending on if I have it as as Talent.
So nerf Thrash to be a Rage Dump? If you took the Talent of Rend and Tear as inherent and have the Talent amplify the affect, maybe? I am not a fan of Rage Dumps for damage sake when I’m not running as DPS (that’s what we have Cat form and Boomkin for, after all), but affecting survivability, I’m all for it.
I wouldn’t mind Maul adding damage reduction to its protocols, especially if it affects magical and aoe attacks. Heck, if it affected those two alone, it would be worth including the rotation since we lost magic protection in Legion and it would allow us to affect hits that tanking won’t absorb. Right now Maul is only good for adding a little GCD damage and dropping Rage that could used on something else, but it is better than WoD’s version.
Because everyone one of those 22 buttons does something unique, each having a direct impact on your ability to tank. There’s no fluff, there’s nothing superfluous, its all useful. Having all these options allows for a separation of skill ceiling and skill floor, because it requires you to know when to use each. It also allows you to make meaningful choices, such as do you shockwave this group, fear it, or power up your damage reduction and face tank it. For casters, do you use stun A, stun B, interrupt, spell reflect, or just ignore pain (LOL magic mitigation wut)? Hopefully you can see, having options is fun, allows for skilled play, and increases your ability to do meaningful content.
There are so many synergies between those 22 as well. Using shield block or ignore pain, lowers the CD on Avatar, which when used shortens thunderclap CD, which extends demo shout duration on all targets which reduces all damage taken by 20%. This stuff is awesome!
Druids have, do i have enough rage for ironfur? Nope, so do i swipe because my only other two meaningful buttons are on cooldown? They are, so lets swipe 3 times. This didnt do anything for your time-to-live or effective HP, this isnt fun, it doesn’t really help you survive that pack on a +15 any better.
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This is more of an issue for warrior, who can overcap rage, due to shield block charges not being ready, and ignore pain already up. Plus warriors lower 4 separate cooldowns by 3 seconds each for each revenge rage dump. I dont really see the rage capping issue unless you are off tanking.
For 4 of the current mythic raid bosses (Wrath, Skitra, Xanesh and to a lesser extent Maut) you never need use ironfur so Maul becomes an important piece of your rotation (for me ~8% even in today’s corruption dominated meta). Although I admit both feel underwhelming in terms of scaling.
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Let me correct myself, I am not a fan of a Rage Dumpe solely for damage and damage alone. It should add to survivability in some way, as noted by my earlier suggestion.
Still, that’s 4 out of how many encounters one may face in a week? And wouldn’t it be better if it addressed a survivability hole as well as providing damage?